Centre for Internet and Society

The Government needs to make sure our emails don't destroy the environment

aman — 2021-01-25T14:17:29Z

The Government's data centre policy must be more reflective of energy requirements and sustainable practices to effectively ensure that India's growing digital user base doesn't hurt the environment.

Ask people to name the first things they think of when you say climate change and you can expect a few standard answers. Polar bears on shrinking ice caps, cities suffocated from car exhaust fumes and mass deforestation are all surely to be somewhere on the list of responses. What you probably won’t find, however, is people discussing their social media. Or their email. Or any piece of the immeasurable amount of data that we produce on the internet on a daily basis. Yet all of this data is far from green, and is substantially increasing our carbon footprint. So the question arises, how is our data contributing to climate change, and what can policy makers do about it?

There is a tendency to focus on the turnover of hardware when discussing the climate impact of digital technology. And while this is an important element of the sector’s impact, it is essential that policymakers also recognise the impact of intangible elements of the digital ecosystem - such as data. Every piece of data that is created or transmitted across the internet has an environmental cost. That cost being the energy required (and by extension the fossil fuel amount used) to operate the technology that hosts and transports the data.

Admittedly, the environmental impact and cost of one person checking their instagram or even reading this article is quite low. But aggregated across the estimated number of internet users in the world, digital technologies are estimated to be responsible for 1.7 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases - which is about 4% of the global greenhouse gas production and roughly how much is produced by the global airline industry.

Another key element of data’s environmental impact is the establishment and operation of data centres. Data centres are establishments that house computing and ICT equipment. These centres are critical infrastructure components to the functioning of the internet and are used to store an immense volume of data. As the number of data centres has exploded over the last decade, they have come to account for 1% all global greenhouse gas production on their own, and are expected to contribute to 14% of all emissions by 2040.

India’s growing data centre problem

As the number of Internet users in India grows at an exponential rate, it is imperative that the government take a proactive approach to creating sustainable infrastructure that can meet the ICT demands of the population.

Recently, the Ministry of Electronics and Information technology, released its draft policy on data centres. The policy outlined the government’s aim at establishing a large number of domestic data centres that will be used to store all data created within the country. The government’s policy envisions India as being one of the world leaders in data centre establishment and operation - on a par with countries such as Singapore who now hold that mantle.

However, despite presenting this grand vision, the policy provides no specifics on how it plans to cope with the environmental stress that these new centres would bring. The policy states that ensuring uninterrupted power to these centres will be a key priority of the government - a burden that would be far beyond the capacity of current renewable energy sources in the country. Taking the example of Singapore, almost 7% of all electricity consumption in the country was from data centres. Such proportionate consumption by Indian data centres would realistically only be possible through an expanded use of fossil fuel generated electricity.

To give the policy some credit, it does mention ‘encouraging’ the use of renewable energy for data centres but fails to mention any specific schemes or measures to ensure renewable energy investment and growth is enough to keep up with growing data centre energy demands.

What can policy makers do?

The question arises, how can policy makers make data centres more sustainable? Is there any way of reducing the energy consumption of these data centres?

In short, not really right now. It has been estimated that 40% of total energy consumption by data centres is used in cooling. And while there is the possibility that building these data centres in cooler environments would reduce these costs - converting shimla, coorg, ooty and other cool weathered hill stations into monuments of data centre infrastructure does not seem particularly practical. And so short of investing heavily into research and development for the future and conforming to global standards of data centre operation, there is not much the government can do now outside of focusing on the source of the energy that is used by these centres.

Keeping this in mind, the first step in evolving India’s data infrastructure has to be investing in and developing clear schemes for promoting renewable energy in the country. While India has seen positive growth in renewable energy infrastructure, it would require substantial private and public investment in order to meet its target of 450 GW of renewable energy by 2021. Widespread development of data centres would only further stress India’s energy needs and would therefore require a commensurate increase in the amount of renewable energy available. As such it is imperative that the state not stick to vague statements of ‘encouraging renewable energy’ or ‘collaborating between ministries’ and rather adopt a revised policy for developing renewable energy for digital infrastructure.

Such a step would ensure the sustainability of the country’s digital infrastructure, and ensure that every Indian has access to both clean air and their email.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-government-needs-to-make-sure-our-emails-dont-destroy-the-environment

The Centre for Internet and Society’s comments and feedback to the: Digital Personal Data Protection Rules 2025

Pallavi Bedi, Vipul Kharbanda, Shweta Mohandas, Anubha Sinha and Isha Suri — 2025-03-06T02:06:44Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) submitted its comments and feedback to the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules 2025 initiated by the Indian government.

Rule 3 - Notice given by data fiduciary to data principal - Under Section 5(2) of the DPDP Act, when the personal data of the data principal has been processed before the commencement of the Act, then the data fiduciary is required to give notice to the data principal as soon as reasonably practicable. However, the Rules fail to specify what is meant by reasonably practicable. The timeline for a notice in such circumstances is unclear.

In addition, under Rule 3(a) the phrase “be presented and be understandable independently” is ambiguous. It is not clear whether the consent notice has to be presented independently of any other information or whether it only needs to be independently understandable and can be presented along with other information.
In addition to this we suggest that the need for “privacy by design” mentioned in the earlier drafts is brought back, with the focus on preventing deceptive design practices (dark patterns) being used while collecting data.

Rule 4 - Registration and obligations of Consent Manager- The concept of independent consent managers, similar to account aggregators in the financial sector, and consent manager platforms in the EU is a positive step. However, the Act and the Rules need to flesh out the interplay between the Data Fiduciary and the Consent Managers in a more detailed manner, for example, how does the data fiduciary know if a data principal is using a consent manager, and under what circumstances can the data fiduciary bypass the consent manager, what is the penalty/consequence, etc.

Rule 6 - Reasonable security safeguards - While we appreciate the guidance provided in terms of the measures for security such as “encryption, obfuscation or masking or the use of virtual tokens”, it would also be good to refer to the SPDI Rules and include the example of the The international Standard IS/ISO/IEC 27001 on Information Technology - Security Techniques - Information Security Management System as an illustration to guide data fiduciaries.

Rule 7 - Intimation of personal data breach - As per the Rules, the data fiduciary on becoming aware of any personal data breach is required to notify the data principal and the Data Protection Board without delay; a plain reading of this Rule suggests that data fiduciary has to report the breach almost immediately, and this could be a practical challenge. Further, the absence of any threshold (materiality, gravity of the breach, etc) for notifying the data principal means that the data fiduciary will have to inform the data principal about even an isolated data breach which may not have an impact on the data principal. In this context, we recommend the Rule be amended to state that the data fiduciary should be required to inform the Data Protection Board about every data breach, however the data principal should be informed depending on the gravity and materiality of the breach and when it is likely to result in high risk to the data principal.

Whilst the Rules have provisions for intimation of data breach, there is no specific provision requiring the Data Fiduciary to take all steps necessary to ensure that the Data Fiduciary has taken all necessary measures to mitigate the risk arising out of the said breach. Although there is an obligation to report any such measures to the Data Principal (Rule 7(1)(c)) as well as to the DPBI (Rule 7(2)(b)(iii)), there is no positive obligation imposed on the Data Fiduciary to take any such mitigation measures. The Rules and the Act merely presume that the Data Fiduciary would take mitigation measures, perhaps that is the reason why there are notification requirements for such breach, however the Rules and the Act do not put any positive obligation on the Data Fiduciary to actually implement such measures. This would lead to a situation where a Data Fiduciary may not take any measures to mitigate the risks arising out of the data breach, and be in compliance with its legal obligations by merely notifying the Data Principal as well as the DPBI that no measures have been taken to mitigate the risks arising from the data breach. In addition, the SPDI Rules state that in an event of a breach the body corporate is required to demonstrate that they had implemented reasonable security standards. This provision could be incorporated in this Rule to emphasize on the need to implement robust security standards which is one of the ways to curb data breaches from happening, and ensure that there is a protocol to mitigate the breach.

Rule 10 - Verifiable consent for processing of personal data of child or of person with disability who has a lawful guardian - The two mechanisms provided under the Rules to verify the age and identity of parents pre-suppose a high degree of digital literacy on the part of the parents. They may either give or refuse consent without thinking too much about the consequences arising out of giving or not giving consent. As there is always a risk of individuals not providing the correct information regarding their age or their relationship with the child, platforms may have to verify every user’s age; thereby preventing users from accessing the platform anonymously. Further, there is also a risk of data maximisation of personal data rather than data minimisation; i.e parents may be required to provide far more information than required to prove their identity. One recommendation/suggestion that we propose is to remove the processing of children's personal data from the ambit of this law, and instead create a separate standalone legislation dealing with children’s digital rights. Another important issue to highlight here is the importance of the Digital Protection Board and its capacity to levy fines and impose strictures on the platforms. We have seen from examples from other countries that platforms are forced to redesign and provide for better privacy and data protection mechanisms when the regulator steps in and imposes high penalties

Rule 12 - Additional obligations of Significant Data Fiduciary - The Rules do not clarify which entities will be considered as a Significant Data Fiduciary, leaving that to the government notifications. This creates uncertainty for data fiduciaries, especially smaller organisations that might not be able to set up the mechanisms and people for conducting data protection impact assessment, and auditing. The Rule provides that SDFs will have to conduct an annual Data Protection Impact Assessment. While this is a step in the right direction, the Rules are currently silent on the granularity of the DPIA. Similarly for “audit” the Rules do not clarify what type of audit is needed and what the parameters are. It is therefore imperative that the government notifies the level of details that the DPIA and the audit need to go into in order to ensure that the SDFs actually address issues where their data governance practices are lacking and not use the DPIA as a whitewashing tactic.There is also a need to reduce some of the ambiguity with regards to the parameters, and responsibilities in order to make it easier for startups and smaller players to comply with the regulations. In addition, while there is a need to protect data and increase responsibility on organisations collecting sensitive data or large volumes of data, there is a need to look beyond compliance and look at ways that preserve the rights of the data principal. Hence significant data fiduciaries should also be given the added responsibility of collecting explicit consent from the data principal, and also have easier access for correction of data, grievance redressal and withdrawal of consent.

Rule 14 - Processing of personal data outside India - As per section 16 of the Act the government could, by notification, restrict the transfer of data to specific countries as notified. This system of a negative list envisaged under the Act appears to have been diluted somewhat by the use of the phrase “any foreign State” under the Rules. This ambiguity should be addressed and the language in the Rules may be altered to bring it in line with the Act. Further, the rules also appear to be ultra vires to the Act. As per the DPDP Act, personal data could be shared to outside India, except to countries which were on the negative list, however, the dilution of the provision through the rules appears to have now created a white list of countries; i.e. permissible list of countries to which data can be transferred.

Rule 15 Exemption from Act for research, archiving or statistical purposes- While creating an exception for research and statistical purposes is an understandable objective, the current wording of the provision is vague and subject to mischief. The objective behind the provision is to ensure that research activities are not hindered due to the requirements of taking consent, etc. as required under the Act. However the way the provision is currently drafted, it could be argued that a research lab or a research centre established by a large company, for e.g. Google, Meta, etc. could also seek exemptions from the provisions of this Act for conducting “research”. The research conducted may not be shared with the public in general and may be used by the companies that funded/established the research centre. Therefore there should be further conditions attached to this provision, that would keep such research centers outside the purview of the exemption. Conditions such as making the results of the research publicly available, public interest, etc. could be considered for this purpose.

Rule 22 - Calling for Information from data fiduciary or intermediary - This rule read with the seventh schedule appears to dilute the data minimisation and purpose limitation provisions provided for in the Act. The wide ambit of powers appears to be in contravention of the Supreme Court judgement in the Puttaswamy case, which places certain restrictions on the government while collecting personal data. This “omnibus” provision flouts guardrails like necessity and proportionality that are important to safeguard the fundamental right to privacy.

It should be clarified whether this rule is merely an enabling provision to facilitate sharing of information, and only designated competent authorities as per law can avail of this provision. Need for Confidentiality

Additionally, the rule mandates that the government may “require the Data Fiduciary or intermediary to not disclose” any request for information made under the Act. There is no requirement of confidentiality indicated in the governing section, i.e. section 36, from which Rule 22 derives its authority. Talking about the avoidance of secrecy in government business, the Supreme Court in the State of U.P. v. Raj Narain, (1975) 4 SCC 428 has held that
“In a government of responsibility like ours, where all the agents of the public must be responsible for their conduct, there can but few secrets. The people of this country have a right to know every public act, everything, that is done in a public way, by their public functionaries. They are entitled to know the particulars of every public transaction in all its bearing. The right to know, which is derived from the concept of freedom of speech, though not absolute, is a factor which should make one wary, when secrecy is claimed for transactions which can, at any rate, have no repercussions on public security (2). To cover with [a] veil [of] secrecy the common routine business, is not in the interest of the public. Such secrecy can seldom be legitimately desired. It is generally desired for the purpose of parties and politics or personal self-interest or bureaucratic routine. The responsibility of officials to explain and to justify their acts is the chief safeguard against oppression and corruption.”
In order to ensure that state interests are also protected, there may be an enabling provision whereby in certain instances confidentiality may be maintained, but there has to be a supervisory mechanism whereby such action may be judged on the anvil of legal propriety.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-comments-and-feedback-to-digital-personal-data-protection-rules-2025

Demystifying Data Breaches in India

Pawan Singh — 2022-10-17T16:14:03Z

Despite the rate at which data breaches occur and are reported in the media, there seems to be little information about how and when they are resolved. This post examines the discourse on data breaches in India with respect to their historical forms, with a focus on how the specific terminology to describe data security incidents has evolved in mainstream news media reportage.

Edited by Arindrajit Basu and Saumyaa Naidu

India saw a 62% drop in data breaches in the first quarter of 2022. Yet, it ranked fifth on the list of countries most hit by cyberattacks according to a 2022 report by Surfshark, a Netherlands-based VPN company. Another report on the cost of data breaches researched by the Ponemon Institute and published by IBM reveals that the breach of about 29500 records between March 2021 and March 2022 resulted in a 25% increase in the average cost from INR 165 million in 2021 to INR 176 million in 2022.

These statistics are certainly a cause for concern, especially in the context of India’s rapidly burgeoning digital economy shaped by the pervasive platformization of private and public services such as welfare, banking, finance, health, and shopping among others. Despite the rate at which data breaches occur and are reported in the media, there seems to be little information about how and when they are resolved. This post examines the discourse on data breaches in India with respect to their historical forms, with a focus on how the specific terminology to describe data security incidents has evolved in mainstream news media reportage.

While expert articulations of cybersecurity in general and data breaches in particular tend to predominate the public discourse on data privacy, this post aims to situate broader understandings of data breaches within the historical context of India’s IT revolution and delve into specific concepts and terminology that have shaped the broader discourse on data protection. The late 1990s and early 2000s offer a useful point of entry into the genesis of the data security landscape in India.

Data Breaches and their Predecessor Forms

The articulation of data security concerns around the late 1990s and early 2000s isn’t always consistent in deploying the phrase, ‘data breach’ to signal cybersecurity concerns in India. The terms such as ‘data/ identity theft’ and ‘data leak’ figure prominently in the public articulation of concerns with the handling of personal information by IT systems, particularly in the context of business process outsourcing (BPO) and e-commerce activities. Other pertinent terms such as “security breach”, “data security”, and ‘“cyberfraud” also capture the specificity of growing concerns around outsourced data to India. At the time, i.e. around mid-2000s regulatory frameworks were still evolving to accommodate and address the complexities arising from a dynamic reconfiguration of the telecommunications and IT landscape in India.

Some of the formative cases that instantiate the usage of the aforementioned terms are instructive to understand shifts in the reporting of such incidents over time. The earliest case during that period concerns a 2002 case concerning the theft and sale of source code by an IIT Kharagpur student who intended to sell the code to two undercover FBI agents who worked with the CBI to catch the thief. A straightforward case of data theft was framed by media stories around the time as a cybercrime involving the illegal sale of the source code of a software package, as software theft of intellectual property in the context of outsourcing and as an instance of industrial espionage in poor nations without laws protecting foreign companies. This case became the basis of the earliest calls for the protection of data privacy and security in the context of the Indian BPO sector. The Indian IT Act, 2000 at the time only covered unauthorized access and data theft from computers and networks without any provisions for data protection, interception or computer forgery. The BPO boom in India brought with it employment opportunities for India’s English-speaking, educated youth but in the absence of concrete data privacy legislation, the country was regarded as an unsafe destination for outsourcing aside from the political ramifications concerning the loss of American jobs.

In a major 2005 incident, employees of the Mphasis BFL call centre in Pune extracted sensitive bank account information of Citibank’s American customers to divert INR 1.90 crore into new accounts set up in India. The media coverage of this incident calls it India’s first outsourcing cyberfraud and a well planned scam, a cybercrime in a globalized world, and a case of financial fraud and a scam that required no hacking skills, and a case of data theft and misuse. Within the ambit of cybercrime, media reports of these incidents refer to them as cases of “fraud”, “scam” and “theft''.

Two other incidents in 2005 set the trend for a critical spotlight on data security practices in India. In a June 2005 incident, an employee of a Delhi-based BPO firm, Infinity e-systems, sold the account numbers and passwords of 1000 bank customers to the British Tabloid, The Sun. The Indian newspaper, Telegraph India, carried an online story headlined, “BPO Blot in British Backlash: Indian Sells Secret Data,” which reported that the employee, Kkaran Bahree, 24, was set up by a British journalist, Oliver Harvey. Harvey filmed Bahree accepting wads of cash for the stolen data. Bahree’s theft of sensitive information is described both as a data fraud and a leak in the above 2005 BBC story by Soutik Biswar. Another story on the incident calls it a “scam” involving the leakage of credit card information. The use of the term ‘leak’ appears consistently across other media accounts such as a 2005 story on Karan Bahree in the Times of India and another story in the Economic Times about the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) sting operation similar to the one in Delhi, describing the scam by the fraudsters as a leak of the online information of Australians. Another media account of the coverage describes the incident in more generic terms such as an “outsourcing crime”.

The other case concerned four former employees of Parsec technologies who stole classified information and diverted calls from potential customers, causing a sudden drop in the productivity of call centres managed by the company in November 2005. Another call centre fraud came to light in 2009 through a BBC sting operation in which British reporters went to Delhi and secretly filmed a deal with a man selling credit card and debit card details obtained from Symantec call centres, which sold software made by Norton. This BBC story uses the term “breach” to refer to the incident.

In the broader framing of these cases generally understood as cybercrime, which received transnational media coverage, the terms “fraud”, “leak”, “scam”, and “theft” appear interchangeably. The term “data breach” does not seem to be a popular or common usage in these media accounts of the BPO-related incidents. A broader sense of breach (of confidentiality, privacy) figures in the media reportage in implicitly racial terms of cultural trust, as a matter of ethics and professionalism and in the language of scandal in some cases.

These early cases typify a specific kind of cybercrime concerning the theft or misappropriation of outsourced personal data belonging to British or American residents. What’s remarkable about these cases is the utmost sensitivity of the stolen personal information including financial details, bank account and credit/debit card numbers, passwords, and in one case, source code. While these cases rang the alarm bells on the Indian BPO sector’s data security protocols, they also directed attention to concerns around the training of Indian employees on the ethics of data confidentiality and vetting through psychometric tests for character assessment. In the wake of these incidents, the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), an Indian non-governmental trade and advocacy group, launched a National Skills Registry for IT professionals to enable employers to conduct background checks in 2006.

These data theft incidents earned India a global reputation of an unsafe destination for business process outsourcing, seen to be lacking both, a culture of maintaining data confidentiality and concrete legislation for data protection at the time. Importantly, the incidents of data theft or misappropriation were also traceable back to a known source, a BPO employee or a group of malefactors, who often sold sensitive data belonging to foreign nationals to others in India.

The phrase “data leak” also caught on in another register in the context of the widespread use of camera-equipped mobile phones in India. The 2004 Delhi MMS case offers an instance of a date leak, recapitulating the language of scandal in moralistic terms.

The Delhi MMS Case

The infamous 2004 incident involved two underage Delhi Public School (DPS) students who recorded themselves in a sexually explicit act on a cellular phone. After a fall out, the male student passed the low-resolution clip on to his friend in which his female friend’s face is seen. The clip, distributed far and wide in India, ended up on the famous e-shopping and auction website, bazee.com leading to the arrest of the website’s CEO Avinash Bajaj for hosting the listing for sale. Another similar case in 2004 mimicked the mechanics of visual capture through hand-held MMS-enabled mobile phones. A two-minute MMS of a top South-Indian actress taking a shower went viral on the Internet in 2004, the year when another MMS of two prominent Bollywood actors kissing had already done the rounds. The MMS case also marked the onset of a national moral panic around the amateur uses of mobile phone technologies, capable of corrupting young Indian minds under a sneaky regime of new media modernity. The MMS case, not strictly the classic case of a data breach - non-visual information generally stored in databases - became an iconic case of a data leak framed in the media as a scandal that shocked the country, with calls for the regulation of mobile phone use in schools. The case continued its scandalous afterlife in a 2009 Bollywood film, Dev D and another 2010 film, Love, Sex and Dhokha,

Taken together, the BPO data thefts and frauds and the data leak scandals prefigure the contemporary discourse on data breaches in the second decade of the 21st century, or what may also be called the Decade of Datafication. The launch of the Indian biometric identity project, Aadhaar, in 2009, which linked access to public services and welfare delivery with biometric identification, resulted in large-scale data collection of the scheme’s subscribers. Such linking raised the spectre of state surveillance as alleged by the critics of Aadhaar, marking a watershed moment in the discourse on data privacy and protection.

Aadhaar Data Security and Other Data Breaches

Aadhaar was challenged in the Indian Supreme Court in 2012 when it was made mandatory for welfare and other services such as banking, taxation and mobile telephony. The national debate on the status of privacy as a cultural practice in Indian society and a fundamental right in the Indian Constitution led to two landmark judgments - the 2017 Puttaswamy ruling holding privacy to be a constitutional right subject to limitations and the 2018 Supreme Court judgment holding mandatory Aadhaar to be constitutional only for welfare and taxation but no other service.

While these judgments sought to rein in Aadhaar’s proliferating mandatory uses, biometric verification remained the most common mode of identity authentication with most organizations claiming it to be mandatory for various purposes. During the same period from 2010 onwards, a range of data security events concerning Aadhaar came to light. These included app-based flaws, government websites publishing Aadhaar details of subscribers, third party leaks of demographic data, duplicate and forged Aadhaar cards and other misuses.

In 2015, the Indian government launched its ambitious Digital India Campaign to provide government services to Indian citizens through online platforms. Yet, data security breach incidents continued to increase, particularly the trade in the sale and purchase of sensitive financial information related to bank accounts and credit card numbers. The online availability of a rich trove of data, accessible via a simple Google search without the use of any extractive software or hacking skills within a thriving shadow economy of data buyers and sellers makes India a particularly vulnerable digital economy, especially in the absence of robust legislation. The lack of awareness around digital crimes and low digital literacy further exacerbates the situation given that datafication via government portals, e-commerce, and online apps has outpaced the enforcement of legislative frameworks for data protection and cybersecurity.

In the context of Aadhaar data security issues, the term “data leak” seems to have more traction in media stories followed by the term “security breach”. Given the complexity of the myriad ways in which Aadhaar data has been breached, terms such as data leak and exposure (of 11 crore Indian farmers’ sensitive information) add to the specificity of the data security compromise. The term “fraud” also makes a comeback in the context of Aadhaar-related data security incidents. These cases represent a mix of data frauds involving fake identities, theft of thumb prints for instance from land registries and inadvertent data leaks in numerous incidents involving government employees in Jharkhand, voter ID information of Indian citizens in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and activist reports of Indian government websites leaking Aadhaar data.

Aadhaar-related data security events parallel the increase in corporate data breaches during the decade of datafication. The term “data leak” again alternates with the term “data breach” in most media accounts while other terms such as “theft” and “scam” all but disappear in the media coverage of corporate data breaches.

From 2016 onwards, incidents of corporate data breaches in India continued to rise. A massive debit card data breach involving the YES Bank ATMs and point-of-sale (PoS) machines compromised through malware between May and July of 2016 resulted in the exposure of ATM PINs and non-personal identifiable information of customers. It went undetected for nearly three months. Another data leak in 2018 concerned a system run by Indane, a state-owned utility company, which allowed anyone to download private information on all Aadhaar holders including their names, services they were connected to and the unique 12-digit Aadhaar number. Data breaches continued to be reported in India concurrent with the incidents of data mismanagement related to Aadhaar. Some prominent data breaches included a cyberattack on the systems of airline data service provider SITA resulting in the leak of Air India passenger data, leakage of the personal details of the Common Admission Test (CAT) applicants, details of credit card and order preferences of Domino’s pizza customers on the dark web, leakage of COVID-19 patients’ test results leaked by government websites, user data of Justpay and Big Basket for sale on the dark web and an SBI data breach among others between 2019 and 2021.

The media reportage of these data breaches use the term “cyberattack” to describe the activities of hackers and cybercriminals operating within a shadow economy or the dark web. Recent examples of cyberattacks by hackers who leak user data for sale on the dark web include 8.2 terabytes of 110 million sensitive financial data (KYC details, Aadhaar, credit/debit cards and phone numbers) of the payments app MobiKwik users, 180 million Domino’s pizza orders (name, location, emails, mobile numbers), and Flipkart’s Cleartrip users’ data. In these incidents again, three terms appear prominently in the media reportage - cyberattack, data breach, and leak. The term “data breach” remains the most frequently used epithet in the media coverage of the lapses of data security. While it alternates with the term “leak” in the stories, the term “data breach” appears consistently across most headlines in the news stories.

The exposure of sensitive, personal, and non-personal data by public and private entities in India is certainly a cause for concern, given the ongoing data protection legislative vacuum.

The media coverage of data breaches tends to emphasize the quantum of compromised user data aside from the types of data exposed. The media framing of these breaches in quantitative terms of financial loss as well as the magnitude and the number of breaches certainly highlights the gravity of these incidents but harm to individual users is often not addressed.

Evolving Terminology and the Source of Data Harms

The main difference in the media reportage of the BPO cybersecurity incidents during the early aughts and the contemporary context of datafication is the usage of the term, “data breach”, which figures prominently in contemporary reportage of data security incidents but not so much in the BPO-related cybercrimes.

THe BPO incidents of data theft and the attendant fraud must be understood in the context of the anxieties brought on by a globalizing world of Internet-enabled systems and transnational communications. In most of these incidents regarded as cybercrimes, the language of fraud and scam ventures further to attribute such illegal actions of the identifiable malefactors to cultural factors such as lack of ethics and professionalism.The usage of the term “data leak” in these media reports functions more specifically to underscore a broader lapse in data security as well as a lack of robust cybersecurity laws. The broader term, “breach”, is occasionally used to refer to these incidents but the term, “data breach” doesn’t appear as such.

The term “data breach” gains more prominence in media accounts from 2009 onwards in the context of Aadhaar and the online delivery of goods and services by public and private players. The term “data breach” is often used interchangeably with the term “leak” within the broader ambit of cyberattacks in the corporate sector. The media reportage frames Aadhaar-related security lapses as instances of security/data breaches, data leaks, fraud, and occasionally scam.

In contrast to the handful of data security cases in the BPO sector, data breaches have abounded in the second decade of the twenty-first century. What further differentiates the BPO-related incidents to the contemporary data breaches is the source of the data security lapse. Most corporate data breaches remain attributable to the actions of hackers and cybercriminals while the BPO security lapses were traceable back to ex-employees or insiders with access to sensitive data. We also see in the coverage of the BPO-related incidents, the attribution of such data security lapses to cultural factors including a lack of ethics and professionalism often in racial overtones. The media reportage of the BBC and ABC sting operations suggests that the India BPOs lack of preparedness to handle and maintain personal data confidentiality of foreigners point to the absence of a privacy culture in India. Interestingly, this transnational attribution recurs in a different form in the national debate on Aadhaar and how Indians don’t care about their privacy.

The question of the harms of data breaches to individuals is also an important one. In the discourse on contemporary data breaches, the actual material harm to an individual user is rarely ever established in the media reportage and generally framed as potential harm that could be devastating given the sensitivity of the compromised data. The harm is reported to be predominantly a function of organizational cybersecurity weakness or attributed to hackers and cybercriminals.

The reporting of harm in collective terms of the number of accounts breached, financial costs of a data breach, the sheer number of breaches and the global rankings of countries with the highest reported cases certainly suggests a problem with cybersecurity and the lack of organizational preparedness. However, this collective framing of a data breach’s impact usually elides an individual user’s experience of harm. Even in the case of Aadhaar-related breaches - a mix of leaking data on government websites and other online portals and breaches - the notion of harm owing to exposed data isn’t clearly established. This is, however, different from the extensively documented cases of Aadhaar-related issues in which welfare benefits have been denied, identities stolen and legitimate beneficiaries erased from the system due to technological errors.

Future Directions of Research

This brief, qualitative foray into the media coverage of data breaches over two decades has aimed to trace the usage of various terms in two different contexts - the Indian BPO-related incidents and the contemporary context of datafication. It would be worth exploring at length, the relationship between frequent reports of data breaches, and the language used to convey harm in the contemporary context of a concrete data protection legislation vacuum. It would be instructive to examine the specific uses of the terms such as “fraud”, “leak”, “scam”, “theft” and “breach” in media reporting of such data security incidents more exhaustively. Such analysis would elucidate how media reportage shapes public perception towards the safety of user data and an anticipation of attendant harm as data protection legislation continues to evolve.

Especially with Aadhaar, which represents a paradigm shift in identity verification through digital means, it would be useful to conduct a sentiment analysis of how biometric identity related frauds, scams, and leaks are reported by the mainstream news media. A study of user attitudes and behaviours in response to the specific terminology of data security lapses such as the terms “breach”, “leak”, “fraud”, “scam”, “cybercrime”, and “cyberattack” would further contribute to how lay users understand the gravity of a data security lapse. Such research would go beyond expert understandings of data security incidents that tend to dominate media reportage to elucidate the concerns of lay users and further clarify the cultural meanings of data privacy.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/demistifying-data-breaches-in-india

CIS comments on the Revised Non Personal Governance Framework Report

Pallavi Bedi, Anubha Sinha and Aman Nair — 2021-03-22T05:39:45Z

This submission presents a response by researchers at the Centre for Internet and Society, India (CIS) to the second version of the Report on Non-Personal Data Governance Framework prepared by the Committee of Experts (hereafter “Report”). CIS had also provided inputs to 1 the draft version of the Report published in July 2020.

Executive Summary

It is beyond doubt that there must exist a regulatory frameowrk that governs the rights accorded to individual, businesses and the state in the context of the use of non personal data. However, based on the recommendations in the Report, we have found that the following areas require greater clarity and deliberation before being enacted.

General Comments

1. Examining the economic considerations underpinning the non-personal data governance framework

a. Open Data access is not enough to offset network effects and existing power imbalances in key digital sectors

b. Increased Data collection leads to Data Appropriation

2. Addressing the societal concerns that arise with sharing Non Personal Data sharing

a. De-anonymization and harm linked with sharing Non Personal Data

b. ● Sharing non-personal data could result in a culture of data maximisation

Section Specific Comments

1. Section 7.2-Non-Personal Data Roles- Community

a. Vague and very wide definition of Community

2. Section 7.7- Data Trustee

a. Need for greater clarity on the defining harmful activities and the appropriateness of Data Trustees

3. Section 7.4(iv)- ‘Duty of care’ of data custodian

a. Lack of clarity on terms including active misuse and harm

4. Section 7.10 -Non-Personal Data Authority

a.Composition of the Authority

b.Roles and Responsibility of the Authority

5. Section 9.3 - Copyright Law

a. Failure to recognise copyright in underlying data of datasets

b. Consider advocating use of limitations and exceptions in copyright law to limit ownership in datasets and underlying data

The full version of the submission can be found at: http://www.cis-india.org/internet-governance/cis-comments-revised-npd-report

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-comments-on-the-revised-non-personal-governance-framework-report

Unpacking Data Protection Law: A Visual Representation

amber — 2018-02-15T13:22:00Z

This visual explainer unpacking data protection law was developed by Amber Sinha (research) and Pooja Saxena (design), and published as part of the Data Privacy Week celebrations on the Privacy International blog. Join the conversation on Twitter using #dataprivacyweek.

Cross-posted from Privacy International blog.

Credits: Flag illustrations, when not created by the authors, are from Ibrandify / Freepik.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/unpacking-data-protection-law-a-visual-representation

MediaNama - #NAMAprivacy: The Future of User Data (Delhi, Sep 6)

sumandro — 2017-09-05T10:22:12Z

MediaNama is hosting a full day conference on "the future of user data in India", on the 6th of September 2017, which is particularly significant given the recent Supreme Court ruling on the fundamental right to privacy, and two government consultations: one at the TRAI, and another at MEITY. This discussion is supported by Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, will participate as a speaker in the session titled "regulating storage, sharing and transfer of data."

Details

Time: September 6th 2017, 9 am to 4:30 pm

Venue: Gulmohar Hall, India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road (please enter from Gate #3)

Agenda: https://www.medianama.com/2017/08/223-agenda-namaprivacy-future-of-user-data/

Announced Speakers

Chinmayi Arun, Centre for Communication Governance at NLU Delhi
Malavika Raghavan, IFMR Finance Foundation
Renuka Sane, NIPFP
Smitha Krishna Prasad, Centre for Communication Governance at NLU Delhi
Ananth Padmanabhan, Carnegie India
Avinash Ramachandra, Amazon
Hitesh Oberoi, Naukri
Jochai Ben-Avie, Mozilla
Mrinal Sinha, Mobikwik
Murari Sreedharan, Bankbazaar
Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Centre for Internet and Society

Facilitators

Saikat Datta, Asia Times Online
Shashidar KJ, MediaNama
Nikhil Pahwa, MediaNama

Attendees

We have confirmed 140+ attendees from: Adobe, Amber Health, Amazon, APCO Worldwide, Bank Bazaar, Bloomberg-Quint, Blume Ventures, Broadband India Forum, Business Standard, BuzzFeed News, CCOAI, CEIP, Change Alliance, Chase India, CIS, CNN News18, DEF, Deloitte, DNA, DSCI, E2E Networks, British High Commission, Eurus Network Services, FICCI, Firefly Networks, Flipkart, Forrester Research, Fortumo, DoT, MEITY, IAMAI, IBM, ICRIER, IFMR Finance Foundation, IIMC, Indian Law Institute, Indic Project, Info Edge, ISPAI, IT for Change, ITU-APT, Jamia Millia Islamia, Jindal Global Law School, Mimir Technologies, Mozilla, Newslaundry, NIPFP, Nishith Desai Associates, NIXI, NLU-Delhi, ORF, Paytm, PLR Chambers, PRS Legislative Research, Publicis Groupe, Quartz India, Reliance Jio, Reuters, Saikrishna & Associates, Scroll.in, SFLC.in, Spectranet, The Economics Times, The Indian Express, The Times of India, The Wire, Times Internet, Twitter, and more.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/medianama-namaprivacy-the-future-of-user-data-delhi-sep-6

Praja - Enhancing Democracy Through Access to Open Data: What Are the Roles of Government and Civil Society? (Delhi, Sep 08)

sumandro — 2017-09-05T10:57:38Z

Open Government Data (OGD) is widely seen to be a key hallmark of contemporary democratic practice and is often linked to the passing of freedom of information legislation. OGD is a philosophy—and increasingly a set of policies—that promotes transparency, accountability and value creation by making government data available to all. Public bodies produce and commission huge quantities of data and information. By making their datasets available, public institutions become more transparent and accountable to citizens. By encouraging the use, reuse and free distribution of datasets, governments promote business creation and innovative, citizen-centric services. Praja is organising a symposium on "open data and civil society" on Friday, Sep 8, which is supported by European Union and Friedrich Naumann Stiftung fur die Freiheit. Sumandro Chattapadhyay (Research Director) will take part in this event as a speaker in the session on "data centric approach and role of stakeholders in the urban governance ecosystem."

Details

Date: Friday, September 08 2017, 9:30 am - 5:00 pm

Venue: Juniper Hall, India Habitat Centre (Entry from Gate 1)

Invitees: Government representatives, elected representatives, civil society organisation and media representatives.

Event Page: Facebook

Objectives

To study the intersectionality between transparency, accountability and consumption of data by stakeholders.
To explore opportunities for the civil society to simplify governance through access to data, privacy of stakeholders and to address challenges faced in data collection and analysis.

Outcomes

The takeaway from the seminar should be to develop the idea of achieving data literacy. The presenters after a detailed interaction should take away the following from the event:

Reflections on the use of Internet and technology as tools for better governance
Balance the development of open data and the strategies to use this data in terms of ownership and replication of data
Identify data sets which should be prioritised for release in order to maximise public value
Data Accessibility: Capitalize on the demand for democracy and transparency by making open data more accessible to the larger public

Sessions

Through sessions, the aim is to specifically investigate the role of civil society and media in this effort. The participants will deliberate on the above-mentioned objectives of the seminar.

Session I: Praja Foundation Website Launch

Session II: Data centric approach and role of stakeholders in the urban governance ecosystem

Session III: Open data-experiences; trends, challenges and opportunities, relationship between governance and data

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/praja-enhancing-democracy-through-access-to-open-data-what-are-the-roles-of-government-and-civil-society-delhi-sep-08

The Fundamental Right to Privacy - A Visual Guide

amber — 2018-02-16T05:31:37Z

Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves, or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. This visual guide to the story of privacy law in India and the recent judgement of the Puttaswamy v. Union of India case is developed by Amber Sinha (research and content) and Pooja Saxena (design and conceptualisation).

The Fundamental Right to Privacy - A Visual Guide: Download (PDF)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-fundamental-right-to-privacy-a-visual-guide

A Series of Op-eds on Data Protection

amber — 2018-02-19T02:08:28Z

I wrote a short series of three op-eds for Asia Times this week.

The first article "User consent is the key to data protection in India" examines the debate around consent and the arguments made to discard it. I question the premise of big data exceptionalism, particularly in the absence of any mature governance models which address use regulation.

In the second article "Robust economic argument for a sound Indian data protection law", I examine the substance of the argument of 'innovation' as a legitimate competing interest with respect to privacy, and questionthe economic arguments made in support of innovation enabled by unregulated access to data.

In the third article "India’s data protection law needs graded enforcement mechanism", I look at the two competing arms of regulation - enforcement and compliance, and how a balance of two is need in India,with an empowered regulator and drawing from the principles from responsive regulation theory.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/a-series-of-op-eds-on-data-protection

Submission to the Committee of Experts on a Data Protection Framework for India

amber — 2018-02-05T13:39:00Z

This submission presents comments by the Centre for Internet and Society, India (“CIS”) on the ‘White Paper of the Committee of Experts on a Data Protection Framework for India’ (“White Paper”) released by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. The White paper was drafted by a Committee of Expert (“Committee”) constituted by the Ministry. CIS has conducted research on the issues of privacy, data protection and data security since 2010 and is thankful for the opportunity to put forth its views. The submission was made on January 31, 2018.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/submission-to-the-committee-of-experts-on-a-data-protection-framework-for-india