Centre for Internet and Society

Fintech Sec Standards Event Concept Note

pranav — 2019-10-15T09:08:51Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/fintech-sec-standards-event-concept-note

Draft Model Fintech Security Standards: Closed Door Consultation

pranav — 2019-10-15T13:20:21Z

The Centre for Internet and Society has been researching privacy and security standards in the Indian ‘Fintech space’ for the past year. One component of our research has been to create Draft Security Standards for Fintech Entities, which are more specific than the requirements of the SPDI Rules. We hope that these will serve as a set of useful parameters that enables innovation while furthering privacy and security. Through this consultation, we hope to further explore these gaps, understand the hurdles that players in the market may face when complying with these requirements and thereby improve these parameters.

More details about the event can be found here.

If you would like to participate in this consultation event, please send an email to pranav@cis-india.org

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/draft-model-fintech-security-standards-closed-door-consultation

Cultivating India’s Cyber Defense Strategy

pranav — 2019-11-01T08:24:03Z

The Centre for Internet & Society is hosting this roundtable discussion to identify critical vectors in India's Cyber Defense debate, and hash out next steps for a robust cyber defense agenda.

Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) are woven into every aspect of life in the twenty-first century. In India, individuals, government institutions, and the private sector increasingly rely on cyberspace for discharging economic, social, and political functions. However, as both states and non-state actors alike continue to engage in the weaponization and exploitation of cyberspace for reaping strategic dividend, India needs a strategy that secures its digital frontiers. As India firms up its cyber security strategy in 2020, critical discourse on response, detection, and publication of incidents, and governance of vulnerabilities, exploitation, and disclosure is certainly the need of the hour.

Recently, the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in Tamil Nadu is suspected to have fallen victim to a potentially disastrous cyber attack. In September 2019, Kaspersky Labs published their report on the DTrack remote administration trojan, which is suspected to have been operated by Lazarus APT. After initially refuting claims made by security researchers, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited has finally confirmed an incident. The reason for the initial denial remains unknown, and the consequences of India’s defense posturing need to be re-examined.

Undoubtedly, India’s defense posturing needs to adopt multilateral cooperation underscored by robust technical readiness. The question is “What does the Indian government need, at the technical, legal, and policy levels, to achieve this readiness?”

Find more details here.

If you are interested in applying for a spot at the event, please fill up this form.

Please note, filling up this form does not guarantee you a seat, since seats are limited. Please await an official email confirmation from us.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/cultivating-india2019s-cyber-defense-strategy

Agenda - Cultivating India’s Cyber Defense Strategy

pranav — 2019-11-01T08:23:22Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/agenda-cultivating-india2019s-cyber-defense-strategy

POSH Poster

pranav — 2019-04-01T10:40:11Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/posh-poster

Event Report: Consultation on Gendered Information Disorder in India pdf

pranav — 2024-10-15T10:51:24Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/event-report-consultation-on-gendered-information-disorder-in-india-pdf

Dialogues on AI - Ethics of AI for India

pranav — 2018-07-01T07:01:58Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) organized the first session of the "Dialogues on AI" Roundtables in collaboration with Facebook on April 27, 2018 at Omidyar Network office in Bengaluru.

Sunil Abraham moderated one of the three sessions, and the event saw a total of 24 participants from industry, academia, law/policy, and civil society. Ambika Tandon, Shweta Mohandas, and Pranav Manjesh Bidare also attended the event.

Ethics of AI for India

Facebook and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) jointly present the first in a national series of roundtables focussing on emerging policy, ethical, and governance concerns relating to Artificial Intelligence (AI) in India. These roundtables aim to stimulate the discourse in India by providing curated, closed-door settings for a diverse group of experts to come together to advance the Indian AI narrative.

The first roundtable – in Bangalore – is designed to draw from the extensive regional expertise available in India’s technology hub and serve as a broader foundation for future roundtables. With the abundance of AI talent in the region, we have designed this first interaction to address several foundational yet critical questions surrounding AI. We hope that this discussion and learnings from it will serve as a key base and starting point for future discourse – intellectually driven from Bangalore – and will lay benchmarks for subsequent development and thought leadership in the area.

The roundtable focused on three key threads:

AI – Evolving a Common Terminology: This thread will aim to provide a primer to the AI revolution and help newcomers and experienced professionals alike evolve a common framework and taxonomy to guide policy discussions, research, and future discourse. Discussions will look to distil conceptual clarity on topics like artificial intelligence v. machine learning v. deep learning and provide technical and philosophical foundations to those from diverse fields.
AI Ethics: This thread will aim to stimulate and provoke discussion on the ethical norms that must underpin research, development, and the use of AI. Specific issues for discussion include openness, transparency, privacy, and moral issues. We expect a key part of this discussion will revolve around questions of whether specific laws or regulations are required to account for questions posed by AI in its various forms.
AI for India: The last thread of this discussion will aim to transition the debate on ethics and policy towards the application realm. Specifically, this discussion will look to focus on how the Indian public and private sector actors can capitalise on developments in AI to drive social and economic change. From a governance point of view, we will also look to cover how AI can be used to tackle key challenges in public distribution, law and order, regulation, and defence. We expect that key questions will revolve around deployment of AI towards governance, service delivery, manufacturing, and the effect of AI on employment.

Event Primer

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/dialogues-on-ai-ethics-of-ai-for-india

Roundtable on A.I. and Governance in India

pranav — 2018-04-20T07:41:21Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore is organizing a roundtable on ‘A.I. and Governance in India' at India Islamic Cultural Centre in New Delhi on March 16, 2018 from 10.00 a.m. to 1.30 p.m.

Download the Event Report

The Roundtable seeks to discuss the various issues and challenges surrounding the design, development and use of AI in Governance (including law enforcement and legal institutions).

In line with the changing times, the government, as well as its agencies, have started using technology and digitization to make governance more efficient and accessible. For example,through its flagship project Digital India, the Indian government has undertaken digitization and revamping of systems related to railways, land records, educational resource etc. As the government pursues its digital agenda, artificial intelligence can be a tool for efficiency and decision making. To realize the potential of AI, a clear understanding of the technology and how it can and should be used is necessary. The first step towards a robust AI policy is a sound Information and Communication Technology (ICT) policy that lays the edifice for algorithmic decision making using AI.

Though the adoption of AI in the public sector is still in its nascent stages, the government of India is taking various steps to increase the scale of adoption. The Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry has constituted a task force on AI to facilitate India's economic transformation. This year’s Union Budget also recognised the need for government investment in research, training and skill development in robotics, AI, digital manufacturing, Big Data intelligence and Quantum communications. Though the adoption of AI in the public sector is still in its nascent stages, the government of India is taking various steps to increase the scale of adoption. The Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry has constituted a task force on AI to facilitate India's economic transformation. This year’s Union Budget also recognised the need for government investment in research, training and skill development in robotics, AI, digital manufacturing, Big Data intelligence and Quantum communications.

Our research on the application of AI in Indian governance aims to examine five broad sectors of application: law enforcement, discharge of governmental functions, defense,judicial/administrative decision making, and education. A few of the existing government research initiatives identified by CIS include the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR) hosted by the Indian Defense Research and Development Organization which focuses on research and development of ICT solutions for defense, and the Ministry of Finance’s use of geospatial analytics for their economic survey on human settlements. There are already instances where government bodies are using AI, an example being the case of the Indian Police force, which is revamping its investigation procedures by using Big Data and Artificial Intelligence. The Delhi police has already started using data and analytics to control crime. In the field of agriculture too, the Indian government has partnered with Microsoft to use AI to improve crop production.

While AI can aid governance in numerous ways, there needs to be a system of checks and balances in order to ensure effectiveness, transparency, and accountability. Hence,governance mechanisms must be able to ensure inclusiveness, while minimising the risks that might arise with the use of the technology. Experts have also predicted that, as the government incorporates AI into specific areas of governance- such as service delivery, it will simultaneously need to incorporate it into broader policy structures such as cyber security and the national education framework.

The process of designing a governance ecosystem is a complex one, and AI poses several pre-existing ethical and legal for each application within this ecosystem. The effectiveness ofAI and Machine learning inherently depends on the availability of data, and it is predicted that the most imminent challenge will also involve the same, especially as India becomesincreasingly data dense and the government is entrusted with its citizens’ data. These challenges could range from the collection, storage, and use of data, to having to answerquestions of fairness, safety, and prevention of misuse. This roundtable seeks to deliberate on these questions and more so as to understand how to optimise the use of AI ingovernance for the public interest. In doing so, the roundtable will use preliminary research that CIS has undertaken into the use of AI and governance in India as an entry point into broader discussions on the challenges and benefits and way forward for AI.

Agenda

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/roundtable-on-a-i-and-governance-in-india

Normative Regulation of Cyber Space Report

pranav — 2018-07-31T23:42:42Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/normative-regulation-of-cyber-space-report

What is IFF? A model for digital rights advocacy in India

pranav — 2019-03-29T05:42:44Z

The Internet Freedom Foundation which was formed 3 years ago towards the end of last year appointed one of it's trustees, Apar Gupta as it's first executive director. In one of the first introductory talks explaining his mandate and plans for IFF, Apar hopes to candidly discuss the challenges to digital rights being faced in India.

This talk hopes to invite interaction on three main tracks:

1. The larger policy movements on technology in the areas of net neutrality, privacy, free expression and innovation and the role for greater public advocacy.

2. Recurring themes of lack of capacity in areas of digital rights advocacy in India and how it compliments research outputs.

3. Experimenting with funding models for work and questions on sustainability.

If you would like to attend this event, please RSVP by emailing pranav@cis-india.org

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/what-is-iff-a-model-for-digital-rights-advocacy-in-india

Digital Rights and ISP Accountability in India: An Analysis of Policies and Practices PDF

pranav — 2025-01-23T09:59:44Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/digital-rights-and-isp-accountability-in-india-an-analysis-of-policies-and-practices-pdf

Technology-facilitated Gender-based Violence and Women’s Political Participation in India: A Position Paper PDF

pranav — 2025-01-07T11:32:02Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/technology-facilitated-gender-based-violence-and-women2019s-political-participation-in-india-a-position-paper-pdf

Explainer: Predatory Pricing pdf

pranav — 2024-12-23T11:00:37Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/explainer-predatory-pricing-pdf