Centre for Internet and Society

Akriti

praskrishna — 2018-08-11T09:57:59Z

Akriti

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Elonnai

praskrishna — 2018-08-11T06:19:25Z

Elonnai New Picture

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August 2018 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2018-09-16T05:08:39Z

CIS newsletter for the month of August 2018.

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights

India houses the second largest population in the world at approximately 1.35 billion individuals. In such a diverse and dense context, law enforcement could be a challenging job. Elonnai Hickok and Vipul Kharbanda throw light on the CLOUD Act and its implifications for India in a blog post.
On August 9, 2018, the DNA Technology (Use and Application) Regulation Bill, 2018 was introduced in the Lok Sabha. CIS had commented on some key aspects of the bill in many forums earlier. Elonnai Hickok and Murali Neelakantan in an article published by Bloomberg Quint have voiced their opinion on the bill.
Murali Neelakantan, Swaraj Barooah, Swagam Dasgupta and Torsha Sarkar in an Op-ed in Bloomberg Quint have examined the National Health Stack, an ambitious attempt by the government to to build a digital infrastructure with a “deep understanding of the incentive structures prevalent in the Indian healthcare ecosystem. The authors have argued that collection of health data, without sensitisation and accountability, has the potential to deny healthcare to the vulnerable.
An article titled India's Contribution to Internet Governance Debates, co-authored by Sunil Abraham, Mukta Batra, Geetha Hariharan, Swaraj Barooah and Akriti Bopanna, was published in the NLUD Student Law Journal, an annual peer-reviewed journal published by the National Law University, Delhi.
IT/IT-eS Sector and the Future of Work in India was organized at Omidyar Networks’ office in Bangalore, on June 29, 2018. Torsha Sarkar, Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rath co-authored a report.
Swaraj Barooah and Gurshabad Grover co-authored an article in Livemint that examines a few problematic provisions in the proposed Anti-trafficking Bill. The authors say that it may lead to censorship.
The Researchers at Work programme of CIS had invited abstracts for essays that explore dimensions of offline lives. Selected authors are expected to submit the first draft of the essay (2000-4000 words) by Friday, October 5, 2018.

Articles

Anti-trafficking Bill may lead to censorship (Swaraj Barooah and Gurshabad Grover; Livemint; July 24, 2018). The article was mirrored on CIS website in the month of August 2018.
The National Health Stack: An Expensive, Temporary Placebo (Murali Neelakantan, Swaraj Barooah, Swagam Dasgupta, and Torsha Sarkar; Bloomberg Quint; August 6, 2018).
Digital Native: Double Speak (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; August 12, 2018).
India's Contribution to Internet Governance Debates (Sunil Abraham, Mukta Batra, Geetha Hariharan, Swaraj Barooah and Akriti Bopanna; NLUD Student Law Journal; August 16, 2018).
National Health Stack: Data for Data's Sake, A Manmade Health Hazard (Murali Neelakantan, Swaraj Barooah, Swagam Dasgupta and Torsha Sarkar; Bloomberg Quint; August 17, 2018).
DNA ‘Evidence’: Only Opinion, Not Science, And Definitely Not Proof Of Crime! (Elonnai Hickok and Murali Neelakantan; Bloomberg Quint; August 22, 2018).
Digital Native: Playing God (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; August 26, 2018).

CIS in the News

UNDP joins Tech Giants in Partnership on AI (UNDP; August 1, 2018). CIS is one of the partners.
UIDAI says asked nobody to add the helpline number to contacts (Komal Gupta; Livemint; August 3, 2018).
How Chinese apps are making inroads in Indian small towns (Mugdha Variyar; Economic Times; August 10, 2018).
The Big Eye: The tech is all ready for mass surveillance in India (Anand Murali; Factor Daily; August 13, 2018).
Centre draws red lines for Whatsapp over fake news, says must comply with Indian laws (Nakul Sridhar; Hindustan Times; August 21, 2018).
India steps up vigilance against WhatsApp abuse (Debashree Dasgupta; Straits Times; August 24, 2018).
India’s Biometric Database Is Creating A Perfect Surveillance State — And U.S. Tech Companies Are On Board (Paul Bluementhal and Gopal Sathe; Huffington Post; August 25, 2018).
20 years of Google: Privacy, fake news and the future (Rachel Lopez; Hindustan Times; August 26, 2018).

Access to Knowledge

Our Access to Knowledge programme currently consists of two projects. The Pervasive Technologies project, conducted under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), aims to conduct research on the complex interplay between low-cost pervasive technologies and intellectual property, in order to encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The Wikipedia project, which is under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

Wikipedia

Blog Entry

మిసిమి పత్రిక గ్రంథాలయంలో తెలుగు వికీపీడియన్ల కార్యక్రమం (Pavan Santhosh; August 22, 2018).

Events Organized

వికీపీడియా:సమావేశం/గుంటూరు/అన్నమయ్య గ్రంథాలయం - భాగస్వామ్య కార్యక్రమం జూలై 2018 (Organized by CIS-A2K; Annamaya Library; Guntur; July 10, 2018).
Workshop of Publishers and Writers on Unicode, Open Source and Wikimedia Projects (Organized by CIS-A2K; Pune; July 25, 2018).
Workshop of River activists for building Jal Bodh - Knowledge resource on Water (Organized by CIS-A2K; Pune; July 25, 2018).
ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ:ಸಂಪಾದನೋತ್ಸವಗಳು/ಸಂಪಾದನೋತ್ಸವ ತುಮಕೂರು ವಿಶ್ವವಿದ್ಯಾನಿಲಯ ೨೦೧೮ (Organized by CIS-A2K; Tumakur University; July 25, 2018).
Intensive Personalised Wiki Training Session at Pune (Organized by CIS-A2K; August 2018).
Wikisource and Wiki technical session at MKCL (Organized by CIS-A2K; Pune; August 2018).
Wiki technical orientation session with PyLadies group (Organized by CIS-A2K; Cummins College of Engineering, Pune; August 7, 2018).
Indian Independence Struggle Edit-a-thon on Marathi Wikipedia (Organized by CIS-A2K; August 10 - 20, 2018).

Event Participation

వికీపీడియా:సమావేశం/హైదరాబాదు/మిసిమి పత్రిక భాగస్వామ్య సమావేశం, జూలై 2018 (July 24, 2018). CIS-A2K held partnership discussions with Misimi Telugu monthly magazine.

Note: Event reports for all these were published in the month of August 2018.

Internet Governance

As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and IDRC) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on restrictions that the Indian government has placed on freedom of expression online.

Privacy

Blog Entries

Use of Visuals and Nudges in Privacy Notices (Saumyaa Naidu; edited by Elonnai Hickok and Amber Sinha; August 18, 2018).
An Analysis of the CLOUD Act and Implications for India (Elonnai Hickok and Vipul Kharbanda; August 22, 2018).
Consumer Care Society: Silver Jubilee Year Celebrations (Arindrajit Basu; August 27, 2018).

Event Participation

Celebrating One Year of the Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India Judgment (Organized by Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations and Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University - Delhi; India International Centre; New Delhi; August 24, 2018). Shweta Mohandas was a panelist at the event.

Free Speech & Expression

Blog Entry

ICANN response to DIDP #31 on diversity (Akriti Bopanna and Akash Sriram; August 21, 2018).

Event Participation

Feminist Information Infrastructure Workshop with Blank Noise and Sangama (Organized by Sangama and Blank Noise; CIS, Bangalore; August 8, 2018). Akriti Bopanna, Swaraj Paul Barooah and Ambika Tandon conducted the workshop.
Summer School on Disinformation (Organized by Digital Asia Hub, Hans-Bredow-Institut, University of Hamburg, Institute for Technology & Society of Rio de Janeiro - ITS Rio and Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University; Azure Room, Pullman, Jakarta; August 22 - 24, 2018). Sunil Abraham made a presentation on Disinformation and Online Recruitment.
World Library and Information Congress 2018 (Organized by International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions; Kuala Lumpur; August 26 - 27, 2018). Swaraj Paul Barooah was a speaker at two panels. Swaraj's first panel, titled "Intellectual Freedom in a Polarised World" was selected as one of 9 sessions to be live-streamed and recorded, out of 249 sessions in total. The recording can be accessed on YouTube.

Information Technology

Blog Entry

Future of Work: Report of the ‘Workshop on the IT/IT-eS Sector and the Future of Work in India’ (Torsha Sarkar, Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rath; edited by Elonnai Hickok. Akash Sriram and Divya Kushwaha; August 16, 2018).

Researchers at Work

The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by an emerging need to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It aims to produce local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:

Call for Essays: Offline (P.P. Sneha; August 6, 2018). Selected authors are expected to submit the first draft of the essay (2000-4000 words) by Friday, October 5, 2018.

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

► Support Us

Please help us defend consumer and citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of 'The Centre for Internet and Society' and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru - 5600 71.

► Request for Collaboration

We invite researchers, practitioners, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at sumandro@cis-india.org (for academic research), with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia projects, write to Tanveer Hasan, Programme Officer, at tanveer@cis-india.org.

CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/august-2018-newsletter

Cracking Whip

praskrishna — 2018-07-29T00:52:54Z

Cracking Whip

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Grover

praskrishna — 2018-07-24T01:50:31Z

Gurshabad Grover

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In focus

praskrishna — 2018-07-19T14:13:41Z

In focus

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Region

praskrishna — 2018-07-16T14:23:00Z

Region

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Stakeholder Group

praskrishna — 2018-07-16T14:21:02Z

Stakeholder Group

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Gender

praskrishna — 2018-07-16T14:19:45Z

Gender

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Shweta Mohandas

praskrishna — 2018-07-14T03:35:11Z

Shweta Mohandas

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July 2018 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2018-08-11T02:50:52Z

CIS July 2018 newsletter.

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights

Paul Kurien and Akriti Bopanna carried out an analysis of the diversity of participation at the ICANN processes by taking a close look at their mailing lists.
CIS-A2K organized 6 events: partnership discussions with Misimi Telugu monthly magazine; partnership activity in Annamayya Library, Guntur, a workshop in Tumakur University; a workshop of river activists for building Jal Bodh; a workshop of publishers and writers on unicode, open source and wikimedia projects; and a Telugu literary conference.
CIS had worked with the Research and Advisory Group (RAG) of the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace (GCSC). The work looked at the negotiation processes and strategies that various players may adopt as they drive the cyber norms agenda. In continuation CIS has brought out a report which focuses more extensively on the substantive law and principles at play and looks closely at what the global state of the debate means for India.
The debate surrounding privacy has in recent times gained momentum due to the Aadhaar judgement and the growing concerns around the use of personal data by corporations and governments. In this light CIS has made comments and recommendations to the India Privacy Code, 2018.
CIS drafted a response to a Notice of Inquiry (NOI) issued by the U.S. Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) on "International Internet Policy Priorities." CIS commented on the free flow of information and jurisdiction, mult-stakeholder approach to internet governance, privacy and security.
Elonnai Hickok, Shweta Mohandas and Swaraj Paul Barooah compiled the AI Task Force Report, India's first step towards an AI framework. The Task Force on Artificial Intelligence was established by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to leverage AI for economic benefits, and provide policy recommendations on the deployment of AI for India.
Paul Kurian and Akriti Bopanna carried out an analysis of the diversity of participation at the ICANN processes by taking a close look at their mailing lists.

Articles

Digital Native: The bigger picture (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; July 1, 2018).
The Problems That Should Occupy Our Electioneers (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; July 6, 2018).
Digital Native: How smart cities can make criminals out of denizens (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; July 15, 2018).
Anti-trafficking Bill may lead to censorship (Swaraj Barooah and Gurshabad Grover; Livemint; July 24, 2018).
Digital Native: Hashtag Along With Me (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; July 29, 2018).
Lining up the data on the Srikrishna Privacy Draft Bill (Sunil Abraham; Economic Times; July 30, 2018).
Spreading unhappiness equally around (Business Standard; July 31, 2018).

CIS in the News

Smartphone rumours spark series of mob killings in India (Samanth Subramanian; The National; July 2, 2018).
Government Gives Nod To Bill For Building DNA Databases In India, For 'Criminal Investigation And Justice Delivery' (Huffington Post; July 5, 2018).
'Hope for such swift crackdowns for everyone' (Times of India; July 6, 2018).
Child-lifting rumours caused 69 mob attacks, 33 deaths in last 18 months (Business Standard; July 9, 2018).
Death by Social Media (Pretika Khanna, Abhiram Ghadyalpatil and Shaswati Das; Livemint; July 9, 2018).
India's Latest Data Leak: People's Aadhaar Number And Bank Account Are Just One Google Search Away (Gopal Sathe; Huffington Post; July 12, 2018).
People Should Have Right To Their Data, Not Companies, Says TRAI (Bloomberg Quint; July 16, 2018).
After Securing Net Neutrality In India, TRAI Goes To Bat For Data Privacy (Gopal Sathe; Huffington Post; July 16, 2018).
TRAI recommendations on data privacy raises eyebrows (Surabhi Agarwal and Gulveen Aulakh; Economic Times; July 18, 2018).
Srikrishna panel upset at timing of Trai suggestions (Megha Mandavia; Economic Times; July 19, 2018).
Firms find wealth in your data (Rajitha Menon; Deccan Herald; July 20, 2018).
WhatsApp races against time to fix fake news mess ahead of 2019 general elections (Venkat Ananth; Economic Times; July 24, 2018).
The crown of thorns that awaits Facebook’s India MD hire (Sunny Sen and Jayadevan PK; Factory Daily; July 25, 2018).
Bit by byte protecting her privacy (Mihir Dalal and Anirban Sen; Livemint; July 26, 2018).
Govt asks CBI to probe Cambridge Analytica in data breach case (Komal Gupta; Livemint; July 27, 2018).
Data localisation may pinch startups, payments firms (Mugdha Variyar and Pratik Bhakta; Economic Times; July 28, 2018).

Access to Knowledge

Wikipedia

Blog Entries

ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ತರಬೇತಿ ೨೦೧೮ @ ರಾಂಚಿ (Vikas Hegde; July 4, 2018).
How to write differently for different Telugu digital platforms - awareness session to Indu Gnana Vedika (Pavan Santosh; July 19, 2018).
వాట్సాప్ సాహిత్య వేదిక నుంచి వికీసోర్సుకు (Pavan Santosh; July 31, 2018).

Events Organized

Partnership activity in Annamayya Library (Guntur; July 10, 2014).
Partnership discussions with Misimi Telugu Monthly Magazine (July 24, 2018).
Tumakur University Workshop (Tumkur; July 25, 2018).
Workshop of River activists for building Jal Bodh - Knowledge resource on Water (Pune; July 25, 2018).
Workshop of Publishers and Writers on Unicode, Open Source and Wikimedia Projects (Pune; July 25, 2018).

Internet Governance

Privacy

Submissions

Response to a Notice of Enquiry by the US Government on International Internet Policy Priorities (Swagam Dasgupta; July 18, 2018).
The Centre for Internet and Society’s Comments and Recommendations to the: Indian Privacy Code, 2018 (Shweta Mohandas, Elonnai Hickok, Amber Sinha and Shruti Trikanand; July 20, 2018).

Blog Entry

The AI Task Force Report - The first steps towards India’s AI framework (Elonnai Hickok, Shweta Mohandas and Swaraj Paul Barooah; June 27, 2018). The blog post was edited by Swagam Dasgupta.

Participation in Events

IETF 102 Montreal (Organized by Internet Engineering Task Force; Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Montreal in Canada; July 14 - 20, 2018). Gurshabad Grover presented a review of the human rights considerations in the drafts of the Software Update for IoT Devices (SUIT) Working Group in the meeting of the HRPC research group.
Ethical Data Design Practices in the AI (Artificial Intelligence) Age (Organized by Startup Grind, Bangalore at NUMA Bangalore; July 28, 2018). Shweta Mohandas was a panelist.

Cyberspace and Cyber Security

Analysis

The Potential for the Normative Regulation of Cyberspace: Implications for India (Arindrajit Basu; July 30, 2018). The report was edited by Elonnai Hickok, Sunil Abraham and Udbhav Tiwari with research assistance from Tejas Bharadwaj.

Blog Entry

CIS contributes to the Research and Advisory Group of the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace (GCSC) (Arindrajit Basu; July 5, 2018).

Participation in Event

IEEE-SA InDITA Conference 2018 (Organized by IEEE Standards Association; IIIT-Bangalore; July 10 - 11, 2018). Gurshabad Grover gave a brief presentation on how we could apply or reject 'Trust Through Technology' principles in the design of public biometric authentication.

Free Speech & Expression

Blog Entries

ICANN Diversity Analysis (Paul Kurian and Akriti Bopanna; July 16, 2018).
DIDP #31 Diversity of employees at ICANN (Akash Sriram; July 19, 2018).

Participation in Event

26th AMIC Annual Conference – India 2018 (Organized by Manipal Academy of Higher Education; Fortune Inn Valley View, Manipal, Karnataka; June 7 - 9, 2018). Swaraj Paul Barooah was a speaker. An article announcing the event by Kevin Mendonsa was published in the Times of India on June 5, 2018.

Telecom

CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources, and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Newspaper Column

The Problems That Should Occupy Our Electioneers (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; July 5, 2018 and Organizing India Blogspot; July 6, 2018).

About CIS

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

► Support Us

► Request for Collaboration

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/july-2018-newsletter

June 2018 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2018-08-11T02:52:10Z

CIS newsletter for the month of June 2018.

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights

Balbharati – the Maharashtra state bureau of textbook production and curriculum research – has issued a copyright policy that forces all publishers, digital educational-content creators, and coaching classes to obtain expensive licenses for developing material directly or indirectly relating to Balbharati’s content. This is an alarming development for Indian students reported Anubha Sinha in an article in the Asian Times on June 20, 2018.
CIS-A2K has started dialogue with the publishers for the last 6 months regarding FOSS, Open knowledge and content donation to Wikimedia Projects. As a result Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Prakashak Sangh, an apex body of publishers at all India level invited us for a orientation session at their annual gathering in Pune.
Submitted comments on the Draft Digital Communications Policy which was released to the public by the Department of Telecommunications of the Ministry of Communications on 1st May 2018 for comments and views.
Submitted comments on the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations which was released to the public by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on 29th May 2018 for comments and views.
The Task Force on Artificial Intelligence was established by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to leverage AI for economic benefits, and provide policy recommendations on the deployment of AI for India. Elonnai Hickok, Shweta Mohandas and Swaraj Paul Barooah wrote a blog entry on the artificial intelligence task force. The blog entry was edited by Swagam Dasgupta.
The world’s oldest networked infrastructure, money, is increasingly dematerialising and fusing with the world’s latest networked infrastructure, the Internet, wrote Sunil Abraham in an article published in the Economic Times on June 10, 2018.
An essay by P.P. Sneha was published in Summer Hill, a journal published by Indian Institute of Advanced Study. In the essay, edited by Dr. Bindu Menon, Sneha draws upon excerpts from a study on the field of digital humanities and related practices in India, to outline the diverse contexts of humanities practice with the advent of the digital and explore the developing discourse around digital humanities in the Indian context.
The inaugural conference of the Digital Humanities Alliance of India (DHAI) was held at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Indore on June 1-2, 2018. P.P. Sneha was a keynote speaker at the event. Her talk was titled ‘New Contexts and Sites of Humanities Practice in the Digital’.

Articles

Why NPCI and Facebook need urgent regulatory attention (Sunil Abraham; Economic Times; June 10, 2018).
Digital Native: Cause an Effect (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; June 17, 2018).
Maharashtra's Copyright Policy Makes Education Unaffordable (Anubha Sinha; Asia Times; June 20, 2018).

CIS in the News

Allow admins to add users to online group chats only after permission: SFLC.in (Times of India; June 1, 2018).
EC disables easy access to electoral data across states (Akshatha M; Economic Times; June 5, 2018).
Draft bill proposes Rs 1 crore fine, 3 year jail for data privacy violation (Vidhi Choudhury; Hindustan Times; June 8, 2018).
Citizens’ Draft Privacy Bill Seeks To Revolutionise Data Collection, Storage In India (Arpan Chaturvedi; Bloomberg Quint; June 9, 2018).
Police to counter fake news on WhatsApp (Nilesh Christopher and Naveen Menezes; Times of India; June 14, 2018).
'Full belief in fake texts shows cops not trusted' (Times of India; June 18, 2018).
Anushka finds support for her anti-litter tirade (Nina C. George; Deccan Herald; June 19, 2018).
Jindal varsity's international affairs students shine in job market (Economic Times; June 19, 2018).
Data Privacy: Footprints on the Web (Sujit Bhar; IndiaLegal; June 21, 2018).
Death By WhatsApp (News18.com, June 25, 2018).
Tech transformation: how agriculture is being redefined through digital innovation and startups (Your Story; June 29, 2018).

Access to Knowledge

Access to Knowledge (A2K) is a campaign to promote the fundamental principles of justice, freedom, and economic development. It deals with issues like copyrights, patents and trademarks, which are an important part of the digital landscape. Our A2K program comprises 2 projects: Pervasive Technologies done under a grant from International Development Research Centre examining interplay between cost-effective pervasive technologies and intellectual property and encouraging development of such technologies for social good, and Wikipedia under a grant from Wikimedia Foundation to enable the growth of Indic language communities and cultivate new editors in different Indian languages.

Wikipedia

Event Organized

Marathi Publishers' orientation session on FOSS,Open knowledge & Wikimedia Projects (Co-organized by Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Prakashak Sangh and CIS-A2K; Maratha Chamber of Commerce, Tilak Road, Pune; June 17, 2018).

Internet Governance

The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society has defined internet governance as the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles of shared principles, norms, rules, decision making procedures and programs that shape the evolution and use of the internet. CIS is engaged in two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and IDRC) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on restrictions that the Indian government has placed on freedom of expression online.

Privacy

Blog Entries

NITI Aayog Discussion Paper: An aspirational step towards India’s AI policy (Sunil Abraham, Elonnai Hickok, Amber Sinha, Swaraj Barooah, Shweta Mohandas, Pranav M Bidare, Swagam Dasgupta, Vishnu Ramachandran and Senthil Kumar; June 13, 2018).
The AI Task Force Report - The first steps towards India’s AI framework (Authored by Elonnai Hickok, Shweta Mohandas and Swaraj Paul Barooah and Edited by Swagam Dasgupta; June 27, 2018).

Submissions

Comments on the Draft National Policy on Official Statistics (Gurshabad Grover and Sandeep Kumar; June 7, 2018).
Comments on the Draft Digital Communications Policy (Anubha Sinha, Gurshabad Grover and Swaraj Barooah; June 14, 2018).

Participation in Event

Is Privacy Obsolete? (Organized by TERI; Bangalore; June 22, 2018). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist.

Free Speech & Expression

Blog Entry

Network Disruptions Report by Global Network Initiative (Akriti Bopanna; June 12, 2018).

Telecom

Submission

Comments on the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations (Sandeep Kumar, Torsha Sarkar, Swaraj Barooah, and Gurshabad Grover; June 22, 2018).

Researchers at Work

Participation in Event

Digital Humanities Alliance of India - Inagural Conference 2018 (Co-organized by IIM and IIT, Indore with support from CIS; IIM, Indore; June 1 - 2, 2018). P.P. Sneha was a speaker and gave the keynote address.

Essay