Centre for Internet and Society

Digital them about yourself?

praskrishna — 2012-01-03T11:07:45Z

If you’re on Facebook or have a blog, you could be a digital native, says Akhila Seetharaman. The article was published in TimeOut Bengaluru.

In the offline world 23-year-old Srikeit Tadepalli is a media student; online he is among the first few Indian administrators for Wikipedia. Twenty-six-year-old Rajneesh Bolia is a media entrepreneur who carries his office with him in the form of his BlackBerry, usually spending only a couple of hours a day in his “real” office; in his online avatar he spearheads a Facebook page to promote adoption.

Given the way both Bolia and Tadepalli have embraced digital media and the internet, they were ideal candidates for an ongoing survey by the Centre for Internet and Society that attempts to map the behaviour of techno-savvy individuals who navigate seamlessly across online media, also called “digital natives”.

To truly be a digital native the internet has to be integral to the way you think, communicate or socialise. But even if you aren’t that seasoned a web navigator, an established pattern of behaviour online, a routine of going through different avenues of online media such as Facebook, twitter, email accounts and blogs (often in a particular order) could make you a potential candidate.

“It’s about being ‘native’ to or at home in the online world,” said Tadepalli, whose experience with Wikipedia helped him secure his college admission. “I’ve found internships through Facebook, and before I entered college, I formed an online group for prospective students and found my roommate there.”

With interactivity at its core, Web 2.0 provides more opportunities than ever before for identities online and offline to merge, said Tadepalli. “So at times you live an online identity in the physical world, and at other times you’re playing your offline identity online.”

The CIS survey is described by Nishant Shah, their head of research, as the first ever attempt out of India to get statistical data on how people across the world use the internet. “We’re going to be looking at time spent online, services people access online and how they identify themselves as part of groups and communities online,” said Shah. According to the CIS website, the findings of the survey will be presented at a “multi-stakeholder conference in the Netherlands later in 2010” and will also be “consolidated into a report which will be made available for free distribution and download”.

The project also includes a series of regional workshops in Taipei, Johannesburg and Santiago, aimed at bringing digital natives between the ages of 14 and 30 together, and making them aware of the possibilities offered by the platforms they use.

According to Shah, the proliferation of online communities has resulted in new ways of addressing grievances. As an example, he pointed out that when the city’s name changed from Bangalore to Bengaluru, there were fierce debates online about whether the name should be changed on its Wikipedia entry. The city’s name remained resolutely unchanged on Wiki. “Online communities are fiercely local and extremely global at the same time. And the internet paves the way for alternative voices to be heard, and for mobilisation and collaboration,” he said.

Twenty-six-year-old Divya Vijay Iyer, another participant of the survey, has been online since she was 13, and has had a blog for eight years now. She’s sworn off traditional media and believes the way forward is mobile internet. “If you know how to leverage Facebook as a networking tool, there’s very little you can’t accomplish,” said Iyer. She doesn’t read the newspapers; instead, she gets RSS feeds on her mobile. Iyer, who’s passionate about rescuing homeless cats and finding them domicile, believes social media can also pack a punch when it comes to promoting a cause. “It’s not that I think that you can find an animal a home just by adding yourself to a group, but you can definitely spread awareness and information more effectively than through traditional media,” she said.

But although, according to the CIS, most digital natives are people born after 1980, Shah clarified that it isn’t about a generation as much as it is about people of any age who are comfortable using digital technology and are aware of its creative potential for networking and bringing about social change.

Elaborating on the way digital natives make use of the reach of digital media and the internet, Bolia said, “We’re in an era when anything can be disseminated to a very large extent. Take the [success of the] Pink Chaddi campaign, for example. It goes to show how, for the right cause, people can be mobilised in large numbers online.”

Click on for the original story in TimeOut Bengaluru

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/digital-yourself

Next CPOV Conference in Leipzig

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T11:27:16Z

Two CPOV conferences have been held so far. The first one in Bangalore and the second one in Amsterdam, the third is to be held in Leipzig.

The Critical Point of View (CPOV), a Wikipedia research initiative organized in partnership with the Centre of Internet and Society (Bangalore, India), has so far successfully produced two conferences: One in Bangalore in January 2010 and one in Amsterdam in March of the same year. Reports, videos, the mailing list and further resources can be accessed at the CPOV website.

A reader based on the conferences is currently being produced and is planned to be released by January 2011 as a part of the INC reader series.

A next conference is foreseen to take place in Leipzig (Germany) 25-26 September 2010 and will be a German speaking CPOV event. For news and updates check the project’s website.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/CPOV-conference-Leipzig

Open Access to International Agricultural Research

praskrishna — 2011-08-25T08:13:43Z

Open access advocates have urged the top management of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research to give open access to its research publications. A report by Subbiah Arunachalam on 3 June, 2010 was also circulated to all the signatories of the letter.

CIS Distinguished Fellow, Subbiah Arunachalam and 15 other open access advocates wrote to the top management of CGIAR, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, requesting them to mandate open access to all research publications from all CGIAR centres. The letter was addressed to Dr. Carlos Pérez del Castillo and Dr. Katherine Sierra and it was copied to the Director Generals of all the 15 CGIAR centres.

A permanent member of the prestigious Harvard University Trade Group, Carlos Pérez del Castillo has received the highest decorations from the Governments of Brazil, Chile, France and Venezuela. Carlos Pérez del Castillo also served as the Chairman of the WTO General Council and as Vice-Minister and Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs of Uruguay (1995-1998) and as Permanent Secretary of the Latin American Economic System (1987-1991). He is a member of the Board of the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council (IPC), and a small cattle farmer.

Katherine Sierra, CGIAR Fund Council chair, is the World Bank vice president for sustainable development responsible for people and programs in environmentally and socially sustainable development and infrastructure. Sierra chairs several international consultative groups. These include the World Bank-WWF Alliance for Forest Conservation and Sustainable Use, Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, Cities Alliance, Energy Sector Management Assistance Programme, and Water and Sanitation Program. Other international groups that she chairs are InfoDev, which supports information and communication technologies for development, and the Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility, which promotes private participation in infrastructure.

The Letter

Dear Dr. Carlos Perez del Castillo/ Dr. Kathy Sierra:

Subject: Please make all CGIAR research publications open access

About a year ago, on 20 May 2009 to be precise, Dr. William D Dar, Director General of ICRISAT sent a memorandum on Launching of Open Access Model: Digital Access to ICRISAT Scientific Publications to all researchers and students in all locations of ICRISAT [http://openaccess.icrisat.org/MemoOnDAIS.pdf]. In the memorandum Dr. Dar had said "Every ICRISAT scientist/author in all locations, laboratories and offices will send a PDF copy of the author's final version of a paper immediately upon receipt of communication from the publisher about its acceptance. This is not the final published version that certain journals provide post-print, but normally the version that is submitted following all reviews and just prior to the page proof."

ICRISAT is the only international agricultural research centre with an OA mandate, and is second among the research and education institutes operating from India, the first being the National Institute of Technology-Rourkela. ICRISAT publishes a research journal (http://www.icrisat.org/journal/) which is also an open access journal.

Since then Institutional Repository is growing fast and the portal now has virtually all the research papers published in recent times, and all the books and learning material produced by ICRISAT researchers.

We believe that it would be great if other CGIAR laboratories could also mandate open access to their research publications. Indeed, it would be a good idea to have a system wide Open Access mandate for CGIAR and to have interoperable OA repositories in each CGIAR laboratory. Such a development would provide a high level of visibility for the work of CGIAR and greatly advance agricultural research. Besides, journals published by CGIAR labs could also be made OA. There are more than 1,500 OA repositories (listed in ROAR and OpenDOAR) and about 5,000 journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Currently over2050 journals are searchable at article level. Over 390,000 articles are included in the DOAJ service.

The world will soon be celebrating the International Open Access Week [18-24 October 2010] and you may wish to announce the CGIAR OA mandate before then.

As you may be aware, all seven Research Councils of the UK and the National Institutes of Health, USA, have such a mandate in place for research they fund and support. The full list of ~220 mandates worldwide is available at the Registry of Open Access Repository Material Archiving Policies.

We look forward to seeing an early implementation of open access in all CGIAR labs.

Regards
Sincerely,

Subbiah Arunachalam [Distinguished Fellow, Centre for Internet and Society,Bangalore, India]
Remi Barre [Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers (CNAM), Paris, France]
Leslie Chan [University of Toronto at Scarborough, Canada]
Anriette Esterhuysen [Association for Progressive Communications, Johannesburg, South Africa]
Jean-Claude Gudon [University of Montreal, Canada]
Stevan Harnad [Universite du Quebec a Montreal and University of Southampton]
Neil Jacobs [JISC, UK]
Heather Joseph [Executive Director, SPARC, USA]
Barbara Kirsop [Electronic Publishing Trust for Development, UK]
Heather Morrison [University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada]
Richard Poynder [Technology journalist, UK]
T V Ramakrishnan, FRS [Banaras Hindu University and Indian Institute of Science; Former President of the Indian Academy of Sciences]
Peter Suber [Berkman Fellow, Harvard University; Research Professor of Philosophy, Earlham College; Senior Researcher, SPARC; Open Access Project Director, Public Knowledge]
Alma swan [Director, Key Perspectives, UK]
John Wilbanks [Vice President for Science, Creative Commons]
John Willinsky [Stanford University and University of British Columbia]

Status Report on a Suggestion made to CGIAR

Sixteen open access advocates wrote to the CGIAR leadership – Dr. Carlos Perez del Castillo and Dr. Kathy Sierra – on 19 May 2010, requesting CGIAR to adopt an open access mandate for all research publications from CGIAR centres. [As the names of the signatories were arranged in alphabetical order, my name appeared on the top of the list. I am one of the group and not the leader.] Mr. Richard Poynder posted a write-up on the letter in his famous blog ‘Open and Shut’.

The letter led to a flurry of activity among the ICT-KM professionals of CGIAR. I have heard from ICRISAT (Dr. William Dar, Director General), ILRI (Dr. Peter Ballantyne, Head, Knowledge Management and Information Services) and CIAT (Dr. Edith Hesse, Head Corporate Communications and Capacity Strengthening).

Dr. Dar welcomed the suggestion. Incidentally, he is a champion of open access and is on the Board of Enabling Open Scholarship (EOS). He was also the first in the CGIAR system to mandate open access to all research publications from the centre he heads.

From the mails of Dr. Ballantyne and Dr. Hesse, I could perceive some misgivings about the letter to CGIAR among knowledge managers of some CGIAR centres. In contrast, Dr. Francesca Re Manning of CAS-IP, CGIAR, expressed complete agreement with the proposal made by the OA advocates.

The response of Dr. Enrica Porcari, Chief Information Officer of CGIAR, was ambivalent, almost a tightrope walk. She didn’t say that OA was not acceptable to CGIAR and yet she was not willing to accept OA mandating as an option. She said: “Rather than a policy on ‘open access’ limited to journal articles, I would instead prefer to see us develop a strong and clear CGIAR view and set of practices that balance the need for high quality science with highly accessible outputs, and reinforces the substantial progress we have already made across all the Centers…I would advocate for a concerted effort to ‘opening access to our research’. Is not providing open access to research publications the obvious first step in opening access to our research?”

Probably, Dr. Porcari also thought that the advocates were promoting open access journals. Both Richard Poynder and I clarified that what we suggested for CGIR was open access and not open access journals and explained the difference between the two. Richard clarified that our emphasis was actually on open access archiving.

Dr. Peter Bloch and Dr. Kay Chapman of CAS-IP thought that some of the ideas we put forward were astute and relevant but had some concerns about making papers for which the copyright vests with journal publishers open access as well as papers co-authored with non-CGIAR researchers. In response we pointed out how other organizations which have mandated open access have dealt with these issues.

Prof. Anil Gupta of the Indian Institute of Management , Ahmedabad, and founder of the Honey Bee network that disseminate the innovations of thousands of farmers, craftsmen, artisans and the lay public, endorsed the suggestion stating that Harvard made it obligatory for all the papers published by its faculty to be openly accessible. He said that "once this is made into a policy by CGIAR, the publishers will have to fall in line."

Prof. Michael Gurstein, editor of Journal of Community Informatics, welcomed the idea of making CGIAR research open access, and suggested that we should go one step further and see to it that the research is also made easily applied by the farmers and other ultimate users. Others who endorsed the suggestion include Professors Bill Hubbard, Stephen Pinfield and Chrisopher Pressler of the Nottingham University, David Bollier, Co-founder of Public Knowledge, Prof. Helen Hambly Odame of the University of Guelph.

In the meanwhile, I found that "the Coherence in Information for Agricultural Research for Development (CIARD) initiative is working to make agricultural research information publicly available and accessible to all. This means working with organisations that hold information or that creates new knowledge – to help them disseminate it more efficiently and make it easier to access. CGIAR, FAO and DFID are CIARD partners.

I refer to the CIARD Manifesto here. It is all for open access. Both DFID and FAO also have adopted open access. Please refer to the R4D portal of DFID. Why R4D? In the past it was difficult to find out what research topics, projects, and programmes DFID was funding or had funded. Researchers all over the world (and even DFID staff) had to rely on a network of personal contacts or inspired detective work to discover who was already working in a particular area, what was already known, and what lessons had been learned. R4D responds to a demand expressed by many DFID stakeholders for better and open access to all this information. It is and will always be only one piece of the jigsaw, but it is a high-quality piece, as in order to have received DFID funding the research posted on R4D will have met strict criteria and quality standards in both formulation and execution.

FAO has complied with all the 13 CIARD requirements for developing institutional readiness and increasing the availability, accessibility and applicability of research outputs. Indeed FAO is the only institution to have done so.

Dr. Ballantyne of ILRI himself has championed open access. Responding to New publication: Learning to Share Knowledge for Global Agricultural Progress, he wrote on 21 March 2010, "Great to see this experience all written up. I was going to complain at the lack of open access to this CGIAR research output… but then I found the author version ‘available’ in full on the CIAT website. Excellent example of I can’t remember which CIARD pathway! Would be even better if your author version was ‘accessible’ in a proper CGIAR/CIAT repository that is harvestable, etc., and not just uploaded on the web!" This is precisely what the 16 signatories to the letter to CGIAR want for all of CGIR research publications!

There should be no difficulty for CGIAR – the Consortium Board, the Science Council and the Programme Committee to accept the suggestion that they adopt an open access mandate for all their research publications.

It is likely that a few knowledge managers were unhappy that people outside the system made the suggestion. It may be their immediate response. It should not be difficult for them to realize, on sober reflection, that all we mean is to bring access to CGIAR research on par with access to research done at some of the best institutions in the world such as MIT, Harvard, Stanford, and Southampton, and to make CGIAR policy the best in the world – even better than the OA policies of NIH, the Research Councils of the UK and the Wellcome Trust. We assure those who have any misgivings that our intentions are honourable, our suggestion was made in the best interest of CGIAR, and they can cast away their misgivings.

Regards,
Arun

The Central Advisory Service for Intellectual Property (CAS-IP of CGIAR) organised a successful workshop in Rome in early July. CAS-IP hopes to conduct a workshop on open access for all CGIAR librarians and knowledge managers before the end of the year.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-access-international-agricultural-research

CIS featured in the Report on Research and Funding Landscape within the Arts and Humanities in India

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T11:27:38Z

Centre for Internet and Society has been listed as an area of excellence and innovative research in this report.

Research Councils UK had undertaken a mapping exercise to gain a better understanding of the research and funding landscape within the arts and humanities in India. The India Foundation for the Arts won the tender to undertake the exercise.

The report highlights:

The challenges of definition with the term ‘arts and humanities’ and ‘social science’ in India and subsequently how this affects funding for research in these areas
The strengths, current themes and challenges of arts and humanities (and in some cases social science) research in India
The challenge of creating an accurate arts and humanities archive in India
An overview of the Indian funding and research structures
The challenge of funding fine and performing arts separately from traditional arts research disciplines
A discussion on significant shifts in theory and approaches in some of the disciplines and this impact on the current research landscape
A list of centres of excellence in arts and humanities research in India
A list of centres with potential or those which are working in innovative research areas
An outline of government, non-government and foreign funders

Click here for the Report.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/research-and-funding

From Archive to Application (and Back): A Workshop with Pad.ma

praskrishna — 2011-04-05T04:08:36Z

The first workshop Open House and Participation will be held on Friday, 16th July at 6.30 p.m at 1, Shanti Road, Bangalore. This will be followed by weekend workshops at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore on 17 and 18 July, 2010.

For about two years now, Pad.ma has been running as an online archive of digital video with text annotations. During this period, the focus has been on gathering materials, annotating densely, and building an archive. At present, pad.ma has over 400 hours of footage, in over 600 "events". Almost all of this material is fully transcribed and is often mapped to physical locations. Essays have been written over videos, and narratives created across different clips in the archive. The focus has been on pulling material into the archive.

What are ways to start thinking about pulling material out of pad.ma? From the onset, pad.ma has had an API, a programming interface that allows you to pull out videos, perform searches, seek to exact time-codes in any video, fetch transcript and map data, and display all this however you please. Also Pad.ma's General Public License is designed specifically for the reuse of the material on pad.ma. Through the experience of running the archive, there have been various imaginations of multiple and layered forms of time-based annotation over video, including for: pedagogical tools for learning and discussion; presentation tools that combine text and video in new ways, essays and other writing formats enabled by rich and context-specific media.

At this workshop, we hope to explore some of these ideas for video on the web, and video's new qualities as a result of online practices. We invite video-makers, coders, writers, artists, students, and other enthusiasts to participate. Considering the term "application" in a broad sense, we invite video material, texts or software that, combined with existing materials and tools in pad.ma, can become innovative kinds of "output", or new forms. These would also then feedback into the archive, and how we imagine its future.

After a hands-on introduction to pad.ma and its possibilities and tools, the workshop will break up into streams for content and code. On day two, these streams come back together.

In the content stream, participants could:

bring in their own footage, clips from popular or unpopular cinema, science or lab videos, ads or news, artworks or documentary films, to assemble into new forms, using pad.ma's tools.
bring together shots, scenes or sounds from fiction or non-fiction films, and make a new 'movie' or create a 'running commentary' alongside.
write over video in pad.ma critically or creatively: theorise or contextualise footage, write collaborativey, or weave fiction and/or poetry with moving images.
create teaching units or illustrated lectures using pad.ma
begin a research project or map a phenomenon through video and text.

In the code stream, participants could:

devise new ways in which video and text can speak to each other, and to an online audience

For developers, this 2-day workshop is an opportunity to experiment with the newest web-video technologies. Concretely, we will cover some background and history of HTML 5 <video>, understand how the pad.ma website works with time-based annotations, server-side seeking of video, etc. and finally work on hacking on applications / prototypes using the pad.ma API. The developer track of this 2-day workshop is open to all, but knowledge of HTML, CSS and / or javascript would be useful.

By end of day 1, we hope to have interesting content and application projects that could be developed (individually or in groups) through the night and following day. Planning ahead will help, so: video-makers, artists, writers, researchers and coders, may write to pad.ma with a one-line bio and project idea, and a confirmation of your participation at pad.ma@pad.ma.

For more information, visit the following links:

http://pad.ma/newsletter/2010-05-26.html

http://pad.ma/texts/10_Theses_on_the_Archive.html

http://files.pad.ma/beirut/Archive_Reader/

How to use pad.ma guide: http://wiki.pad.ma/wiki/HowTo

Pad.ma API : http://wiki.pad.ma/wiki/API

About Pad.ma

Pad.ma is an interpretative web-based video archive, which works primarily with footage and not finished films. Pad.ma creates access to material which is easily lost in editing processes, in the filmmaking economy, and in changes of scale brought about by digital technology. Unlike Youtube and similar video sites, the focus here is on annotation, cross-linking, downloading and the reuse of video material for research, pedagogy and reference.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/pad.ma-workshop

Enabling Access to Education through ICT

praskrishna — 2011-08-31T10:41:15Z

ICT workshop in Delhi...starts from Wednesday, 27 October 2010...ends on Friday, 29 October 2010.

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore in cooperation with the Global Initiative for Inclusive ICT (G3ICT), a flagship advocacy organization of the UN Global Alliance on ICT and Development (UN-GAID), the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), UNESCO, Digital Empowerment Foundation, Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment and the Deafway Foundation is organizing an international conference, Enabling Access to Education through ICT in New Delhi from 27 to 29 October 2010. The event is sponsored by Hans Foundation.

Agenda

EDICT2010: Enabling Access to Education through ICT

How can accessible information and communication and assistive technologies for persons with disabilities be best deployed in schools and universities?

October 27-29, 2010

India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, India

Co-organized by:

Event Sponsor:

Media Partners

Enabling Access to Education through ICTs: How Can Accessible Information and Communication and Assistive Technologies for Persons with Disabilities be Best Deployed in Schools and Universities?

An international inquiry organized by the Centre for Internet and Society in cooperation with G3ict, an advocacy initiative of the United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development with the support of UNESCO, the International Telecommunication Union, the DAISY Consortium and the World Intellectual Property Organization

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

08.30 – 09.30 Registration opens

09.30 – 11.00 Opening session

Welcome note from the organizers, CIS, G3ict, UNESCO, ITU and WIPO

Key note address by Smt Vibha Puri Das, Secretary, Higher Education, Ministry for Human Resource and Development

Introductory remarks by Dr.Indrajit Banerjee, Director, UNESCO

– 11.15 Tea break

11.15 – 13.00 Axel Leblois, Executive Director, G3ict: ICT Accessibility and Reasonable Accommodation in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Implications of Article 9 and 24 for State Parties and Education Ministries

Why Accessible and Assistive Technologies Matter? – An Overview of ICT Barriers to Access and Solutions

Live examples and case studies of ICT accessibility issues and solutions in education. The topics – (access to websites), (published works and libraries),(classroom materials and tests), (hardware and software) and (K to 12 and university perspectives)

Speakers

Cyndi Rowland, Associate Director, Center for Persons with Disabilities: Visible and Hidden Barriers for Students and Faculty

Dr. Sushmita Mitra, Director, Student Support Services, National Institute of Open Schooling: School Textbooks and Educational Resources – Making Distance Education Work

Dr.Hemalata, Deputy Director, NCDS, IGNOU: Information Communication Technology (ICT) for Inclusion
Mr.S.C.Kunthiya, Joint Secretary Elementary Education, Ministry of HRD: Barriers and Initiatives of the HRD Ministry

James Thurston, Senior Strategist for Global Policy and Standards, Microsoft: Accessibility Guide for Educators

Q & A discussion
Moderator- Ambassador Swashpawan Singh

13.00 – 14.00 Lunch break

14.00 – 15.30 Beyond Accessibility: Implementing Assistive Technologies for Students with Disabilities

Live examples and demos. Topics - (input / output devices), (screen readers), (text to speech and voice recognition), (language support) and)

The need for individual solutions and
Training and support essentials

Speakers

Srinivasu Chakravartula, Accessibility Manager, Yahoo India: World of Assistive Technologies

Prof S R Mittal, Professor in Education, Department of Education, University of Delhi: Challenges faced by Students with Disabilities in Higher Education

Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society: Open Educational Resources
Arun Rao, CEO, The Deaf Way Foundation: ICT Applications in Deaf Education

Prof Tanmoy Bhattacharya, Coordinator, Equal Opportunities Cell, Delhi University: Education of Students with Disabilities: An Evaluation of the Indian Educational Policies

Moderator: Mrs. Mala Ramadurai

15.30 – 16.00 Tea break

16.00 – 17.30 Shifting Paradigms for Accessible and Assistive Solutions: Can India Schools Leapfrog Current Solutions?

Speakers

Prabir Purkayastha, President, Centre for Technology and Development, Chairperson of Knowledge Commons, Vice President, Delhi Science Forum and Chairperson of Program Review Committee on Perception and Control, ASTeC Programme, Ministry of Information Technology
Mandar Naik, Director - Platform Strategy with Microsoft India: Open Source Software and Proprietary Software, The Need for Interoperability

Susan Schorr, Regulatory Officer of the Regulatory and Market Environment Division of the Telecommunication Development Bureau, ITU: Connecting Schools: Global Challenges and Solutions

Claudio Giugliemma, President, Dominic Foundation (Switzerland): Accessible e-learning

Professor Kenryu Nakamura, Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Tokyo: 99 Tips in My Pocket In-Class Use of Mobile Phones for Students with Disabilities

Moderator: Noopur Jhunjhunwala

17.30 Adjournment, Announcements for Next Day Program

Thursday, October 28, 2010

09.30 – 11.00 Morning Session – UNESCO-CIS Case Studies Overview Education in ICTs Initiatives in the Asia Pacific Region: Success Stories

Speakers

Nirmita Narasimhan, Programme Manager, Centre for Internet and Society: Presentation on UNESCO case study

James Mathew- Insite, Project Coordinator of Insight: Insight ICT for the Differently abled

Professor Mamoru Iwabuchi, Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology University of Tokyo: Development of ICT based Assistive Technology for Minority Languages

Sachin Malhan, CEO and Co-founder, Inclusive Planet: The Global Social Library for the Visually Impaired

Moderator: Dr.Indrajit Banerjee

11.00 – 11.20 Tea break

11.20 – 13.00 Plenary Session with DAISY Speakers - The New Frontier for Access to Published Works: Success Stories and Roadblocks

Speakers

Hiroshi Kawamura, President, DAISY Consortium: Daisy Consortium Presentation
Viji Dilip, International Program Manager, Bookshare: The Bookshare Success Story

Mr.Andrew Tu, Senior Advisor to Assistant Director General of WIPO: Facilitating Access to Copyright Works for Visually Impaired Persons – The WPO VIP Initiative

Mr. Vivek, Mehra, MD and CEO Sage publications
Dr. Sam Taraporevala, Associate Professor and Head of Department of Sociology, St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai: India’s situation

Discussion and Q & As

Moderator: TBC

13.00 – 14.00 Lunch break

14.00 – 15.30 DAISY Best Practices for Educators

Speakers

George Kerscher, Secretary General of the DAISY Consortium and President of the International Digital Publishing Forum: Latest Technical Developments and Sample Implementations such as in DAISY Mathematics

Prashant Ranjan Verma, Consultant, DAISY Consortium: Over view of Hardware and Software Tools for Authoring and Playback of DAISY Books

Birendra Raj Pokharel, President, National Federation of the Disabled-Nepal, Convener, DAISY Nepal Foundation, Vice Chair, DPI Asia Pacific and Chair, DPI South Asia: Sharing of Experiences on Implementation of DAISY Book Production and Distribution in Developing Countries

Michael Katzmann, Chief of the Materials Development Division, National Library Services for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, USA: Best Practices in Providing Accessible Materials to Persons with Disabilities

Moderator: George Abraham, CEO, Score Foundation

15.30 – 16.00 Tea break

16.00 – 17.30 Break-out Sessions:
Group 1: Primary education

Group 2: Secondary education
Group 3: Tertiary education
Group 4: Vocational and lifelong learning

Each group covers

Covers 2 to 3 case studies presented by field practitioners with Q&As
Discuss key challenges and success factors as described by field practitioners

Agreed on key policy recommendations to be presented in plenary session

Facilitator: Sunil Abraham

Moderators and rapporteurs to be identified for each group

17.30 Adjournment

19.30 Conference Dinne at Gymkhana Club being coorganised by Daisy Forum of India, Bookshare and CIS

Friday, October 29, 2010

09.30 – 11.00 Developing an ICT Accessibility and Assistive Technology Support Eco-system for Educators

The topics – (centers of excellence and peer support), (training the trainers), (employing disabled persons as trainers), (resources for field practitioners), (role of universities), (standards), (public procurement), (international examples), (discussion with selected case studies leaders and participants and India’s Ministry of Education officials)

Speakers

Cyndi Rowland, Associate Director, Center for Persons with Disabilities: Impact of Lack of Accessible ICTs for Students with Disabilities – An International Perspective

Arun Mehta, President, Bidirectional Access Promotion Society: Opportunities and Challenges for Education in a Neuro-Diverse World
Joyojeet Pal, Visiting Assistant Professor, Polytechnic Institute of New York University and a Computing Innovation fellow at University of Colorado Boulder: Developing a curriculum in Disability Studies and Assistive Technology for higher education
Shanti Raghavan, Founder and Managing Trustee, Enable India: Centres of Excellence, Train the Trainers, Employing Disabled Persons as Trainers

Moderator: Geet Oberoy

11.00 - 11.20 Tea break
11.20 – 13.00 Wrap-up session presentation of group work, feedback and action points. On site web based survey of participants on policy priorities. Will be used to edit white paper.

Facilitator: Axel Leblois

13.00 – 14.00 Closing lunch

14.00 – 15.30 Afternoon Organizer’s Private Session

Summarizing key findings
Looking at on-line survey results
Drafting key points of white paper
Drafting table of contents

Next steps

15.30 – 16.00 Tea break
16.00 Adjournment

Download the agenda

For details on the event in the digital LEARNING newsletter

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/education-through-ICT

Digital humanities: How social sciences may benefit from the digital revolution?

praskrishna — 2011-04-05T04:06:22Z

Centre for Contemporary Studies in collaboration with the Centre for Internet and Society presents a talk on Digital Humanities by Dominique Boullier, Professor at Sciences Po Paris on 9 July, 2010 at the Centre for Contemporary Studies.

This talk is in the context of the shift from traditional uses of digital power: databases, online questionnaires, and statistic analyses, to new uses of digital techniques for exploring digital data: producing datascapes from the huge amount of unstructured expressions on the Web and from the traces left by various kinds of behaviour. Starting with an example from the sociology of controversies redesigned by web crawling and visualization techniques, the speaker raises the following questions: How can we fill the gap between qualitative and quantitative analysis by using digital networks resources? How can we fill the gap between individual and structure when analyzing a phenomenon through digital lenses? In assessing the opportunities in the studies of social phenomena offered by using digital tools and web sources of data, the speaker seeks to demonstrate that it gives room for new social theory that can get rid of the concepts of “institutions”, “market” and “emergence” as unquestioned a priori.

All are cordially invited
Tea / Coffee will be served at 3.30 p.m.
Venue: Seminar Hall, Centre for Contemporary Studies (Formerly TIFR Mathematics Building), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/digital-humanities

UID Act may be released for debate, may be introduced in monsoon session

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T11:27:53Z

An article by Karen Leigh & Surabhi Agarwal in livemint on June 30, 2010.

The government has moved to create a legal basis for its ambitious project to provide all residents with numeric identity cards and guarantee the safety of demographic and biometric data being collected for it.

The draft National Identification Authority of India Act, 2010, was put up for public debate on Tuesday, and is likely to be introduced when Parliament convenes for its monsoon session.

The Act provides for the creation of the National Identity Authority of India to oversee the implementation of the Aadhaar project, but its jurisdiction will not extend to Jammu and Kashmir.

“This Bill will give the authority a legislative framework to function,” said R.S. Sharma, director general of the Unique Identification Authority ofIndia (UIDAI), the nodal agency currently overseeing Aadhaar.

Sharma said the Bill contains provisions that will make sure that sensitive data is protected and there are no hacking attempts. It lays down that “the authority shall ensure the security and confidentiality of identity information of individuals”.

UIDAI is collecting fingerprints and eye scans of all residents, along with other information, for Aadhaar.

The Bill “will also make sure that data related to a citizen’s caste or religion is not collected or chronicled”, Sharma added.

The Bill lays down that impersonation using Aadhaar data can lead to a three-year jail term and a fine of Rs10,000. Unauthorized collection or dissemination of identity information will also invite a three-year jail term, or a Rs1 lakh fine, or both.

The heftiest penalty of Rs1 crore along with three years’ imprisonment has been specified for unauthorized access to the central database, which will contain all individual details collected for Aadhaar.

Although the Bill lays down that no information stored in the database shall be revealed by UIDAI officials, it allows disclosure of personal information in a case of national security. Information can be disclosed on the direction of an officer of joint secretary level or above in the Union government, with the approval of the minister in charge.

But civil rights activists say the safety measures in the Bill are not enough.

“It doesn’t have any of the safeguards and provisions necessary to protect the rights of citizens. It’s only protecting the interests of the UIDAI,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society and a critic of the Aadhaar project.

“They have criminalized an imaginary crime—if the technology were infallible, which is what they claim biometrics is, then you can’t create ghost identities. They’re saying that ghost identities will still be there; that the technology is, in fact, not foolproof.”

Rahul Matthan, founding partner of law firm Trilegal, said the Bill will give a legal basis to UIDAI for collecting data and allotting identities.

“Provisions in the Act on data protection are limited as it can’t be a substitute for an over-arching data protection legislation in the country, which will deal with all kinds of citizen data,” he said.

The Union government is mulling over a separate privacy Bill to safeguard individual data privacy, as reported by Mint on 21 June. The move is aimed at deflecting worries over the safety of the immense amount of data it proposes to collect about its citizens for various programmes, including Aadhaar.

Read the original article in livemint.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/UID-in-monsoon-session

Right to Read: Campaign Updates

praskrishna — 2011-08-20T14:06:38Z

A nationwide campaign on Right to Read was co-organised by CIS along with the Daisy Forum of India and Inclusive planet to highlight the lack of content in accessible formats and accelerate change in the provisions of the Indian Copyright Act, 1957, which presently does not permit the conversion of books in accessible formats for the benefits the blind, visually impaired and other reading disabled persons. The campaign is affiliated with the global R2R campaign started by the World Blind Union in April 2008.

The campaign in India began in Chennai and was taken up thereafter, in other cities, namely Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai. The campaign has gathered thousands of supporters and has succeeded in bringing the problems of the print disabled to the notice of policy makers and the general public.

In order to bring its supporters regular updates about the progress of the campaign, CIS has started a newsletter. The first newsletter went out to a thousand people on the 23rd of this month:

National Campaigns

National Right to Read Events
Until now four Right to Read events: Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai have been held in India.

Legal Paper on the Right to Read Submitted to the Government
CIS along with Alternative Law Forum and Inclusive Planet submitted a paper on the Indian Copyright Act, 1957 to the HRD Ministry.

The Ministry of HRD has presented the Bill to the Parliament which has been referred to the Standing Committee.

The Bill has attracted newspaper publicity: http://bit.ly/d2S5mc, http://bit.ly/bYkctq, http://bit.ly/buqbLs, http://bit.ly/cHp1bg, http://bit.ly/9LF1Ep, http://bit.ly/cwO4Yv, http://bit.ly/aj7D9p, http://bit.ly/aWv7G9 and http://bit.ly/aFyKrC.

An updated list of signatories is available here.

International Development

A debate on EU supporting a binding treaty for enabling access to published works was held in the European Parliament. Details are available at: (http://bit.ly/94cqVc, http://bit.ly/aVWkyC, http://bit.ly/cDVysw).

We thank you for taking interest in our campaign and look forward to your continued support to make this campaign a success.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/right-to-read-newsletter

A New Age in News

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T11:26:14Z

Citizen journalism and online piracy were key topics during the opening day of the Mekong Information and Communication Technology conference. The 2010 Mekong ICT conference in Chang Mai, Thailand, has brought together an experienced crowd of experts from all over the globe. They have gathered to discuss the status, trends and the current situation of the ICT world.

Participants with expertise from various fields will be sharing ideas and exchanging information until June 12 in Thailand. The intensive session includes participants from Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, New Zealand, Argentina, the United States, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Germany.

The way that technology is changing the scope of media and the new wave of citizen journalists are playing a powerful role in the way that the information age is emerging. Citizens are now a powerful force of information and the Internet is their tool. Social networking sites such as facebook and twitter have changed the way information is shared and examples of how to utilize these sources posed both debate and discussion from the panel of experts and participants.

Veteran journalist Tharum Bun shared that, "The flow of information, the quality, the speed, it is all changing. Youtube, blogs, twitter and social networking have greatly changed the game for journalism and are essential to the new age of reporting."

Also addressed was the idea that journalists have as much responsibility as any other public figure and perhaps more because of the audience they can reach. Media was described as a "war of ethics" that citizen journalists are raising the bar in. One major challenge is the abundance of information leaving those who read to question or scrutinize more carefully what is factual because there is, at times, an overflow of information.

The way that average citizens are getting the word out and becoming a new source of information was a topic of great interest to attendees. Citizen journalism is fast-becoming a way for the general population to become reporters. There was also talk of how video is becoming a weapon of choice for citizen journalists and is an essential supplement to the written word as images are important because they are so powerful.

In closing, keynote speaker Sunil Abraham spoke on the topic of piracy and the availability of everything from books to movies online. He pointed out that the war against piracy has become an invasion of privacy. Examples of authors, such as the worldwide sensation Paulo Cohelo, and how they have used online sharing to their advantage were highlighted. The sharing of information is now a fact and people can either find ways to utilize (and still profit) from this new age, or they are fighting something similar to a war on drugs that has no end in sight. Abraham pointed out that bibles are available for free worldwide, yet it is still the most sold book in history. So despite its ready availability, it hasn't stopped it from being sold.

Music has also always been, "Shared, it's remixed, it's borrowed, it's changed..." illustrating that information should be available. The topics, discussions, and meetings at the 2010 Mekong ICT will continue for the next week.

Read the original in dtinews

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/new-age-news

Activists welcome privacy Bill, but point out concerns

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T11:42:47Z

Experts have welcomed the government's move to bring in a law for protecting individual privacy, amid concerns about the potential misuse of personal data it is collecting to execute social welfare and security schemes.

But they warn that overlaps with existing laws, a limited consultation process and failure to keep up with technological advances could undercut the utility of the planned legislation.

The Union government has set up a panel of secretary-level officials to prepare a blueprint for a law to protect individual privacy and personal data from misuse, even by the government, Mint reported on Monday.

The government is collecting personal data to operate schemes such as Aadhaar--a project to provide numeric identity cards to all residents, and the National Intelligence Grid (Natgrid), which will track information obtained by 11 law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

These agencies can access details of phone calls, credit card transactions, visa, immigration and property records, and driving licences of all citizens, as well as their iris and thumb-prints.

Lawrence Liang, a lawyer who works with Bangalore-based Alternative Law Forum, said the planned law will check the manner in which private companies use the personal data of citizens.

"Currently, there are only private contracts between individuals and companies on how personal data is used. With this legislation, the individual is more empowered. The state can back him better in case of a dispute," he said.

Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, which has protested Aadhaar's project structure, also welcomed the move.

"The privacy Bill guidelines are fairly broad. It is early days yet. Their will be a large overlap between the privacy and Aadhaar Bills," he said.

Faking biometric data, for instance, isn't a violation of privacy in the proposed law but could be criminally cognizable under the Aadhaar Bill, Abraham said. "It will be interesting to see how these issues are tackled as there are several nuances and grey areas."

A scientist at the Institute for Genomics and Integrative Biology in New Delhi said new kinds of privacy issues will emerge because of the imminent rise of bioinformatics applications.

There are no products or applications today that rely solely on biometric information to breach individual privacy, he said, requesting anonymity.

"But within five years, it will be easier to collect biometric information and link it to other details such as credit card information and driving licence numbers on a large scale. There could then be issues of privacy that will emerge," he added.

Leo Saldanah, coordinator at the Bangalore-based Environment Support Group and another critic of Aadhaar, said the planned privacy Bill is a sham.

"Privacy is anyway enumerated in our constitutional rights under Article 21. But governments have anyway accessed information via phone taps unencumbered," he said. "I don't think the existence of legislation per se will change matters on the ground."

Link to the article on DailyMe

For the article in Livemint

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/privacy-bill

Digital Natives Workshop in Taipei: Only a Few Seats Left!!!

praskrishna — 2011-08-04T10:29:26Z

The Centre for Internet and Society in collaboration with the Frontier Foundation is holding a three day Digital Natives workshop in Taipei from 16 to 18 August, 2010. The three day workshop will serve as an ideal platform for the young users of technology to share their knowledge and experience of the digital and Internet world and help them learn from each other’s individual experiences.

Everybody has a story to tell, and with the Internet, it is possible to tell the story and be heard. Young people around the world use digital technologies to find a voice, an expression, a creative output and a space for dialogue. Gone are the days when the young were only to be seen and not heard. In the Web 2.0 world, the young are seen, heard and are making a dramatic change in the world that we live in.

As Internet and digital technologies become more widespread, the world is shrinking, time is replaced by Internet time, we are constantly connected and intricately linked to our contexts, our people, our cultures and our networks. And you, yes YOU are a part of this change. In fact, as Digital Natives – people who have found technologies as central to their lives – you are directly affecting the lives of many, sometimes even without knowing about it.

An Open Call for Participation

The Centre for Internet and Society (Bangalore, India) in collaboration with the Frontier Foundation (Taipei, Taiwan) are calling out to young technology users to share stories about how they have tried to change things around them with the use of digital and Internet technologies. Conversely, if you feel that the presence of these technologies has significantly changed you in some way, we want to hear about that too! These can be stories where you have made a significant impact by initiating campaigns or movements for a particular cause, stories where you have used technologies to cope with problems in your personal and social life through your online persona in the virtual World Wide Web or stories where a small blog you started, or a facebook group you created, or a plurk network that you started, or a discussion group that you participated in, led to a change that has a story to tell.

The three day workshop will select 20 participants from all around Asia and in the Middle East to come and share these stories, to interact with facilitators and scholars who have worked in different countries and areas, and to form a network of collaboration and support. We will give your stories a face, a voice and a platform where they can be heard in your own voice, in your own style and in your own formats. Participants can fill in an application form (as given below) and forward it to digitalnatives@cis-india.org by 15th July 2010.

Simultaneously a website will also be hosted online where the Digital Natives will contribute to the content. Selected participants will be encouraged to document in it. Expenses relevant to the project will be granted to the selected participants.

Application Form

Name:
Gender:
Age:
Primary language of communication:
Other languages you can read and write:
Email:
Postal address:
Describe your Internet related experience / initiative(s) in 300 words. Furnish with URLs where necessary. Optionally, if images and videos are part of the description, then upload them in a high resolution version to a secure website and provide the URL.
Write in a few sentences about your expectation from the workshop.
I declare that the above information is true to the best of my knowledge.
I agree that Digital Natives will use the material I have provided for public use.

Please note that the information you provide will be kept for purposes of the Digital Natives project. Materials which you submit will be used for reporting to sponsors and for public use relevant to the project.

Dates: 16, 17 and 18 August, 2010
Venue: Taipei (Taiwan)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/open-call

Dont hang up on this one

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T11:42:41Z

Is 3G the next twist in the mobile phone growth story?

The ubiquitous mobile phone is the story of the decade that just passed us by. Now with the superfast 3G technology set to storm the market, consumers are eagerly awaiting faster data access and multimedia services, and it isn't time to hang up on the Indian telecom story.

From a clunky walkie-talkie like device that was nearly as exclusive as the landline, to an “anywhere, anytime” device that doubles as your computer, browser, map or even digital cash, the mobile phone has taken rapid strides in recent years.

In early 2000, Karnataka and Maharashtra led the mobile phone growth. However, experts often differ on when exactly the cellphone “explosion” began and what triggered it. Is it low-cost, mass market handsets that made it possible for just about anyone to “be connected” or the sophisticated smart phone that brought hitherto unforeseen experiences onto the mobile? Further, like mobile phone manufacturers, service providers too have been involved in a fierce price war to woo customers.

Sustained growth

According to an April 2010 TRAI report, there are 601.22 million wireless phone connections in the country and a teledensity (phones per 100 people) of over 50.98.

While wireless connections are growing by nearly three per cent every month, wireless connections declined by 0.4 per cent in April.

So what will 3G do that will change the way we connect to our devices?

Currently, our mobile phones are devices that we use to talk, stay connected — even feel safe in this instant connectivity — click or transfer pictures, listen to music or capture videos. “The future will be about livelihood applications.

Services, which have thus far focussed on how to get money from consumers' pockets, will move towards evolving ways to put money back in their pockets,” says S.R. Raja, president and co-founder of Mobile Monday.

Mr. Raja alludes to services in the agricultural sector or existing commerce-based applications that will get a boost once 3G enters.

For instance, he points to a Sasken Technologies pilot initiative in rural Tamil Nadu which helps women's self-help groups sell their produce by providing access to pricing details, thereby eliminating middlemen.

While larger services and societal applications in the field of e-learning and telemedicine are likely to pick up, for the common user it means access to live video and multimedia content. The 3G rollout will transform the way we use our cellphone, experts say.

Scepticism

However, others are sceptical and far less optimistic about this “radical change” and believe that the 3G take-off may not be as smooth as people would like to believe.

“3G may not deliver in the short-term for the ordinary Indian. Smart phones are still expensive. Data services will be expensive as telecom operators will try to recoup what they spent on the spectrum auction,” says Sunil Abraham, researcher and director of the Centre for Internet and Society.

The Government should start considering spectrum a public good and additionally consider open or shared spectrum to lower costs for projects run by public institutions or non-governmental organisations. Only then will the poor of India transcend SMS, he adds.

Read the original article in the Hindu

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/dont-hang-up

Peeping Toms In Your Inbox

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T11:42:11Z

Nothing’s safe any more—not your mobile number, nor your e-mail—as they’re put on offer for the benefit of telemarketers, writes Namrata Joshi and Neha Bhatt in an article published in the Outlook.

It was Saturday morning and Sneha Gupta wanted to book a table for dinner at a Delhi restaurant called Rodeo. So she called up a telephone directory service and procured the restaurant’s phone number, firmly nixing the operator’s seemingly casual offer to also provide numbers of similar restaurants. But that wasn’t the end of the story. The next day, Sunday brunch with her extended family was interrupted by calls from sundry restaurants enquiring if she’d be interested in hosting parties and events—at a discount.

“Instead of enjoying the food, the company and the conversation, I was busy ticking off these guys. Why were they assuming I wanted to organise a party? How did they get my mobile number to blatantly infringe on my private family time?” asks Sneha. She got no answers from them, but the sequence of events is clear: the telephone directory service sold Sneha’s contact details to marketers who broadly assumed, from her Rodeo outing, that she was a party animal, and decided to bombard her with similar offers.

Something similar happened to media professional Raghav Agarwal. He paid off his bank loan for a car in two-and-a-half years instead of the stipulated five, happy to stop living off credit. But from the next day, he was inundated with calls offering him bigger and better credit for everything—from house to car to education. “It was awfully distracting to deal with this while trying to meet deadlines,” he recounts. The fact that he had paid back the loan ahead of time had, by hook or by crook, reached financial outfits who used the information to serenade what they saw as an attractive catch.

For Kuhu Tanvir, these attentions come laced with a hint of menace. The film student was startled to find herself receiving unsolicited calls from unknown vendors offering to maintain the water purifier installed in the recesses of her kitchen. “It’s scary to think,” she says, “that there are people out there who even know which products you’ve bought for your house.” It was equally unnerving for film producer Gaurang Jalan to have his personal details passed on to data-miners by none other than a prominent Calcutta club (“strangers now call you on your birthday, offering schemes”). All those out there accosted by calls offering car insurance just at the time their policy is up for renewal will know exactly how they felt....

8 Ways In Which You’re Being Intruded Upon

Privacy is being redefined in India, with the lines between the public and the private blurring not just for celebrities but also for ordinary citizens...
Personal details like your phone number, date of birth, credit history, bank loans, insurance policies, white goods purchases, favourite restaurants and nightclubs are bought and sold among cellphone operators, banks, shops, telephone directory services, credit card companies, hospitals, hotels, elite clubs and even your locality’s residents’ welfare association.
Unsolicited telemarketing calls, spam SMSes and e-mails intrude incessantly on your private space, time
Your online purchases and searches, archived e-mails and documents are being tracked for marketing purposes. Social networking groups and search engines stand accused of sharing user information and contact details.
Personal pictures, information about relationships on social networking sites are being misused by online predators and molesters.
Identity theft is fast emerging as a threat.
Surveillance cameras and intrusive frisking have become a way of life, at airports, cinema halls, malls, hospitals, hotels, etc.
TV cameras and sting operations blur the line between individual privacy and public interest.
People encouraged and offered inducements to bare all about their lives on TV. Shows like Emotional Atyachar, Splitsvilla, Truth Love Cash play out individual dating rituals and infidelity games for the masses.

7 Steps You Can Take To Protect Yourself

Give out your mobile number cautiously, if at all; don’t print it on the visiting cards you hand out generously. Give only your landline number if you have to, to avoid being constantly disturbed.
Be wary of filling in random forms at retail stores and restaurants, or the gift voucher you’re offered in return for your friends’ names and phone numbers.
Be alert while shopping with your debit or credit card. The retailer may be also swiping the card on his computer to feed your contact information into it.
Even though the Do Not Call facility has not worked for a majority of users, you lose nothing by registering for it on www.donotcall.gov. You can’t complain about unsolicited calls unless you register.
Online, be cautious of the personal information you reveal, such as your date of birth and photographs, which make you especially vulnerable to identity theft. Use Google dashboard and the new Facebook privacy settings to protect yourself.
Get the latest browser that allows you to delete cookies-as-you-go, delete your browsing history regularly, learn to encrypt your e-mail.
Always read privacy clauses in bank and other forms, and on websites carefully, and remember to tick opt-out boxes if you don’t want to be besieged with new product information.

For celebrities, the lines between the private and the public have always been blurred. But in a transforming India, ordinary people like Sneha, Raghav, Kuhu and Gaurang are finding themselves intruded upon in newer ways—from the trivial to the serious—and across varied platforms, from the mobile phone to the internet, TV to the surveillance camera. And, with citizens like them mostly dimly aware of how to safeguard, renegotiate or fight for their right to privacy—enshrined in the Constitution, but vaguely defined—in a changing world, and no effective laws to rein in those who violate it, the infringements and threats are set to increase.

Take telemarketing, perhaps the most insistent manifestation today of this marauding culture. It started out as an irritant, became a nuisance and is now a virtually unchecked invasion. “In the West, telemarketing is an unobtrusive experience thanks to opt-in services by which users get calls only if they ask for them. Moreover, governments discourage telemarketers through strict regulations. In India, it’s a menace,” says Supreme Court advocate Harsh Pathak, who has litigated against telemarketing calls and the sale of personal data to companies.

Indeed, you can chart an entire day in your life with these intrusions as markers. You get woken up with the SMS: “Hare Krishna. Today is Ekadashi. Fasting from grains and beens (sic). Chant Hare Krishna mahamantra 25 rounds (sic) and be happy. Hari bol.” Through the day, they keep coming, both SMSes and human voices, trying to sell you everything from houses and farmland to hotel deals, sauna belts, equity tips and public speaking skills. And, if you happen to be even an occasional club-hopper, your phone could carry on beeping till two or three am, with SMSes announcing the next gig in town.

It’s clear from this virtually round-the-clock barrage that our personal lives are up for sale in an aggressive marketing-driven environment. Be it telecom companies, banks, shops, credit card firms, DVD rental libraries, insurance, auto dealers, clubs or hotels, they all profit from sharing personal information—phone numbers, credit history, spending patterns, shopping preferences and much else—about their customers. “The irony is that the corporate world has no accountability or transparency in India but the public has turned transparent for them,” says media analyst and columnist Sudheesh Pachauri.

Those often identified as the prime offenders in this game are quick to shrug off blame, or not respond, as Outlook found. ICICI Bank could not “participate in this story”, Airtel declined comment while Vodafone did not respond at all. Rajat Mukarji, chief corporate officer, Idea Cellular, who did respond, said phone companies were unfairly blamed for unsolicited calls. “Such data is available everywhere now, you can buy it off the Net for Rs 150,” he argued. HDFC Bank’s chief information security officer Vishal Salvi also stoutly denies that databases are sold, and when asked why existing customers are deluged with new product and service offers, says: “It only happens on a need-to-know, need-to-do-basis.” That’s the theory, but in practice, many customers find that the “need” seems to be defined by the banks, not their clients.

So where does that leave the consumer? Well, says Bangalore-based freelance writer and photographer Darshan Manakkal, “On a good day, I plead with the telemarketer to never call me again. With the more persistent ones, I try a different approach, like putting them on hold while I go for a bath. On really bad days, I just abuse them.” Others, like Chennai professional P.K. Pradeep, who shared with us pages upon pages of (extremely polite) e-mails to Airtel and Vodafone requesting them to halt unsolicited calls and SMSes, have been more persistent, but have achieved little beyond the robotic response, “We’re looking into it.”

Signing up, along with some 66 million souls, at the National Do Not Call (NDNC) Registry set up in October 2007, provided no protection to Pradeep, nor did changing phone numbers. “I got a new number from Vodafone recently, and would you believe it, the very next day I was bombarded with promotional messages. They had clearly passed on my number,” he says. The NDNC of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is now widely acknowledged as a failure. There was a brief dip in calls, but they resumed with renewed gusto. You could get lost in the maze of explanations for why NDNC doesn’t work; what’s clear, though, is that it has no capacity to deal with telemarketers who fail to register with it—like all those unknown real estate companies who bombard you with SMSes—and little teeth to deal with those who do. Fines are laughably minuscule—ranging from Rs 500 to Rs 1,000—and the threat of disconnecting a telemarketer’s line is an empty one when it can quickly sign up and assault consumers from another connection. In view of its failure, a Do Call registry has been mooted, on the more consumer-friendly principle that those who want to be called should opt in rather than opt out. Consultations are on but its future shape is still unclear, with telecom companies (no surprise there) opposed to it. “We have gone far with dnc. To now backtrack and try something new doesn’t seem feasible,” says Mukarji.

“The whole problem of unregistered telemarketers will continue and telecom companies will go on blaming them,” S. Saroja, legal coordinator for the Chennai-based Citizen Consumer and Civic Action Group, predicts pessimistically. The group has tried, to no avail, to get phone companies to trace bulk SMSes, which she maintains are easily traceable. “Telemarketing is a Rs 50,000-crore industry and growing at 20 per cent every year. Nobody wants to upset it as everybody is making money out of it, including the government,” says Supreme Court advocate Nivedita Sharma, who has fought her own battles against the sale of privacy.

Meanwhile, an expanding online world is throwing up its own challenges. By 2013, according to some estimates, India will have the third-largest internet user base in the world. Already, with 50 million-plus users and growing, it is a magnet for marketers, who as we know—without perhaps fully internalising the fact—avidly follow the telltale digital pugmarks and trails we leave on the Net as we e-mail, search, shop and obsessively communicate with each other on platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

These spaces on the Net, and their counterparts on other media, seem to be drawing us into an open, sharing, even confessional, culture, without our being fully aware of our vulnerability. We occasionally get intimations of it—like when our e-mail account is hacked into and bizarre mail sent out on our behalf; our Facebook pictures downloaded and their obscene versions floated on Orkut, as happened to two Delhi airhostesses recently; or vicious, revealing comments on our personal lives posted amid the banter on our favourite chat sites.

However, as media analysts point out, there is little push in the Indian environment to do what Western users of Facebook did recently: forcing it to change privacy policies and settings by protesting against its inadequate privacy controls. Here too, as with telemarketing, the regulatory environment is missing.

“In India, there are no regulatory bodies related to online privacy concerns like in the US and Canada where there are privacy commissions which force corporations to make changes in their privacy policy in the interest of citizens,” says Sunil Abraham, executive director, the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.

But individuals are to blame too. Saad Akhtar of naukri.com points out: “We don’t even read the fine print on privacy policies on websites, not realising that a lot of the data we upload even on Indian social networking websites becomes their property, which they can share with advertisers.”

Indeed, Akhila Sivadas of the Centre for Advocacy and Research, says that privacy issues are creating a cultural crisis of sorts, with no understanding of them, leave alone resolution. “Privacy is something that has been negotiated in a personal, intimate, micro universe. We have drawn our individual lakshman rekhas. But we have not debated on privacy norms as a society in a public space, which is very significant in the wake of how the mass media and social networking media is exploding in our country,” she says. It’s leading to an uneasy blend of the very closed and guarded, and the extremely open and no-holds-barred in our society. “There is no robust normative system in place, and corporate entities are exploiting that void,” she says. “The market is primed to take advantage and exploit existing conditions for profit. We are allowing the market to overreach itself,” agrees adman and social commentator Santosh Desai.

So what should be done? Obviously, the R-word—regulation—is critical, and hopefully, the cry for it from the ground will become stronger, as intrusions gather apace. But it would help for consumers to get smarter. Some of the questions to ask ourselves are: should I really be patronising a phone directory service, as Sneha did, that states that it shares information with third-party members and is not responsible for that information being misused by third parties? Should I hand out my visiting card, with my mobile number on it, to all and sundry? Should I reflexively press the “I agree to the terms & conditions” button while signing up for net services without reading the fine print? As Desai puts it, we need to be “mindful, suspicious and careful”. Without, of course, descending into paranoia. The irony, getting sharper and sharper in our lives, is that the very platforms that are used to invade our privacy also enrich our lives in manifold ways.

Read the original article in Outlook

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/peeping-toms-in-inbox

I don't want my fingerprints taken

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T11:41:46Z

Through this article published in Down to Earth, Nishant Shah looks at the role of the state as arbiter of our privacy.

The census, or the collection of citizen data, has been a fundamental aspect of governance for most modern nations. It reminds us that modern governance has been wedded to information, even before it became fashionable to talk of the information age after the digital explosion. Different governments have sought mechanisms to gather and centralize citizen data to effectively administer public services, equity and justice. We have appointed the state as a repository of this data and also the trustee of privacy of this data.

However, lately, in India as well as other countries, there has been a growing anxiety about the role of the state as the arbiter of our privacy.

As public-private-partnerships become a desirable norm for many governments, the citizen data is available to private players who can exploit it for vested interest. In everyday life, this proliferation of citizen data can manifest itself from spam calls by product bearing companies that all of us experience on a regular basis to shattering violence inflicted on selective communities as was seen in Gujarat in the aftermath of the communal conflict in Godhra. While we have, reluctantly, invested our faith in the government in offering our personal data, it comes as a shock that the data has been compromised in the government’s partnerships with the market.

We have always known that even in its physical form, the citizen data often travels through insurance companies, private healthcare systems, financial databases and opens us to invasive surveillance by their operators. But the data is not immediately linked to our bodies. It is possible to deny the data related to our name, sex, occupation and class, or escape it, if necessary. The data resides in large databases, so huge that they fail to make sense to anybody who has to browse through the records.

With the digital data gathering—the kinds that the Unique Identity Project (now known as Aadhar) uses—these safety nets were already weakened. In its digital form, the data suddenly became vulnerable to algorithmic searches and queries that allow for extremely customized and selective data to be made available to operators who are not accountable to us.

Moreover, the digital data can now travel easily across fault lines and previously accepted boundaries to mark citizens in ways that make survival precarious. The anxieties that have surrounded the Aadhar project have been fuelled by the lack of transparent accountability about citizen data usage.

These anxieties around digital data collection get aggravated by the introduction of the biometric protocols into the system. Even with digital data, there was a certain amount of autonomy and agency available to the citizen, to either morph or escape the data production that the system required. Like in earlier times, the relationship of the data was not with the individual citizen’s body but with the citizen as a representative of the larger population. There was no undeniable link that would bind the data on the physiological presence of the citizen.

Biometric system makes the citizen data personal—they tie it up with our inalienable self and body. The data once gathered offers no escape from the information webs, and the possibilities of abuse and violence in such a link between citizen data and the individual citizen’s presence are mind-boggling. We are talking about a dystopian sci-fi vision where each individual has a unique relationship through his/her unique identity with systems of justice, regulation, consumption and production. Everything from what you wear to what you eat to who you are friends with and what you do in your spare time can be tied to your physical body and self. This posits a fundamental threat to the human rights, dignity and security offered by the Constitution.

The census promises the safety of the citizen through anonymity. The biometric data collection violates this safety and suddenly makes us vulnerable to being single, unique and alone in our identity which can be exploited by anybody. The biometric fixity of our identity identifies us, marks us and ties us down to the mass abuse that any information system is always susceptible to. There will be no escape.

Read the article in Down to Earth

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/fingerprints-taken