Centre for Internet and Society

Automated Facial Recognition Systems and the Mosaic Theory of Privacy: The Way Forward

Arindrajit Basu, Siddharth Sonkar — 2020-01-02T14:12:38Z

Arindrajit Basu and Siddharth Sonkar have co-written this blog as the third of their three-part blog series on AI Policy Exchange under the parent title: Is there a Reasonable Expectation of Privacy from Data Aggregation by Automated Facial Recognition Systems?

The Mosaic Theory of Privacy

Whether the data collected by the AFRS should be treated similar to face photographs taken for the purposes of ABBA is not clear in the absence of judicial opinion. The AFRS would ordinarily collect significantly more data than facial photographs during authentication. This can be explained with the help of the mosaic theory of privacy.

The mosaic theory of privacy suggests that data collected for long durations of an individual can be qualitatively different from single instances of observation. It argues that aggregating data from different instances can create a picture of an individual which affects her reasonable expectation of privacy. This is because a mere slice of information reveals a lot less if the same is contextualised in a broad pattern — a mosaic.

The mosaic theory of privacy does not find explicit reference in Puttaswamy II. The petitioners had argued that seeding of Aadhaar data into existing databases would bridge information across silos so as to make real time surveillance possible. This is because information when integrated from different silos becomes more than the sum of its parts.

The Court, however, dismissed this argument, accepting UIDAI’s submission that the data collected remains in different silos and merging is not permitted within the Aadhaar framework. Therefore, the Court did not examine whether it is constitutionally permissible to integrate data from different silos; it simply rejected the possibility of surveillance as a result of Aadhaar authentication.

Jurisprudence in other jurisdictions is more advanced. In United States v. Jones, the United States Supreme Court had observed that the insertion of a global positioning system into Antoine Jones’ Jeep in the absence of a warrant and without his consent invaded his privacy, entitling him to Fourth Amendment Protection. In this case, the movement of Jones’ vehicle was monitored for a period of twenty-eight days. Five concurring opinions in Jones acknowledges that aggregated and extensive surveillance is capable of violating the reasonable expectation of privacy irrespective of whether or not surveillance has taken place in public.

The Court distinguished between prolonged surveillance and short term surveillance. Surveillance in the short run does not reveal what a person repeatedly does, as opposed to sustained surveillance which can reveal significantly more about a person. The Court takes the example of how a sequence of trips to a bar, a bookie, a gym or a church can tell a lot more about a person than the story of any single visit viewed in isolation.

Most recently, in Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court of the United States held that the collection of historical cell data by the government exposes the physical movements of an individual to potential surveillance, and an individual holds a reasonable expectation of privacy against such collection. The Court admitted that historical-cell site information allows the government to go back in time in order to retract the exact whereabouts of a person.

Judicial decisions have not addressed specifically whether facial recognition through law enforcement constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment or a “mere visual observation”.

The common thread linking CCTV footages and cellular data is the unique ability to track the movement of an individual from one place to another, enabling extreme forms of surveillance. It is perhaps this crucial link that would make ARFS-enabled CCTVs prejudicial to individual privacy.

The mosaic theory as understood in Carpenter helps one understand the extent to which an AFRS can augment the capacities of law enforcement in India. This in turn can help in understanding whether it is constitutionally permissible to install such systems across the country.

AFRS enabled-CCTV footages from different CCTVs. if viewed in conjunction could reveal a sequence of movements of an individual, enabling long-term surveillance of a nature that is qualitatively distinct from isolated observances observed across unrelated CCTV footages.

Subsequent to Carpenter, federal district courts in the United States have declined to apply Carpenter to video surveillance cases since the judgement did not “call into question conventional surveillance techniques and tools, such as security cameras.”

The extent of processing that an AFRS-enabled CCTV exposes an individual to would be significantly greater. This is because every time an individual is in the zone of a AFRS-enabled CCTV, the facial image will be compared to a common database. Snippets from different CCTVs capturing the individual’s physical presence in two different locations may not be meaningful per se. When observed together, the AFRS will make it possible to identify the individual’s movement from one place to another.

For instance, the AFRS will be able to identify the person when they are on Street A at a particular time and when they are Street B in the immediately subsequent hour recorded by respective CCTV cameras, indicating the person’s physical movement from A to B. While a CCTV camera only records movement of an individual in video format, AFRS translates that digital information into individualised data with the help of a comparison of facial features with a pre-existing database.

Through data aggregation, which appears to be the aim of the Indian government in their tender that links three databases, it is apparent that the right to privacy is in danger. Yet, at present, there does not exist any case law or legislation that can render such efforts illegal at this juncture.

Conclusions and The Way Forward

Despite a lack of judicial recognition of the potential unconstitutionality of deploying AFRS, it is clear that the introduction of these systems pose a clear and present danger to civil rights and human dignity. Algorithmic surveillance alters a human being’s life in ways that even the subject of this surveillance cannot fully comprehend. As an individual’s data is manipulated and aggregated to derive a pattern about that individual’s world, the individual or his data no longer exists for itselfbut are massaged into various categories.

Louis Amoore terms this a ‘data-derivative’, which is an abstract conglomeration of data that continuously shapes our futures without us having a say in their framing. The branding of an individual as a criminal and then aggregating their data causes emotional distress as individuals move about in fear of the state gaze and their association with activities that are branded as potentially dangerous — thereby suppressing a right to dissent — as exemplified by their use reported use during the recent protests in Hong Kong.

Case law both in India and abroad has clearly suggested that a right to privacy is contextual and is not surrendered merely because an individual is in a public place. However, the jurisprudence protecting public photography or videography under the umbrella of privacy remains less clear globally and non-existent in India.

The mosaic theory of privacy is useful in this regard as it prevents mass ‘data-veillance’ of individual behaviour and accurately identifies the unique power that the volume, velocity and variety of Big Data provides to the state. Therefore, it is imperative that the judiciary recognise safeguards from data aggregation as an essential component of a reasonable expectation of privacy. At the same time, legislation could also provide the required safeguards.

In the US, Senators Coons and Lee recently introduced a draft Bill titled ‘The Facial Recognition Technology Warrant Act of 2019’. The Bill aims to impose reasonable restrictions on the use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement. The Bill creates safeguards against sustained tracking of physical movements of an individual in public spaces. The Bill terms such tracking ‘ongoing surveillance’ when it occurs for over a period of 72 hours in real time or through application of technology to historical records. The Bill requires that ongoing surveillance only be conducted for law enforcement purposes and in pursuance of a Court Order (unless it is impractical to do so).

While the Bill has its textual problems, it is definitely worth considering as a model going forward and ensure that AFR systems are deployed in line with a rights-respecting reading of a reasonable expectation of privacy. Parsheera suggests that the legislation should narrow tailoring of the objects and purposes for deployment of AFRS, restrictions on the person whose images may be scanned from the databases, judicial approval for its use on a case by case basis and effective mechanisms of oversight, analysis and verification.

Appropriate legal intervention is crucial. A failure to implement this effectively jeopardizes the expression of our true selves and the core tenets of our democracy.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/automated-facial-recognition-systems-and-the-mosaic-theory-of-privacy-the-way-forward

Automated Facial Recognition Systems (AFRS): Responding to Related Privacy Concerns

Arindrajit Basu, Siddharth Sonkar — 2020-01-02T14:09:14Z

Arindrajit Basu and Siddharth Sonkar have co-written this blog as the second of their three-part blog series on AI Policy Exchange under the parent title: Is there a Reasonable Expectation of Privacy from Data Aggregation by Automated Facial Recognition Systems?

The Supreme Court of India, in Puttaswamy I recognized that the right to privacy is not surrendered merely because the individual is in a public place. Privacy is linked to the individual as it is an essential facet of human dignity. Justice Chelameswar further clarified that privacy is contextual. Even in a public setting, people trying to converse in whispers would signal a claim to the right to privacy. Speaking on a loudspeaker would naturally not signal the same claim.

The Supreme Court of Canada has also affirmed the notion of contextual privacy. As recently as on 7 March, 2019, the Supreme Court of Canada in a landmark decision defined privacy rights in public areas implicitly applying Helena Nissenbaum’s theory of contextual integrity. Helena Nissenbaum explains that the extent to which the right to privacy is eroded in public spaces with the help of her theory of contextual integrity.

Nissenbaum suggests that labelling information as exclusively public or private fails to take into account the context which rationalises the desire of the individual to exercise her privacy in public. To explain this with an illustration, there exists a reasonable expectation of privacy in the restroom of a restaurant, even though it is in a public space.

In R v Jarvis (Jarvis), the Court overruled a Court of Appeal for Ontario decision to hold that people can have a reasonable expectation of privacy even in public spaces. In this case, Jarvis was charged with the offence of voyeurism for secretly recording his students. The primary issue that the Supreme Court of Canada was concerned with was whether the students filmed by Mr. Jarvis enjoyed a reasonable expectation of privacy at their school.

The Court in this case unanimously held that students did indeed have a reasonable expectation of privacy. The Court concluded nine contextual factors relevant in determining whether a person has a reasonable expectation to privacy would arise. The listed factors were:

“1. The location the person was in when he or she was observed or recorded,

2. The nature of the impugned conduct (whether it consisted of observation or recording),

3. Awareness of or consent to potential observation or recording,

4. The manner in which the observation or recording was done,

5. The subject matter or content of the observation or recording,

6. Any rules, regulations or policies that governed the observation or recording in question,

7. The relationship between the person who was observed or recorded and the person who did the observing or recording,

8. The purpose for which the observation or recording was done, and

9. The personal attributes of the person who was observed or recorded.” (paragraph 29 of the judgement).

The Court emphasized that the factors are not an exhaustive list, but rather were meant to be a guiding tool in determining whether a reasonable expectation of privacy existed in a given context. It is not necessary that each of these factors is present in a given situation to give rise to an expectation of privacy.

Compared to the above-mentioned factors in Jarvis, the Indian Supreme Court in Justice K.S Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India: Justice Sikri (Puttaswamy II) — the case which upheld the constitutionality of the Aadhaar project relied on the following factors to determine a reasonable expectation of privacy in a given context:

“(i) What is the context in which a privacy claim is set up?

(ii) Does the claim relate to private or family life, or a confidential relationship?

(iii) Is the claim a serious one or is it trivial?

(iv) Is the disclosure likely to result in any serious or significant injury and the nature and extent of disclosure?

(v) Is disclosure relates to personal and sensitive information of an identified person?

(vi) Does disclosure relate to information already disclosed publicly? If so, its implication?”

These factors (acknowledged in Puttaswamy II in paragraph 292) seem to be very similar to the ones laid down in Jarvis, i.e., there is a strong reliance on the context in both cases. While there is no explicit mention of individual attributes of the individual claiming a reasonable expectation, the holding that children should be given an opt out indicates that the Court implicitly takes into account personal attributes (e.g. age) as well.

The Court in Jarvis further (in paragraph 39) took the example of a woman in a communal change room at a public pool. She may expect other users to incidentally observe her undress but she would continue to expect only other women in the change room to observe her and reserve her rights against the general public. She would also expect not to be video recorded or photographed while undressing, both from other users of the pool and by the general public.

If it is later found out that the change room had a one-way glass which allowed the pool staff to view the users change — or if there was a concealed camera recording persons while they were changing, she could claim a breach of her reasonable expectation of privacy under such circumstances and it would constitute an invasion of privacy.

So, in the context of an AFRS, an individual walking down a public road may still signal that they wish to avail of their right to privacy. In such contexts, a concerted surveillance mechanism may come up against constitutional roadblocks.

What is the nature of information being collected?

The second big question — the nature of information which is being collected plays a role in determining the extent to which a person can exercise their reasonable expectation of privacy. Puttaswamy II laid down that collection of core biometric information such as fingerprints, iris scans in the context of the Aadhaar-Based Biometric Authentication (‘ABBA’) is constitutionally permissible. The basis of this conclusion is that the Aadhaar Act does not deal with the individual’s intimate or private sphere.

The judgement of the Supreme Court in Puttaswamy II is in a very specific context (i.e. the ABBA). It does not explain or identify the contextual factors which determine the extent to which privacy may be reasonably expected over biometrics generally. In this judgment, the Court observed that demographic information and photographs do not raise a reasonable expectation of privacy under Article 21 unless there exist special circumstances such as the disclosure of juveniles in conflict of law or a rape victim’s identity.

Most importantly, the Court held that face photographs for the purpose of identification are not covered by a reasonable expectation of privacy. The Court distinguished face photographs from intimate photographs or those photographs which concern confidential situations.

Face photographs, according to the Court, are shared by individuals in the ordinary course of conduct for the purpose of obtaining a driving license, voter id, passport, examination admit cards, employment cards, and so on. Face photographs by themselves reveal no information.

Naturally, this pronouncement of the Apex Court is a huge boost for the introduction of AFRS in India.

Abroad, however, on 4 September 2019, in Edward Bridges v. Chief Constable of South Wales Police, a Division Bench of the High Court in England and Wales heard a challenge against an AFRS introduced by law enforcement (see Endnote 1). The High Court rejected a claim for judicial review holding that the AFRS in question does not violate inter alia the right to privacy under Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights (‘ECHR’).

According to the Court, the AFRS was used for specific and limited purposes, i.e., only when the image of the public matched a person on an existing watchlist. The use of the AFRS was therefore considered a lawful and fair restriction.

The Court, however, acknowledged that extracting biometric data through AFRS is “well beyond the expected and unsurprising”. This seems to be a departure from the Indian Supreme Court’s observation in Puttaswamy II that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy over biometric data in the context of ABBA, and may be a wiser approach for the Indian courts to adopt.

Endnote

1. The challenge was put forth by Edward Bridges, a civil liberties campaigner from Cardiff for being caught on camera in two particular deployments of the AFRS a) when he was at Queen Street, a busy shopping area in Cardiff and b) when he was at the Defence Procurement, Research, Technology and Exportability Exhibition held at the Motorpoint Arena.

This was published by AI Policy Exchange.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/automated-facial-recognition-systems-afrs-responding-to-related-privacy-concerns

Decrypting Automated Facial Recognition Systems (AFRS) and Delineating Related Privacy Concerns

Arindrajit Basu, Siddharth Sonkar — 2020-01-02T14:01:48Z

Arindrajit Basu and Siddharth Sonkar have co-written this blog as the first of their three-part blog series on AI Policy Exchange under the parent title: Is there a Reasonable Expectation of Privacy from Data Aggregation by Automated Facial Recognition Systems?

The use of aggregated Big Data by governments has the potential to exacerbate power asymmetries and erode civil liberties like few technologies of the past. In order to guard against the aggressive aggregation and manipulation of the data generated by individuals who are branded as suspect, it is critical that our firmly established constitutional rights protect human dignity in the face of this potential erosion.

The increasing ubiquity of Automated Facial Recognition Systems (AFRS) serve as a prime example of the rising desire of governments to push fundamental rights to the brink. With AFRS, the core fundamental right in question is privacy, although questions have been posed regarding the potential violation of other related rights, such as the Right to Equality and the Right to Free Speech and Expression, as well.

There is a rich corpus of literature, (see here, here and an excellent recent paper by Smriti Parsheera here) from a diverse coterie of scholars that call out the challenges posed by AFRS, particularly with respect to its proportionality as a restriction over the right to privacy. Our contribution to this discourse focuses on a very specific question around a ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’ — the standard identified for the protection of privacy in public spaces across jurisdictions, including in India. This is because at this juncture, the precise nature of the AFRS which will eventually be used and the regulations it will be subject to are not clear.

In Retd. K.S Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India: Justice Chandrachud (Puttaswamy I), the Indian Supreme Court was concerned with the question whether there exists a fundamental right to privacy under the Indian Constitution. A nine-judge bench of the Court recognized that the right to privacy is a fundamental right implicit inter alia in the right to life within Article 21 of the Constitution.

The right to privacy protects people and not places. Every person is entitled, however, to a reasonable expectation of privacy. The expectation of privacy must be twofold. First, the person must prove that the alleged act could inflict some harm. Such harm must be real and not be speculative or imaginary. Second, society must recognize this expectation as reasonable. The test of reasonable expectations is contextual, i.e., the extent to which it safeguards privacy depends on the place at which the individual is.

In order to pass any constitutional test, therefore, AFRS must satisfy the ‘reasonable expectation’ test articulated in Puttaswamy. However, in this context, the test itself has multiple contours. Do we have a right to privacy in a public place? Is AFRS collecting any data that specifically violates a right to privacy? Is the aggregation of that data a potential violation?

After providing a brief introduction to the use cases of AFRS in India and across the world, we embark upon answering all these questions.

Primer on Automated Facial Recognition Systems (AFRS)

Facial recognition is a biometric technology that utilises cameras to match stored or live footage of individuals (including both stills and moving footage) with images or video from an existing database. Some systems might also be used to analyze broader demographic trends or conduct sentiment analysis through crowd scanning.

While the use of photographs and video footage have been core components of police investigation, the use of algorithms to process vast tracts of Big Data (characterized by ‘Volume, Velocity, and Variety), and compare disparate and discrete data points allows for the derivation of hitherto unfeasible insights on the subjects of Big Data.

The utilisation of AFRS for law enforcement is rapidly spreading around the world. A Global AI Surveillance Index compiled by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace found that at least sixty-four countries are incorporating facial recognition systems into their AI surveillance programs.

Chinese technology company Yitu has entered into a partnership with security forces in Malaysia to equip police officers with facial recognition body cameras that, powered by enabling technologies, would allow a comparison of images caught by the live body cameras with images from several central databases.

In England and Wales, London Metropolitan Police, South Wales Police, and Leicestershire Police are all in the process of developing technologies that allow for the identification and comparison of live images with those stored in a database.

The technology is being developed by Japanese firm NEC and the police force has limited ability to oversee or modify the software, given its proprietary nature. The Deputy Chief of South Wales Police stated that “the tech is given to [them] as a sealed box… [and the police force themselves] have no input – whatever it does, it does what it does.”

In the US, Baltimore’s police set up facial recognition cameras to track and arrest protestors — a system that reached its zenith during the 2018 riots in the city.

It is suspected that authorities in Hong Kong are also using AFRS to clamp down on the ongoing pro-democracy protests.

In India, the Ministry of Home Affairs, through the National Crime Records Bureau put out a tender for a new AFRS, whose stated objective is to “act as a foundation for national level searchable platform of facial images.” The AFRS will pull facial image data from CCTV feeds and compare these with existing records across databases including the Crime and Criminal Tracking Networks and Systems (CCTNS), Inter-operable Criminal Justice System (or ICJS), Immigration Visa Foreigner Registration Tracking (IVFRT), Passport, Prisons and state police records.

Plans are also afoot to integrate this with the yet to be deployed National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS), thereby creating a multi-faceted surveillance system.

Despite raising eyeballs due to its potential all-pervasive scope, this tender is not the first instance of AFRS being used by Indian authorities. Punjab Police, in partnership with Gurugram-based start-up Staqu has launched and commenced implementation of the Punjab Artificial Intelligence System (PAIS) which uses digitised criminal records and automated facial recognition to retrieve information on a suspected criminal and essentially tracks their public whereabouts, which poses potential constitutional questions.

This was published by AI Policy Exchange.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/decrypting-automated-facial-recognition-systems-afrs-and-delineating-related-privacy-concerns

Call for Comments: Model Security Standards for the Indian Fintech Industry

pranav — 2019-12-16T13:16:25Z

The Centre for Internet and Society is pleased to make available the Draft document of Model Security Standards for the Indian Fintech Industry, for feedback and comments from all stakeholders. The objective of this document which was first published in November 2019, is to ensure that the data of users is dealt with in a secure and safe manner by the Fintech Industry, and that smaller businesses in the Fintech industry have a specific standard to look at in order to limit their liabilities for any future breaches.

We invite any parties interested in the field of technology policy, including but not limited to lawyers, policy researchers, and engineers, to send in your feedback/comments on the draft document by the 16th of January 2020. We intend to publish our final draft by the end of January 2020. We look forward to receiving your contributions to make this document more comprehensive and effective. Please find a copy of the draft document here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/call-for-comments-model-security-standards-for-the-indian-fintech-industry

ICANN Begins its Sojourn into Open Data

Padmini Baruah and Sumandro Chattapadhyay — 2016-11-12T01:17:24Z

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) recently announced that it will now set up a pilot project in order to introduce an Open Data initiative for all data that it generates. We would like to extend our congratulations to ICANN on the development of this commendable new initiative, and would be honoured to support the creation of this living document to be prepared before ICANN 58.

To quote the ICANN blog directly, the aim of this project is to “bring selected data sets into the open, available through web pages and programming APIs, for the purposes of external party review and analysis” [1]. This will play out through the setting up of three components:

Development of a catalogue of existing data sets which will be appropriate for publication
Selection of the technology necessary for managing the publication of these data sets.
Creation of a process to prioritise the order in which the data sets are made available [2].

Principles in Question

The Centre for Internet and Society firmly believes in the value of accessible, inclusive open data standards as a tool for enhancing transparency in any system. Greater transparency goes a long way towards bringing a regulatory authority closer to those who are governed under it – be it a state or a body such as ICANN. It is, in fact, an indispensable component of a multistakeholder model of governance to facilitate informed participation by all parties concerned in the decision making process.

The right to information that a regulatory authority owes those it regulates has two kinds of components. The first may be described as reactive disclosure – “when individual members of the public file requests for and receive information” [3]. The second is disclosure that is more proactive in nature – “when information is made public at the initiative of the public body, without a request being filed” [4]. The former is epitomized by initiatives such as the Freedom of Information Act [5] in the United States, the Right to Information Act in India [6], or ICANN’s very own Documentary Information Disclosure Policy [7].

Proactive disclosure policies, on the other hand, operate out of the principle that the provision of information by those in positions of regulatory authority will ensure free and timely flow of information to the public, and the information so provided will be equally accessible to everyone, without the need for individual requests being filed [8]. Proactive disclosure also goes a long way towards preventing officials from denying or manipulating information subsequent to publication [9]. Scholars have touted proactive disclosure as the “future of the right to know” [10].

At the Centre for Internet and Society, much of our research has pointed towards the direction of creating better open data standards for governments (Please see “Open Data Government Study: India”). We are one of the Lead Stewards of the International Open Data Charter [11] and have maintained that it is crucial for governments to maintain open data standards in the interest of transparency and accountability. We firmly believe that the same principles extend also to ICANN – a body which, as per its own by-laws commits towards operating “…to the maximum extent feasible in an open and transparent manner and consistent with procedures designed to ensure fairness”[12].

Suggestions

While this policy is in its nascent stage, we would like to put forward certain principles which we believe ought to be kept in mind before it gets chalked out, in the best interest of the ICANN community:

To determine what data sets should be made publicly accessible, it would be useful to carry out an analysis of existing DIDP requests to understand trends in the kind of information that the ICANN community is interested in accessing, which can then be proactively disclosed. It would be redundant on ICANN’s part to disclose, under this Open Data Policy, data which is already publicly available.
ICANN should first develop a catalog of all existing data sets with ICANN, apply the principles for deciding appropriateness for publication, then make publicly available both the full catalog, and the actual data sets identified for publication. ICANN should make clear the kind of information it is not going to make accessible under this open data standards, and justify the principles on the basis of which it is choosing to do so (analogous to the exceptions clauses under the DIDP).
With respect to technology to be selected for managing the publication of data sets, free and open source software (such as CKAN) ought to be used, and open standards should be adopted for the use and licensing of such data.
Such data ought to be downloadable in bulk in CSV/JSON/XML formats.
DIDP responses and the open data work flows ought to be integrated so that all the responses to DIDP requests are automatically published in a machine-readable format as open data.
Qualitative (text of speeches, slides from presentations, recordings of sessions, etc.) and quantitative data should both be included under this new policy.

In conclusion, we would like to extend our congratulations to ICANN on the development of this commendable new initiative, and would be honoured to support the creation of this living document before ICANN 58.

Endnotes

[1] Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN Kicks off Open Data Initiative Pilot, (November 6, 2016), available at https://www.icann.org/news/blog/icann-kicks-off-open-data-initiative-pilot (Last visited on November 9, 2016).

[2] Id.

[3] Naniette Coleman, Proactive vs. Reactive Transparency, (February 8, 2010), available at: http://blogs.worldbank.org/publicsphere/proactive-vs-reactive-transparency (Last visited on November 9, 2016).

[4] Id.

[5] Freedom of Information Act, 1966, 5 U.S.C. § 552.

[6] Right to Information Act, 2005 available at http://righttoinformation.gov.in/rti-act.pdf

[7] ICANN, Documentary Information Disclosure Policy, available at https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/didp-2012-02-25-en (Last visited on November 9, 2016).

[8] Helen Darbishire, Proactive Transparency: The future of the right to information? Working paper. N.p.: World Bank, (2009).

[9] Id.

[10] Darbishire, supra note 8.

[11] Open Data Charter, Who We Are, available at http://opendatacharter.net/who-we-are/ (Last visited on November 10, 2016).

[12] Article III(1), Bylaws For Internet Corporation For Assigned Names And Numbers

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/icann-begins-its-sojourn-into-open-data

An Evidence based Intermediary Liability Policy Framework: Workshop at IGF

jyoti — 2014-07-04T06:41:10Z

CIS is organising a workshop at the Internet Governance Forum 2014. The workshop will be an opportunity to present and discuss ongoing research on the changing definition of intermediaries and their responsibilities across jurisdictions and technologies and contribute to a comprehensible framework for liability that is consistent with the capacity of the intermediary and with international human-rights standards.

The Centre for Internet and Society, India and Centre for Internet and Society, Stanford Law School, USA, will be organising a workshop to analyse the role of intermediary platforms in relation to freedom of expression, freedom of information and freedom of association at the Internet Governance Forum 2014. The aim of the workshop is to highlight the increasing importance of digital rights and broad legal protections of stakeholders in an increasingly knowledge-based economy. The workshop will discuss public policy issues associated with Internet intermediaries, in particular their roles, legal responsibilities and related liability limitations in context of the evolving nature and role of intermediaries in the Internet ecosystem. distinct

Online Intermediaries: Setting the context

The Internet has facilitated unprecedented access to information and amplified avenues for expression and engagement by removing the limits of geographic boundaries and enabling diverse sources of information and online communities to coexist. Against the backdrop of a broadening base of users, the role of intermediaries that enable economic, social and political interactions between users in a global networked communication is ubiquitous. Intermediaries are essential to the functioning of the Internet as many producers and consumers of content on the internet rely on the action of some third party–the so called intermediary. Such intermediation ranges from the mere provision of connectivity, to more advanced services such as providing online storage spaces for data, acting as platforms for storage and sharing of user generated content (UGC), or platforms that provides links to other internet content.

Online intermediaries enhance economic activity by reducing costs, inducing competition by lowering the barriers for participation in the knowledge economy and fuelling innovation through their contribution to the wider ICT sector as well as through their key role in operating and maintaining Internet infrastructure to meet the network capacity demands of new applications and of an expanding base of users.

Intermediary platforms also provide social benefits, by empowering users and improving choice through social and participative networks, or web services that enable creativity and collaboration amongst individuals. By enabling platforms for self-expression and cooperation, intermediaries also play a critical role in establishing digital trust, protection of human rights such as freedom of speech and expression, privacy and upholding fundamental values such as freedom and democracy.

However, the economic and social benefits of online intermediaries are conditional to a framework for protection of intermediaries against legal liability for the communication and distribution of content which they enable.

Intermediary Liability

Over the last decade, right holders, service providers and Internet users have been locked in a debate on the potential liability of online intermediaries. The debate has raised global concerns on issues such as, the extent to which Internet intermediaries should be held responsible for content produced by third parties using their Internet infrastructure and how the resultant liability would affect online innovation and the free flow of knowledge in the information economy?

Given the impact of their services on communications, intermediaries find themselves as either directly liable for their actions, or indirectly (or “secondarily”) liable for the actions of their users. Requiring intermediaries to monitor the legality of the online content poses an insurmountable task. Even if monitoring the legality of content by intermediaries against all applicable legislations were possible, the costs of doing so would be prohibitively high. Therefore, placing liability on intermediaries can deter their willingness and ability to provide services, hindering the development of the internet itself.

Economics of intermediaries are dependent on scale and evaluating the legality of an individual post exceeds the profit from hosting the speech, and in the absence of judicial oversight can lead to a private censorship regime. Intermediaries that are liable for content or face legal exposure, have powerful incentives, to police content and limit user activity to protect themselves. The result is curtailing of legitimate expression especially where obligations related to and definition of illegal content is vague. Content policing mandates impose significant compliance costs limiting the innovation and competiveness of such platforms.

More importantly, placing liability on intermediaries has a chilling effect on freedom of expression online. Gate keeping obligations by service providers threaten democratic participation and expression of views online, limiting the potential of individuals and restricting freedoms. Imposing liability can also indirectly lead to the death of anonymity and pseudonymity, pervasive surveillance of users' activities, extensive collection of users' data and ultimately would undermine the digital trust between stakeholders.

Thus effectively, imposing liability for intermediaries creates a chilling effect on Internet activity and speech, create new barriers to innovation and stifles the Internet's potential to promote broader economic and social gains. To avoid these issues, legislators have defined 'safe harbours', limiting the liability of intermediaries under specific circumstances.

Online intermediaries do not have direct control of what information is or information are exchanged via their platform and might not be aware of illegal content per se. A key framework for online intermediaries, such limited liability regimes provide exceptions for third party intermediaries from liability rules to address this asymmetry of information that exists between content producers and intermediaries.

However, it is important to note, that significant differences exist concerning the subjects of these limitations, their scope of provisions and procedures and modes of operation. The 'notice and takedown' procedures are at the heart of the safe harbour model and can be subdivided into two approaches:

a. Vertical approach where liability regime applies to specific types of content exemplified in the US Digital Copyright Millennium Act

b. Horizontal approach based on the E-Commerce Directive (ECD) where different levels of immunity are granted depending on the type of activity at issue

Current framework

Globally, three broad but distinct models of liability for intermediaries have emerged within the Internet ecosystem:

1. Strict liability model under which intermediaries are liable for third party content used in countries such as China and Thailand

2. Safe harbour model granting intermediaries immunity, provided their compliance on certain requirements

3. Broad immunity model that grants intermediaries broad or conditional immunity from liability for third party content and exempts them from any general requirement to monitor content.

While the models described above can provide useful guidance for the drafting or the improvement of the current legislation, they are limited in their scope and application as they fail to account for the different roles and functions of intermediaries. Legislators and courts are facing increasing difficulties, in interpreting these regulations and adapting them to a new economic and technical landscape that involves unprecedented levels user generated content and new kinds of and online intermediaries.

The nature and role of intermediaries change considerably across jurisdictions, and in relation to the social, economic and technical contexts. In addition to the dynamic nature of intermediaries the different categories of Internet intermediaries‘ are frequently not clear-cut, with actors often playing more than one intermediation role. Several of these intermediaries offer a variety of products and services and may have number of roles, and conversely, several of these intermediaries perform the same function. For example , blogs, video services and social media platforms are considered to be 'hosts'. Search engine providers have been treated as 'hosts' and 'technical providers'.

This limitations of existing models in recognising that different types of intermediaries perform different functions or roles and therefore should have different liability, poses an interesting area for research and global deliberation. Establishing classification of intermediaries, will also help analyse existing patterns of influence in relation to content for example when the removal of content by upstream intermediaries results in undue over-blocking.

Distinguishing intermediaries on the basis of their roles and functions in the Internet ecosystem is critical to ensuring a balanced system of liability and addressing concerns for freedom of expression. Rather than the highly abstracted view of intermediaries as providing a single unified service of connecting third parties, the definition of intermediaries must expand to include the specific role and function they have in relation to users' rights. A successful intermediary liability regime must balance the needs of producers, consumers, affected parties and law enforcement, address the risk of abuses for political or commercial purposes, safeguard human rights and contribute to the evolution of uniform principles and safeguards.

Towards an evidence based intermediary liability policy framework

This workshop aims to bring together leading representatives from a broad spectrum of stakeholder groups to discuss liability related issues and ways to enhance Internet users’ trust.

Questions to address at the panel include:

1. What are the varying definitions of intermediaries across jurisdictions?

2. What are the specific roles and functions that allow for classification of intermediaries?

3. How can we ensure the legal framework keeps pace with technological advances and the changing roles of intermediaries?

4. What are the gaps in existing models in balancing innovation, economic growth and human rights?

5. What could be the respective role of law and industry self-regulation in enhancing trust?

6. How can we enhance multi-stakeholder cooperation in this space?

Confirmed Panel:

Technical Community: Malcolm Hutty: Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA)
Civil Society: Gabrielle Guillemin: Article19
Academic: Nicolo Zingales: Assistant Professor of Law at Tilburg University
Intergovernmental: Rebecca Mackinnon: Consent of the Networked, UNESCO project
Civil Society: Anriette Esterhuysen: Association for Progressive Communication (APC)
Civil Society: Francisco Vera: Advocacy Director: Derechos Digitale
Private Sector: Titi Akinsanmi: Policy and Government Relations Manager, Google Sub-Saharan Africa
Legal: Martin Husovec: MaxPlanck Institute

Moderator(s): Giancarlo Frosio, Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and Jeremy Malcolm, Electronic Frontier Foundation

Remote Moderator: Anubha Sinha, New Delhi

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/igf-workshop-an-evidence-based-intermediary-liability-policy-framework

Access Beyond Developmentalism: Technology and the Intellectual Life of the Poor

radha — 2011-08-02T07:16:36Z

Essay by Lawrence Liang, September 21, 2009 in response to - A Dialogue on ICTs, Human Development, Growth, and Poverty Reduction

In February 2009 we invited the French philosopher Jacques Ranciere to Delhi for the release of his book “Nights of Labour” which we had translated into Hindi, and to have a conversation with a group of young writers and practitioners at the Cybermohalla (“CM”) in Dakshinpuri. The Cybermohalla is one of three media labs that have been set up in different working class colonies in Delhi where young people living in the colony meet, engage in conversations and write about their neighborhood, technology, media, culture and life in the city. Almost six years old, the CMs were set up as experimental spaces to explore ways of looking at the relationship between technology and the urban poor beyond the lens of developmentalism. The CM is presently involved in documenting intellectual life in their neighborhoods and the transformations brought about by media.

In this brief note I would like to raise a few critical questions about the dominant ICT and Development discourse that dominates policy and NGO circles, and I will be using the writings of Ranciere, the CM practitioners, and the conversation between them as the grounds on which to raise these questions. Ranciere began his career as a labour historian, and had initially set out to do a straight forward history of class consciousness in the labour archives outside Paris. What he found surprised him, and informed his philosophy of education and I believe has immense significance for people working on ICT, poverty and development. Ranciere’s rethinking of labour history paves the way for us to start thinking seriously about the hidden domain of aspiration and desire of the subaltern subject, while at the same time thinking about the politics of our own aspirations and desires.

Ranciere goes into an unexplored aspect of the labour archive of nineteenth century France, where he starts looking at small, obscure and short lived journals brought out by workers, in which they were writing about their own lives. But they were not necessarily writing about their work, or their condition as workers. And if they were , they were not writing about it in glorified terms but with immense dissatisfaction. Instead they were interested in writing poetry, philosophy and indulging in the pleasures of thought. They looked enviously at the thinking life that intellectuals were entitled to. At the same time, intellectuals have always been fascinated with the world of work and the romance of working class identity. Ranciere says “what new forms of misreading will affect this contradiction when the discourse of labourers in love with the intellectual nights of the intellectuals encounters the discourse of intellectuals in love with the toilsome and glorious days of the labouring people”

Ranciere’s motley cast of characters include Jerome Gillard, an iron smith tired of hammering iron, and Pierre Vincard, a metal worker who aspires to be a painter. In other words, a series of sketches of people who refused to obey the role sketched out of for them by history, people who wanted to step across the line and perform the truly radical act of breaking down the time-honored barrier separating those who carried out useful labour from those who pondered aesthetics. He says that “A worker who has never learned how to write and yet tried to compose verses to suit the taste of his times was perhaps more of a danger to the prevailing ideological order than a worker who performed revolutionary songs… Perhaps the truly dangerous classes are not so much the uncivilized ones thought to undermine society from below, but rather the migrants who move at the borders between classes, individuals and groups who develop capabilities within themselves which are useless for the improvement of their material lives and which in fact are liable to make them despise material concerns.”

While we ordinarily think of development in terns of an improvement in the material life and living condition of people, it seems from Ranciere’s account that this was not enough. What the workers wanted was to become entirely human, with all the possibilities of a human being which included a life in thought. What was not afforded to works was the leisure of thought, or the time of night which intellectuals had. This is not to say that an improvement in the material conditions of life was not important. On the contrary it was crucially important, but if we are also recognize inequality as being about the distribution of possibilities, then it is futile to maintain a divide between material and intellectual life. The struggle in other words was between time as a form of constraint and time as a possibility of freedom. For Ranciere, a worker then was someone to whom many lives were owed.

If we were to translate what this means for our understanding of ICT and the subject of development, we find that most interventions frame the poor as objects of the discourse of digital access, and they are rarely seen as the subject of digital imaginaries. How do we think of the space created by ICT as one that expands not just the material conditions but also breaks the divide between those entitled to the world of thought, and those entitled to the world of work? In other words, what is the space that we create when we frame the discourse of ‘digital divides’ only as a matter of technological access? How do we begin to look at the technological lives of people beyond developmentalism and take into account the way it changes aspirations and subjectivities?

Suraj, one of the writers at CM, in his conversation with Ranciere says “The capacity of my intellectual life always competes against my imagination. Exploration for me consists of recognizing the continuous pull by others around me (the constant movement), which propels me to the imagination of an intellectual life which always seems to be beyond me.” What this statement forces us to think about is the fact that we all lead intellectual lives, but the distribution of opportunities to lead an intellectual life is unequal, and we need to think through the history of materiality also as the history of conditions which divide people on the basis of those who think and those who work, or the division of time between the days of labour and the nights of writing. It would be tragic if we were to recycle clichéd ideas of the real needs of the elite and the real needs of the subaltern. The development sector seems to have inherited a certain anti intellectualism on the grounds that it is elitist and the left have failed to engage with such desires on the grounds that they were ‘false consciousness’.

But as Ranciere says “What if the truest sorrow lay not in being able to enjoy the false ones.” Ranciere argues that politics has always been about a distribution of the sensible or sensibilities (and this is certainly evidenced in political discourse as well as the critical discourse on technology where we find metaphors of ‘visibility’, ‘silence’ as a way of thinking about the political condition of the underclass). While the focus of the Harvard Forum has been appropriately on the correlation between ICT and poverty alleviation, it is also important to remember that these technologies (computers, mobiles, DVD players) are also a radical redistribution of the sensible. All of a sudden you have a vast number of people whose access to the world of images, texts and sounds have dramatically increased. At the same time they are engaging with the world of the sensible not just as passive consumers but actively producing, sharing and thinking through these new ephemeral forms.

We could ask questions about the larger change that a small experiment like the CM has been able to bring about. Do these young writers have the ability to change the world, is the model sustainable, etc.? The answer would be yes, but perhaps not in the way usually imagined by funders or NGOs. They have already changed the horizon of the possible by reinventing themselves and claiming their space in the world of thought. This also involves a radical rethinking of the very idea of equality itself. The liberal assumption is that equality for something we strive, in other words that we move from inequality to equality. But what if we were to start with equality itself.

Starting from equality does not presuppose that everyone in the world has equal opportunities to learn, to express their capacities. We recognize immense inequalities in the material conditions of life, but we also recognize that there is always some point of equality when we think of each other as thinking beings, and to think of the process of learning, not as a moving from ignorance to knowledge but as a process of going from what is already known or what is already possessed to further knowledge or new possessions.

It in this context that we also have to recognize that ICT technologies are a serious redistribution of the means of thought and expression. When Victor Hugo, a sympathizer of the working class, was shown a poem written by a worker, his embarrassed and patronizing response was “In your fine verse there is something more than fine verse. There is a strong soul, a lofty heart, a noble and robust spirit. Carry on. Always be what you are: poet and worker. That is to say, thinker and worker.” This is a classic instance of what Ranciere would term as an ‘exclusion by homage’. Thus, the aspiration and desires of the poor have to be ‘something more than fine verse’; the information needs of the poor have to be more than wanting to watch a film or even dreaming of becoming a film maker.

These injunctions certainly tell us more about the fantasies of the state, of the intellectual and of NGOs than they do about people participating in the new realms of the digital, and if we are to avoid collapsing all ICT interventions into ‘exclusions by homage’ then we also need to start thinking about the new landscape via the intellectual possibilities that they hold, and the many lives that they enable. After all, the poor are also those to whom many lives are owed.

Lawrence Liang is founder of the Alternative Law Forum and a Distinguished Fellow with the Centre for Internet and Society.

Link to the original article

Link to related article

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/access-beyond-developmentalism

The ICANN-US DOC 'Affirmation of Commitments' - A Step Forward?

anja — 2011-08-02T07:16:09Z

On 30 September 2009, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) signed an Affirmation of Commitments (AoC) with the US Government's Department of Commerce. For those of us who are concerned that the Internet should serve the global public good, is the new arrangement a step forward? An assessment.

On 30 September 2009, ICANN signed an Affirmation of Commitments (AoC) with the US Government's Department of Commerce. ICANN is the not-for-profit public-benefit corporation that coordinates the Internet's naming system. The Affirmation has been widely hailed for the loosening of US-ICANN ties that it implies. The unilateral control that the US exercised over the organisation had for long been criticised in various quarters as inappropriate for a – by now - global resource such as the Internet. A central instrument of this control was constituted by the reviews that the US's NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration) would conduct of the organisation, based on which the country's Department of Commerce would rework and renew its contract with ICANN. With the signing of the AoC, reviews will henceforth be conducted by panels to be appointed by the Chair of ICANN's Board of Directors, as well as the Chair of the Government Advisory Committee (GAC) in consultation with the other members of the GAC. Since the Affirmation of Commitments is of long standing – unlike earlier Memoranda of Understanding, which had a limited validity – and since the US has demanded for itself a permanent seat on only one of the four panels that the AoC institutes, the US has indeed given up significant amounts of the control that it wielded over the organisation so far.

A clear step forward? Well, not necessarily – and in many ways it is too early to tell. Because while the denationalisation of ICANN was high on many stakeholders' agenda, so was the strengthening of ICANN as an accountable tool for global governance. And where the latter is concerned, the AoC falls sorely short. Although ICANN likes to posit itself as an organisation rooted in communities, where policy is developed from the bottom up, this wonderfully democratic discourse stands in rather ugly contrast to the quite questionable practices that are all too frequently reported from the organisation (the rather stepsisterly treatment meted out to noncommercial users in ICANN in recent times, for example, immediately comes to mind [1]). At the root of this contradiction seems to lie the fact that, while ICANN may be a public interest organisation on paper, in practice it is heavily dominated by large businesses, in particular those US-based, who seem to be willing to go to considerable lengths to defend their interests. The AoC has done nothing to check these tendencies. The review panels suggested are an internal affair, where those who develop policy will get to appoint the people who will assess the policy development processes, and most of those appointed, too, will come from within the organisation. While the suggested wider involvement of ICANN communities, including governments, in reviewing the organisation is a welcome move, it remains to be seen, then, to what extent these review panels will have teeth – in any case their recommendations are not binding. But some go even further and argue that the AoC has effectively removed the one democratic control that existed over ICANN's Board: that of the US Government. As the communities that supposedly make up ICANN do not have the power to unseat the Board, the Board now is effectively accountable... to none.

Since it does not directly address accountability problems within ICANN, the AoC is not so much an improvement, then, as simply a change: it has closed a few old doors, and opened some new ones. Whether this is for good or for bad remains to be seen: in the absence of clear structures of control and oversight, the shape of things to come is never fixed. For those within ICANN who genuinely want to work towards an Internet in the service of the public good, rather than of big business, there is, therefore, a tough task ahead of trying to ensure that the most will be made of the opportunities that the new arrangement does provide. Considering ICANN's institutional culture, this will undoubtedly mean that much of their energy will need to be invested in simply trying to shape new procedures and frameworks of governance in more democratic and accountable directions, eating into valuable time that could and should have been devoted to policy development instead. Indeed, irrespective of the final outcome of the AoC, the spectre of ICANN's lack of accountability and its glaring democratic deficit, for now, remains. And for a forum such as ICANN, that is unbecoming to say the least.

1] For more information, please see http://ncdnhc.org/profiles/blogs/ncuc-letter-to-icann-board-of, http://ncdnhc.org/profiles/blogs/top-10-myths-about-civil, and http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2009/10/2/4338930.html.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-icann-us-doc-affirmation-of-commitments-a-step-forward

ಕೃಷಿ ಸಂಪದ - ಇ-ಮ್ಯಾಗಜೀನ್ ಬಿಡುಗಡೆ

radha — 2011-08-02T07:15:54Z

ಪರಿಸರ ಬರಹಗಾರ ನಾಗೇಶ್ ಹೆಗಡೆ ಅವರು ಕಂಪ್ಯೂಟರಿನ ಸ್ವಿಚ್ ಒತ್ತಿ ಪರದೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಡಿಜಿಟಲ್ ಪುಟ ಬೆಳಗಿ "ಕೃಷಿ ಸಂಪದ" ಇ-ಮ್ಯಾಗಜೀನನ್ನು ಇಂಟರ್ನೆಟ್ ಲೋಕಕ್ಕೆ ಅರ್ಪಿಸಿದರು.

"ನಮ್ಮ ಪಾರಂಪರಿಕ ಜ್ಞಾನವನ್ನು ರಕ್ಷಿಸಲಿಕ್ಕಾಗಿ ಮಾಹಿತಿ ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನ ಮತ್ತು ಸಂವಹನದ ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನವನ್ನು ಸಮರ್ಥವಾಗಿ ಬಳಸಿಕೊಳ್ಳಬೇಕಾಗಿದೆ. ಇಂಟರ್ನೆಟ್ನಲ್ಲಿ ಪ್ರಕಟವಾಗುವ ಇ-ಮ್ಯಾಗಜೀನಗಳು ಈ ನಿಟ್ಟಿನಲ್ಲಿ ಪ್ರಧಾನಪ್ರಾತ್ರವಹಿಸಬಲ್ಲವು. ಅದಕ್ಕಾಗಿ ಕನ್ನಡದ ಮೊದಲ ಕೃಷಿ ಇ-ಮ್ಯಾಗಜೀನ್ "ಕೃಷಿ ಸಂಪದ" ವನ್ನು ಇಂದು ಬಿಡುಗಡೆ ಮಾಡಲು ಸಂತೋಷವಾಗುತ್ತಿದೆ" ಎಂಬ ಮಾತುಗಳೊಂದಿಗೆ ಪರಿಸರ ಬರಹಗಾರ ನಾಗೇಶ್ ಹೆಗಡೆ ಅವರು ಕಂಪ್ಯೂಟರಿನ ಸ್ವಿಚ್ ಒತ್ತಿ ಪರದೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಡಿಜಿಟಲ್ ಪುಟ ಬೆಳಗಿ "ಕೃಷಿ ಸಂಪದ" ಇ-ಮ್ಯಾಗಜೀನನ್ನು ಇಂಟರ್ನೆಟ್ ಲೋಕಕ್ಕೆ ಅರ್ಪಿಸಿದರು.

ನಲವತ್ತು ವರುಷಗಳ ಮುಂಚೆ ಯು.ಎಸ್.ಎ ದೇಶದ ಗಗನಯಾತ್ರಿಗಳು ಚಂದ್ರನ ನೆಲದಲ್ಲಿ ಪ್ರಪ್ರಥಮ ಭಾರಿ ಪಾದಾರ್ಪಣೆ ಮಾಡಿದರು. ಇಡೀ ಜಗತ್ತು ಆ ಘಟನೆಯನ್ನು ಕಾತರದಿಂದ ನಿರೀಕ್ಷಿಸುತ್ತಿತ್ತು. ಮಾನವನೊಬ್ಬ ಚಂದ್ರನ ಮೇಲಿಟ್ಟ ಪುಟ್ಟ ಹೆಜ್ಜೆ ಮನುಕುಲದ ವೈಜ್ಞಾನಿಕ ಪ್ರಗತಿಯ ಪಯಣದ ಪರ್ವತ ಹೆಜ್ಜೆ. ಆ ಕ್ಷಣದಲ್ಲಿ ಭೂಲೋಕದ ಜನರೆಲ್ಲ ಸಂಭ್ರಮಿಸಿದ್ದರು. ಅದೇ ಸಂದರ್ಭದಲ್ಲಿ ಯು.ಎಸ್.ಎ ದೇಶದ ಮಿಲಿಟರಿ ಇನ್ನೊಂದು ಬೃಹತ್ ಯೋಜನೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಮುಳುಗಿತ್ತು - ರಷ್ಯಾ ದೇಶದಿಂದ ಪರಮಾಣು ಬಾಂಬ್ ದಾಳಿ ನೆಡೆದರೆ, ಯು.ಎಸ್.ಎ ದೇಶದ ಸರಕಾರ, ಸೇನಾಪಡೆಗಳು ಹಾಗು ವೈಜ್ಞಾನಿಕ ಪ್ರಗತಿಗೆ ಸಂಬಂಧಿಸಿದ ಅಗಾಧ ಮಾಹಿತಿಯನ್ನು ರಕ್ಷಿಸುವ ಯೋಜನೆ ಅದಾಗಿತ್ತು. ಅದಕ್ಕಾಗಿ ನಾಲ್ಕು ಬೇರೆ ಬೇರೆ ಸ್ಥಳಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಇರಿಸಿದ ಕಂಪ್ಯೂಟರ್ ಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಶೇಖರಿಸಿಟ್ಟರು. ಒಂದು ಕಂಪ್ಯೂಟರ್ ಬಾಂಬ್ ದಾಳಿಯಿಂದ ನಾಶವಾದರೂ ಉಳಿದ ಮೂರು ಕಂಪ್ಯೂಟರ್ಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಅಗಾಧ ಮಾಹಿತಿ ಸುರಕ್ಷಿತವಾಗಿ ಉಳಿದಿರುತ್ತಿತ್ತು. ಈ ಪ್ರಾಜೆಕ್ಟಿಗೆ ಅರ್ಪಾನೆಟ್(ARPANET) ಎಂದು ಹೆಸರಿಡಲಾಗಿತ್ತು.ಇದುವೇ ಮುಂದೆ ಇಂಟರ್ನೆಟ್ ಆಗಿ ಬೆಳೆಯಿತು. ಇಂದು ಕನ್ನಡದ ಮಟ್ಟಿಗೆ ಅದೇ ರೀತಿಯ ಸಂಭ್ರಮ. ಕೃಷಿ ಹಾಗು ಗ್ರಾಮೀಣರಂಗಗಳ ಅಗಾಧ ಮಾಹಿತಿಯನ್ನು ಡಿಜಿಟಲ್ ರೂಪದಲ್ಲಿ ಸಂಗ್ರಹಿಸಿಡುವ ಮಹಾತ್ವಾಕಾಂಕ್ಷೆಯ "ಕೃಷಿ ಸಂಪದ" ಯೋಜನೆ ಅನಾವರಣಗೊಂಡದ್ದು ನಾವೆಲ್ಲ ಹೆಮ್ಮೆ ಪಡಬೇಕಾದ ಬೆಳವಣಿಗೆ ಎಂದು ನಾಗೇಶ್ ಹೆಗಡೆಯವರು ಅಭಿಪ್ರಾಯಪಟ್ಟರು.

ಸಾವಿರಾರು ಕನ್ನಡ ಅಭಿಮಾನಿಗಳು ಸದಸ್ಯರಾಗಿರುವ ಇಂಟರ್ನೆಟ್ ಸಮುದಾಯ "ಸಂಪದ". ಇದರದೇ ಒಂದು ಭಾಗವಾದ ಕೃಷಿ ಸಂಪದದ ಹೊಸದೊಂದು ಯೋಜನೆ "ಕೃಷಿ ಸಂಪದ" ಎಂಬ ಇ-ಮ್ಯಾಗಜೀನ್. ಇದು "ಕ್ರಿಯೇಟೀವ್ ಕಾಮನ್ಸ್" ಲೈಸೆನ್ಸ್ ನಲ್ಲಿ ಪ್ರಕಟವಾಗುತ್ತಿರುವ ಪ್ರಥಮ ಕನ್ನಡದ ಇ-ಮ್ಯಾಗಜೀನ್. ಆದ್ದರಿಂದ ಇದರಲ್ಲಿರುವ ಕಂಟೆಂಟನ್ನು (ಬರಹಗಳು, ಪೊಟೋಗಳು ಇತ್ಯಾದಿ) ಯಾರುಬೇಕಾದರೂ "ಇದ್ದದ್ದು ಇದ್ದ ಹಾಗೆ" ಮರುಬಳಕೆ ಮಾಡಬಹುದು. ಅಂದರೆ ಲಾಭರಹಿತ ಉದ್ದೇಶಗಳಿಗಾಗಿ ಮರುಪ್ರಕಟಿಸಬಹುದು ಅಥವಾ ಪ್ರತಿಗಳನ್ನು ತೆಗೆದು ಆಸಕ್ತರಿಗೆ ಹಂಚಬಹುದು ಎಂದು "ಸಂಪದ" ತಂಡದ ಪರವಾಗಿ ಹರಿಪ್ರಸಾದ್ ನಾಡಿಗ್ ಆರಂಭದಲ್ಲಿ ತಿಳಿಸಿದರು.

ಇದೇ ಸಂದರ್ಭದಲ್ಲಿ ಕೃಷಿ ಸಂಪದದ ಸಂಪಾದಕರಾದ ಅಡ್ಡೂರು ಕೃಷ್ಣರಾವ್ ರವರು, ಕೃಷಿ ಹಾಗು ಗ್ರಾಮೀಣ ಬದುಕಿನ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಕಾಳಜಿಯಿರುವ ಎಲ್ಲರಿಗೂ ವೇದಿಕೆ ಒದಗಿಸುವ ಉದ್ದೇಶದಿಂದ ಇ-ಮ್ಯಾಗಜೀನ್ ಅನ್ನು ಆರಂಭಿಸಲಾಗಿದೆ ಎಂದು ತಿಳಿಸಿ, ಇದರ ಉದ್ದೇಶಗಳನ್ನು ವಿವರಿಸಿದರು.

ಬೆಂಗಳೂರಿನ "ಕೃಷಿ ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞರ ಸಂಸ್ಥೆ" ಯಲ್ಲಿ ನೆಡೆದ ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮದಲ್ಲಿ ಹಲವಾರು ಆಸಕ್ತರು ಭಾಗವಹಿಸಿದ್ದರು. "ಕೃಷಿ ಸಂಪದ" ಬಿಡುಗಡೆಯ ಬಳಿಕ ಜರುಗಿದ ಸಂವಾದದಲ್ಲಿ ಚುರುಕಿನ ಪ್ರಶ್ನೋತ್ತರ ಜರುಗಿತು. ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮ ಸೆಂಟರ್ ಫಾರ್ ಇಂಟರ್ನೆಟ್ & ಸೊಸೈಟಿ, ಸಂಪದ ಹಾಗು ಕೃಷಿ ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞರ ಸಂಸ್ಥೆ - ಇವರ ಸಹಯೋಗದಲ್ಲಿ ಆಯೋಜಿಸಲಾಗಿತ್ತು.

ಇ-ಮ್ಯಾಗಜೀನ್ ಪ್ರತಿಯನ್ನು ಕೃಷಿ ಸಂಪದದ ತಾಣದಿಂದ ಡೌನ್ ಲೋಡ್ ಮಾಡಿಕೊಳ್ಳಬಹುದಾಗಿದೆ: http://krushi.sampada.net

ನಿಮ್ಮ ಅನಿಸಿಕೆ ಇತ್ಯಾದಿಗಳನ್ನು ಕೃಷಿಸಂಪದ ತಂಡಕ್ಕೆ ಇ-ಮೈಲ್ ಮೂಲಕ ಕಳುಹಿಸಿ ಕೊಡಬಹುದಾಗಿದೆ: krushi@sampada.net

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/c95cc3cb7cbf-cb8c82caaca6-c87-caeccdcafcbec97c9cca8ccd-caccbfca1cc1c97ca1cc6

Information and Communication Technology For Improving Agriculture and Rural Livelihoods

radha — 2011-08-02T07:15:43Z

ಮೈಕೇಲ್, ಮೊಬೈಲ್ ಮತ್ತು ಗ್ರಾಮೀಣ ಅಭಿವೃದ್ಧಿ (ಮೈಕೇಲ್ ರಿಗ್ಸ್ ಭಾಷಣ) - ಚಾಮರಾಜ ಸವಡಿ

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/information-and-communication-technology-for-improving-agriculture-and-rural-livelihoods

Value Added Services of Information & Communication Technology- Mobile Telephony for Farmers Benefit

radha — 2011-08-02T07:15:28Z

Mr. G Raghunatha, State Manager, IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Ltd., Bangalore and Secretary, Institution of Agricultural Technologists, Bangalore has written an article on how ICT - Mobile Technology can be used for the farmers' benefit.

The rural areas are suffering with extreme poverty and isolation. Such isolation has led to many miseries and tragic consequences in many families. This trend is more evident due to the absence of joint family system, which has deprived the supportive role of family members. It is seen that mobile phones have to some extent end isolation and therefore proved to be most transformative technology of economic development in recent times. The mobile phone technology has been so powerful and costs so little that it has now proved possible to sell mobile phone access to the poor.

The rural poor have access to wireless banking and payment systems. The mobile revolution is creating logistics revolution in farm to retail marketing connecting farmers to food retailers enabling them to sell the produce at high farm gate prices without delay.

Mobile telephony has become a part of everybody’s of life. This has also become a symbol of progress. If rural telephony grows by 1% there will be an increase of 0.6% in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) showing the impact of growth of rural mobile telephony on Indian economy. 70% of the population of the country is still left behind so far as mobile telephone connectivity is concerned. This indicates that there is an excellent potential for growth in rural areas.

The rural population deserves to shift to mobile telephones in view of the delipitated, ancient and almost useless fixed line infrastructure. They have proved to be an effective instrument of empowerment of rural masses. It is a welcome sign that mobile operators have now shifted their focus to service the rural areas. The once neglected, non profitable areas with high operating costs with low income subscribers is now seen as a proverbial pot of gold with technological advancement and better network management.

Karnataka being in the forefront of Information technology revolution has not lagged behind to harness the Information and communication technology for strengthening the rural masses. Communication is a major challenge and serious impediment in taking the fruits of development to our farmers in the country. IFFCO has realized that a reliable and economical communication medium, as well as, useful services of relevance over this channel have the potential to transform the quality of living in our villages. The need of the hour is to take valuable information inputs to farmers- directly to their ‘ears’ & ‘eyes’ using latest information media like mobile technologies, in addition, rural friendly technologies which are simple, affordable and can address the basic needs of our farmers need to be designed, developed and supplied in all the villages of our country. IFFCO was amongst the first in India to realize the importance and benefits of information and communication technology (ICT) for the development of rural India and applied the technology under 'ICT Initiatives for Farmers & Cooperatives'.

As the country witnessed a boom in Communication in the past decades, most of the developments had been limited to urban areas. It is well known that communication plays a vital role in overall growth in country. It has been proved that mobile telephony has a positive and significant impact on economic growth. But communication infrastructure is still lacking in rural areas.

'IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Limited (IKSL)' is IFFCO's initiative tying up with telecom giant “Airtel”to take further the application of ICT to the benefit of Rural India through a mandate to design, develop, source and supply state of the art, economical & environmentally friendly rural communication & other technologies with value additions of content & services. The focus is to empower people living in villages by taking advantage of appropriate technology to address issues relating to farmers who are in need of communication, access to input from experts and services of reliable quality.

IFFCO has always been in the forefront in spreading the benefits of latest in science and technology for the upliftment of quality of life in rural India. Service to farmers is an integral part of the marketing in gaining trust of rural masses. IFFCO has distinction of floating institutions with focus on rural India like IFFCO- TOKIO General Insurance (ITGI), CORDET, IFFCO Foundation, Kisan Sewa Trust and IFFDC. Unique initiatives of ITGI like 'Sankat Haran Bima Yojna' and ‘Barish Bima Yojana’ have become very popular

IKSL is harnessing domain strength of vast resources of expertise both within and outside IKSL by leveraging organizations engaged in communications & rural friendly technologies. Partnerships have been forged with giant companies like Airtel and Freeplay. Innovation, dynamism & sense of purpose guide IKSL in its journey towards harnessing technology for the betterment of life in rural India.

Value added services are designed to disseminate through mobile channel five voice messages of current importance to farmers in local languages every day free of cost. The broad areas covered are: recommendation on best agricultural practices, nutrient management, animal husbandry, problems & possible solutions for the specific location, information on mandies, weather & climate and several other areas. In Karnataka IKSL is entering into an MOU with University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore & Dharwad for developing content in the form of message bank and helpline services which is enhanced and updated on a continuous basis.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/value-added-services-of-information-communication-technology-mobile-telephony-for-farmers-benefit

A Comment on the 2009 IGF Draft Programme Paper

anja — 2011-08-02T07:15:14Z

The Centre for Internet and Society is part of a broad group of civil society actors that submitted a comment on the Draft Programme Paper of the fourth Internet Governance Forum (IGF), taking place in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, in November 2009. The IGF is a forum for multistakeholder policy dialogue on Internet governance issues. The comment decries the complete absence of attention for Internet Rights and Principles in the agenda as it stands as of today, and this despite repeated requests from a wide range of stakeholders to make this theme a central one. All stakeholder groups were invited to submit their comments on the Draft Programme Paper of the 2009 IGF to the IGF Secretariat by 15 August.

The comment submitted reads as follows:

Re: IGF Draft Programme Paper, August 2009

We, the undersigned would like to express our surprise and disappointment that Internet Rights and Principles was not retained as an item on the agenda of the 2009 IGF in any way. Although this topic was suggested as a theme for this year's IGF or for a main session by a range of actors during and in the run-up to May's Open Consultations, this widespread support is not reflected in the Draft Programme Paper, which does not include Internet Rights and Principles even as a sub-topic of any of the main sessions. The WSIS Declaration of Principles, 2003, and the Tunis Agenda, 2005, explicitly reaffirmed the centrality of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to an inclusive information society. To make these commitments meaningful, it is of great importance that a beginning is made to explicitly building understanding and consensus around the meaning of Internet Rights and Principles at the earliest. We recommend that the Agenda of the 2009 IGF provide the space to do so.

Signatories:

Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore

Association for Progressive Communications

IP Justice

Bytesforall, Pakistan

Instituto Nupef, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Jacques Berleur

Ginger Paque

Fouad Bajwa

Milton L Mueller

Willie Currie

Michael Gurstein

Jeanette Hofmann

Eric Dierker

Jeffrey A Williams

Charity Gamboa, chairperson Internet Governance Working Group, ISOC Philippines

Ian Peter

Tracy F. Hackshaw

Shaila Rao Mistry, Internet Rights and Principles

Lee W McKnight

Jeremy Malcolm

Tapani Tarvainen

Shahzad Ahmad, ICT Policy Monitors Network

Carlos Afonso

Dina Hovakmian

Rui Correia

Lisa Horner

Deirdre Williams

Jaco Aizenman

Nyangkwe Agien Aaron

Siranush Vardanyan, Armenia

Kwasi Boakye-Akyeampong

Linda D. Misek-Falkoff

Baudouin Schombe

Stefano Trumpy

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/a-comment-on-the-2009-igf-draft-programme-paper