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Data Breach: How will the biggest scandal that Facebook is mired in affect its credibility in India?
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/economic-times-g-seetharaman-shephali-bhatt-march-25-2018-data-breach-how-will-the-biggest-scandal-that-facebook-is-mired-in-affect-its-credibility-in-india
<b>Facebook has not been able to catch a break lately. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by G. Seetharaman and Shephali Bhatt with additional inputs by Indulekha Aravind was published in the <a class="external-link" href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/data-breach-how-will-the-biggest-scandal-that-facebook-is-mired-in-affect-its-credibility-in-india/articleshow/63446048.cms">Economic Times</a> on March 26, 2018. Sunil Abraham was quoted.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Rebuked for the misinformation spread on its platform by Russian agencies during the 2016 US presidential election, aiding Donald Trump’s victory, Facebook was on the defensive for most of 2017. Making matters worse for the Menlo Park, California-headquartered social media behemoth, another one of its past oversights has now come back to haunt it in what is undoubtedly its biggest public relations challenge.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Reports by the New York Times and the Observer of London on March 17 disclosed that a researcher linked to Cambridge Analytica (CA), a political consulting firm that worked on Trump’s campaign, had accessed details of 50 million Facebook users unbeknownst to them and shared it with CA, which uses online data to reach voters on social media with personalised messages. The reports were based on revelations by whistle-blower Christopher Wylie, who had worked with CA.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This is how it unfolded: in 2014, CA hired Aleksandr Kogan, a Soviet-born American citizen, to mine data on US voters on Facebook, through a personality quiz app. It was downloaded by 2,70,000 users, who logged in with their Facebook credentials. That enabled Kogan to access not just their data on Facebook, but also their friends’ profiles. Facebook says Kogan lied that the data was only for his research, while there was a commercial element to it as CA paid for the app. It is unclear at this point how exactly the data was used or whether it was effective.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img alt="Future of Facebook" src="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/img/63446106/Master.jpg" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In 2015, Facebook removed his app and sought an assurance from him that the data had been destroyed. But it later found out that the information had been passed on to CA. Facebook has since stopped apps from accessing information about a user’s friends and has even limited the data that can be collected about the user.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While the broad details of the issue have been known since 2015, the sheer number of accounts that were compromised was not known till now and has led to calls for Facebook to be deleted, with #DeleteFacebook trending on Twitter. The company, one of the world’s most valuable public companies, has shed $75 billion, or 14% of its market value, since March 16.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As Facebook spends the next few months trying to convince its users that their data is safe, India will be crucial to their plans. India is, after all, its largest market, with 250 million monthly active users, 12% of its global base, according to recent data by We Are Social and Hootsuite, firms involved in social media marketing and management, respectively.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There are other reasons why India is important to Facebook: WhatsApp, the country’s chat app of choice, has 200 million users, again more than any other market, and Instagram has 53 million. Both these apps are owned by Facebook, giving the company an outsize role in how Indians communicate.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img alt="Experts" src="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/img/63446138/Master.jpg" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook will only grow as smartphone and internet adoption grows — India is set to add 100 million internet users and 250 million smartphone users by 2020. But at the same time, it has to deal with those wondering whether they should sign up or continue being on the network.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Soumya Sinha, a 32-year-old data consultant in Delhi, says FB is quite passive-aggressive when it comes to data. “It gives you a lot of privacy options, makes you feel you are in control of your wall, but buries an ‘unless you don’t want to share’ option at the bottom,” he says. “If you don’t opt out, it assumes you are happy to share. Even if you do, you can never be sure the non-consensual sharing has stopped.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Privacy controls — not just on Facebook but on social media platforms in general — are not easy to find and even the most tech-savvy have a hard time ensuring the accounts are as secure as they can possibly be. “Indians are very liberal with others accessing their data. A lot of other accounts are linked to my FB account. Who knows which one of them will provide my data to others?” says Prateek Kharangar, a 30-year-old doctor in Rajasthan.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s billionaire chief executive, issued a statement on March 21 admitting that Facebook had made mistakes. He added that Facebook would do a thorough audit of suspicious apps and make its privacy policy stricter by limiting the user information it shares with third-party apps.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook will also revoke permission to apps that a user has not accessed for three months and show an option at the top of the news feed, allowing users to do the same. Zuckerberg also said in a subsequent interview to the New York Times that Facebook would let concerned users know about the CA debacle. Questions sent by ET Magazine to Facebook India went unanswered. The US Federal Trade Commission and the European Union are also scrutinising the issue.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img alt="Stock" src="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/img/63446140/Master.jpg" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>Protect Data</strong> <br />Facebook has faced criticism in the past, including about its facial recognition software In India, it was badly bruised in its fight against net neutrality. Its Free Basics campaign tried to push free access to a few websites, including its own, in partnership with telcos, but the telecom regulator in February 2016 ruled in favour of net neutrality. Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, believes sites like Facebook should periodically inform users about the data the apps have access to. “Facebook should also ask you every quarter if you want to revoke permission. It’s required in countries where users are naive, unaware and incapable of protecting their own interests.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Many experts call for more transparency and clarity. Nayantara Ranganathan, programme manager at the Internet Democracy Project, says privacy policies are tweaked constantly and the changes the companies want us to know about are conveyed through blog posts and such, while there may be changes that we may not be aware of. Nikhil Pahwa, cofounder, Internet Freedom Foundation, says the process of notifying users of changes in terms and conditions needs to be improved. “So often, T&Cs are changed and the company just sends a generic mail to all its users. If they don’t respond, it is assumed they have agreed to the changes. That needs to change.” Some believe online consent agreements are being simplified.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While there have been calls for the privacy notice to be in local languages too, Rama Vedashree, CEO of Data Security Council of India, says that in markets like India, where millions are just being introduced to the internet, websites may have to look at pictorial representations to explain how user data will be used by third-party developers. Regardless of how intelligible tech companies make their privacy policy documents, given the number of websites we use, it is impossible to read every site’s terms. That is where a stringent law becomes necessary. “We don’t have a robust legal framework that acts swiftly, permits class action lawsuits and awards damages in tune with the harm incurred,” says Mishi Choudhary, legal director at the Software Freedom Law Center.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">WHY FB CAN'T TAKE DATA SECURITY LIGHTLY IN INDIA</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img alt="1" src="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/img/63446196/Master.jpg" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img alt="2" src="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/img/63446203/Master.jpg" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Source: Facebook, WhatsApp, We Are Social and Hootsuite, Ministry of Communications, Internet and Mobile Association of India</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Abraham says presently only data security is covered under the Information Technology Act, 2000. “A mere infringement of your privacy without financial loss does not allow you to seek remedy.” However, India could have a data protection law sooner than later. A committee was appointed by the government last year to come up with a draft law, an important part of which will be a data protection authority. The Supreme Court, in a landmark ruling last year in a case related to Aadhaar, said privacy is a fundamental right.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which will come into effect in May, could be emulated in countries, including India. It makes tech companies more accountable for the privacy of those who use their services and has penalties up to £20 million, or 4% of the errant company’s global annual revenues, whichever is higher. This forced Facebook to put all of its privacy settings in one place in January.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“India must go further than Europe did with its General Data Protection Regulation, which requires companies to get unambiguous consent from users to collect data, to clearly disclose how personal data are being used, and to spell out why data is being collected. It must also ban any form of political advertising and the sale of data to third parties,” wrote Vivek Wadhwa, a tech entrepreneur and academic, in a column in ET on Friday.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img alt="Controversy" src="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/img/63446260/Master.jpg" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In light of this controversy, there will be pressure on the government to hasten the process of introducing a data protection law, accompanied by a regulator. It is likely the draft document will draw on the European regulation. “The more we adopt from EU GDPR, the better,” says Pahwa, adding that users should also have the right to removal of personal data.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Ravi Shankar Prasad, India’s IT and law minister, has warned Facebook of stringent action if it is found influencing elections “through undesirable means”. The Indian government on Friday issued a notice to Cambridge Analytica asking if any entities engaged its services to harvest data of Indian Facebook users.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India could also take a leaf out of Germany’s playbook while enforcing data protection, especially if it involves tech companies that dominate the segment they operate in, like Google in search and Facebook in social media. Germany’s competition watchdog in December accused Facebook of abusing its dominant position to get users’ consent to access their data from third-party websites. The Competition Commission of India in February imposed a penalty of `136 crore on Google for abusing its dominant position in search to create a bias to favour its own services.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>Messing Up Elections?</strong> <br />The ongoing controversy has been exacerbated by the fact that besides data privacy, electoral politics is at the centre of the issue. CA dug itself into a deeper hole when footage emerged of a UK television channel’s sting operation, in which the company’s top officials talk about using bribes and women to entrap their clients’ political opponents. CA has since suspended its chief executive, Alexander Nix, who was in the video. CA is partly funded by conservative US billionaire Robert Mercer, and Trump’s former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon served on its board.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The issue has had political ramifications in India, with both the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and opposition Congress trading charges about each other’s association with CA. The BJP has attacked the Congress by quoting news reports of talks between CA and the Congress ahead of the 2019 general election, while the Congress has hit back with a reference to the 2010 Bihar election on the CA website. The company claims that it worked on the Bihar election, reportedly through its parent Strategic Communication Laboratories, by identifying swing voters.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Our client achieved a landslide victory, with over 90% of total seats targeted by CA being won,” says the website. The JD(U)-BJP combine was the victorious coalition. Interestingly, the company’s India partner, Ovleno Business Intelligence, is run by Amrish Tyagi, son of JD(U) leader KC Tyagi. When contacted by ET Magazine, Amrish Tyagi declined to comment. Both the Congress and the BJP have denied any ties to CA.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“We have been on social media as long as social media was around and we have always been ethical in our conduct,” says Amit Malviya, head of BJP’s IT Cell. Divya Spandana, who heads the social media team for the Congress, says the party does not engage external agencies. “We only use data with the consent of the individual, emails are subscribed to and WhatsApp is through people who have signed up to receive messages.” The BJP made good use of social media in its 2014 campaign, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and most of his cabinet are quite active on Twitter.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img alt="India" src="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/img/63447364/Master.jpg" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp will play an even bigger role in the upcoming assembly polls and the 2019 general election, WhatsApp perhaps more so than the other two, given its popularity and user engagement. “What makes WhatsApp worse than Facebook is Facebook knows what’s being sent around (on its platform). If it comes up with a fake news mitigation strategy, it might work. WhatsApp doesn’t know what’s being sent on its platform,” says Abraham.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In his New York Times interview, Zuckerberg said that after the US presidential election, Facebook developed artificial intelligence tools to identify fake accounts and fake news, which were deployed during the French presidential polls in 2017. “This is a massive focus for us to make sure we’re dialed in for not only the 2018 elections in the US, but the Indian elections, the Brazilian elections, and a number of other elections that are going on this year that are really important,” he was quoted as saying. Both government authorities and the Election Commission of India will keep a close watch on how social media is used in poll campaigns.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img alt="1" src="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/img/63447378/Master.jpg" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While things do not look up for Facebook in the immediate future, some think it will get past the issue. Vineet Sehgal, chief marketing officer of Quikr, says while marketers will take a hard look at Facebook, the company will act swiftly to change its policies.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"There is too much at stake." More and more Indians are using social media, in addition to searching for information on the internet, buying things on ecommerce sites, booking app-based cabs, and making payments and transfers on online payment platforms. They will also buy more devices, including wearables and smart speakers, which gather large amounts of data. So naturally, it is imperative that the sanctity of that data become a top priority for tech companies, consumers and the government. "The emphasis of any (data protection) law needs to be protecting people, not data. Our legislators should ask about relationships of all entities with social media and data analytics companies," says Choudhary of Software Freedom Law Center.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/economic-times-g-seetharaman-shephali-bhatt-march-25-2018-data-breach-how-will-the-biggest-scandal-that-facebook-is-mired-in-affect-its-credibility-in-india'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/economic-times-g-seetharaman-shephali-bhatt-march-25-2018-data-breach-how-will-the-biggest-scandal-that-facebook-is-mired-in-affect-its-credibility-in-india</a>
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No publisherAdminSocial MediaInternet Governance2018-03-27T02:09:41ZNews ItemIs Facebook too powerful without legal safeguards?
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindustan-times-march-24-2018-vidhi-choudhary-is-facebook-too-powerful-without-legal-safeguards
<b>The absence of a data protection law and a competition watchdog to oversee Internet companies are key shortcomings, according to some experts.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Vidhi Choudhary was published in<a class="external-link" href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/tech/is-facebook-too-powerful-without-legal-safeguards/story-NBdkYAPa421zrWpLPZlwQI.html"> Hindustan Times</a> on March 24, 2018</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">It’s time India moves to put in place legal safeguards to contain the potential harm that Internet giants like Facebook Inc. can cause, experts say, amid a raging scandal over access gained by political marketing firm Cambridge Analytica to user data on the social media network. India is a key market for Facebook with 217 million people using the platform every month.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Concerns centre around protection of user privacy and freedom of speech, harassment by Internet trolls, spread of misinformation and fake news, said Apar Gupta, a Delhi-based lawyer who is part of Save The Internet , a group of individuals and non-government organisations fighting to preserve net neutrality. It’s time to take stock of the concerns and the sufficiency of India’s legal framework to address them, Gupta said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Companies like Facebook have grown too big and too powerful without adequate legal safeguards,” he said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On Thursday, Facebook founder and CEO Mark <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/facebook-boosting-security-features-ahead-of-elections-in-india-brazil-mark-zuckerberg/story-NTwFWoDFw65Q7yukIzwEvM.html">Zuckerberg pledged to stop the misuse of user data</a> on its site to manipulate voters in India,Brazil and the US. The social media network is under scrutiny after a whistleblower alleged that London-based Cambridge Analytica accessed user data to prepare voter profiles that helped Donald Trump win the US presidential election in 2016.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Information technology and law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Wednesday <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/govt-says-congress-has-hired-cambridge-analytica-for-2019-campaign-warns-facebook-against-interfering-in-polls/story-MeTgtVU6RAIGw1WEU4PVaL.html">warned social media platforms</a> such as Facebook of “stringent action” in case of any attempt to sway the country’s electoral process. The government is considering a new regulatory framework for online content, including on social media and websites, Union minister for information and broadcasting Smriti Irani said on 17 March at the News18 Rising India Summit , conceding that the law is not clear about online news and broadcast content.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“We remain strongly committed to protecting people’s information. We have announced that we are planning to introduce improvements to our settings and give people more prominent controls ,” an India-based Facebook spokesperson said in response to an emailed query from Hindustan Times .” We have a lot of work to do to regain people’s trust and are working hard to tackle past abuse, prevent future abuse and will continue to engage with the Election Commission of India and relevant stakeholders to answer any questions they may have.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The absence of a data protection law and a competition watchdog to oversee Internet companies are key shortcomings, said Sunil Abraham, founder of the think tank Centre for Internet and Society.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Evil is a function of power. As internet giants get bigger and bigger, they’ll become more and more evil. In fact, in jurisdictions like India, where we don’t have a data protection law and a sufficiently agile competition commission to take on these Internet giants, they can do whatever they want to..,” said Abraham.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Internet networks have helped undermine the business model for real news and replace it with a vibrant fake news model, in the process cornering the lion’s share of the digital advertising revenue, said Abraham . Facebook and Google dominate the Rs 9,490 crore digital advertising market in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Since they don’t see themselves as a media company, their primary objective is to maximize the amount of time their users spend on the platform,” he said, adding that social media networks aren’t concerned whether the content they present is the truth or lies</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“It would be laziness on our part to just blame Facebook and then feel morally superior. We have to regulate them using competition law and a data protection law so that they behave themselves on our jurisdiction,” Abraham said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The legal framework for Indian social media users is limited. Section 43 (A) of the IT Act operates merely as a data security law applicable only to someone whose privacy has been infringed and can demonstrate that he/she has suffered a financial loss in the process.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Whatever is known from the Cambridge Analytica episode is that none of the users have lost money or property but democracy has been undermined. So we cannot use the IT Act in India to save our democracy,” he said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook operates in an opaque manner in the manner in which it regulates content, said Geeta Seshu, consulting editor for media website The Hoot.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“When complaints are launched, they are upheld if they meet Facebook’s so-called community standards. Often users who are dissenting voices against hate or discrimination or misogyny have found themselves blocked. The process to appeal back to Facebook is very arbitrary. Users spend months and years being blocked on the platform. Facebook manipulates user data, when it decides to use algorithms to push content or boost certain articles for a certain sum of money,” she added.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In December, Alex Hardiman, head of news products at Facebook, said restoring trust and credibility to news on Facebook is one of the biggest priorities for the company.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“There is a lot that we are doing to make sure that we eradicate any false news or misinformation on Facebook. We’ve found that false news is actually a very small percentage of content. But there were a lot of financial motivations for posting false news,” she said in an interview to Mint when he was in Delhi to attend the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit. “So, one of the first things we have done is remove any financial incentives. We have also done a lot to make sure we can quickly identify and remove fake accounts. Also, we have been doing a lot to better understand clickbait content and train classifiers to identify and downlink it.We have also started third-party fact-checking. We have partnered with third-party organizations in the US, France, Germany and a few other countries,” said Hardiman.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindustan-times-march-24-2018-vidhi-choudhary-is-facebook-too-powerful-without-legal-safeguards'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindustan-times-march-24-2018-vidhi-choudhary-is-facebook-too-powerful-without-legal-safeguards</a>
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No publisherAdminSocial MediaInternet Governance2018-03-25T01:38:57ZNews ItemSuicide videos: Facebook beefs up team to monitor content
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-times-of-india-kim-arora-may-5-2017-suicide-videos-facebook-beefs-up-team-to-monitor-content
<b>Responding to the spate of suicides being livestreamed, social media giant Facebook has announced it will add another 3,000 people to its 4,500-strong review team that moderates content. The review team will also work in tandem with law enforcement agencies on this issue. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Kim Arora was <a class="external-link" href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/suicide-videos-facebook-beefs-up-team-to-monitor-content/articleshow/58523818.cms">published in the Times of India</a> on May 5, 2017.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">"Over the last few weeks, we've seen people hurting themselves and others on Facebook, either live or in video posted later. It's heartbreaking, and I've been reflecting on how we can do better for our community," Facebook co-founder and CEO <a class="key_underline" href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Mark-Zuckerberg">Mark Zuckerberg</a> wrote in a status update and added, "Over the next year, we'll be adding 3,000 people to our community operations team around the world, on top of the 4,500 we have today, to review the millions of reports we get every week, and improve the process for doing it quickly." <br /> <br /> "...we'll keep working with local community groups and law enforcement who are in the best position to help someone if they need it, either because they're about to harm themselves, or because they're in danger from someone else," Zuckerberg added announcing the move.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Over the last year, several violent incidents and suicides have been streamed live on Facebook. In India last April, a young student went live on Facebook minutes before he jumped off the 19th floor of Taj Lands End hotel in Mumbai. The same month saw similar news coming out of the US and Thailand as well. A 49-year-old from Alabama went live on Facebook before shooting himself in the head. Another man from Bangkok made a video of hanging his 11-month-old daughter, and uploaded it to Facebook. He was later discovered to have killed himself too.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"It's a positive development that Facebook is adding human power and tools for dealing with hate speech, child abuse and suicide attempts. It would be interesting to see how Facebook coordinates with the Indian police departments to get an emergency response to a potential suicide attempt or attempt to harm someone else," says Rohini Lakshane, program officer, <a class="key_underline" href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Center-for-Internet-and-Society">Center for Internet and Society</a>, though she warns against false reports clogging up reviewers' feeds and police notifications.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On Facebook, a video, picture or any other piece of content reaches the review team after it is reported by users for flouting its "community guidelines".</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Chinmayi Arun, research director at the Centre for Communication Governance, National Law University, Delhi, says Facebook must be transparent about this process. "Facebook should also announce how it is keeping this process accountable. It is a public platform of great importance which has been guilty of over-censorship in the past. It should be responsive not just to government censorship requests but also to user requests to review and reconsider its blocking of legitimate content," she says.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-times-of-india-kim-arora-may-5-2017-suicide-videos-facebook-beefs-up-team-to-monitor-content'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-times-of-india-kim-arora-may-5-2017-suicide-videos-facebook-beefs-up-team-to-monitor-content</a>
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No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaInternet Governance2017-05-20T02:59:14ZNews ItemFaking it on WhatsApp: How India's favourite messaging app is turning into a rumour mill
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindustan-times-samarth-bansal-faking-it-on-whatsapp-how-india-s-favourite-messaging-app-turned-into-a-rumour-mill
<b>Spreading fast and wild on WhatsApp fake news about riots, ‘miracle’ currency</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Samarth Bansal was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/faking-it-on-whatsapp-how-india-s-favourite-messaging-app-turned-into-a-rumour-mill/story-QAkM4RnF3NeeulOXlFDyUK.html">published in the Hindustan Times</a> on May 19, 2017. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">It didn’t take long after demonetisation for almost everyone to hear about the ‘special properties’ of the new Rs 2000 note, which was said to include a ‘built-in GPS-enabled nano-chip’. News of this high-tech feature spread rapidly, even though there was no notification about it from the Reserve Bank of India or any other government department. What there was, instead, was a popular WhatsApp message.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">WhatsApp messages were involved in another fake-news controversy the very same month, when word of a <b><a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/delhi-news/clashes-in-delhi-over-salt-shortage-rumours-panic-buying-in-ncr-towns/story-9xNUxTkCG0xB1vMA16QUeI.html" shape="rect" target="_blank">salt shortage in North India</a></b> spread widely. The fake news unleashed panic, and in Hyderabad, among other places, salt prices increased by a factor of four. It even extracted a victim, a woman died in Bakarganj Bazaar, Kanpur, when she slipped and fell into a drain in a panicked buying melee.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This isn’t the only time that fake news that circulated on WhatsApp led to violence. In 2013, messages sent on WhatsApp helped to <b><a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/delhi-news/107-killed-in-riots-this-year-66-muslims-41-hindus/story-uqHMNT093ZqMa0WAsWdIpJ.html" shape="rect" target="_blank">incite riots</a></b> in Muzaffarnagar. A two-year old video of a lynching in Pakistan was mischievously promoted as an attack on two Hindu boys by Muslims in Kawal village of Muzaffarnagar. The video, in turn, provoked calls for revenge. Though the police blocked the video on the internet, its spread could not be stopped on the app.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook, WhatsApp’s parent company, has <b><a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/not-just-fake-news-facebook-is-a-bad-news-platform-by-design/story-Sbzz467SZHcUtooErKzOjL.html" shape="rect" target="_blank">faced much flak</a></b> for not curbing the circulation of fake news. On its part, Facebook has now said it will try to flag questionable news stories with the help of users and external fact checkers to cope with this problem.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But the instant messaging app poses similar challenges in a particularly intractable form. WhatsApp offers a particularly private medium of communication, something many people like about it. A <b><a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/supreme-court-questions-whatsapp-s-move-to-tweak-privacy-policy/story-gI8k4AVWptqF9IbJrLgGBI.html" shape="rect" target="_blank">case</a></b> currently being heard at the Supreme Court of India concerns the protection of this very quality — while WhatsApp would like to allow Facebook to access its user data, a PIL contends that this move would be a violation of privacy.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The same factors of WhatsApp’s design that protect its users also make it difficult or impossible to study many aspects of communication on the platform. Even as anecdotal evidence piles up that WhatsApp is being used to distribute fake news, then, it remains hard to know just what is happening or what can be done in response.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Facebook vs WhatsApp</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The differences between WhatsApp and Facebook dictate the ways people share news on each platform. “Facebook is a social platform where people express their concerns, react, and build perceptions based on an individual’s posts,” says Anoop Mishra, a digital marketing and social media consultant. “However, on WhatsApp, which is an end-to-end messaging platform, people share content in a more personal and closed way.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is because the primary mode of sharing on instant messaging apps is one-to-one, as opposed to the one-to-many relationship on Facebook, that the former feels more personal. This personal quality of most of the content shared directly or on small groups via WhatsApp carries with it the implicit endorsement of people you know. Given that the app is now a large and growing part of people’s lives on mobile devices, the way it influences news consumption demands more attention. “Lack of content moderation and privacy controls gives WhatsApp an edge over Facebook for sharing any type of multimedia content,” says Mishra.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For instance, to get your friends’ attention on Facebook, you need to tag them. Not every post by every friend shows up on your news feed; what you see is dictated by an algorithm. WhatsApp has a big advantage here since it works like a text message. You know that your message will be received by everyone you send it to.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>A black hole for content</b></p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">There is no non-anecdotal way to track the spread of content on WhatsApp. Facebook, for instance, is compatible with analytics tools capable of determining that a particular news report has been shared 7,000 times, say, or viewed 20,000 times.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Such analysis is not feasible with WhatsApp, which offers no way to mine social media data to understand the patterns, trends, or reach of any given message. Even its original source is completely opaque. What is true of particular texts also applies to the total sum of activity on WhatsApp: it is impossible to determine what kinds of messages the public is sharing most, what sorts of conditions people are sharing these messages in, or where in the world they are spreading.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Surpassing one billion</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">WhatsApp arrived in India at the beginning of the decade. At that time, chat apps were generally considered to be interchangeable with text messages. Today they’re widely understood to support sharing of all forms of multimedia content — photos, videos, audio files and even text documents.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Simplicity is one of WhatsApp’s signature virtues. All you need to do is download it: the programme automatically scans your phone book and links up with your contacts who are also users. Crucially, you don’t even need a password. According to Guide to Chat Apps, a report by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, the requirement of a password is “a significant barrier to entry for many people in emerging markets when it comes to other apps and social media platforms.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In February 2016, WhatsApp crossed the one billion mark for active users worldwide. India is its largest market, with about 160 million active users.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>WhatsApping the news</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">WhatsApp’s reach and growing role in the consumption of photos and videos has prompted media companies to take it seriously as a distribution channel. A report by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism highlights the increasing adoption of new social networks among young people and the growing importance of recommendations as a gateway to news. “The digital generation expects the news to come to them,” says the report’s author journalist Nic Newman in a press release. “Young people rarely go directly to a mainstream news website anymore.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But unlike apps like WeChat and Snapchat, which are gaining currency among millennials, WhatsApp hasn’t positioned itself as a media distribution platform. Media organisations have been experimenting nonetheless. For instance, the BBC ran pilots on WhatsApp and WeChat for the Indian elections in 2014. Users subscribed to the BBC news service on WhatsApp by adding a number to their contacts and sending a request message to join. They were then put on a broadcast list that sent them up to three updates a day in Hindi and English. Many media outlets, including ours, now have a WhatsApp sharing icon on their mobile websites.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For all its susceptibility to the dissemination of fake news, WhatsApp presents unique challenges to the mass sharing of content, just as it does for the mass tracking of it. It has no official application program interface (API), the service which allows programmers to build applications that automate the functions of a platform. “An official WhatsApp API release could spawn an entirely new industry of startups, in much the same way that the release of Twitter’s API did,” says the Tow Center report. “Except this time, it could be even bigger, given WhatsApp’s near-billion account user base.” Reaching out to a wider audience on WhatsApp — with either fake or authentic news — needs to be performed manually, via broadcast lists, which allow you to send the same message to many people at once, and groups.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>State of control</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Fake news might lead only to harmless speculation or minor inconvenience, as it did with rumours about the Rs 2000 note, or it could be dangerous, as was the case during the Muzaffarnagar riots. Pranesh Prakash, a policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, a research and advocacy group focused on digital technology, believes that social media rumours gain potency after the imposition of censorship, under which people begin to wonder what the government is trying to conceal. “There is no way rumours can be completely quelled,” he says, “but the state can act against rumours through clear communication that calls out particular rumours, and tells people not to believe them.”</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindustan-times-samarth-bansal-faking-it-on-whatsapp-how-india-s-favourite-messaging-app-turned-into-a-rumour-mill'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindustan-times-samarth-bansal-faking-it-on-whatsapp-how-india-s-favourite-messaging-app-turned-into-a-rumour-mill</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaInternet Governance2017-05-19T14:44:05ZNews ItemA 13-year-old's rape in TN highlights the major threat online sexual grooming poses to children
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/newsminute-may-6-2017-a-13-year-olds-rape-in-tn-highlights-the-major-threat-online-sexual-grooming-poses-to-children
<b>Predatory paedophiles online pose a major threat to children who form 7% of internet users in India. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The blog post by Priyanka Thirumurthy was published by <a class="external-link" href="http://www.thenewsminute.com/article/13-year-old-s-rape-tn-highlights-major-threat-online-sexual-grooming-poses-children-61591">News Minute</a> on May 6, 2017. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">It was a usual practice, for 13-year-old Meena* from Tirupur to log into her father's Facebook account when she came home from school. While she was scrolling through his timeline one day, she received and accepted a friend request from a profile named Siva Idiot on Facebook. When this 'new friend' sent her a “hi” on chat, the young girl found no reason to ignore this message. Over the next 10 days, they chatted incessantly and she revealed all her personal details - where she lived, studied, who her parents were and even her phone number. Siva Idiot then proceeded to begin calling her on a mobile phone and their conversations lasted hours.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Meanwhile, miffed by her lack of focus on her studies, Meena's parents often chastised her and threatened to take away her laptop and mobile phone. An upset Meena proceeded to complain to Siva Idiot about the 'problems' she faced, who provided emotional support to the teenager. He even offered to come meet her outside her home.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Meena's parents were out in their offices till 8pm every day and Siva Idiot knew this. He met Meena outside her home, when she was still upset about her parents' advice. Her 'friend' then convinced the teenager to leave her house and marry him. Fifteen days after she first spoke to him on Facebook, 13-year-old Meena ran away from home to 'get married' to 22-year-old Ibrahim.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Online sexual grooming</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"This is a classic case of sexual grooming," says Vidya Reddy, of Tulir, Centre for Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse. "Abusers study a situation carefully to understand what a child's Achilles heel is and then exploit the situation. Now, with almost every child having accesses to technology and internet in the form of a laptop or phone, these criminals have found new platforms to target children," she adds.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">What Vidya explains is called online sexual grooming, a worldwide phenomenon, that has spread along with the speed and easy access to the internet. According to UNICEF, it can be defined as preparing a child or adult for sexual abuse, exploitation or ideological manipulation. A report released by the organisation in 2014 states that the surge in mobile and internet usage in India had brought 400 million people online. Of this, seven percent of internet users in the country are reportedly children.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"Phones are now an extension of our hands and it has completely changed the way crime is committed and presented, " Vidya notes.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Even a report of the Parliamentary Committee on Information Technology in 2014 recognized the threat posed to children by predatory paedophiles online. It emphasises how these predators "conceal their true identity whilst using the internet to ‘groom’ potential victims for sexual purposes."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>From home to horror</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Meena too was unaware about the identity of the person she was chatting with. In fact, an officer told The News Minute, that it was only when Ibrahim called her on the phone that she even realised she had compromised all her data to an unknown man. But Ibrahim, as the police put it, was too smart for the girl.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"He spoke to her very nicely and formed an emotional connect before she even realised the dangers of the situation," a police officer told The News Minute. "He was just somebody who did odd jobs for a living but his real life was on Facebook. He has close to 5000 friends and they are all young girls," she admits.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On April 27, Ibrahim and Meena made their way to Puducherry, where they took shelter at his friend Prabhakar’s motel. That very night, Meena was allegedly raped. The next morning, Ibrahim's phone somehow came into her possession and when the child surfed through the picture gallery, fresh horror awaited her. It was filled with obscene pictures and videos of young women and children. Shocked, Meena confronted Ibrahim about this and the two got into a loud fight. An angry Ibrahim then abused the teenager who refused to leave with him and abandoned her in the lodge.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">When the hotel manager and Ibrahim's friend Prabhakaran came to investigate the source of commotion, he found a devastated Meena alone in the room. In an effort to ‘cheer her up’ he took her out to eat and bought her clothes. As Meena changed in the room, Prabhakaran allegedly waited outside to make his move. He went into the room with a yellow thread in hand, and when she was ready, tied it around her neck and declared that they were married. He then proceeded, according to officials, to sexually assault the girl.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Prabhakaran had even mortgaged all her jewellery, given her some money and pocketed the rest. On April 29, the frightened and devastated teenager managed to escape from the lodge and make a call to her house from a nearby bus stop. By then, her parents had already filed a missing girl complaint with the Tirupur North police and were frantically searching for her.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>The need to intervene</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">According to the UNICEF report, India falls largely short in terms of awareness about online child sexual abuse and exploitation. Parents, it claims, are not aware of the risks the internet poses and therefore do not respond effectively to this form of harassment.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"This case shows that parents and schools have to spend more time educating their wards on online safety. In many schools, non- digital safety lessons are imparted such as good touch and bad touch. But when it comes to the internet, they don't even impart basic lessons," says Pranesh Prakash, Director of the Centre for Internet and Society.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Pranesh argues that while parents cannot monitor children's activity on the internet the whole day, they can ensure they have a trusting relationship with their children. This he claims will create dialogue on the child's activity on the internet or social media and create awareness.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"In this crime, details shared online, led to an offline meeting. So, children must be taught to not share addresses, personal details or meet such 'friends' without their parents' knowledge." he adds.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In India, two major challenges are the lack of a uniform terminology and lacunae in law as far as sexual grooming of children is concerned. Some key legal instruments meant to protect children, predate technological advances. For example, the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography does not criminalize online sexual grooming.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Establishing the criminality of sexual grooming or even sexting is difficult in view of the potential for misuse of the law, states the UNICEF report.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Back home and healing</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Following her desperate phone call, Tirupur police rescued Meena, and went on to arrest Ibrahim in Pondicherry on April 30. Prabhakaran was arrested on May 2. They have been booked under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) and other sections of the Indian Penal Code. Police are now investigating if Ibrahim and Prabahakaran have been involved in crimes of this nature in the past as well.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"There is only so much parents can do. They work till eight in the night and children who come back from school at 4pm, have four unsupervised hours to themselves. The only thing they can do is keep a password and stop children from using social media accounts," says the investigating officer, who observes that a number of children chat with strangers, making it difficult to keep track.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Vidya Reddy too expresses shock at sheer number of teenagers who chat with strangers online. The Tulir Director recounts horrific cases, including one where a 16-year-old girl was sexually assaulted and then blackmailed with videos of the abuse. The perpetrator allegedly threatened to leak the images if girl did not bring another child for him to rape.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While sexual grooming and other forms of online sexual abuse are common across the world, in India it takes a unique shape in South Asia. "Our society creates a repressive atmosphere, as far as engagement with the other gender is concerned. So, when the conversation is online, teenagers will risk their safety to push boundaries and the anonymity the internet provides has made this whole set up even more dangerous," concludes Vidya Reddy.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">*Name changed</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/newsminute-may-6-2017-a-13-year-olds-rape-in-tn-highlights-the-major-threat-online-sexual-grooming-poses-to-children'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/newsminute-may-6-2017-a-13-year-olds-rape-in-tn-highlights-the-major-threat-online-sexual-grooming-poses-to-children</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaInternet Governance2017-05-19T10:16:40ZNews ItemKashmir: Telecom firms struggle to block 22 banned social media sites
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-may-4-2017-aijaz-hussain-kashmir-telecom-firms-struggle-to-block-22-banned-social-media-sites
<b>A BSNL official says engineers are still working on shutting down the 22 social media sites but so far had been unable to do so without freezing the Internet across Kashmir.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Aijaz Hussain was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.livemint.com/Politics/c7DaWt2HvT6AVJLo5XJV2I/Kashmir-Telecom-firms-struggle-to-block-22-banned-social-me.html">published in Livemint</a> on May 4, 2017. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">The government has banned 22 social media sites in an effort to calm tensions in parts of the disputed region of Kashmir, after several viral videos depicting the alleged abuse of Kashmiris by Indian law enforcement fuelled protests. But the sites remained online Thursday morning as the local telecom company struggled to block them.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The government said on Wednesday that the restrictions, to be in effect for one month, were necessary for public safety. “It’s being felt that continued misuse of social networking sites and instant messaging services is likely to be detrimental to the interests of peace and tranquillity in the state,” the public order reads.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Pranesh Prakash, policy director for the Indian advocacy group the Centre for Internet and Society, called the ban a “blow to freedom of speech” and “legally unprecedented in India.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">An official with Kashmir’s state-owned telecom company, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), said engineers were still working on shutting down the 22 sites, including Facebook and Twitter, but so far had been unable to do so without freezing the internet across the Himalayan region. The official spoke on condition of anonymity, because he was not authorized to give technical details of the effort to the media.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Meanwhile, 3G and 4G cellphone service has been suspended for more than a week, but the slower 2G service was still running.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Residents in Srinagar, the region’s main city, were busily downloading documents, software and applications onto their smartphones, which would likely be able to circumvent the social media block once it goes into effect. Many expressed relief to still have internet access Thursday morning.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“It was a welcome surprise,” said Tariq Ahmed, a 24-year-old university student. “It appears they’ve hit a technical glitch to block social media en mass.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While the government has halted internet service in Kashmir in previous attempts to prevent anti-India demonstrations, this is the first time they have done so in response to the circulation of videos and photos showing alleged military abuse.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Others mocked the government. One Facebook post by Kashmiri writer Arif Ayaz Parrey said that the ban showed “the Indian government has decided to take on the collective subversive wisdom of cyberspace humanity.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Kashmiris have been uploading videos and photos of alleged abuse for some years, but several recently posted clips, captured in the days surrounding a violence-plagued local election 9 April, have proven to be especially powerful and have helped to intensify anti-India protests.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">One video shows a stone-throwing teenage boy being shot by a soldier from a few metres (yards) away. Another shows soldiers making a group of young men, held inside an armoured vehicle, shout profanities against Pakistan while a soldier kicks and slaps them with a stick. The video pans to a young boy’s bleeding face as he cries. Yet another clip shows three soldiers holding a teenage boy down with their boots and beating him on his back.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The video that drew the most outrage was of young shawl weaver Farooq Ahmed Dar tied to the hood of an army jeep as it patrolled villages on voting day. A soldier can be heard saying in Hindi over a loudspeaker, “Stone throwers will meet a similar fate,” as residents look on aghast.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-may-4-2017-aijaz-hussain-kashmir-telecom-firms-struggle-to-block-22-banned-social-media-sites'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-may-4-2017-aijaz-hussain-kashmir-telecom-firms-struggle-to-block-22-banned-social-media-sites</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionSocial MediaInternet GovernanceCensorship2017-05-04T02:29:04ZNews ItemJ&K social media ban: Use of 132-year-old Act can’t stand judicial scrutiny, say experts
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/indian-express-april-28-2017-shruti-dhapola-j-k-social-media-ban
<b>Jammu and Kashmir's social media ban: Legal experts are not convinced this is a viable order</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Shruti Dhapola was published in the <a class="external-link" href="http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news-technology/jammu-and-kashmir-social-media-ban-use-of-132-year-old-act-cant-stand-judicial-scrutiny-say-experts-4631775/">Indian Express</a> on April 28, 2017. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">For residents of Jammu and Kashmir, there’s a blanket ban on social media for the next one month. This means no access to <a href="http://indianexpress.com/about/facebook/">Facebook</a>, WhatsApp, Twitter, Snapchat, <a href="http://indianexpress.com/about/skype/">Skype</a> WeChat, YouTube, Telegram and other social networks.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As The Indian Express reported, this ‘social media ban’ was ordered by the state government after Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti chaired a meeting of the Unified Command Headquarters in Srinagar. The total list includes 22 social media websites, and the order, a copy of which is available with The Indian Express, says this is being done “in the interest of maintenance of public order.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The order to block the sites was issued by RK Goyal, Principal Secretary in the Home department, and cites Section 5 of Indian Telegraph Act, which “confers powers upon the Central government or the state government to take possession of license telegraphs and order stoppage of transmission or interception or detention of messages”.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The order reasons that social media sites are “being used by anti-national and anti-social elements by transmitting inflammatory messages in various forms”. It directs all ISPs to block these websites in the state of Jammu and Kashmir.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But questions are already being raised over its legality.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“This is an illegal order because the Telegraph Act and Rules, which the order cites, doesn’t give the government the power to block websites. The Telegraph Act is a colonial-era legislation first passed in 1885 in the aftermath of the Mutiny, making telegraphs a monopoly of the colonial British government, and restricting Indians’ access to communications technologies. In 1996, in the PUCL case, the Supreme Court laid down that powers to intercept or block transmission of messages cannot be exercised without procedural safeguards in place. In 2007, procedural safeguards were made for interception, but not for blocking of telegraphic communications,” points out Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director at Centre for Internet and Society.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Pavan Duggal, senior lawyer specialising in cyberlaw, concurs. “Legally, the order is not viable. This is because the IT Act applies for blocking, under Section 69 (A). Also Section 81 of the IT Act also make it clear that this is a special law, which will prevail over any other older law. The IT ACT deals with everything related to the internet.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The IT ACT notes in Section 1, that “It shall extend to the whole of India and, save as otherwise provided in this Act, it applies also to any offence or contravention there under committed outside India by any person.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But even blocking under the IT Act isn’t something that can be ordered over night, and the powers for this rest with the central government.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“There’s a provision (69A) in the Information Technology Act which provides for blocking of specific web pages for national security reasons, but only by the Central government. The J&K government, thus can only request the Central government to block. The central government has in the past denied requests by state governments as they were unlawful requests,” Prakash said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">However, blocking of URLs or in fact complete internet shutdowns is not new in India. “This is an example of Internet manipulation by the governments world over. The first casualty of any disturbance is now the Internet and the government, even the democratic ones living under rule of law have decided that is a-okay to prevent people from communicating in the name of law and order,” said Mishi Choudhary, President and Legal Director at SFLC.in</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">SFLC.in has also been keeping a track of internet shutdowns in India. It has a dedicated website Internetshutdowns.in which crowd-sources information on these bans, and India has already seen seven shut internet shutdowns in first three months of 2017. For instance, in the state of Nagaland internet and mobile services were down for nearly a month from January 30 to February 20.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The issue of url blocking and internet shutdowns inevitably gets linked to one of freedom of speech. While reasonable restrictions can be imposed under Article 19 (2) of the Constitution, experts are not convinced the current order makes enough of a case to justify such a blanket ban.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“The citizens of J&K are Indian citizens and can challenge the order as violative of Article 19 (1) (a) of the Constitution, violative of right to free speech and expression,” says Choudhary.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Any kind of blocking must conform to the Constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression, and any blocking must be legally “reasonable” for it to be acceptable as a legitimate restriction under Art.19(2). This blanket ban of 22 arbitrarily chosen service — why block QQ or WeChat, but not <a href="http://indianexpress.com/about/linkedin/">LinkedIn</a> — and that too for a month, cannot be called reasonable under any circumstances,” argues Prakash.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Prakash adds that the order also raises other international concerns for India. “It also violates India’s international legal obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), whose Article 19 protects the freedom of thought, opinion and expression. Only those restrictions that are provided by law, have a legitimate aim, are necessary with less restrictive option being available, and are proportionate to the harm being address are allowed. For instance, targeting of hate speech that is calling for genocide is reasonable. But such blanket bans of communications platforms are not,” he argues.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">So can the citizens challenge such an order, which puts a blanket ban on social networks? The answer is yes, as in this case this order “is legally untenable,” explains Duggal.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On the practice of blocking, he points that in today’s world it can only be seen an antiquated practice. “To give an analogy it is like fixing a leaking roof with a band-aid. It will only increase traffic to the blocked websites, and there are indirect ways to reach these sites via proxies and other tools as well,” he adds.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The orders can always be reviewed by the courts. “While the IT Act allows for blocking, it should be remembered the process is always open to judicial review. Courts have final authority, and they can examine whether the principles of law were applied when passing such a blocking order,” explains Duggal.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The affected social media websites or ISPs don’t yet have a response to this order. When we reached out, Facebook said it did not have an official comment on the ban. Mobile internet service providers Vodafone and Airtel also refused to comment.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/indian-express-april-28-2017-shruti-dhapola-j-k-social-media-ban'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/indian-express-april-28-2017-shruti-dhapola-j-k-social-media-ban</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionSocial MediaInternet GovernanceCensorship2017-05-04T02:12:23ZNews ItemIndia bans social media in Kashmir for one month
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-telegraph-april-27-2017-india-bans-social-media-in-kashmir-for-one-month
<b>Authorities in Indian-controlled Kashmir have banned 22 social media sites including Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter in an effort to calm tensions in the disputed region.</b>
<p>The article was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/04/27/india-bans-social-media-kashmir-one-month/">published in the Telegraph</a> on April 27, 2017. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The government said Wednesday that the one-month ban was necessary for public safety because social media were being "misused by anti-national and anti-social elements." Videos depicting the alleged abuse of Kashmiris by Indian forces fueled protests have been shown on social media in recent days.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"It's being felt that continued misuse of social networking sites and instant messaging services is likely to be detrimental to the interests of peace and tranquility in the state," the public order said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The sites remained online Thursday as the local telecom company struggled to block them.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Pranesh Prakash, policy director for the Indian advocacy group the Center for Internet and Society, called the ban a "blow to freedom of speech" and "legally unprecedented in India."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">An official with Kashmir's state-owned telecom company, Bharat Sanchar Nigam, said engineers were still working on shutting down the 22 sites, including Facebook and Twitter, but so far had been unable to do so without freezing the internet across the Himalayan region. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give technical details of the effort to the media.<br /><br />Meanwhile, 3G and 4G cellphone service has been suspended for more than a week, but slower 2G service is still available.<br /><br />Residents of Srinagar, the region's main city, were busily downloading documents, software and applications onto their smartphones which would likely be able to circumvent the social media block once it goes into effect. Many expressed relief to still have internet access Thursday morning.<br /><br />"It was a welcome surprise," said Tariq Ahmed, a 24-year-old university student. "It appears they've hit a technical glitch to block social media en mass."<br /><br />While the government has halted internet service in Kashmir in previous attempts to prevent anti-India demonstrations, this is the first time they have done so in response to the circulation of videos and photos showing alleged military abuse.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Others mocked the government. A Facebook post by Kashmiri writer Arif Ayaz Parrey said the ban showed "the Indian government has decided to take on the collective subversive wisdom of cyberspace humanity."<br /><br />Indian police and paramilitary officials accuse agitators of using social media to instigate violence.<br /><br />An international journalists' rights group urged Indian authorities to immediately revoke the "sweeping censorship of social media," saying it "will bring neither peace nor order" in the region.<br /><br />"Such broad censorship clearly violates the democratic ideals and human rights India purports to uphold," said Steven Butler, Asia Program coordinator at the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.<br /><br />Kashmiris have been uploading videos and photos of alleged abuse for some years, but several recently posted clips, captured in the days surrounding a violence-plagued local election on April 9, have proven to be especially powerful and have helped to intensify anti-India protests.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">One video shows a stone-throwing teenage boy being shot by a soldier from a few meters (yards) away. Another shows soldiers making a group of young men, held inside an armored vehicle, shout profanities against Pakistan while a soldier kicks and slaps them with a stick.<br /><br />The video pans to a young boy's bleeding face as he cries. Yet another clip shows three soldiers holding a teenage boy down with their boots and beating him on his back.<br /><br />The video that drew the most outrage was of young shawl weaver Farooq Ahmed Dar tied to the hood of an army jeep as it patrolled villages on voting day. A soldier can be heard saying in Hindi over a loudspeaker, "Stone throwers will meet a similar fate," as residents look on aghast.<br /><br />Protests and clashes are an almost daily occurrence in Indian-administered Kashmir, where anti-India sentiment runs deep among the mostly Muslim population after decades of military crackdowns. Disputes over control of the Kashmir region, claimed by both India and Pakistan, have sparked two wars between the nations since 1947.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-telegraph-april-27-2017-india-bans-social-media-in-kashmir-for-one-month'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-telegraph-april-27-2017-india-bans-social-media-in-kashmir-for-one-month</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionSocial MediaInternet Governance2017-04-27T16:09:56ZNews ItemBengaluru cops' twitter handle in ethical storm
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-times-of-india-april-6-2017-umesh-yadav-bengaluru-cops-twitter-handle-in-ethical-storm
<b>The city's privacy activists are among the most strident in trying to prevent the Union government from gaining unprecedented access to citizens' personal information through Aadhaar. But in their own backyard, Bengaluru police have been publishing on Twitter the phone numbers of thousands of citizens reporting various crimes such as gambling on the streets, random quarrels and harassment of women.</b>
<p>The article by Umesh Yadav was <a class="external-link" href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/bengaluru-cops-twitter-handle-in-ethical-storm/articleshow/58042187.cms">published in the Times of India</a> on April 6, 2017. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The police control room has put out more than 46,000 tweets since April 2015 containing the numbers of complainants calling the emergency number 100. The phone numbers of citizens reaching the control room through Bengaluru police's new emergency <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/topic/mobile-application" target="_blank">mobile application</a>, Suraksha, too are being published through this handle.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Thankfully, the Twitter handle, @BCPCR, had a mere 66 followers as on the evening of April 5, nearly 30 per cent of which were various police stations in the city. On Wednesday evening, the police closed the account for public view. <br /> <br /> ET has screenshots of tweets from the account. A senior police officer at Bengaluru police's Command Control was unapologetic for the breach of privacy. The tweets are generated automatically and meant to `show' the number of calls received by the control room and the number of people using the new app, he said. <br /> <br /> On the matter of compromising the safety of the complainants, the officer said, "It is obvious that the accused will know who registered the complaint and privacy does not matter here." <br /> <br /> Expectedly, privacy and law experts are indignant. <br /> <br /> "This is horrible and unpardonable," said Supreme Court advocate KV Dhananjay. "The fact that the police did not consider it necessary to ask for permission before broadcasting someone's identity shows how insensitive the Police Commissioner's office has become to the privacy concern of our society." Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director at the <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/topic/Centre-for-Internet-and-Society" target="_blank">Centre for Internet and Society</a> and who has been at the forefront of the campaign against any potential misuse of Aadhaar, too said the "police officer who ordered to create such an account should be held responsible if any harm comes to a complainant." <br /> <br /> Complainants ET spoke with were startled about the abuse of their privacy. Gowda, a complainant, who had informed the police control room about the sale of cigarettes within 100 metres of a school, had specifically requested the police to not disclose his identity. <br /> <br /> "(This is why) it is better to keep quiet when you see lawbreakers," he said on hearing that Bengaluru police had published his phone number on Twitter. <br /> <br /> "This is injustice and this is the reason why people are scared to inform the police of crimes. If the accused send people to beat me, what should I do?" Dhanusha had called the control room about some teenagers who were teasing girls at a bus stop. The police arrived and took the boys in. She, too, is now worried. "If the accused get my number, they are going to harass me. The police do not have any right to display our phone numbers in public."</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-times-of-india-april-6-2017-umesh-yadav-bengaluru-cops-twitter-handle-in-ethical-storm'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-times-of-india-april-6-2017-umesh-yadav-bengaluru-cops-twitter-handle-in-ethical-storm</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaInternet GovernancePrivacy2017-04-07T02:38:24ZNews ItemLinkedIn will help people in India train for semi-skilled jobs
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/idg-cio-february-21-2017-john-ribeiro-linkedin-will-help-people-in-india-train-for-semi-skilled-jobs
<b>Microsoft has launched Project Sangam, a cloud service integrated with LinkedIn that will help train and generate employment for middle and low-skilled workers.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by John Ribeiro of IDG News Service was mirrored on <a class="external-link" href="http://www.cio.com/article/3172792/internet/linkedin-will-help-people-in-india-train-for-semi-skilled-jobs.html">CIO blog</a> on February 21, 2017. Sunil Abraham was quoted.</p>
<hr style="text-align: justify; " />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Microsoft has launched Project Sangam, a cloud service integrated with LinkedIn that will help train and generate employment for middle and low-skilled workers.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The professional network that was acquired by Microsoft in December has been generally associated with educated urban professionals but the company is now planning to extend its reach to semi-skilled people in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Having connected white-collared professionals around the world with the right job opportunities and training through LinkedIn Learning, the platform is now developing a new set of products that extends this service to low- and semi-skilled workers, said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at an event on digital transformation in Mumbai on Wednesday.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Project Sangam, which is in private preview, is “the first project that is now the coming together of LinkedIn and Microsoft, where we are building this cloud service with deep integration with LinkedIn, so that we can start tackling that enormous challenge in front of us of how to provide every person in India the opportunity to skill themselves for the jobs that are going to be available.”</p>
<div style="text-align: justify; "><aside class="smartphone nativo-promo"> </aside></div>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">LinkedIn also plans a placement product for college graduates that will help students finds jobs regardless of whether they studied at top universities or not, Nadella added.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Microsoft announced earlier in the day its Skype Lite, a version of Skype <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/3172789/voice-over-ip/microsoft-seeks-indian-customers-with-exclusive-skype-lite-app.html">that consumes less data</a>. The company is also offering a ‘lite’ version of LinkedIn, reflecting the need for vendors to factor in low Internet bandwidth, usually running on low-cost and inadequately featured smartphones, when designing products for markets in countries like India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">LinkedIn Lite works on 2G links and is four times faster than the original LinkedIn client, Nadella said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A large number of low-skilled and semi-skilled workers that Microsoft is targeting with its Sangam project still use feature phones, which will likely be a challenge as Microsoft tries to popularize the service.</p>
<div style="text-align: justify; "><aside class="desktop tablet nativo-promo"> </aside></div>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Nadella has also backed a controversial Indian government sponsored project to use biometric data collected from over 1 billion people as an authentication mechanism for a variety of services offered by both the government and the private sector.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The project, called India Stack, aims to use a biometric system, called Aadhaar, to facilitate the digital exchange of information. Microsoft said on Tuesday that Skype Lite would support Aadhaar authentication, pointing out to potential uses of the technology such as for verifying the identity of a candidate for a video job interview. Project Sangam too offers authentication using Aadhaar.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Skype Lite is another example of how India Stack is driving the company’s innovation agenda, Nadella said in Mumbai. He announced in Bangalore on Monday that the company's end user products<a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/3172184/cloud-computing/microsoft-eyes-indian-startups-for-cloud-services.html"> including Windows would be "great participants in the India Stack."</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Aadhaar project has been criticized by privacy activists for collecting biometric information such as the fingerprints and iris scans of people in a central database, which could be misused by both governments and hackers who might get access to the data.The government has been trying to extend the use of Aadhaar, initially designed for the distribution of government benefits and subsidies, to a variety of financial and other services.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"It is indeed shameful that Microsoft is supporting the centralized surveillance project of the Indian government which has dramatically increased the fragility of the Indian information society,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bangalore-based research organization, the Centre for Internet and Society.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"As Indian citizens we must realize that Microsoft will have our biometrics or our authentication factors that can be used to frame us in crimes or clean out our bank accounts," he added.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/idg-cio-february-21-2017-john-ribeiro-linkedin-will-help-people-in-india-train-for-semi-skilled-jobs'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/idg-cio-february-21-2017-john-ribeiro-linkedin-will-help-people-in-india-train-for-semi-skilled-jobs</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaInternet Governance2017-02-24T01:51:20ZNews ItemIndia WhatsApp Privacy Fight May Affect Multinationals
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bloomberg-bna-february-1-2017-nayanima-basu-india-whatsapp-privacy-fight-may-affect-multinationals
<b>The Indian Supreme Court’s review of Facebook Inc.'s and WhatsApp Inc.'s data security practices may lack teeth but also presages a desire for a stronger privacy regime and oversight of multinationals, internet and privacy specialists told Bloomberg BNA. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Nayanima Basu was <a class="external-link" href="https://www.bna.com/india-whatsapp-privacy-n57982083152/">published by Bloomberg BNA</a> on February 1, 2017. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.</p>
<hr style="text-align: justify; " />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">WhatsApp revised its privacy policy in August 2016 to share data with owner Facebook and allow targeted ads and messages from businesses, laying the groundwork for the free messaging service to monetize such data. But a public interest complaint, akin to a class action in the U.S., filed by two Indian students and regulatory inquiries have resulted in India’s top court asking Facebook and WhatsApp about their data protection practices.<br /><br />The court’s move Jan. 17 to seek the information may make multinational companies jittery, Rahul Khullar, former secretary of commerce for India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry, told Bloomberg BNA. Although stronger data privacy enforcement is needed, all the high court has done is aggravate Facebook and other large multinationals, he said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook is the second largest media company in the world with a $367 billion market capitalization, Bloomberg data show. It acquired WhatsApp in 2014 for approximately $18 billion, data show. Facebook didn’t immediately respond to Bloomberg BNA’s e-mail request for comments.<br /><br />Khullar, who is also the former chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, said multinationals need to be more careful in sharing their data because of the “distinction between digital non-commercial data and digitally sensitive data,” he said. A strong national data privacy law would resolve some of these issues, he said.<br /><br />An U.S. official based at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, speaking on background, told Bloomberg BNA that any maneuver that restricts the free flow of data may harm the operations of U.S.-based multinationals and similar companies.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Clarity, Stronger Laws Needed</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Some internet and privacy specialists say that Facebook and WhatsApp failed to provide effective data protection under Indian law.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the nonprofit digital technologies advocate Centre for Internet and Society, told Bloomberg BNA that Facebook and WhatsApp are in violation of <a class="bluenobold" href="http://www.wipo.int/edocs/lexdocs/laws/en/in/in098en.pdf"> Section 43A of the Information Technology Act</a> that lays out “reasonable security practices and procedures.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Indian citizens are reaching out to the courts for data protection enforcement because lawmakers have “failed to do so,” he said. That highlights the need for robust data protection laws in India and, he said, hopefully “goads the government and Parliament into enacting a privacy and data protection law.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In lieu of further legislative action, companies may be able to resolve some issues by establishing clearer privacy policies, Niraj Gunde, a Mumbai-based attorney and consumer advocate, told Bloomberg BNA. Most software agreements have a clandestine clause that allows companies to access user data, but those agreements should also state how the data will be used, stored and eventually disposed of, he said.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bloomberg-bna-february-1-2017-nayanima-basu-india-whatsapp-privacy-fight-may-affect-multinationals'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bloomberg-bna-february-1-2017-nayanima-basu-india-whatsapp-privacy-fight-may-affect-multinationals</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaWhatsAppInternet GovernancePrivacy2017-02-02T02:28:23ZNews ItemFor India’s complaints department, visit Facebook Live
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/financial-times-amy-kazmin-january-23-2017-for-indias-complaints-department-visit-facebook-live
<b>Notebook: Social media cuts through red tape in a country beset by inertia.</b>
<p>The article by Amy Kazmin was <a class="external-link" href="https://www.ft.com/content/9eb3b4ba-e156-11e6-9645-c9357a75844a">published in the Financial Times</a> on January 23, 2017. Sunil Abraham was quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Rarely has a soldier’s lament about bad food received such attention. But Tej Bahadur Yadav, of India’s Border Security Force, made national headlines with Facebook videos complaining about his rations along India’s tense line-of-control with neighbouring Pakistan.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Standing against a landscape of desolate, snow-covered mountains, Mr Yadav bemoaned the fried flatbread and tea that constitutes breakfast, and the watery lentils, seasoned only with salt and turmeric, of his lunch. It was unclear whether his main complaint was about the poor cooking quality or limited food quantity but the <a class="external-link" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2XEpolmass">video</a> of the offending meals, including a burnt chapati, suggested both.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“I do not want to blame the government,” he said calmly in Hindi. “The government provides everything for us but these higher officers sell everything. Sometimes, we soldiers go hungry.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Reaction to the videos, which were covered widely by the mainstream media, came fast and furious. The BSF publicly accused Mr Yadav of indiscipline, saying he was a chronic malcontent previously subjected to a court martial for aiming his weapon at a superior. It also noted he was taking voluntary retirement soon.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But many Indians found it easy to believe that their country’s troops are short-changed on food and they rallied to the disgruntled soldier as a courageous whistleblower. Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered an investigation, and a dietitian was reportedly sent to the border to assess the soldiers’ food.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Analysts pointed out that Mr Yadav’s gripe echoed official critiques of deficiencies in the army’s food procurement. “One can imagine the toil our jawans [junior soldiers] go through while guarding the border in chilling conditions. And the least they can expect is a good meal after long hours of hard duty,” an Indian Express editorial declared.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">That a soldier posted in a remote border area could unleash such a kerfuffle via a video highlights how Indians armed with mobile phones are taking to social media to hold to account the traditionally non-responsive political and bureaucratic establishment.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Smartphones make up nearly 30 per cent of phones in use in India and that number is rising fast, according to the Asian research group CLSA. Sushma Swaraj, India’s foreign minister, has garnered attention for her rapid responses to individual Twitter pleas for help — whether from Indians in trouble abroad or those struggling to renew a passport or secure a visa for a visitor.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Now other ministers and government agencies, including local police forces, have begun to respond personally to pleas for help and public complaints on Twitter. It’s a big change from a time I recall well, when Indians tangled in red tape had no option but to find those with connections to try to influence, or prod, the seemingly impenetrable bureaucracy.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Bureaucrats and politicians are now active and available on social media — ordinary citizens tweet politicians and there is a spectacle of immediate redress of complaints,” Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, told me. When New Delhi’s police department set up an office to receive complaints against corrupt officers, for example, many citizens provided audio or visual recordings of the alleged wrongdoing. It’s only a matter of time before such footage finds its way to social media — or beyond. Ironically, those whose plights gain traction on social media, and are then amplified by mainstream media, are sometimes low-ranking civil servants harassed by their superiors.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This week brought news of a <a class="external-link" href="https://twitter.com/ArchisMohan/status/823216559376175104">female railway clerk</a> punished for dereliction of duty after she refused to sing “one particular” duet with her senior manager at his farewell party. A friend who works for a major western social media platform here in India (who ironically can’t be identified as he wasn’t authorised to speak to me), tells me that “the power structures that governed who used to be heard and who wouldn’t be heard have changed”. As technology spreads further and deeper in India, we can expect that noise to amplify.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/financial-times-amy-kazmin-january-23-2017-for-indias-complaints-department-visit-facebook-live'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/financial-times-amy-kazmin-january-23-2017-for-indias-complaints-department-visit-facebook-live</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaInternet Governance2017-01-25T02:03:03ZNews ItemSupreme Court issues notice to WhatsApp, Centre on data privacy
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-mj-antony-ayan-pramanik-apurva-venkat-supreme-court-issues-notice-to-whatsapp-centre-on-data-privacy
<b>Analysts said India lacked data protection laws.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by MJ Antony, Ayan Pramanik and Apurva Venkat was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/supreme-court-issues-notice-to-whatsapp-centre-on-data-privacy-117011601108_1.html">published in the Business Standard</a> on January 17, 2017. Sunil Abraham was quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The <a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Supreme+Court" target="_blank">Supreme Court </a>on Monday issued notices to the Centre and <a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Whatsapp" target="_blank">WhatsApp </a>over an appeal alleging the instant messaging service did not ensure the privacy of its users and seeking regulations to protect personal information.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Chief Justice J S Khehar granted urgent hearing when Harish Salve, counsel for the petitioner, submitted that the service provided free by the platform to 155 million subscribers violated constitutional provisions protecting privacy.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The government and <a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Whatsapp" target="_blank">WhatsApp </a>would file their replies within two weeks, the court directed after Salve sought its intervention to protect consumer <a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Data" target="_blank">data </a>till India enacted <a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Data" target="_blank">data </a>protection laws.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The <a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Supreme+Court" target="_blank">Supreme Court </a>heard the petition after the Delhi High Court in September directed <a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Whatsapp" target="_blank">WhatsApp </a>not to share its users’ <a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Data" target="_blank">data </a>with its parent <a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Facebook" target="_blank">Facebook </a>and asked it to provide users with the option to opt out. The court was hearing a public interest litigation over a change in WhatsApp’s user policies that explicitly allowed <a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Facebook" target="_blank">Facebook </a>to access to <a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Whatsapp" target="_blank">WhatsApp </a>users’ data.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A <a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Facebook" target="_blank">Facebook </a>spokesperson said the company could not comment immediately.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Analysts said India lacked <a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Data" target="_blank">data </a>protection laws that prohibit global Internet firms from harvesting user <a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Data" target="_blank">data </a>for their business. “We used to think that we had some privacy jurisprudence in the country. If you asked a lawyer 1.5 years ago, he would say privacy in India was a constitutionally guaranteed right,” said Sunil Abraham, director of the Centre for Internet Society. “It is not explicitly referenced into the law.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Saroj Kumar Jha, partner, SRGR Law Offices, said, “Along with the lack of policies and laws, there are very few judgments on privacy issues based on constitutional rights. Thus, it makes it very difficult to judge a case.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Salve argued that till the government enacted legislation to protect user data, the court should provide protection. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India should introduce a clause in telecom licences that if calls were intercepted the licence would be cancelled, he said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The court sought the assistance of Attorney-General Mukul Rohatgi to sort out the issues.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Rohatgi, while arguing an earlier case related to alleged violation of privacy, had taken the stand that the Constitution did not protect the right to privacy. According to him, neither the fundamental rights nor <a class="storyTags" href="http://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=Supreme+Court" target="_blank">Supreme Court </a>judgments recognises a citizen’s right to privacy. The bench hearing that case referred the question to a constitution bench last year.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-mj-antony-ayan-pramanik-apurva-venkat-supreme-court-issues-notice-to-whatsapp-centre-on-data-privacy'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-mj-antony-ayan-pramanik-apurva-venkat-supreme-court-issues-notice-to-whatsapp-centre-on-data-privacy</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaInternet GovernancePrivacy2017-01-17T15:06:08ZNews ItemSocial Media Monitoring
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/social-media-monitoring
<b>We see a trend of social media and communication monitoring and surveillance initiatives in India which have the potential to create a chilling effect on free speech online and raises question about the privacy of individuals. In this paper, Amber Sinha looks at social media monitoring as a tool for surveillance, the current state of social media surveillance in India, and evaluate how the existing regulatory framework in India may deal with such practices in future.</b>
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<h4>Social Media Monitoring: <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/social-media-monitoring/at_download/file">Download</a> (PDF)</h4>
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<h3><strong>Introduction</strong></h3>
<p>In 2014, the Government of India launched the much lauded and popular citizen outreach website called MyGov.in. A press release by the government announced that they had roped in global consulting firm PwC to assist in the data mining exercise to process and filter key points emerging from debates on Mygov.in. While this was a welcome move, the release also mentioned that the government intended to monitor social media sites in order to gauge popular opinion. Further, earlier this year, the government set up National Media Analytics Centre (NMAC) to monitor blogs, media channels, news outlets and social media platforms. The tracking software used by NMAC will generate tags to classify post and comments on social media into negative, positive and neutral categories, paying special attention to “belligerent” comments, and also look at the past patterns of posts. A project called NETRA has already been reported in the media a few years back which would intercept and analyse internet traffic using pre-defined filters. Alongside, we see other initiatives which intend to use social media data for predictive policing purposes such as CCTNS and Social Media Labs.</p>
<p>Thus, we see a trend of social media and communication monitoring and surveillance initiatives announced by the government which have the potential to create a chilling effect on free speech online and raises question about the
privacy of individuals. Various commentators have raised concerns about the legal validity of such programmes and whether they were in violation of the fundamental rights to privacy and free expression, and the existing surveillance laws in India. The lack of legislation governing these programmes often translates into an absence of transparency and due procedure. Further, a lot of personal communication now exists in the public domain which
renders traditional principles which govern interception and monitoring of personal communications futile. In the last few years, the blogosphere and social media websites in India have also changed and become platforms for more dissemination of political content, often also accompanied by significant vitriol, ‘trolling’ and abuse. Thus, we see greater policing of public or semi-public spaces online. In this paper, we look at social media monitoring as a
tool for surveillance, the current state of social media surveillance in India and evaluate how the existing regulatory framework in India may deal with such practices in future.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/social-media-monitoring'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/social-media-monitoring</a>
</p>
No publisheramberSocial MediaInternet GovernanceSurveillance2017-01-16T14:23:13ZBlog EntryIndia’s ruling party takes online abuse to a professional level
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-national-december-31-2016-samanth-subramanian-indias-ruling-party-takes-online-abuse-to-a-professional-level
<b>Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) employs an army of trolls to harass and intimidate critics through social media, a new book claims.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Samanth Subramanian was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.thenational.ae/world/south-asia/indias-ruling-party-takes-online-abuse-to-a-professional-level">published in the National</a> on December 31, 2016. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.</p>
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<p class="hs-text-container" style="text-align: justify; "><span class="Italic Web">I Am a Troll: Inside the Secret World of the BJP’s Digital Army</span>, by the journalist Swati Chaturvedi, alleges that the party’s social media warriors carry out organised harassment, threatening critics of the BJP with assault, sexual violence and even murder.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Although other parties also have social media units, the BJP’s is particularly well organised and vociferous, Chaturvedi wrote.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The BJP social media cell is active on Twitter and Facebook, as well as in the comments sections of articles on news websites, Chaturvedi found. Some of the abusive PRO-BJP Twitter handles are still followed by Mr Modi’s official Twitter account.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span class="Italic Web">I Am a Troll</span> is based largely upon the account of Sadhavi Khosla, now an activist but formerly a volunteer for two years in the BJP’s social media cell, which went into top gear during the parliamentary elections in 2014 when Mr Modi beat the incumbent Congress party led by Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Mr Modi campaigned on a platform of fervent nationalism, drawing upon the BJP’s Hindu chauvinist credentials to attract votes. His party’s social media cell responded accordingly.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"It was a never-ending drip feed of hate and bigotry against the minorities, the Gandhi family, journalists on the hit list, liberals, anyone perceived as anti-Modi," Ms Khosla told Chaturvedi.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The BJP has responded to the claims made in the book by accusing Ms Khosla of political bias, saying she "supports the Congress [and] has all reasons to publish unsubstantiated claims". -In fact, she has never revealed her own political leanings, or even whether she has any.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Arvind Gupta, the head of the BJP’s information technology cell, denies the party encouraged trolling or that Ms Khosla had been a member of any BJP unit.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">By way of evidence, Ms Khosla shared with Chaturvedi screenshots of instructions that were purportedly sent by Mr Gupta to the operators of the social media cell. "If there was even an unfavourable mention of [Modi] anywhere, Gupta’s digital tracking tools would pick it up and the pack of hyena-like trolls would descend," Ms Khosla said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">One specific campaign cited in <span class="Italic Web">I Am a Troll</span> took place in November last year, after the actor Aamir Khan, speaking as the chief guest at a journalism awards ceremony, remarked upon the growing intolerance in India. "There is a growing sense of disquiet and despondency," he said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Ms Khosla said the BJP’s social media cell was instructed to launch an all-out attack on Khan. She and her colleagues were also asked to spread a petition calling upon SnapDeal, a shopping website, to drop Khan as its brand ambassador.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"I realised that my hero had become a ‘Muslim’," Ms Khosla said in the book. "For me he had just been an Indian actor. I felt like my country was changing."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">SnapDeal cut its ties with Khan in February. Ms Khosla, who said she had been growing increasingly uncomfortable with the social media cell’s tactics, quit not long after.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"I simply could not follow directions anymore when I saw rape threats made against female journalists," she said. "Every day some new person was a target and they would attack like a swarm of bees with vile sexual innuendoes, slander, rape and death threats."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Chaturvedi’s book calls for social media companies and police agencies to take such threats more seriously.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"In the United States, which is a beacon for free speech laws, thousands are arrested each year — and the courts uphold these allegations as ‘actionable’ — based on complaints from people who have received violent threats on social media," she wrote.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"Hate speech, targeted harassment, threats of rape with graphic details of assault, incitement to violence — all this is ‘actionable’ too but our police does not act."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Pranesh Prakash, the policy director at the Centre for internet and Society, a Bengaluru-based non-profit organisation, noted that although there are no Indian laws specifically against abusive online behaviour, the general laws that deal with verbal assault cover online cases as well.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"But I’m not sure how much these cases can be taken forward, given jurisdictional problems," Mr Prakash told <span class="Italic Web">The National</span>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">When a person complains to police about online abuse, "the first step would be to establish against whom the case is being made, and doing that is difficult", he said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Since most social media companies are based in the US, police agencies would have to approach India’s foreign ministry which could then invoke a bilateral treaty to gain this information.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"This can take several months if not longer," Mr Prakash said. "And most police stations are not equipped to handle such treaty-based cases."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"Even if the police takes such complaints seriously — and it’s not always clear that they do — there’s no easy way to proceed."</p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-national-december-31-2016-samanth-subramanian-indias-ruling-party-takes-online-abuse-to-a-professional-level'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-national-december-31-2016-samanth-subramanian-indias-ruling-party-takes-online-abuse-to-a-professional-level</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaInternet Governance2016-12-31T02:19:14ZNews Item