Centre for Internet and Society

Linking Facebook use to free top-up data

praskrishna — 2016-02-14T12:33:17Z

Just before the Trai notification, the Ambani brothers signed a spectrum sharing pact and they have been sharing optic fibre since 2013.

The article was published in the Deccan Chronicle on February 14, 2016. Pranesh Prakash gave inputs.

Some people argue that Trai should have stayed off the issue since the Competition Commission of India (CCI) is sufficient to tackle Net Neutrality harms. However it is unclear if predatory pricing by Reliance, which has only nine per cent market share, will cross the competition law threshold for market dominance? Interestingly, just before the Trai notification, the Ambani brothers signed a spectrum sharing pact and they have been sharing optic fibre since 2013.

Will a content sharing pact follow these carriage pacts? As media diversity researcher, Alam Srinivas, notes: “If their plans succeed, their media empires will span across genres such as print, broadcasting, radio and digital. They will own the distribution chains such as cable, direct-to-home (DTH), optic fibre (terrestrial and undersea), telecom towers and multiplexes.”

What does this convergence vision of the Ambani brothers mean for media diversity in India? In the absence of net neutrality regulation could they use their dominance in broadcast media to reduce choice on the Internet? Could they use a non-neutral provisioning of the Internet to increase their dominance in broadcast media? When a single wire or the very same radio spectrum delivers radio, TV, games and Internet to your home — what under competition law will be considered a substitutable product? What would be the relevant market?

At the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), we argue that competition law principles with lower threshold should be applied to networked infrastructure through infrastructure specific non-discrimination regulations like the one that Trai just notified to protect digital media diversity.

Was an absolute prohibition the best response for Trai? With only two possible exemptions — i.e. closed communication network and emergencies — the regulation is very clear and brief. However, as our colleague Pranesh Prakash has said, Trai has over-regulated and used a sledgehammer where a scalpel would have sufficed. In CIS’ official submission, we had recommended a series of tests in order to determine whether a particular type of zero rating should be allowed or forbidden. That test may be legally sophisticated; but as Trai argues it is clear and simple rules that result in regulatory equity. A possible alternative to a complicated multi-part legal test is the leaky walled garden proposal. Remember, it is only in the case of very dangerous technologies where the harms are large scale and irreversible and an absolute prohibition based on the precautionary principle is merited.

However, as far as network neutrality harms go, it may be sufficient to insist that for every MB that is consumed within Free Basics, Reliance be mandated to provide a data top up of 3MB.

This would have three advantages. One, it would be easy to articulate in a brief regulation and therefore reduce the possibility of litigation. Two, it is easy for the consumer who is harmed to monitor the mitigation measure and last, based on empirical data, the regulator could increase or decrease the proportion of the mitigation measure.

This is an example of what Prof Christopher T. Marsden calls positive, forward-looking network neutrality regulation. Positive in the sense that instead of prohibitions and punitive measures, the emphasis is on obligations and forward-looking in the sense that no new technology and business model should be prohibited.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/deccan-chronicle-february-14-2016-linking-facebook-use-to-free-top-up-data

Zuckerberg's Plan Spurned as India Backs Full Net Neutrality

praskrishna — 2016-02-15T02:18:54Z

Facebook Inc.’s plans for expansion in India have suffered a major setback.

The article by Adi Narayan and Bhuma Srivastava was published in Bloomberg on February 8, 2016. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

Telecom regulator bans differential Internet data plans
Facebook had lobbied India to approve its Free Basics plan

After the company spent months lobbying the country to accept its Free Basics service -- a way of delivering a limited Internet that included Facebook, plus some other tools, for no cost -- India’s telecom regulator ruled against any plans from cellular operators that charge different rates to different parts of the Web.

Telecom operators can’t offer discriminatory tariffs for data services based on content, and aren’t allowed to enter into agreements with Internet companies to subsidize access to some websites, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said in a statement Monday. Companies violating the rules will be fined, it said.

“This is the most extensive and stringent regulation on differential pricing anywhere in the world,” Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, said via phone. “Those who suggested regulation in place of complete ban have clearly lost.”

With this decision, India joins countries such as the U.S., Brazil and the Netherlands in passing laws that restrict telecom operators from discriminating Internet traffic based on content. It is a big blow to Facebook’s Internet sampler plan known as Free Basics, which is currently offered in about three dozen countries including Kenya and Zambia, none of which come close to the scale or reach that could’ve been achieved in India.

With 130 million Facebook users, 375 million people online, and an additional 800 million-plus who aren’t, India is the biggest growth market for the social network, which remains blocked in China.

Facebook said in a statement that it’s “disappointed with the outcome.”

Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said the decision won’t cause Facebook to give up on connecting people to the Internet in India, “because more than a billion people in India don’t have access to the Internet.” The company will continue to focus on its other initiatives, like extending networks using satellites, drones and lasers.

Freebies Curtailed

The rule will put an end to prepaid plans that offered free access to services such as Google searches, the WhatsApp messaging application and Facebook. These packages were popular with low-income users by giving them an incentive to get online, said Rajan Mathews, director general of the lobby group Cellular Operators Association of India.

“These types of plans were being used by operators to meet the policy goals of connecting one billion people,” Matthews said. “With these gone, the government needs to tell us what alternatives are there.”

The regulator’s decision comes after months of public lobbying by Facebook for India to approve Free Basics, which allows customers to access the social network and other services such as education, health care, and employment listings from their phones without a data plan.

Free Basics was criticized by activists who said it threatened net neutrality, the principle that all Internet websites should be equally accessible, and could change pricing in India for access to different websites.

The regulator, which had sought stakeholders’ views, said it was seeking to ensure data tariffs remain content agnostic. Operators will have six months to wind down existing differential pricing services.

Google Unaffected

“Anything on the Internet can’t be priced based on content, applications, source and destination,” R.S. Sharma, the regulator’s chairman, told reporters in New Delhi. Some Internet companies’ plans to offer free WiFi at public venues, like Google Inc.’s project with Indian Railways, are not affected by this ruling, he said.

For Free Basics, one or two carriers in a given country offer the package for free at slow speeds, betting that it will help attract new customers who’ll later upgrade to pricier data plans. In India, Facebook had tied up with Reliance Communications Ltd., though the service was suspended in December as the government solicited comments from proponents and opponents.

Since the government’s telecommunications regulator announced the suspension, Facebook bought daily full-page ads in major newspapers and plastered billboards with pictures of happy farmers and schoolchildren it says would benefit from Free Basics. Zuckerberg has frequently made the case himself via phone or newspaper op-eds, asking that Indians petition the government to approve his service.

Entrepreneurs, business people and activists took to Twitter to share their views after the decision came out on Monday.

“Great to see TRAI backing #NetNeutrality,” Kunal Bahl, founder of Snapdeal.com, one of India’s biggest e-commerce sites, said. “Let’s keep the Internet free and independent.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bloomberg-adi-narayan-bhuma-srivastava-february-8-2016-zuckerberg-plan-spurned-as-india-backs-full-net-neutrality

Facebook’s Free Basics hits snag in India

praskrishna — 2016-02-15T02:33:26Z

Indian regulators have dealt a major blow to Facebook’s controversial Free Basics online access plan by forbidding so-called differential pricing by internet companies, in effect banning the programme in the country.

The article by James Crabtree with additional reporting by Tim Bradshaw was published in Financial Times on February 8, 2016. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

Free Basics, a plan to make access to parts of the internet free, has been at the centre of a fierce row in the country between the social network and local start-ups and advocates for net neutrality — the idea that all web traffic should be treated equally and technology companies should not be allowed to price certain kinds of content differently from others.

Last December, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India ordered Facebook to put its Free Basics programme on hold pending a review.

On Monday, Trai published the results of its deliberations, introducing a complete ban on any form of differential pricing.

The ruling is the latest in a series of regulatory battles pitting net neutrality campaigners against telecom and internet companies, and is likely to be viewed as a test case for other emerging markets in which programmes similar to Facebook’s are yet to be challenged in the courts.

It also marks the most significant setback yet for Free Basics, which Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg launched in 2014 as the centrepiece of plans to help poorer people access the internet in emerging economies. It operates in more than 30 countries.

Facebook had launched a high-profile public campaign to defend its programme, which offered stripped-down access to sites such as BBC News or Facebook’s own app to customers of Reliance Communications, the US company’s local telecoms partner.

But critics attacked the programme as an attempt to become a gatekeeper for tens of millions of internet users.

In a post to his Facebook page on Monday, Mr Zuckerberg said the company “won’t give up on” finding new ways to boost internet access in India.

“While we’re disappointed with today’s decision, I want to personally communicate that we are committed to keep working to break down barriers to connectivity in India and around the world. Internet.org has many initiatives, and we will keep working until everyone has access to the internet,” he wrote.

Trai’s ruling was welcomed by anti-Facebook campaigners, a group that included the founders of many Indian start-ups including online retailers such as Flipkart, Paytm and restaurant search service Zomato, which had declined to offer their services as part of the Free Basics platform.

Analysts also hailed the Indian regulator’s ruling as a landmark. “This is the most broad and the most stringent set of regulations on differential pricing which exists anywhere in the world,” said Pranesh Prakash of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet & Society, a think-tank.

India has become an increasingly important focus for the company’s global business, with the country becoming its second-largest market by users last year.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/financial-times-february-8-2016-james-crabtree-facebooks-free-basics-hits-snag-in-india

Internet Freedom

Sunil Abraham and Vidushi Marda — 2016-02-15T02:51:10Z

The modern medium of the web is an open-sourced, democratic world in which equality is an ideal, which is why what is most important is Internet freedom.

The article by Sunil Abraham and Vidushi Marda was published by Asian Age on February 14, 2016.

What would have gone wrong if India’s telecom regulator Trai had decided to support programmes like Facebook’s Free Basics and Airtel’s Zero Rating instead of issuing the regulation that prohibits discriminatory tariffs? Here are possible scenarios to look at in case the discriminatory tarrifs were allowed as they are in some countries.

Possible impact on elections

Facebook would have continued to amass its product — eyeballs. Indian eyeballs would be more valuable than others for three reasons 1. Facebook would have an additional layer of surveillance thanks to the Free Basics proxy server which stores the time, the site url and data transferred for all the other destinations featured in the walled garden 2. As part of Digital India, most government entities will set up Facebook pages and a majority of the interaction with citizens would happen on the social media rather than the websites of government entities and, consequently, Facebook would know what is and what is not working in governance 3. Given the financial disincentive to leave the walled garden, the surveillance would be total.

What would this mean for democracies? Eight years ago, Facebook began to engineer the News Feed to show more posts of a user’s friends voting in order to influence voting behavior. It introduced the “I’m Voting” button into 61 million users’ feeds during the 2010 US presidential elections to increase voter turnout and found that this kind of social pressure caused people to vote. Facebook has also admitted to populating feeds with posts from friends with similar political views. During the 2012 Presidential elections, Facebook was able to increase voter turnout by altering 1.9 million news feeds.

Indian eyeballs may not be that lucrative in terms of advertising. But these users are extremely valuable to political parties and others interested in influencing elections. Facebook’s notifications to users when their friends signed on to the “Support Free Basics” campaign was configured so that you were informed more often than with other campaigns. In other words, Facebook is not just another player on their platform. Given that margins are often slim, would Facebook be tempted to try and install a government of its choice in India during the 2019 general elections?

In times of disasters

Most people defending Free Basics and defending forbearance as the regulatory response in 2015/16 make the argument that “95 per cent of Internet users in developing countries spend 95 per cent of their time on Facebook”.

This is not too far from the truth as LirneAsia demonstrated in 2012 with most people using Facebook in Indonesia not even knowing they were using the internet. In other words, they argue that regulators should ignore the fringe user and fringe usage and only focus on the mainstream. The cognitive bias they are appealing to is smaller numbers are less important.

Since all the sublime analogies in the Net Neutrality debate have been taken, forgive us for using the scatological. That is the same as arguing that since we spend only 5% of our day in toilets, only 5% of our home’s real estate should be devoted to them.

Everyone agrees that it is far easier to live in a house without a bedroom than a house without a toilet. Even extremely low probabilities or ‘Black Swan’ events can be terribly important! Imagine you are an Indian at the bottom of the pyramid. You cannot afford to pay for data on your phone and, as a result, you rarely and nervously stray out of the walled garden of Free Basics.

During a natural disaster you are able to use the Facebook Safety Check feature to mark yourself safe but the volunteers who are organising both offline and online rescue efforts are using a wider variety of platforms, tools and technologies.

Since you are unfamiliar with the rest of the Internet, you are ill equipped when you try to organise a rescue for you and your loved ones.

Content and carriage converge

Some people argue that TRAI should have stayed off the issue since the Competition Commission of India (CCI) is sufficient to tackle Net Neutrality harms. However it is unclear if predatory pricing by Reliance, which has only 9% market share, will cross the competition law threshold for market dominance? Interestingly, just before the Trai notification, the Ambani brothers signed a spectrum sharing pact and they have been sharing optic fibre since 2013.

Will a content sharing pact follow these carriage pacts? As media diversity researcher, Alam Srinivas, notes “If their plans succeed, their media empires will span across genres such as print, broadcasting, radio and digital. They will own the distribution chains such as cable, direct-to-home (DTH), optic fibre (terrestrial and undersea), telecom towers and multiplexes.”

What does this convergence vision of the Ambani brothers mean for media diversity in India? In the absence of net neutrality regulation could they use their dominance in broadcast media to reduce choice on the Internet? Could they use a non-neutral provisioning of the Internet to increase their dominance in broadcast media? When a single wire or the very same radio spectrum delivers radio, TV, games and Internet to your home — what under competition law will be considered a substitutable product? What would be the relevant market? At the Centre for Internet and Society (CI S), we argue that competition law principles with lower threshold should be applied to networked infrastructure through infrastructure specific non-discrimination regulations like the one that Trai just notified to protect digital media diversity.

Was an absolute prohibition the best response for TRAI? With only two possible exemptions — i.e. closed communication network and emergencies - the regulation is very clear and brief. However, as our colleague Pranesh Prakash has said, TRAI has over regulated and used a sledgehammer where a scalpel would have sufficed. In CIS’ official submission, we had recommended a series of tests in order to determine whether a particular type of zero rating should be allowed or forbidden. That test may be legally sophisticated; but as TRAI argues it is clear and simple rules that result in regulatory equity. A possible alternative to a complicated multi-part legal test is the leaky walled garden proposal. Remember, it is only in the case of very dangerous technologies where the harms are large scale and irreversible and an absolute prohibition based on the precautionary principle is merited.

However, as far as network neutrality harms go, it may be sufficient to insist that for every MB that is consumed within Free Basics, Reliance be mandated to provide a data top up of 3MB.

This would have three advantages. One, it would be easy to articulate in a brief regulation and therefore reduce the possibility of litigation. Two, it is easy for the consumer who is harmed to monitor the mitigation measure and last, based on empirical data, the regulator could increase or decrease the proportion of the mitigation measure.

This is an example of what Prof Christopher T. Marsden calls positive, forward-looking network neutrality regulation. Positive in the sense that instead of prohibitions and punitive measures, the emphasis is on obligations and forward-looking in the sense that no new technology and business model should be prohibited.

What is Net neutrality?

According to this principle, all service providers and governments should not discriminate between various data on the internet and consider all as one. They cannot give preference to one set of apps/ websites while restricting others.

2006: TRAI invites opinions regarding the regulation of net neutrality from various telecom industry bodies and stakeholdersFeb. 2012: Sunil Bharti Mittal, CEO of Bharti Airtel, suggests services like YouTube should pay an interconnect charge to network operators, saying that if telecom operators are building highways for data then there should be a tax on the highway
July 2012: Bharti Airtel’s Jagbir Singh suggests large Internet companies like Facebook and Google should share revenues with telecom companies.
August 2012: Data from M-Lab said You Broadband, Airtel, BSNL were throttling traffic of P2P services like BitTorrent
Feb. 2013: Killi Kiruparani, Minister for state for communications and technology says government will look into legality of VoIP services like Skype
June 2013: Airtel starts offering select Google services to cellular broadband users for free, fixing a ceiling of 1GB on the data
Feb. 2014: Airtel operations CEO Gopal Vittal says companies offering free messaging apps like Skype and WhatsApp should be regulated
August 2014: TRAI rejects proposal from telecom companies to make messaging application firms share part of their revenue with the carriers/government
Nov. 2014: Trai begins investigation on Airtel implementing preferential access with special packs for WhatsApp and Facebook at rates lower than standard data rates
Dec. 2014: Airtel launches 2G, 3G data packs with VoIP data excluded in the pack, later launches VoIP pack.
Feb. 2015: Facebook launches Internet.org with Reliance communications, aiming to provide free access to 38 websites through single app
March 2015: Trai publishes consultation paper on regulatory framework for over the top services, explaining what net neutrality in India will mean and its impact, invited public feedback
April 2015: Airtel launches Airtel Zero, a scheme where apps sign up with airtle to get their content displayed free across the network. Flipkart, which was in talks for the scheme, had to pull out after users started giving it poor rating after hearing about the news
April 2015: Ravi Shankar Prasad, Communication and information technology minister announces formation of a committee to study net neutrality issues in the country
23 April 2015: Many organisations under Free Software Movement of India protested in various parts of the country. In a counter measure, Cellular Operators Association of India launches campaign , saying its aim is to connect the unconnected citizens, demanding VoIP apps be treated as cellular operators
27 April 2015: Trai releases names and email addresses of users who responded to the consultation paper in millions. Anonymous India group, take down Trai’s website in retaliation, which the government could not confirm
Sept. 2015: Facebook rebrands Internet.org as Free Basics, launches in the country with massive ads across major newspapers in the country. Faces huge backlash from public
Feb. 2016: Trai rules in favour of net neutrality, barring telecom operators from charging different rates for data services.

The writers work at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru. CIS receives about $200,000 a year from WMF, the organisation behind Wikipedia, a site featured in Free Basics and zero-rated by many access providers across the world

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/asian-age-february-14-2016-sunil-abraham-vidushi-marda-internet-freedom

Internet users fume as govt blocks 32 sites

praskrishna — 2015-01-02T13:46:25Z

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has ordered Internet service providers to block 32 websites, in cluding popular video-sharing plat forms such as Dailymotion and Vimeo, reportedly over concerns that they are being misused by Islamic State jihadists.

The article by Jaison Lewis was published in Mumbai Mirror on January 1, 2015. Pranesh Prakash gave his inputs.

The ban has angered free-speech proponents who allege that the Narendra Modi government is using national security as a pretext to censor online content. On Wednesday, tweets criticising the restrictions were trending on #GOIBlocks. Senior lawyer Karuna Nandy said that she would challenge the DoT order in the Supreme Court.

Apart from Dailymotion and Vimeo, Internet service providers have also been ordered to block Github and Pastebin, which are popular among programmers; Weebly, a free website creator; and Archive.org, a non-profit digital library.

Some Internet users, however, were able to access some of the sites. This could be because their Internet service providers have not yet implemented the DoT order or because the government has lifted restrictions on some web addresses, according to activists monitoring the blockage of the websites.

The order was issued under Section 69A (procedure for blocking public access) of the Information Technology Act, 2000. The section allows authorities to block websites without giving any formal reason or making any public announcement.

However, Arvind Gupta, BJP's national head for information and technology, tweeted that the sites had been blocked over security concerns. "The Web sites have been blocked based on an advisory by Anti-Terrorism Squad, and were carrying Anti India content from ISIS.The sites that have removed objectionable content andor cooperated with the ongoing investigations, are being unblocked," he wrote.

Gupta, however, did not explain how the sites were being misused by terrorists. Some of the sites are mostly frequented by programmers looking for open-source software and codes.

Nandy, a Supreme Court lawyer who specialises in human rights litigations, criticised the ban. "I will challenge the order in the Su preme Court this week. I will seek directions to lift the secrecy surrounding such bans and also request for a right to appeal," she said.

She added that censoring the Internet was against the idea of free expression guaranteed under the Constitution. "Such steps are not good for a healthy society," she said.

Pranesh Prakash, a policy director with the Centre for Internet and Society and one of the most vocal opponents of the blockage, said that the people had the right to know why the websites had been blocked.

"We still don't know why these blocks were issued: was it an overzealous copyright lawyer who found an indulgent judge to issue an overbroad and baseless order? Or was it a public servant who wrongly directed the Department of Electronics and IT to block the sites under the IT Act? We have no idea," said Prakash, who tweeted a picture of the DoT order on Wednesday.

He added that websites were frequently blocked without clear evidence of wrongdoing. "These laws must be changed," Prakash said.

Internet users also voiced their anger over the DoT order. "This only proves ATS is an idiot. If terrorists use buses, phones & Whatspp, you'll block whole system? #GOIBlocks," Poonam Sharma tweeted.

Some users retweeted a Modi post from August 2012: "As a common man, I join the protest against crackdown on freedom of speech!"

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/mumbai-mirror-jaison-lewis-jan-1-2015-internet-users-fume-as-govt-blocks-32-sites

Centre blocks 32 websites for security reasons, restores some later

praskrishna — 2015-01-02T14:13:03Z

The Centre on Wednesday asked Internet Service Providers (ISP) to block 32 websites citing national security concerns, especially from terror group ISIS.

The article by S. Ronendra Singh was published in the Hindu Businessline on December 31, 2014. Pranesh Prakash gave his inputs.

The move created a flutter on social networking sites, as most of the Web sites, such as archive.org, vimeo.com, github.com, pastebin.com, codepad.org and paste2.org, were being used by global communities like application developers for free movies and books, coders and text sharing.

By late evening, some sites were restored.

Sources in the Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology confirmed the development and told BusinessLine: “It was based on some national security issues, and we cannot compromise with our nation’s security….”

A senior official from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) said the directive had come from a Mumbai court after the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) had approached it to block some Web sites carrying anti-India content.

The matter came to light after a circular, purportedly sent by DoT to ISPs, showed up on social networking sites, listing the sites, along with some screen shots. Incidentally, the said circular had edited out the letter head, date and the signature below. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s IT cell head, Arvind Gupta, tweeted saying ‘the Web sites that have been blocked were based on an advisory by the Anti-Terrorism Squad, and were carrying anti-India content from ISIS’.

However, later in the evening, Gupta, in his tweet said, some of the Web sites such as vimeo.com have been restored because they have removed ‘objectionable content and/or cooperated with the on going investigations’.

However, the blocked Web sites raised a furore in the social media wherein people said the Government should amend the laws than do such things.

“The problem isn’t just about the specific sites that are blocked; the problem is always about the bad law + process relating to #GoIBlocks,” Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director at Centre for Internet and Society tweeted. He said the 69A Rules (of the IT Act 2000) does not allow for transparency, accountability and time-limits on blocks, so it is easily misused by the Government, the courts and individuals.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-hindu-businessline-december-31-2015-s-ronendra-singh-

DoT Reportedly Orders Blocking of 32 Websites Including GitHub, Archive.org, SourceForge

praskrishna — 2015-01-02T14:51:39Z

Many users on Twitter are claiming that several websites, including many software development resources such as GitHub and SourceForge, along with research resources like the Internet Archive have all been blocked on order of the Department of Telecom.

The story was published in NDTV on December 31, 2014. Pranesh Prakash gave his inputs.

A letter circulating online shows a list of 32 URLs that ISPs have reportedly been ordered to block, with most of these URLs being entire websites, instead of specific webpages that's usually been the case with such blocks in the past.

We tried to verify the users' claims, but on both our office broadband network, and also on Airtel and Vodafone 3G networks, all the sites were opening properly at the time of writing. Interestingly, many of the sites failed the load at the first try, but simply hitting refresh once solved the problem.

This does not mean that blocking is not happening - it is possible that the order has been sent recently, and will take some time to be fully implemented. Here is the email which purportedly shows the list of the 32 blocked URLs, as posted by Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director of the Center for Inernet and Society:

No information is available at present to confirm if blocking is truly happening, or why, but we are trying to ascertain the exact details and will update this story with the information as soon as possible.

However, there is some partial confirmation because both Pastebin and the Internet Archive have tweeted about blocking from India.

Such blocks in the past have been due to John Doe orders but the fact it is targeting software development sites like Github and Sourceforge is strange - the John Doe orders have specifically been used to block piracy of films, and blocking off sites that have no connection to movies makes no sense.

Arvind Gupta, the National Head of the BJP IT cell also took to Twitter, stating that these websites were being blocked for security reasons, based on the advice of the Anti-Terrorism Squad. According to Gupta's Tweets, the sites were being unblocked as soon as they removed "objectionable materials", allegedly related to ISIS.

It's extremely unusual that a government decision is being communicated by a political party official - if the Department of Telecom is blocking sites, then it should be the one to communicate and clarify these events. However, so far, it has not issued any statements, and neither has the IT Ministry.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/ndtv-december-31-2014-dot-reportedly-orders-blocking-of-32-websites-including-github-archiveorg-sourceforge

Vimeo, DailyMotion, Pastebin Among Sites Blocked In India For 'Anti-India' Content From ISIS

praskrishna — 2015-01-02T16:43:20Z

The Indian government has convinced ISPs to block dozens of popular websites accused of hosting “anti-India” content posted by members of the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

The story was published by IB Times on December 31. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

GitHub, Pastebin, as well as the video sites Vimeo and DailyMotion were among those rendered inaccessible to many of India’s nearly 250 million Internet users.

The text repository Pastebin first tweeted on Dec. 19 that it had been blocked, confirming on Dec. 26 that the blockade was at the behest of India’s Department of Telecom. Pranesh Prakash, the policy director at the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore, posted a list of the blocked sites Wednesday. Notice the list was issued Dec. 17.

Insane! Govt orders blocking of 32 websites including @internetarchive @vimeo @github @pastebin #censorship #FoEx pic.twitter.com/F75ngSGohJ

â€” Pranesh Prakash (@pranesh_prakash) December 31, 2014

Hours later Arvind Gupta, the national head of information technology at India’s Bharatiya Janata Party, confirmed on Twitter that a block had indeed been put in place. Other than referencing “ongoing investigations,” Gupta did not provide specific details on the type of threats being made.

The websites that have been blocked were based on an advisory by Anti Terrorism Squad, and were carrying Anti India content from ISIS. 1/2

â€” Arvind Gupta (@buzzindelhi) December 31, 2014

The sites that have removed objectionable content and/or cooperated with the on going investigations, are being unblocked. 2/2

â€” Arvind Gupta (@buzzindelhi) December 31, 2014

The move comes after it was discovered that the operator of a prominent pro-ISIS Twitter account was based in Bangalore. Mehdi Masroor Biswas, 24, was arrested earlier this month after a Channel 4 News investigation determined he was behind @ShamiWitness, an account with more than 17,700 followers and 2 million tweets seen each month.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled the “Make in India” campaign earlier this year in an attempt to encourage international businesses to invest in India. The campaign specifically mentions information technology as a sector in which India wishes to improve.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/ib-times-jeff-stone-december-31-2014-sites-blocked-in-india-for-anti-india-content-from-isis

Minds that (should) matter

praskrishna — 2015-02-26T16:34:25Z

Thinkers who best explain a rapidly-changing India to the world (and the world to India).

The article by Raju Narisetti was published in Forbes India magazine on January 2, 2015.

Sunil Abraham
Executive director of The Centre for Internet and Society. Has deep insights into India’s rapidly growing digital culture as well as the threats to it from misguided government regulation.

Shuddhabrata Sengupta
Runs Raqs Media Collective and is a founder of the Sarai Collective which does the rare examination of the interplay of urban India/technology/culture.

Anusha Rizvi
The former journalist who directed Peepli Live is now a filmmaker. Peepli was the first ever Indian film to be screened at Sundance. Her response to broadcast media and society issues always make you think.

Mohandas Pai
Ex-Infosys and now with the Manipal Group, he is active in public policy and corporate governance issues, and is not afraid to speak his mind. He was behind the Bangalore Political Action Committee—first-of-its-kind in India—and is also an activist shareholder who has minority shareholders’ interests in mind.

Ramesh Ramanathan
Ex-Citibanker, who heads Janalakshmi, a micro/alternative finance organisation, that has attracted Wall Street money. Offers honest and workable solutions through Janagraha, a hybrid public-private partnership initiative.

Satish Acharya
A brilliant cartoonist from Mangalore. A small-town guy whose views on Indian politics and Indian sport are spot on as he traverses the fine line of cartoons in India: Not too cerebral, but never clichéd and banal either.

Chhavi Rajawat
A young MBA who chose to go back to her ancestral village, Soda in Rajasthan, to help bring management skills to grassroots governance. Won elections to be its sarpanch. A high-profile doer, she will be worth listening to about hands-on governance.

Payal Chawla
While her past claim to fame is taking on Coca-Cola over workplace harassment, as a lawyer and founder of her own law firm, Juscontractus, this University of Chicago alumni would be a good way to track India’s troubled legal system.

Pushkar
A professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at BITS Pilani’s Goa Campus, he is particularly good on a major challenge for India: Reforming its education system.

Karuna Nundy
A Supreme Court lawyer involved in major commercial and human rights litigation and legal policy, she has contributed in a major way on gender justice in India, recently helping with the new anti-rape laws.

Binalakshmi Nepram
She fights racism against people from the North East and says it like it needs to be said in a country with deep geographical and regional prejudices.

Ireena Vittal
This former McKinsey consultant has a lot of good things to say about smart cities.

Economic and Political Weekly
Ignore its left-leaning interpretations and conclusions. Focus on its outstanding data.

GVL Narasimha Rao
GVL knows his psephology like few others do. His current turn as a spokesman for the BJP yields unrelenting evidence that is often hard to refute. And he takes sides when taking sides can be personally risky.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/forbes-india-january-2-2015-raju-narisetti-

Indian Government still blocks 20+ websites – Indian Censorship on Internet

praskrishna — 2015-01-03T03:47:16Z

Indian Government has blocked 20+ major websites to counter ISIS propaganda. The government has removed blocking of github.com, vimeo.com and other 10+ websites blocked till December 31, 2014.

The article was published in the Times of Assam on January 2, 2015. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

A confidential department of telecom order – dated December 17, 2014 – instructing all internet service licensees to block the websites appeared online on Wednesday.

When contacted to verify the news, Dr Gulshan Rai – Director of the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) – told, the directions had been issued to internet service providers following a Mumbai Additional Chief metropolitan magistrate’s November order directing the government’s Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) to implement the same.

Pranesh Prakash – Policy Director at Bengaluru-based Center for Internet and Society – questioned the lack of transparency around the practice of blocking websites under the Indian law. “Qn for govt: Why does the law require secrecy of web blocking orders when it doesn’t allow such secrecy for books, films? #GoIBlocks,” he tweeted, adding, “The 69A Rules don’t allow for transparency, accountability, time-limits on blocks, etc. So easily misused by govt. + courts + individuals.” The websites were blocked under section 69 A of the IT Act, 2000 and the IT (Procedure and sdafeguards for Blocking of Access of Information by Public) rules, 2009.

Currently, the Supreme Court is in the middle of hearing a clutch of petitions challenging several IT Act provisions, including blocking and takedown of websites.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/times-of-assam-january-2-2015-indian-govt-still-blocks-websites-india-censorship-on-internet

Pastebin, Dailymotion, Github blocked after DoT order: Report

praskrishna — 2015-01-03T04:17:48Z

A number of Indian users are reporting they're not able to access websites such as Pastebin, DailyMotion and Github while accessing the internet through providers such as BSNL and Vodafone.

The article by Anupam Saxena was published in the Times of India on December 31, 2014. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The block was first reported by Pastebin, a website where you can store text online for a set period of time, through its social media accounts on December 19. In a follow-up post on December 26, the site posted that it was still blocked in India on the directions of the Indian government.A number of users also posted about the blocks on Reddit threads confirming that the sites have been blocked by Vodafone, BSNL and Hathway, among others.It now appears that the blocks are being carried out on the instructions of DoT (Department of Telecom). The telecom body reportedly issued a notification regarding the same on December 17. A screenshot of the circular has been posted on Twitter by Pranesh Prakash.

The notification mentions that 32 URLs including Pastebin, video sharing sites Vimeo and DailyMotion, Internet archive site archive.org and Github.com( a web-based software code repository), have been blocked under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000. DoT has also asked ISPs to submit compliance reports. However, we have not been able to verify the authenticity of the circular.

At the time of writing this story, we could not access Pastebin, DailyMotion and Github on Vodafone 3G and our office network that has access via dedicated lines. Vodafone is not displaying any errors and is simply blocking access. However, a number of users report that they're getting an error that says 'the site is blocked as per the instructions of Competent Authority.' However, we were able to access all the websites on Airtel 3G.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/times-of-india-anupam-saxena-december-31-2014-pastein-dailymotion-github-blocked-after-dot-order

Delhi government in consultation with Centre to block Uber's Internet address

praskrishna — 2015-03-09T02:12:15Z

The Delhi transport department has started consultation with the central government to block the internet address of taxi hailing app Uber if the San Francisco-based startup does not obtain a radio taxi licence to ply its cabs in the national capital.

The article by Harsimran Julka was published in the Economic Times on February 25, 2015. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Blocking Uber's IP will mean the company's website and mobile phone application will no longer be accessible in India, effectively shutting down operations in a country which the startup estimates is its largest market outside the United States.

Uber has operations across 10 cities in India with over 10,000 cabs registered on its platform."We have initiated a process with the central government to block (Uber's) IP address in India if the company doesn't abide by law," said a senior official in the Delhi transport department.

Uber and other taxi app companies were banned from operating in Delhi after the alleged rape of a passenger by a driver on the Uber network in December 2014. Subsequently, the transport department modified radio taxi laws and directed Uber and rivals OlaCabs and Taxiforsure to obtain licences to operate legally in the city. While Ola has obtained a licence, Uber, which terms itself as a technology company and not a transport provider, has been demanding that it be regulated under the Information Technology Act. "There has to be an end to the matter somewhere," said the official quoted above. The department has given Uber time until February 25 to submit a revised application for a radio taxi licence.

"We are waiting to see if they comply and apply for a licence before issuing a written request (to block the IP address),' said a second official who confirmed that the transport department had already begun discussions with the department of IT. Zubeda Begum, the standing counsel for the Delhi government is likely to submit an affidavit on Wednesday in the Delhi High Court on the method to be adopted to block the IP address.

The court, which is hearing the case of the alleged rape, had raised the issue of banning IP addresses of taxi app companies after the state government complained that the companies continued to ply in the national despite the ban.

"It is the central government which will have to block the website. The Delhi government just has to make a request," Begum told ET.

Pawan Duggal, cyber law expert and a Supreme Court advocate, said that the blocking of websites in India can be done under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act but the rules to get them unblocked are unclear.

"A court order may be needed to get it unblocked," said Duggal.

A spokeswoman for Uber said the company will continue to work with the authorities and is "evaluating the perceived deficiencies in the time period provided to us by the government."

This is not the first time that the website of a foreign company will be banned in India. Last December, about 32 websites including SourceForge, Archive, Vimeo, Dailymotion were banned on grounds of national security. Uber itself has had its IP address blocked in countries such as Spain. Last December, a Madrid Court ordered Spain's telcos to block access to Uber.

"Any state government department can request the designated authority to block a website. The authority has to then forward the request to a committee, which takes the decision," said Pranesh Prakash, at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bengaluru.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/economic-times-harsimran-julka-february-25-2015-delhi-government-in-consultation-with-centre-to-block-ubers-internet-address

The Dangers Of Birdsong

praskrishna — 2014-02-12T10:29:10Z

Instant gratification? Social media can quickly turn the game into checkmate if you don’t keep your emotions in check.

Namrata Joshi's article was published in Outlook on January 25, 2014. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

“Woke up from a dream in which I had just learned that I was going to keep wickets for India. In my dream, I thought, let me share this news on Twitter. I didn’t, fearing I would be made a laughing stock.” These are few of a series of stream of consciousness tweets about a dream posted this Monday by author-academician Amitava Kumar. Tweets that don’t just have to do with dreaming of a personal achievement, but also about tweeting it. “Twitter has invaded even our sleeping life,” says Amitava on an e-mail but also admits that he didn’t think for a moment that he was sharing something private in a public place while tweeting his reverie. “Instead, perhaps, I was seeking a private connection with a lot of readers.” Which he did rustle up in good measure. He followed it up by tweeting a picture of his son with him, taken by his 10-year-old daughter Ila, as a homage to a similar photostream by author- photographer-art historian Teju Cole.

Amitava’s unfussy and creative candidness about tweeting things personal, which he prefers to see as “grappling with a form of writing” came in the wake of a weekend of vigorous debate on how social media platforms were bringing the private under unblinking public scrutiny—the immediate hook being the sudden, tragic death of Sunanda Pushkar after her no-holds-barred Twitter war with Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar (over the latter’s alleged liaison with her husband Shashi Tharoor, which was consumed with much amusement by their vicarious, at times vicious, followers). The Tharoor incident is not a stand-alone case. Be it a confidentiality clause or diplomatic tact, a professional decision or personal affair or even a death of someone close to you, social media has become a stage to play out the classified and the confidential (see infographic) by the celebrities and the aam aadmi alike. The payback? Spats, comebacks, breakdowns, meltdowns, resignations, embarrassments, humiliations, kerfuffles....

And it’s not something confined to India alone. “US Congressman Anthony Weiner’s tweet of his, let’s call it, torso, to a young woman in Seattle is perhaps the most egregious example of a US politician behaving badly online,” says Amitava. No surprise then that Weiner became a butt of late-night comedy shows.

But the larger question here is why. Why this urge and urgency to share it all? What is it about a platform like Twitter or Facebook that makes people bare and dare? Is it that the immediacy, speed and reach allows them the easiest way to extend the boundaries of their secluded, lonely lives, get instant attention and fan the curiosity of someone out there who they don’t even know? And why is propriety and moderation getting thrown out of the window in the world of virtual exchanges? Adman-columnist Santosh Desai calls Twitter a “broadcast system to the universe”. The tweets are often “thought bubbles”, “something you mutter” without a full sense of what public means. “The spur of the moment opinion or feeling acquires public currency,” he says. “The unraveling of the human being, the opening up of the closed box then becomes a new source of stimulation and pleasure,” he says. “I sometimes wonder how we shared before Twitter. We talk about what we like, don’t like at the drop of a hat. At times you are vulnerable and vent things out without an agenda and without knowing the repercussions. We creative bunch are like that,” says popular actress Divya Dutta.

According to Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, private information is a currency in the global attention economy. “One of the many ways of climbing the attention economy is to divulge private information. Those in public life like filmstars and socialites understand this completely and exploit all traditional broadcast channels and contemporary multicast channels like social media to amass public attention,” he says. Look closely and the online space is no different from the real. There are as many exceptions as there are rules. So for every exhibitionist handle that exploits our latent voyeurism, there is a Natasha Badhwar, one of the most life-affirming presences on Twitter. For her, like Amitava, sharing is a mode of expression. “Sharing gives us agency. We take back the power to tell our story, express our views, share our version in our own words,” she says. According to her, “honest” sharing fuels empathy. “It is contagious, it makes the reader want to share too,” she says. And from that sharing could emerge a new pool of acquaintances, friends and well-wishers. It may not be a virtual escape from the real but a journey and connect back to the actual, an expansion of the human circle than a depletion of it.

But not all our friends and followers need necessarily be sympathetic. Often they are also brutally savage. “The anonymity allows people to say exactly what they want without considering the implications. They don’t realise that it’s not just a handle but a human being they are talking to,” says Nikhil Pahwa, founder of medianama.com. Amitava compares it to drone warfare. “The technology of remote destruction has introduced a new experience of war, and a new logic of killing. You can kill with greater abandon; you can strike in unexpected places; you are confronted with few consequences of your fatal mistakes. Similarly, Twitter allows a mode of social exchange with less culpability. There are very few consequences for trolls, but disastrous ones for their victims,” he says.

But surely that doesn’t mean that you blur all the lines between the private and the public? How to exercise caution? How much to open up (or not) and how much of your core to keep to yourself? Life, after all, is too complex and fragile for blame games and finger-pointing at social media alone. It’s those using it who need to own up. “People need to take responsibility for what they say. It’s like someone telling me how he was abused for 15 minutes on the phone when he could have easily cut the call,” says Nikhil Pahwa. “It’s a modern form of communication which you have to embrace but there’s a line you must draw. For instance, my wife and I never interact on FB or Twitter. I keep the family to myself. Jokes are fine but I don’t abuse or use swear words,” says actor Ashwin Mushran. “There has to be a sense of decorum. I won’t put out what I gossip about with my friends. I have no strategy but am guarded by my own belief system,” says actor Rajat Kapoor.

“It’s normal human nature to express. Be it anger or frustration, as a counsellor I tell people to not suppress emotions but some moderation and etiquette need to apply in cyber space,” says Mukta Puntambekar deputy director of Pune-based Muktangan Rehabilitation Centre. “You have to accept that your followers and friends will have access to details about you. You have to exercise discretion in saving something of yourself for yourself. There are areas that need not be opened up for all,” says actor-comedian Vir Das, who recently posted an open letter on FB—‘Twitter Bad? Facebook Evil? or We Stupid?’—on the pointlessness of blaming social media for the Tharoor family tragedy. To extend the argument further, and add another layer to it, aren’t we also living in times when privacy itself is evolving, asks Rajesh Lalwani, CEO of blogworks and a self-confessed people-watcher. “My grandmother would not even eat in public. But we eat in restaurants, on the streets,” he says.

Privacy is also becoming an ambiguous, vague and complex entity. Getting tagged in a friend’s photo compromises your privacy without your involvement or participation. “The line between private and public has mostly dissolved because of the temporal persistence of digital traces in cyberspace, the global nature of the network and the ubiquitous and pervasive surveillance state,” says Abraham. “On Twitter and FB, things get circulated...what we put up, whether it’s a tweet, an update or a picture, is permanent unlike memory,” says Desai. The digital trail stays online. “We are leaving our digital footprints behind. What we post might be easy but the implications of it are complicated,” says writer, filmmaker and media observer Amit Khanna.

According to him, there is a gap between the progression of technology and society. “There are newer windows but our minds are not growing apace to handle the connected world in a mature way,” he says. So one needs to be additionally circumspect about what we do online, how much of us we put out there. The ‘creative minds’ don’t see it as cut and dried. Natasha thinks that sharing can make people vulnerable to ridicule. “Confronting and embracing that vulnerability is the only way forward. These are not real fears to cling to, these are fears to shed as we grow and realise the extent of our individual power.” Amitava says he has seen several careers destroyed because of a single tweet. But he’d hate to back down and be cautious. As he puts it, “You’ve got to push the envelope and experiment with expression. I hope that when my wrong moment comes, people will be forgiving.” Amen to that.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/outlook-namrata-joshi-january-25-2014-dangers-of-birdsong

Public Art, Technology and Citizenship - Blank Noise Project

denisse — 2015-04-17T10:43:55Z

Jasmeen Patheja speaks about the active citizen in the digital age, its challenges in the public and private spheres and interdisciplinary methods to overcome them.


CHANGE-MAKER: Jasmeen Patheja

PROJECT: Blank Noise Project: A volunteer-led arts collective community

STRATEGY OF CHANGE:
 Fostering an active, participatory and horizontal model of citizenship,
 empowering its volunteers to participate politically and address issues
 of street sexual harassments in the public sphere.

METHOD OF CHANGE: Public space interventions using community art and technology.

To open the interview series for the Making Change project, I interviewed Jasmeen Patheja. She is the founder of Blank Noise, a volunteer-led arts collective community that started in Bangalore and has now spread to Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Calcutta, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, and Lucknow. It seeks to address street sexual harassment and violence by triggering dialogue and building testimonials around notions of "teasing" and "harassment" in the public discourse. The collective has garnered attention and momentum since it was founded in 2003, and ever since, it’s fostering a model of active citizenship across India through its volunteer network. The story of Blank Noise and the working of community art with technology highlight the need to create spaces of expression and experience in which civic and political creativity can develop and unfold organically.

One of the main reflections stemming from my conversation with Jasmeen was the question of how technologies can create a sense of ownership and active citizenship. At the moment, we are moving on to a scenario in which technology has a more pervasive and complex presence. It is no longer judged merely on its connective utility, but is also understood as an actor, a space and a context within the ecosystem of social change and political democratic systems. For this reason, it is paramount to get to know the citizen that is being exposed to, influenced and impacted by these technologies and identify the ways in which his self-identity, social membership and political participation (King and Waldron 1988, Turner 1986, 1990) are being molded by them.

In this post, I aim to unpack ‘active citizenship’ drawing from political science literature around citizenship and civic engagement. The analysis will be based on two dichotomies proposed by Turner: the tension between the active-passive citizen, and the contradictions between its private and public presence. I will then refer to Westmeister and Kahnein, Kabeer, Gaventa and Bennett to identify the type of citizen that Jasmeen Patheja hopes to yield through her project and the main challenges of manoeuvering in the public space. Finally, I will look at some of the tactics taken by Blank Noise to reconcile these tensions through community art and technology. This exploration of citizenship is a first stage in the journey of detecting the undertones of citizen action for social change in the digital era.

Unpacking Citizenship

ACTIVE VS. PASSIVE CITIZEN

What is the difference between an active and a passive citizen?

A passive citizen comes to existence as a subject, recipient or client of the state (...) regards its rights as privileges handed down from above (...)complies with norms yet does not act to change circumstances (...)and its security and survival are merely determined by constitutional and common law traditions

Turner places the citizenship question on two points of contention. The first: the vectorial nature of citizenship and how to recognize an ‘active or passive’ citizen. According to his analysis, a citizen either comes to existence from above as mere subject of the state, or from below as an active bearer of its rights (Mann 1987, Ullmann 1975, Turner 1990). The force and direction from which the citizen emerges has important implications for the self-identity of the individual, its confidence and disposition for political participation (Merrifield, 2001). A passive citizen regards its rights as privileges handed down from above, in such a way that citizenship becomes a strategy for social integration and cooperation (Mann, 1986). Westheimer and Kahne find the manifestation of this model in what they call a “Personally Responsible Citizen”: a dutiful citizen who complies with norms, pays taxes and obeys laws, yet does not act to change the circumstances of other communities (2004). However, defining the citizen as a passive actor constraints its role within its network. If the citizen’ security and survival are merely determined by constitutional and common law traditions, and the negotiation between institutions and the individual (Weber 1958 - refer to Turner 1990), the individual is a disempowered recipient or client (Cornwall, 2007) as opposed to the proactive agent Blank Noise looks to recruit and shape through heir interventions.

Patheja, as shown by the interview, aims to disrupt the passive citizen model by fostering political participation and putting its counterpart: ’the active citizen’ forward. Blank Noise believes the citizen must ground its claims from the grassroots and grow from below; yet still be visible and present in the public space, redefining problematic concepts looming in society’s social imaginary; what Turner would describe as revolutionary citizenship (1990).

How is your practice building a stronger model of citizenship?
Change cannot happen only at one level. It would involve more people and different groups from different communities. For example, with citizen-led street action; we can’t end it there. It needs to push home the cause and make [the issues] visible with the government. How do we work with the government? Learning to ask and not assume it’s all their responsibility, but learning to assert our citizenship. What does it mean to do this? What does it mean to ask for safer cities in a way that it doesn’t become somebody else’s business entirely but that it’s about being able to see we are a society. We must understand the process of citizenship; what it means to be in a democratic country and what means to be a female citizen in it.

Safe City Pledge - Delhi

Safe City Pledge - Mumbai
Courtesy of Blank Noise blog: http://bit.do/fHMm

The message is: “this is your city, this is your space. Don’t be apologetic for your presence” And over time, Action Heros are reporting change: ”I'm getting my space. I'm not thinking twice about what I have to wear.” [...]So it was not only about a vocabulary shift, but a shift in attitude.

An active citizen comes from below as an active bearer of its rights (...), feels impelled to engage and mobilize its network (...) keeps government and community members in check (...) and evolves with a higher sense of individual purpose favoring solidarity and maintaining networks of community action.

Westheimer and Kahne label this stronger orientation towards a social-change approach as the second degree of civic engagement or as the behaviour of a ‘participatory citizen’; an individual who feels impelled to engage and mobilize its network, skills and action to respond to a community need. This participation impetus is one of Patheja’s main expectations from its Action Hero Network. However, this entails relying on intimate shifts of behaviour and attitude among the volunteers, which are in essence hard to demand, inculcate and entrench by a third party.

Their approach also reflects a vision of citizenship that relies on collective action (Montgomery, 2004) to, not only keep the government in check as suggested by Westheimer and Kahnne, but other community and society members as well. From Bennett’s point of view and taking the role of information technologies into account, he would define the ideal Action Hero as a self-actualizing citizen. In contrast to its counterpart: the dutiful citizen, who sees its obligation to participate in government-centered activities, the AC evolves with higher sense of individual purpose, favouring and maintaining networks of community action, backed up by a growing distrust in media and the government. In this sense the role of technology is also paramount to how Blank Noise spreads its predicament and expands its outreach:

What is the role of technology and media in your project?
Using the web for example, we happened to stumble upon blogging and we realized there was a community there. Once [Action Heroes] started blogging and the press started writing about it, it created a community further. So, going back to the fact that our constant thread of conversation has been the web, there is a large percentage of the English speaking youth who are action hero agents anidd now have the responsibility of taking the conversations and actions forward.

On the other hand, this is not always the case. In Delhi we did an event in collaboration with Action Aid. Many of the Action Aid volunteers weren’t necessarily on Facebook. They were people who were largely Hindi speaking; their stories were about harassment in slums and these were men and women wanting to do something about the issue. So being a loose volunteer is one way, but identifying different communities is also important. Every space is a point of engagement and we use different forms of media to enable that.

Citizen participation, communication and mobilization mechanisms, mediated by the state in the past, are now taken up by the people in the form of social protest, civil disobedience, digital activism, consumerism, etc. (Bennett, 2008). The emphasis on collective action also calls for a broader understanding of the citizen, away from the state-conferred rights and duties, and a definition that includes solidarity and membership to broader communities (Ellison 1997), Heater and Kabeer defines this as a “horizontal view” that stresses the relationship between citizens over that of the state and the individual (Heater 2002, Kabeer 2007) and Berlin has also made the connection between group identity and affiliation as a building block of citizenship (1969).

[on Giving Letters to Strangers] We trigger a conversation and it takes its own journey. Over time, what does it take to lean back and relax? Each person participates establishing their own level of comfort and every person’s narrative is different. [The project is] happening in Delhi while it is happening in Bangalore; allowing it to happen in a very individual, self-confrontational and at the same time, collective experience. They are doing this alone knowing that others are doing the same.

Dear Stranger:
Giving out letters to strangers in the streets of Bangalore. Courtesy of Blank Noise blog: http://bit.do/fHJw

In this way, Blank Noise has envisioned and designed a project that fosters an active, participatory, self-actualizing and horizontal model of citizenship. This combination builds a citizen prototype with a positive disposition and attitude to civic action; traits that Gaventa identifies as elements of empowerment and political agency that can derive into higher possibilities for social change. Having citizens identify community’s ailments as their own and their network’s responsibility, results in conversations that act as causal nexus of community action. The main challenge at the moment is the implementation of this model. To what extent will the Action Hero represent this model uniformly and steadily, preventing dissonance between Blank Noise’s discourse and its practice. And secondly, how will Blank Noise volunteers negotiate their political participation between public and private spaces?

PRIVATE VS. PUBLIC SPACE

Where should the active citizen operate?

The second tension on citizenship, as identified by Turner, is its political expression on the public arena versus its manifestation on the individual’s private space. We asked Jasmeen about the crises and spaces in which Blank Noise is operating:

To what crisis is the project responding to?
The project responds to the crises and experiences of street harassment. To the sense of getting defensive, agitated, angry; creating a wall and feeling vulnerable in a city. Blank Noise was initiated at a time were street harassment was disregarded and dismissed as teasing. This ‘eve-teasing’, just going by the pulse of things, included concepts of molestation and sexual violence. There was denial, there was silence.

First point on the public vs. private dilemma lies on the issue at hand. Volunteers are working to re-conceptualize social norms around ‘safety’, ‘agency’ and ‘gender’, that are not only deeply entrenched in society, but that can also be traced back to the private domain of traditions and culture at the household level. By openly discussing ‘sexual harassment’ in the public space and enabling volunteers to express and act on the basis of a new understanding of citizenship and freedom, the collective is possibly also redefining dynamics at the private space of its volunteers. What is more, the motivation and determination to be an Action Hero, as mentioned by Patheja, must be grounded in a "personal shift and challenge".

How does this translate it into citizens taking ownership of the cause and sustained behavioral change in everyday practices?
Anger is a good starting point. It is worrying when there is no anger. And then it has to be a personal shift. We’ve learned from conversations and feedback that volunteers who would say: “we came to address the issue and we are realizing that we are doing something in ourselves”. So what is the spirit of an Action Hero? Allowing something to shift and challenging something in yourself. Last year for example we worked towards having locality specific Action Hero networks and on how this intuitive citizen can become a full citizen, in terms of being an informed citizen as well.

Acton Hero Game. Courtesy of Blank Noise blog: http://bit.do/fHKq

The expectation of a personal pledge at the individual, community and public level, signals the project is blurring the lines between the private and public domain and fostering the politicization of the citizen at all fronts. This suggests that in order for the claims and behaviour of Action Heroes to become sustainable, they must also trickle into the common citizen’s routine. In words of Arendt: “the space of appearance comes into being whenever men are together in the manner of speech and action, predating all formal constitutions of the public realm” (1989). Establishing the private-public space as a common ground works towards bringing consistency and coherence to the interventions, yet it remains in many ways problematic and threatening to individual freedoms.

Does your project create new spaces for citizen expression and action?
Our role is to build testimonials and translate them back into the public domain. An example of this is the blogathon that happened in 2006, initiated by our Action Hero. She said: let’s invite bloggers to share their experiences of street harassment. 4-5 male and female Action Heroes made the event happen and in a couple of days we had hundreds and hundreds of testimonials and people talking about this for the first time. Maybe it was the first time speaking about it, remembering things that happened ages ago and that they had never shared. Suddenly the web was seen as a space where people could speak. Suddenly people had so much to say about the issue, the person dismissing the issue and their relationship with their body and the city.

Talk To Me:
Creating spaces for conversation and collaboration. Courtesy of Blank Noise blog: http://bit.do/fHKq

Turner reflects on the French revolution tradition to shed light on this particular challenge for active citizenship, as what bound Frenchmen together was their citizen identity (Baker 1987). Passing on from state subjects, to actively voicing their political, civic and social aspirations coupled with meaningful mechanisms of participation. However, how do we reconcile this tradition of positive democracy with the American understanding of citizenship that enshrines the autonomous sanctity of the private space. American individualism values personal success and the main way to exercise political participation is through voluntary associations that do not represent a large-scale force -or a threat- with enough power to shape their lives (Bellah et. al 2008, Turner 1990). Translating this to the Bangalorean context: a changing society in which community- based traditions in the household are coexisting with an agitated and growingly individualist youth culture; the issues and interventions must be addressed in an implicational manner. The connections between the issue and individual freedoms must be made, in order for these actors to be willing to politicize their action in both the public and private spheres.

MIDDLE CLASS ACTIVISM

Can everybody be an active citizen?

The second challenge is rooted in the socio-economic group that comprises the body of volunteers of Blank Noise. I asked Jasmeen the extent to which the Action Hero Network was being led by middle class citizens.

Are you only reaching out to the middle class activist that has the resources to be part of the Blank Noise project?
Yes and no. A large percentage of our volunteers are usually web-savvy, English speaking, teenagers or in their early 20s. Others have been around for the last decade. The mainstream media also reports back mainly to the web-savvy groups. But it is also about one action hero inspiring another Action Hero. I find [the project] fascinating in terms of the spaces it leaks into. Some people tell me they were at their religious meeting and they overheard two women talking about the project, who were not necessarily web-savvy. Ultimately the media is not only reporting us but we see them as point of engagement in which more and more citizens take ownership of the issue. Although our network is largely urban middle class, we are at the point where we collaborate largely with other groups that are working with different communities so it completes the entire picture. The question is: how do you take the conversation forward? What can be that medium? and what kind of technology can get to people?

“We use different strategies to enable dialogue across communities. It could be on the street, on the blog, within a workshop; the web has been a constant space. If you are an Action Hero, yes you may be web-savvy, but you also carry the responsibility to take the conversation to another space."

Jasmeen Patheja

This demographic is ultimately an interest group leading a movement and has taken on the responsibility of spreading the call to action among its network. Foregoing the assumption that every Indian citizen wants to challenge concepts of sexual harassment in the city, the fact that one group is spreading a specific opinion puts forward a tension between the dynamics of public social protest and the existence of privatized dissent. Turner reflects on Mill’s On Liberty and shows how this could entail a threat of spreading mass opinion to the extent it makes all people alike (Turner, 1990).

Kabeer also highlights this by exploring the tension between universality versus particularity — a debate that questions the extent to which human rights advocacy in the public sphere will be equally received and supported by every group, given diversity of opinion within as well as obstacles to freedom of speech. Nyamu-Musembi attempts to bridge this dichotomy by framing universality as “the experience of resistance to general oppression” and particularity as “how resistance speaks to each relevant social context”. In order to have the issue speak to all citizen groups, Blank Noise is currently also depending on the the ability of its Action Heroes to pass on a message that speaks to the different needs and cultural sensibilities of communities who do not belong to the Anglo-speaking middle class it is currently operating with.

In response to having the protest of a specific social group translate into homogenized dissent, Jasmeen is looking to increase her outreach by approaching and working with other groups.

How can you build effective solidarity networks among middle class activists, their networks and further communities?
It is an attitude we are trying to push forward: have that conversation with your grandma; with your domestic help. We would love to do something with domestic workers for example. We don’t hear enough stories of who empowers or harasses them. That’s definitely a rising concern within the collective. We really need to have the complete spectrum and what kind of technology or strategies can be used to get it. Identifying these groups is a proposed future project and also an ongoing preoccupation. For now, our role is to trigger conversations and have them take their own journey.

METHODS FOR CHANGE

How does the combination of art and technology foster active citizenship?

Some of the strategies Blank Noise has devised to overcome these obstacles relate back to the interdisciplinary design of its interventions. First, they are designed to be highly visible and aimed at triggering dialogue. This enables opinions and thoughts to flow from the private space into the public realm. Also, community art and technology as tools of expression and reflection, work as effective channels for responses to flow back and forth between both spaces.

Why did you take a multi-stakeholder approach and brought together technology and art?
The entire collective is really based on defining strategies and identifying approaches to breaking denial and building conversation. Our role is enabling dialogue across forms of media and using different strategies to enable dialogue across communities. There are also lots of questions of how to create an art practice that can be collaborative and participatory. Where does art exist? How can art exist, be, feel confrontational? Can arte provoke? How can we build testimonials? Could be on the street, on the blog, twitter or within a workshop. The web has been a constant space. We also work with the web in a way that we have a growing community of Action Heroes, and if you are web-savvy, you carry the responsibility to take the conversation to another space.

Twitter campaign. Courtesy of: http://bit.do/fHLK

Public art installation to redefine sexual harassment and eve-teasing. Courtesy of Caravan Magazine: http://bit.do/fHLV

Bennett and his work on civic engagement in the digital age, notes that one of the main strategies for positive civic engagement is nurturing creative and expressive actions in this generation.

How does this approach work towards creating sustainable change?
We are creating tool kits for different ideas so the community can take it forward. There are many creative processes that equip them to initiate action in a community space. For instance, the Yelahanka Action Heroes workshop (http://yelahankaactionheroes.wordpress.com/), was a one month initiative that got Sristhi students to arrive to action heroism through games, like the Hahaha Sangha for example. We invited women out of their homes, and we would speak through pure laughter, gibberish and a sense of play. In doing that, people felt they knew each other. Anonymity was broken, people felt comfortable and safety was established. We are working towards creating safe public spaces and going beyond the biases that come from language or through age. But through the Hahaha Sangha we found there is still a need for facilitators to continue the project with the purpose of creating a safe space. Also, one of our interns is in charge of creating an Action Hero College Network and spreading information about different events, calendars, etc. It is still fluid but we are moving in that direction. Action Heroes are the strength of the project.

Hahaha Sangha sessions - Courtesy of Blank Noise blog http://bit.do/fHMb

The ideal of an engaged youth must be sustained by the empowerment of young people; getting them to recognize their personal expression and identities in collective spaces (Bennett, 2008). By setting in place mechanisms and opportunities to critically dissect societal problems and develop a political perspective as put forward by Westheimer and Kahne, as well as the awareness, self-identity and political confidence to act, as noted by Gaventa, the Blank Noise interventions become a context in which active citizenship is more likely.

Conclusion

This analysis, part of the Methods of Social Change research project, aimed to shed light on how change-makers such as Blank Noise still place a heavy consideration on the notion of citizenship when designing, framing and implementing their projects. What is more, it is paramount to identify the working characteristics of an ‘active citizen’ and reflect on whether these are desirable and necessary in the populace to make political and social change more likely. It also contributes to the Making Change project by unpacking the workings of a change actor that is not confined to the ‘category of citizen’ but is still closely linked to processes of citizen action and social change in Bangalore.

As seen throughout this post, the analysis of our citizen is not grounded on its relationship with the state, but instead on its disposition, self-identity and notion of social membership. After identifying our ideal active citizen: an active bearer of his rights, that defines itself horizontally in relation to other citizens and their rights, participates in political processes and is informed about and at odds with power imbalances, the Blank Noise experience demonstrated spatial tensions in implementing this ideal and practice in the public and private realms. Designing strategies and identifying technologies that enable a flow of thought and action between both spaces is a way of restructuring the ecosystem in which volunteers from the Action Hero Network interact with each other, reclaim their citizenship and alter the status quo from within. While Blank Noise is not starting a revolution, it is consolidating a process of steady and growing resistance in the public and private discourse of sexual harassment and eve-teasing in the city.

Shah also notes there are implicit codes allowing only certain people to embrace this model of citizenship. This was evident on the demographic that comprises the activist bases of Blank Noise and the risks of homogenizing the political space with their discourse of change. Jasmeen Patheja brought this point forward herself, but with full confidence on the ability of dialogue and conversation to keep luring other social groups and communities into joining the debate. We discussed opportunities from exploring the foreign women experience in the public space in India to expanding the Blank Noise basis through simultaneous international interventions enabled and coordinated through technology. The network is ever-growing and its mechanisms of change are constantly innovating and adapting through its content. In the meantime, the ‘active citizen’ remains at the core of it all, pushing the project forward; fighting among other battles, that of its identity’s reassertion in the landscape of change.

Sources

Arendt, Hannah (1989) The Human Condition. Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press.
Baker, Keith Michael. The French Revolution and the creation of modern political culture. Vol. 3. Pergamon Press, 1987.
Bennett, W. Lance. "Changing citizenship in the digital age." Civic life online: Learning how digital media can engage youth 1 (2008): 1-24.
Berlin, Isaiah. "Two concepts of liberty." Berlin, I (1969): 118-172.
Bellah, Robert Neelly, ed. Habits of the heart: individualism and commitment in American life: with a new preface. University of California Pr, 2008.
Cornwall, Andrea, and Vera Schatten Coelho, eds. Spaces for change?: the politics of citizen participation in new democratic arenas. Vol. 4. Zed Books, 2007.
Ellison, N. (1997) ‘Towards a new social politics: citizenship and reflexivity in late modernity’, Sociology, 31(4): 697–717.
Gaventa, John, and Rajesh Tandon “Citizen engagements in a globalizing world." Globalizing citizens: New dynamics of inclusion and exclusion (2010): 3-30.
Heater, D. (2002) World Citizenship: Cosmopolitan Thinking and Its Opponents, London: Continuum
Kabeer, Naila, ed. Inclusive citizenship: Meanings and expressions. Vol. 1. Zed Books, 2005.
Kathryn Montgomery et al., Youth as E-Citizens: Engaging the Digital Generation. Center for Social Media, 2004. Retrieved February 15, 2007. http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/ecitizens/project.htm.
Mann, Michael. "Ruling class strategies and citizenship". Sociology 21, no.3 (1987): 339-354
Shah, Nishant “Whose Change is it Anyways? Hivos Knowledge Program. April 30, 2013.
Turner, Bryan. Outline of a Theory of Citizenship. Sociology (May 1990), 24 (2), pg. 189-217
Westheimer, Joel, and Joseph Kahne. "What kind of citizen? The politics of educating for democracy." American educational research journal 41, no. 2 (2004): 237-269

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/blank-noise-citizenship

It's That Eavesdrop Endemic

praskrishna — 2016-07-30T15:45:31Z

Whatsapp Says It’s Snoop-Proof Now, But There’s Always A Way In

The article by Arindam Mukherjee was published in Outlook on July 25, 2016. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

Lock and Key

WhatsApp says it has end-to-end encryption, so no one, not even WhatsApp, can snoop into calls.

Experts say any encryption can be broken by security agencies. Android phones can also get infected by malware.

For years, a Delhi power-broker used to call from nondescript landline numbers, changing them ever so often. Of late, he has started using WhatsApp calls for ‘sensitive’ conversations. He’s not alone. WhatsApp has revealed that over 100 million voice calls are being made on the social network every day. That’s over 1,100 calls a second! India is one of the biggest user bases of WhatsApp. And many Indian users are making the app their main engine for voice calls.

One reason for this shift is that WhatsApp calls are seen to be essentially free (though they indeed have data charges). But for a lot of people, the chief allure lies in the touted fact that WhatsApp calling is far more secure than mobile calling. In April, the app introduced end-to-end encryption for its messages and voice calls.

Consequent to this, Sudhir Yadav, a Gurgaon-based software engineer filed a PIL in the Supreme Court seeking a ban on WhatsApp on the grounds that its calls are so safe that it could be misused by ‘terrorists’. Last month, a court in Brazil issued orders to block WhatsApp for 72 hours after it failed to provide the authorities access to encrypted data.

Are WhatsApp calls really impenetrable? WhatsApp believes so and says that the encryption key is held by the two persons at the two ends of the message or call and no one, not even the company, can snoop in. “The calls are end-to-end encrypted so WhatsApp and third parties can’t listen to them,” a WhatsApp spokesperson told Outlook. This is precisely Yadav’s concern. “Because the encryption is end to end, the government can’t break it and WhatsApp cannot provide the decryption key,” he says.

However, experts do not buy this argument. They believe everything on the Internet is vulnerable. “Anything that uses a phone number is vulnerable,” says Kiran Jonnalagadda, founder of technology platform HasGeek. “Anyone can impersonate the phone number by getting a duplicate SIM and get access to a phone. There are also bugs in the system which security agencies use.”

WhatsApp uses a person’s phone number to open an account and authenticate a user. So, if the government or a security agency wants to get access to a WhatsApp call, it would be very easy. “Telecom companies cannot access these calls as they are encrypted before they reach the network. But the government can. It just has to replicate a SIM to access any number and its messages or voice calls,” says Aravind R.S., a volunteer for Save the Internet campaign and founder of community chat app Belong,

There are other modes of attack as well. It is a given that Android phones, which form the majority of mobile phones used in India today, are most vulnerable to malware attacks. So, even if the app itself is secure, the device is not and if the device is attacked, just about everything in it can be tapped into. For instance, there’s the ‘man in the middle’ mode of attack, where a third person gets into a call and mirrors the messages to both the sides and relays the messages or calls to a different server. There is also the SS7 signalling protocol that can help hackers get into networks and calls. These attacks can make even a WhatsApp encryption vulnerable.

Security agencies and hackers routinely implant viruses into the phones of people they are monitoring. Once a phone is “infected”, everything is accessible. And Android phones are extremely prone to attacks from malware. “It's not perfectly secure, especially if there is any virus in an Android phone, which is what security agencies work with. They have many more ways to get into a phone. There is no defence against that,” says Aravind,

Experts believe it is possible that US intelligence agencies like the FBI and the NSA may have access to or are capable of breaking into even the WhatsApp encryption. This is proven by the recent incident where the FBI, after being refused by Apple to open up an iPhone used by a terrorist, broke into the phone by itself.

“If you are on the NSA list, there is nothing you can do to protect yourself,” says Pranesh Prakash, policy director with the Centre for Internet and Society. “They will find a way to get into your phone. In WhatsApp, many things like photographs and videos are not encrypted; these can get access to a person’s account.”

In India, the debate on access to encrypted phones has been on since the government engaged with Blackberry a few years ago. “There is no law governing an Over The Top (OTT) service like WhatsApp. If the government orders decryption of a call and WhatsApp cannot comply, it will become illegal,” says cyber lawyer Asheeta Regidi. The government’s seeming comfort level with all this legal ambiguity is yet another indicator that all is not what is seems with WhatsApp. As for callers, they would do well to speak discreetly on any network.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/outlook-july-25-2016-arindam-mukherjee-its-that-eavesdrop-endemic