Centre for Internet and Society

Internet Governance and India: The Way Forward

praskrishna — 2014-02-03T10:33:53Z

Snehashish Ghosh is participating in this event organized by the Observer Research Foundation on January 22 in New Delhi.

The Internet Governance Forum’s (IGF) purpose is to support the United Nations Secretary-General in carrying out the mandate from the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) with regard to convening a new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue. The eighth edition of the Internet Governance Forum started on October 22, in Bali, Indonesia. Representatives of governments, intergovernmental organisations, private sector, technical and academic community and civil society gathered together to discuss Internet governance related issues, under the general theme of “Building Bridges – Enhancing Multistakeholder Cooperation for Growth and Sustainable Development”. Cybersecurity, open internet, freedom of expression, protection of human rights were some of the topics discussed and debated at the three day conference. There was also a mutual consensus amongst the participants on the multistakeholder model for internet governance.

Programme

10.30: Registration/Tea
11.00: Opening Remarks by Mahima Kaul, Fellow-ORF
11.10: Subi Chaturvedi, Assistant Professor Journalism & Communication, Lady Shri Ram College for Women & Founder Trustee Media For Change
11.25: Dr. Anja Kovacs, Director, Internet Democracy Project, New Delhi.
11.40: Dr. Govind, CEO, National Internet Exchange of India, Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India.
11.55: Virat Bhatia, Chairman, FICCI Communications & Digital Economy Committee and President, IEA AT&T, SouthAsia
12.10: Question and Answer
12.50: Concluding remarks
13.00: Lunch, ORF Lounge.

Speakers Biography

Subi Chaturvedi, Asstt. Professor Journalism & Communication, Lady Shri Ram College for Women & Founder Trustee Media For Change.

Ms. Chaturvedi strives to promote the role and participation of the youth, women and girls in ICT and the policy dialogue and decision making, along with Improving e-governance and deepening democracy through 'media for change'. She also works on building bridges between different stakeholders in IG and enabling conversations on the national and domestic level on important policy concerns such as cybersecurity, openness, universality, human rights, permission less innovation and freedom of speech and expression online, through roundtables, workshops, public hearings and youth meets (Internet Dialogues) for India.

She also actively participates in domestic as well as International meetings on Internet governance and enhanced cooperation to represent her stakeholder perspective, especially as a women academician and a member of the media and civil society from a developing country and an emerging economy. She often writes opinion and edits pieces for national dailies, journals and provides inputs and commentary to the electronic media to inform the debate and dialogue on Internet Governance policy questions

Dr. Anja Kovacs, Director, Internet Democracy Project, Delhi
Dr. Anja Kovacs directs the Internet Democracy Project, Delhi, where her work focuses on questions regarding freedom of expression, cybersecurity and the architecture of Internet governance as they relate to the Internet and democracy. She is currently also a member of the of the Investment Committee of the Digital Defenders Partnership and of the interim Steering Group of Best Bits, a global network of civil society members. In addition, Anja has worked as an international consultant on Internet issues, including for the United Nations Development Programme Asia Pacific and the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Mr. Frank La Rue, and has been an IREX Fellow and a Fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore. Prior to focusing her work on the information society, Anja researched, lectured and consulted on a wide range of development-related issues, including at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, and Ambedkar University, Delhi. She obtained her PhD in Development Studies from the University of East Anglia in the UK.

Dr. Govind, CEO, National Internet Exchange of India, Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India

Virat Bhatia, Chairman, FICCI Communications & Digital Economy Committee and President, IEA AT&T, SouthAsia
As Chairman of the FICCI Communications and Digital Economy Committee, Mr. Bhatia currently leads the combined advocacy and policy reform efforts of nearly 150 members - representing leading telecom industry associations, mobile service providers, domestic and long distance service providers, ISPs, internet companies, social media, infrastructure and tower companies, device manufacturers, consultants, legal experts and other related stakeholders in India’s ICT space. He is appointed as a member of the Joint Working Group (JWG) which drafted the “Guidelines on Protection of National Critical Information Infrastructure”, later released by the NSA in June 2013. He serves on the Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) of DeitY for India IGF, and in the past, on the JWG dealing with issues of cyber security.

At AT&T, Mr. Bhatia serves as President, IEA, for the South Asia region. He has responsibility for supporting all of AT&T’s businesses, corporate development activities, new investments and business strategies. He has been involved with the digital economy sector since 1994.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/internet-governance-and-india-the-way-forward

Social Notworking - 'Murder by Twitter'

praskrishna — 2014-02-04T07:02:30Z

Suketu Mehta (@suketumehta) - terrible news about sunanda tharoor. this is murder by twitter.

The article by Malini Nair published in the Times of India quotes Nishant Shah.

Even before forensic science has declared the reasons behind Sunanda Pushkar's shocking death on Friday night, social media has been accused of murder. Writer Suketu Mehta wasn't the only one to point fingers. "First murder by @TwitterIndia , claps, fellow twitter matured guns!" is how another tweet went. Besides the deadly cocktail of depression, drugs, a strained marriage, questions have been raised about whether the vicious banter and collective howls of derision on social media over her very public meltdown — again on social media — pushed her over the edge.
Have we, the tweeple, in our eagerness to share every detail of our lives over an internet megaphone, not quite understood what the social media can do, especially its pitfalls? Is the line between the public and private blurring too fast? Commentators say that the rules that govern human and social behaviour haven't changed, and the fault lies in how we negotiate the cyber turf.

Can our digital lives have serious offline consequences? Nishant Shah, director, research , Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore, says people need to realize that though twitter amplifies everything, but the ability to hurt, be mean, fight, question, critique and bully is not new.

"These are human practices , which replay themselves across different media forms. What is perhaps new is that our most personal and darkest desires have become available for public spectacle," says Shah.

That the twitterati can be brutal has been shown often enough this last year. When Tehelka editor Tarun Tejpal was mired in allegations of sexual harassment, his daughter was hounded on social media. Recently when novelist Lavanya Sankaran wrote an op-ed for New York Times defending the decent Indian man, she was royally derided, so much so that another journalist Rahul Bhatia tweeted in her defence, asking people to lay off.

Sunanda's story hurtled towards a tragedy in a space of 48 hours after she went public. As Shah points out it wasn't as though there were no affairs and scandals before the dawn of social media but the tangle would have spun out differently and less brutally in another time and age. It all began, as Pushkar admitted to some papers and later denied, with the spilling of alleged BBMs sent by Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar to Tharoor on his twitter account.

Predictably, the effect of the first round of revelations was explosive. In fact, Pushkar herself appeared taken aback by the fact that a twitter spat ended up making front page headlines.

The entire drama which, in another age, would have played out at home or a circle of family, friends and acquaintances — and at the most in far less dramatic gossip columns and on TV— was up on social media, provide enormous vicarious pleasure to thousands of social media bystanders. That Pushkar herself set the virtual assault in motion only adds to the bleak irony of it all. This was also not the first time Pushkar took a spat to twitter. @SPTVrocks tweeted about her fight with a journalist in Dubai earlier this month.

Clinical psychologist Varkha Chulani says it is the personality behind the media usage not the form itself that is to be blamed. "People choose to talk about their private lives to impress others, to get attention. We forget what is real and what is virtual." Shah, however, believes that we live in a world of digital striptease and that the ubiquitous and pervasive technologies that surround us have forever blurred the lines between real and virtual.

Activists have often pointed out that the social media has everything going for it — quick and vast connect and instant response — but what it lacks is empathy. It is easy enough to send out an RIP message, for instance, for someone you don't know or even care for, positioning yourself as a caring, empathetic soul in 140 characters.

Post Pushkar's death, news anchor Barkha Dutt tweeted that we need to limit viciousness , stop judging and use greater compassion on twitter.

Shah makes a similar plea for the human touch.

"We are all so self-involved , creating narratives of our selves, bit-stripping every moment , instagramming every event, tweeting every encounter, and liking all the various things that happen around us, that we don't always have enough time to stop, to respond, to think and reflect upon other people's conditions . We have become jaded, to the various 'great' moments in people's time lines, but we are also becoming jaded to the pain that our involvement in these social networks can bring to those who are the subject of our attention," he says.

With additional reporting by Shobita Dhar

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-times-of-india-january-19-2014-malini-nair-social-networking-murder-by-twitter

Netizen's Guide to the Internet Governance Forum

praskrishna — 2011-09-26T08:59:57Z

The Internet Governance Forum is a multi-stakeholder forum where people from all over the world - from government, industry, the technical community and civil society - come together to discuss the Internet's future. The Sixth Annual meeting officially kicks off on Tuesday morning in Nairobi, Kenya. A number of pre-meetings will be held all day on Monday.

The IGF is set up for remote participation, so you do not need to be in Kenya physically to follow the discussions or to ask questions and make your views known. Before the start of each day, IGF staff will post remote participation links for each conference room so that you can participate remotely through the conference's WEBEX system. (Click here to see if your computer is compatible with their system.)

The Monday pre-meetings: Several interesting and important meetings will be held on Monday and four of them are open to everybody on the Internet. Two of them have made their schedules publicly available and promoted them:

The Association for Progressive Communications meeting on access as a right. (10am-6pm Kenya time). Why attend? Click here for the invitation flyer and click here for the full run-down of the day's discussions. Also see APC's briefing paper on priorities for this year's IGF and other short papers on key IGF discussion themes. The final panel of the day, a Roundtable on the State of Internet Rights (17:15-18:15 local time) will be held jointly with the next group. A guest blogger from APC will be reporting from the meeting here on GVA later this week.
Global Internet Governance Academic Network (Giganet) annual symposium. (also approximately 10am-6pm) Many of the papers or abstracts are available for download. See for instance Arresting the decline of multi-stakeholderism in Internet governance by Jeremy Malcolm; The legality of internet blackouts in times of crisis. An assessment at the intersection of human rights law, humanitarian law and internet governance principles by Matthias Ketteman; and Upholding online anonymity in Internet governance. Affordances, ethical frameworks, and regulatory practices by Robert Bodle.

The main conference: So many sessions, which ones to join? At any given time, several different meetings, workshops, and plenary sessions are held concurrently. The IGF organizers have posted the schedule as a rather unweildy Excel file here. Fortunately, other participants have taken the time to post the schedule in more digestible formats. The Diplo Foundation's e-Diplomacy project has an online list of sessions and schedule. The indefatigable Tim Davies has also created a social media page aggregating all tweets, blogs and photos posted by participants. The official hashtag, by the way, is #IGF11.

If you want to get involved with a global community of people working for Internet users' rights whose work extends throughout the year, be sure to join one or more of the “dynamic coalitions.” Examples include the Internet Rights and Principles Coalition (meeting on Tuesday from 11-12:30 Kenya time) and the Freedom of Expression Coalition (Wednesday 4:30-6pm).

Many participating organizations have posted lists of the workshops they are organizing or participating in on their websites. Those interested in sessions related to activism, human rights and free expression on the Internet may want to check out session listings by the APC (scroll down below the jump), the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Global Network Initiative, and the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, among others.

Kieren McCarthy of dot-nxt has also created a handy practical guide to this year's IGF, with his top session picks. He observes that while the opening session on Tuesday afternoon has “far, far too many speakers,” it will nonetheless be interesting “given all that is happening in the Internet governance world.” No doubt, speeches from Hamadoun Toure (ITU), Neelie Kroes (EC), Janis Karklins (UNESCO), Larry Strickling (US), Rod Beckstrom (ICANN) and Vint Cerf (Google) not be uniform in their visions for the Internet's future.

For those interested in truly doing their homework on the IGF and the current global impasse over Internet governance, see Jeremy Malcolm's post on IGF Watch: Where to develop Internet policy: ITU, G8, OECD or an empowered IGF? Also see his previous posts on twists and turns of the IGF's five-year history.

Written by Rebecca MacKinnon, the story was published in Global Voices Advocacy on 26 September 2011. The original can be read here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/netizen-guide-to-igf

Linking Aadhaar to Facebook, WhatsApp won't curb fake news, but may undermine its legislation: Experts

Swathi Moorthy — 2019-08-22T01:59:34Z

The Supreme Court’s move to look into the petition regarding the linking of social media accounts with Aadhaar has opened a pandora’s box.

The blog post by Swathi Moorthy was published by Moneycontrol on August 20, 2019. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

The Supreme Court’s move to look into the petition regarding the linking of social media accounts with Aadhaar has opened a pandora’s box.

Linkage with Aadhaar will not help in curbing fake news and may also end up weakening the Aadhaar legislation, experts said.

The petition initially filed in Tamil Nadu argues that linking Aadhaar with social media accounts will help keep in check fake messages, pornographic and anti-national and terror messages in check. Similar petitions were filed in Mumbai and Madhya Pradesh.

Facebook and WhatsApp have argued against the proposal, stating that such a move will violate user privacy and asked for all the cases to be transferred to the Supreme Court.

Hearing the pleas, the Supreme Court said that it will examine the case and has asked both the parties to submit responses by September 13.

Weakens Aadhaar legislation

Pavan Duggal, Supreme Court advocate specialised in cyberlaw, told Moneycontrol, “Linking Aadhaar and social media accounts is a violation of Right to Privacy, which is a fundamental right and raise questions about India’s sovereignty and integrity.”

“Given that we do not have a data privacy and protection law as yet, it will also weaken Aadhaar legislation,” Duggal added.

Facebook or any social media for that matter store their data overseas since data localisation is not mandatory as of yet. The draft data protection and privacy bill, which mandates storage of local data within the country, is yet to be placed before the Parliament.

At this juncture, linking Aadhaar with social media accounts would mean that Aadhaar data will be stored in data centres in other parts of the world, compromising integrity of Aadhaar, Duggal pointed out.

Fake news

Pranesh Prakash from Centre for Internet & Society, asked, “How does linking Aadhaar and social media accounts curb fake news?” He explained based on the SC's previous judgement, Aadhaar's scope is restricted to the government's benefits and subsidies.

Duggal said, “There is no way it is going to help curb fake new.” If anything people who are starting fake news will be more careful so as not go get caught, he added.

Prakash pointed out that, all social media accounts can be traced either using their phone numbers and email linked to their account or IP addresses.

As such, there is no need to link Aadhaar specifically for this purpose since police are free to use these tools to trace offenders, he added. The exception is that when users are sophisticated and have knowledge of advanced tools to hide their identity, which is usually not the case for most purveyors of fake news.

What can be done?

Duggal said that there are so many other ways of dealing with fake news. For one, this could be opened up for public discussion.

“We could have a dedicated legal framework like in Malaysia for curbing fake news that is much more efficient than linking Aadhaar," he added.

According to Duggal, the platforms should be more proactive rather than being a mere spectator and take stringent steps to fight fake news.

The government can also amend Section 79 of the Information Technology Act that protects intermediaries from being liable for any third party information data or communication link hosted on their site. Changing this will also help combat fake news, he added.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/money-control-swathi-moorthy-august-20-2019-linking-aadhaar-to-facebook-whatsapp-wont-curb-fake-news-impinge-on-privacy-experts

AI is biased, you’ll see if you Google ‘hands’

Rajmohan Sudhakar — 2019-08-26T23:53:38Z

As it is, the world is unfair. The question now is, do we want automated tech to be unfair too? As we build more and more AI-dependent smart digital infrastructure in our cities and beyond, we have pretty much overlooked the emerging character of artificial intelligence that would have a profound bearing on our nature and future.

The article by Rajmohan Sudhakar was published in Deccan Herald on August 25, 2019. Radhika Radhakrishnan was quoted.

Are we happy with algorithms making decisions for us? Naturally, one would expect the algorithm to possess discretion. Herein lies the dilemma. Do you trust an AI algorithm? Though an algorithm can evolve over time drawing on the nature and accuracy of the dataset, it shall nevertheless pick up the prejudices and biases it is exposed to.

“Questions on fairness arise at multiple stages of AI design. For instance, who has access to large datasets? The private sector in India. There may not be data at all on marginalised communities while there can be excessive surveillance data on targeted communities. Historic biases in datasets add up: widely used leading datasets of word embeddings associate women as homemakers and men as computer programmers. Focus on FAT (Fairness, Accountability and Transparency) is crucial,” says Radhika Radhakrishnan, programme officer at The Centrefor Internet and Society.

For example, a whopping 90% of the Wikipedia editors are men.

As AI is expected to add 15 trillion US dollars by 2030 to the global economy, at present, the data it relies upon comes from a few nations (45% from the US) while a major chunk of users are elsewhere. As it is vital to any social mechanism, diversity will be key if we are to reap the true benefits of AI. Or else, a non-diverse data set or a programmer crafting an algorithm could chart the most unpleasant course.

“Research recommends the inclusion of social scientists in AI design and ensuring they have decision-making power. The AI Now Institute, for instance. However, there is a dearth of social scientists working on AI. In India, we ignore the social impact of AI in favour of the purely technical solutions of computer scientists. Lack of women, gender-queers, and individuals from under-represented communities reflects poor diversity within the AI industry,” Radhakrishnan points out.

The G20 adopted AI Principles in June, which stressed “AI actors should respect the rule of law,human rights and democratic values, throughout the AI system life-cycle. These include freedom, dignity and autonomy, privacy and data protection, non-discrimination and equality,diversity, fairness, social justice, and internationally recognised labour rights.”

The UK recently set up the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation. Canada and France are spearheading the International Panel on Artificial Intelligence (IPAI) on the sidelines of the G7summit. Meanwhile, India and France agreed on a slew of measures to advance cooperation ondigital tech. Of course, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a promising start.

All of that is well and welcome. But what such efforts and international bodies could achieve in reality is to be seen as questions loom large over private corporations that own tech exercising clout, henceforth leaving AI vulnerable to manipulation.

“To achieve this, panel members will need to be protected from direct or indirect lobbying by companies, pressure groups and governments — especially by those who regard ethics as a brake on innovation. That also means that panel members will need to be chosen for their expertise, not for which organisation they represent,” reads an August 21 editorial in Nature journal on IPAI.

Whatever one may do to de-bias AI, much damage is done already. Try a google search for images of hands. How many black/brown hands do you see? There you go.

“Whose needs are being reflected in AI — those of the poor or those of the big tech looking to‘dump’ their products in an easily exploitable market? Instead of asking, what is the AI solution,we should be wondering, is an AI-based solution necessary in this case?” adds Radhakrishnan.

Where are the big tech located? In the United States. When a white male sitting in that country crafts an algorithm based on a bought dataset, for the benefit of an aboriginal community in the Amazon, something’s amiss.

“Engineers and data scientists who design algorithms are often far removed from the socioeconomic contexts of the people they are designing the tools for. So, they reproduce ideologies that are damaging. They end up reinforcing prejudices. Direct engagement is rare. Engineers should actively and carefully challenge their biases and assumptions by engaging meaningfully with communities to understand their histories and needs,” explains Radhakrishnan.

The march of AI cannot be stopped as more and more datasets get integrated. An ethical approach to computer science and engineering should begin from our institutions of excellence.

“Computer science and engineering disciplines at the undergraduate level teach AI as a purelytechnical subject, not as an interdisciplinary subject. Engineers should be trained in the socialimplications of the systems they design. Technology inevitably re􀁻ects its creators, consciousor not. Therefore, deeper attention to the social contexts of AI and the potential impact of suchsystems when applied to human populations should be incorporated to university curricula,”notes Radhakrishnan.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/deccan-herald-rajmohan-sudhakar-august-25-2019-ai-is-biased-you-see-if-you-google-hands

Pycon India 2019

Admin — 2019-08-27T00:04:03Z

K. Bhuvana Meenakshi gave a talk at BangPypers organized by Python Software Society in Bangalore on August 25, 2019. She spoke on Let the world experience WebXR!

For more info, click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/pycon-india-2019

Policies for the Platform Economy

Admin — 2019-08-27T00:19:26Z

Anubha Sinha and Amber Sinha will be panelists in this event being organized by IT for Change at India Habitat Centre in New Delhi on August 30, 2019.

The agenda for the event is here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/policies-for-the-platform-economy

A judicial overreach into matters of regulation

gurshabad — 2019-08-28T01:28:52Z

A PIL on Aadhaar sheds light on some problematic trends

The article by Gurshabad Grover was published in the Hindu on August 27, 2019.

The Madras High Court has been hearing a PIL petition since 2018 that initially asked the court to declare the linking of Aadhaar with a government identity proof as mandatory for registering email and social media accounts. The petitioners, victims of online bullying, went to the court because they found that law enforcement agencies were inefficient at investigating cybercrimes, especially when it came to gathering information about pseudonymous accounts on major online platforms. This case brings out some of the most odious trends in policymaking in India.

The first issue is how the courts, as Anuj Bhuwania has argued in the book Courting the People, have continually expanded the scope of issues considered in PILs. In this case, it is absolutely clear that the court is not pondering about any question of law. In what could be considered as abrogation of the separation of powers provision in the Constitution, the Madras High Court started to deliberate on a policy question with a wide-ranging impact: Should Aadhaar be linked with social media accounts?

After ruling out this possibility, it went on to consider a question that is even further out of its purview: Should platforms like WhatsApp that provide encrypted services allow forms of “traceability” to enable finding the originator of content? In essence, the court is now trying to regulate one particular platform on a very specific technical question, ignoring legal frameworks entirely. It is worrying that the judiciary is finding itself increasingly at ease with deliberations on policy and regulatory measures, and its recent actions remind us that the powers of the court also deserve critical questioning.

Government’s support

Second, not only are governments failing to assert their own powers of regulation in response to the courts’ actions, they are on the contrary encouraging such PILs. The Attorney General, K.K. Venugopal, who is representing the State of Tamil Nadu in the case, could have argued for the case’s dismissal by referring to the fact that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has already published draft regulations that aim to introduce “traceability” and to increase obligations on social media platforms. Instead, he has largely urged the court to pass regulatory orders.

Third, ‘Aadhaar linking’ is becoming increasingly a refrain whenever any matter even loosely related to identification or investigation of crime is brought up. While the Madras High Court has ruled out such linking for social media platforms, other High Courts are still hearing petitions to formulate such rules. The processes that law enforcement agencies use to get information from platforms based in foreign jurisdictions rely on international agreements. Linking Aadhaar with social media accounts will have no bearing on these processes. Hence, the proposed ‘solution’ misses the problem entirely, and comes with its own threats of infringing privacy.

Problems of investigation

That said, investigating cybercrime is a serious problem for law enforcement agencies. However, the proceedings before the court indicate that the cause of the issues have not been correctly identified. While legal provisions that allow agencies to seek information from online platforms already exist in the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Information Technology Act, getting this information from platforms based in foreign jurisdictions can be a long and cumbersome process. For instance, the hurdles posed by the mutual legal assistance treaty between India and the U.S. effectively mean that it might take months to receive a response to information requests sent to U.S.-based platforms, if a response is received at all.

To make cybercrime investigation easier, the Indian government has various options. India should push for fairer executive agreements possible under instruments like the United States’ CLOUD Act, for which we need to first bring our surveillance laws in line with international human rights standards through reforms such as judicial oversight. India could use the threat of data localisation as a leverage to negotiate bilateral agreements with other countries to ensure that agencies have recourse to quicker procedures. As a first step, however, Indian courts must wash their hands of such questions. For its part, the Centre must engage in consultative policymaking around these important issues, rather than support ad-hoc regulation through court orders in PILs.

(Disclosure: The CIS is a recipient of research grants from Facebook.)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-hindu-august-27-2019-a-judicial-overreach-into-matters-of-regulation

Packets, net neutrality and gaming public policy outcomes

Admin — 2019-08-28T15:15:37Z

Gurshabad Grover attended Prof. Vishal Misra's lecture on net neutrality at Has Geek in Bangalore on August 15, 2019.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/packets-net-neutrality-and-gaming-public-policy-outcomes

What Centre will tell Supreme Court on Aadhaar and social media account linkage

Amrita Madhukalya — 2019-09-02T04:28:45Z

The top court had held in the Aadhaar case that the government can make the linking of the 12-digit-number mandatory only in the case of availing subsidies and welfare benefits. Consequently, Section 57 of the Aadhaar Act was struck down.

The article by Amrita Madhukalya was published in Hindustan Times on August 28, 2019. Gurshabad Grover was quoted.

The Centre will refer to the Aadhaar Act and the Supreme Court’s 2017 privacy judgement when it is directed by the top court to put forward its view on whether the unique identification number should be made mandatory in opening and managing accounts on Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and other social media platforms.

“While we are yet to receive a notice from the SC asking for our reply, the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and other Subsidies, benefits and services) Act, 2016, and the apex court’s 2017 judgement upholding the Right to Privacy will guide us in drafting a response,” a senior official of the ministry of electronics and information technology, who did not wish to be named, said.

As a division bench of Madras High Court continues to hear two writ petitions on whether social media profiles should be linked to Aadhaar so that users in cases where pornographic material, fake news and communal content is posted on these sites can be traced, Facebook had simultaneously filed a plea to transfer all similar cases in the high courts of Madras, Bombay as well as Madhya Pradesh. The top court will hear the matter on September 13.

During its hearings, Madras High Court made it clear that it will not rule on Aadhaar-linking and the case will concentrate on traceability now. As of now, only one of the transfer petitions, the one in Jabalpur, deals with Aadhaar linking.

Meanwhile, the top court has already asked social media companies for their stand on the matter. Senior lawyers Mukul Rohatgi and Kapil Sibal, who have been representing Facebook and WhatsApp respectively in Madras High Court case, have already said that as both the companies are headquartered outside of India, with operations in dozens of countries, the high court’s judgement will have ramifications globally.

Both Twitter and Google declined to comment on the matter, as the matter is sub-judice, while Facebook was not available.

However, in March this year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that privacy, encryption and secure data storage were some of these principles while unveiling the company’s “vision and principles” in building a “privacy-focused” social platform.

Wherein people can have “clear control over who can communicate with them and confidence that no one else can access what they share”, such communication could be secure with end-to-end encryption, and Facebook will not store sensitive data in countries with “weak records on human rights”.

Gurshabad Grover of the Centre for Internet Security says he welcomes the Centre’s stand but adds that the petition should not have been allowed by the Madras High Court in the first place.

“The case is now deliberating on policy, which is the responsibility of the government. This goes against the basis of separation of power,” he says.

The Centre is dealing with issues surrounding traceability through the Intermediaries Guidelines, which is due in the next few weeks.

The solution, Grover says, lies in diplomatic negotiations.

“Instruments like the US’ Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act can come in handy if India can fight for better executive agreements there, provided we have data protection laws in line with human rights standards,” he said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindustan-times-august-28-2019-amrita-madhukalya-what-centre-will-tell-sc-on-aadhaar-and-social-media-account-linkage

Kashmir’s information vacuum

Aayush Rathi and Akriti Bopanna — 2019-09-02T04:34:29Z

Legislative backing is being appropriated to normalise communication shutdowns.

The article by Aayush Rathi and Akriti Bopanna was published in the Hindu on August 29, 2019.

On August 4, around midnight, Jammu and Kashmir was thrust into a near total communication shutdown. In the continuing aftermath of the dilution of Article 370, cable television, cellular services, landline and Internet and even the postal services have been rendered inoperational. Even hospitals and fire stations have not been spared. While law enforcement personnel have been provided satellite phones, locals are having to queue up outside designated government offices and register the numbers they want to call. The blackout is all encompassing.

The erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir is accustomed to the flicking on of the “Internet killswitch”, but this indiscriminate embargo is unprecedented. The blocking of multi-point/two-way communication is quite frequent in Kashmir, with close to 55 instances of partial or complete Internet shutdowns being recorded just this year. Of the 347 cases of shutdown that have been imposed in India since 2012, 51% have been in Kashmir. The blocking of one-way communication media, such as cable television, however, is new. Even the measures adopted during the Kargil war in 1999 stopped short of blocking telephone lines.

Appearing for the incumbent government on a petition challenging the communications shutdown in Kashmir, the Attorney General of India, K.K. Venugopal, made the necessary-for-law-and-order argument.

However, recent research by Jan Rydzak looking exclusively at network shutdowns in India has shown no evidence backing this claim. On the contrary, network shutdowns have been shown to compel actors wanting to engage in collective action to substitute non-violent mobilisation for more violent means as the latter requires less coordination.

In dubious company

Network shutdowns have a limited and inconsistent effect on even structured, non-violent protests. Cross-country comparative research indicates that the shutdown of communication for achieving objectives of social control is usually the riposte of authoritarian regimes. The shroud of secrecy it creates allows for further controversial measures to be effected away from public scrutiny. Authoritarian regimes masquerading as liberal democracies are following suit. In 2016, the Turkish government had ordered the shutdown of over 100 media companies in the aftermath of a failed military coup. Earlier this year, Joseph Kabila’s government in the Democratic Republic of Congo had shut down Internet and SMS services for three weeks under the pretext of preventing the circulation of fake election results.

Mr. Venugopal further reassured the Supreme Court that the residents of Kashmir would experience the least amount of inconvenience. This line assumes that the primary use of telecommunication networks is for supposedly banal interpersonal interaction. What is forgotten is that these networks function both as an “infrastructure” and as medium of communication. Impacting either function has dire and simultaneous consequences on its use as the other. As an infrastructure, they are akin to a public utility and are foundational to the operation of critical systems such as water supply and finance.

In the Kashmir Valley, over half the business transactions are said to happen online. The payment of wages for the government-run employment guarantee scheme for unskilled manual labour is almost entirely made electronically — 99.56% in Jammu and Kashmir. The reliance on the Internet for bank-related transactions has meant that automated teller machines and banks are inoperative. What is telling is that the increasing recourse to network shutdowns as a law and order tool in India is also happening simultaneously with the government’s digitisation drive. Information flows are being simultaneously facilitated and throttled.

Ambiguous backing

Moreover, communication shutdowns have ambiguous legal backing. One approach imposes them as an order passed under Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. A colonial relic, Section 144 is frequently used for the imposition of curfew in ‘sensitive’ areas as a preventive measure against public demonstrations. This approach lacks procedural accountability and transparency. Orders are not mandated to be publicly notified; they do not identify the duration of the lockdown or envision an appeal mechanism.

Perhaps realising these challenges, the Temporary Suspension of Telecom Services (Public Emergency or Public Safety) Rules, 2017, notified under the Telegraph Act, do incorporate a review mechanism. However, reviewing officials do not have the authority to revoke a shutdown order even if it is deemed illegal. The grounds for effectuating any shutdown also have not been elaborated other than for ‘public emergency’ or ‘public safety’ — both these terms are undefined. Legislative backing, then, is being appropriated to normalise, not curb, communication shutdowns. Tellingly, the owner of an Internet service provider in Kashmir pointed out that with Internet shutdowns becoming so common, often the shape that an order takes is of a call from a government official, while the procedural documentation follows much later.

Treated as collateral damage in imposing communication blackouts are the fundamental freedoms of speech and expression, trade, and also of association. The imposition of Section 144 along with the virtual curfew is designed to restrict the freedom to assemble peacefully. Such preemptive measures assume that any assembly will be violent along with negating the potential utility of technological means in maintaining social order (such as responsible digital journalism checking the spread of rumours).

Most critically, this enables a complete information vacuum, the only salve from which is information supplied by the suppressor. Of the days leading up to August 5 and the days since, sparse information is publicly available. Local newspaper outlets in Kashmir are inoperational. This lack of information necessarily precludes effective democratic participation. Beneath the national security sentiments, a key motivation for network shutdown presents itself: that of political censorship through the criminalisation of dissent.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-hindu-august-29-2019-aayush-rathi-and-akriti-bopanna-kashmirs-information-vacuum

Submission to Global Commission on Stability of Cyberspace on the definition of Cyber Stability

Arindrajit Basu and Elonnai Hickok — 2019-09-11T14:52:25Z

"The Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace released a public consultation process that sought to solicit comments and obtain feedback on the definition of “Stability of Cyberspace”, as developed by the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace (GCSC).

The definition of cyberspace the GCSC provided was :

Stability of cyberspace is the condition where individuals and institutions can be reasonably confident in their ability to use cyberspace safely and securely, where the availability and integrity of services in cyberspace is generally assured, where change is managed in relative peace, and where tensions are resolved in a peaceful manner.

CIS gave detailed commentary on the definitions [attached] and suggested a new definition of cyber stability documented below:

Stability of cyberspace is the objective where individuals, institutions and communities are confident in the safety and security of cyberspace; the accessibility,availability and integrity of services in cyberspace can be relied upon and where change is managed and tensions ranging from external interference in sovereign processes to the use of force in cyberspace are resolved peacefully in line with the tenets of International Law,specifically the principles of the UN Charter and universally recognised human rights.

Cyber stability can only be fostered if key stakeholders in cyberspace conform to a due diligence obligation of not undertaking and preventing actions that may prevent cyber stability. The end goal of cyber stability must minimize or eliminate immaterial or peripheral incentives while preserving and potentially legitimizing those cyber offensive operations that can further effective deterrence and thereby foster stability, while also minimising any collateral damage to civilian life or property.

Click to view the detailed submission here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/arindrajit-basu-and-elonnai-hickok-september-9-2019-submission-to-global-commission-on-stability-of-cyberspace

AI in Healthcare

Admin — 2019-09-19T16:15:24Z

The Center for Information Technology and Public Policy (CITAPP) and the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIITB) invited Radhika Radhakrishnan for a talk at IIIT-Bangalore on September 13, 2019.

In her talk, she critically questioned the dominant narrative of “AI for social good” that has been widely adopted by various stakeholders in India (including the private sector, non-profits, and the Indian State) from a feminist standpoint. Specific to healthcare in India, such a narrative has been employed towards solving development challenges (such as a shortage of medical practitioners in remote regions of the country) through the introduction of AI applications targeted towards the sick-poor. Through her research and fieldwork, she analysed the layers of expropriation and experimentation that come into play when AI technologies become a method of using 'diverse' bodies and medical records of the sick-poor as ‘data’ to train proprietary AI algorithms at a low cost in the absence of effective State regulatory mechanisms. She argued that structural challenges (such as lack of incentives for medical practitioners to join public healthcare) get reframed into opportunities to substitute labour (people) by capital (technology) through innovation of “spectacular technologies” such as AI. Throughout the talk, she also highlighted the methodologies she used to conduct this research.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/ai-in-healthcare

Talks at National University of Juridical Sciences Today

Admin — 2019-09-20T14:45:35Z

Arindrajit Basu delivered two lectures at the National University of Juridical Sciences on September 18, 2019.

The first one was part of a symposium being conducted by the soon to be set up Intellectual Property and Technology Law Centre. I spoke on "Conceptualising India's Digital Policy Vision" The other speaker today was Mr. Supratim Chakraborty (Partner, Khaitan&Co.) Tomorrow's speakers are Prof. Mahendra Kumar Bhandan and Nikhil Narendran (Partner, Trilegal)

Abstract

The past year has seen vigorous activity on the domestic data governance policy front in India. Across key issues including intermediary liability, data localisation and e-commerce, the government has rolled out a patchwork of regulatory policies that has resulted in battle lines being drawn by governments, industry and civil society actors both in India and across the globe. The Data Protection Bill is set to be tabled in the next session of Parliament amidst supposed disagreement among policy-makers on key provisions, including data localization. The draft e-commerce policy and Chapter 4 of the Economic Survey refer to the concepts of ‘community data’ and ‘data as public good’ respectively. Artifiicial Intelligence is also the new buzz word among policy-making circles and industry players alike.

The implementation of each of these concepts have important implications for individual privacy, the monetisation of data by (foreign tech companies) and the harnessing of-as the e-commerce policy puts it-India’s data for India’s development. Meanwhile, at international forums such as the G20, India has partnered up with its BRICS allies to emphasize the notion of ‘data sovereignty’ or the right of each country to govern data within its jurisdiction without external interference.
In his talk, Basu unpacked each of these policies and followed up with a discussion on what these developments meant for Indian citizens and for India’s role in the multilateral global order.

The second one was on 'Constitutionalizing Artificial Intelligence' conducted by the Constitutional Law Society. Here, I drew from some preliminary findings from a paper I am working on with Elonnai and Amber.

Abstract

The use of big data and algorithmic decision-making has been touted world over as a means of augmenting human capacities, removing bureaucratic fetters and benefiting society. Yet, with concerns arising around bias, fairness and a lack of algorithmic accountability, an entirely new domain of discourse on data justice has emerged - underscoring the idea that algorithms not only have the potential to exacerbate entrenched structural inequality but could also create and modulate new forms of injustice for the vulnerable sections of society.

There is a need for a reflexive turn in the debate on data justice that adequately considers the broader narrative and entrenched inequality in the ecosystem. Transformative constitutionalism is a new brand of scholarship in comparative constitutional law which celebrates the crucial role of the state and the judiciary in bringing about emancipatory change and rooting out structural inequality.

Originally conceptualized as a Global South concept designed as a counter-model to the individual rights-driven model of Northern Constitutions, scholars have now identified emancipatory provisions in several western constitutions such as Germany. India’s constitution is one such example. The origins of constitutional order in India were designed to “bring the alien and powerful machine like that of the state under the control of human will” and to eliminate the inequality of “status, facilities and opportunities.”

What is the relevance of India's constitutional ethos in the regulation of modern day data driven decision-making? How can policy-makers use constitutional tenets to mitigate structural injustice and transform the bearings of 21st century Indian society?

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/talks-at-national-university-of-juridical-sciences-today

Internet pour toutes

Isabelle Grégoire — 2019-09-20T15:01:56Z

Ambika Tandon was quoted in Canadian-French magazine L'Actualite, in an article on technology and women in India. In the quote, she explains the core research questions of the FIRN project, which is studying the digital intermediation of domestic work in India.

The article by Isabelle Grégoire was published in L'Actualite on September 11, 2019.

"Are women workers more or less exploited when they are recruited online? Can they evaluate clients and be defended if their rights are not respected? And most importantly, how do employers go about recruiting this workforce that usually does not have access to the Internet?

These are the kinds of questions that Indian researcher Ambika Tandon, a policy officer at the Center for the Internet and Society (CIS), a non-profit organization in Bangalore that conducts interdisciplinary research on the Internet and digital technologies, is trying to answer. To do this, she chose to look at digital platforms that provide housekeeping and home care services - trades mostly done by women.

"The idea is to compare the job opportunities and working conditions offered on these platforms with those of traditional placement agencies," says this graduate from the London School of Economics, and a member of the Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN) launched this year. Funded by the International Development Research Center (IDRC) in Ottawa, the network brings together researchers (a majority of women) from a dozen countries in Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe. It is led by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), an international organization, which contributed to the development of the 17 "feminist principles of Internet 2.0". Each of FIRN's eight research projects will be linked to one or other of these principles.

"Our goal is to increase the visibility of these issues in the public space, so that they become part of the discourse," says Namita Aavriti from India, who is co-responsible for setting up projects within the APC, "With special attention to online violence against women, which still needs to be recognized in many countries."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/l-actualite-magazine-isabelle-gregoire-september-11-2019-internet-pour-toutes