Centre for Internet and Society

Legitimate Restrictions on Freedom of Online Speech: Deadlock to Dialogue

praskrishna — 2012-10-15T05:44:04Z

The event was hosted by FICCI Communications and Digital Economy Committee on September 4, 2012 at FICCI, Federation House, Tansen Marg, New Delhi. Pranesh Prakash spoke on censorship and the way forward.

The following were the speakers who spoke at the event:

Anja Kovacs, Project Director, Internet Democracy Project
Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director, Center for Internet and Society
Prabir Purkayastha, Founder Member, Delhi Science Forum
Prasanth Sugathan, Legal Counsel, Software Freedom Law Center
Parminder Jeet Singh, Executive Director, IT for Change
Ramanjit Singh Chima, Sr. Policy Analyst, Google India
Ankhi Das, Head of Public Policy for India, Facebook
Nikhil Pahwa, Editor & Publisher, Medianama.com
Rajesh Chharia, President, Internet Service Providers Association of India
Mahesh Uppal, Policy Expert
Virat Bhatia, Chairman, Communication and Digital Economy Committee, FICCI

Click to read the Digest of Comments and Inputs at the panel discussion.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/legitimate-restrictions-on-freedom-of-online-speech

Iceland’s proposed porn ban ‘like repression in Iran, N. Korea’ – activists

praskrishna — 2013-03-21T03:56:30Z

A group of 40 human rights activists from around the world fear that Iceland could become “a role model for Internet censorship” if it introduces Internet filters blocking online content deemed pornographic.

This blog post was published in RT on March 1, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

“The act of censoring pornography in Iceland differs in no way from repression of speech in Iran, China or North Korea,” human rights advocates wrote in an open letter to Icelandic Interior Minister Ögmundur Jónasson.

Activists from nearly 20 countries, including the UK, America, Austria and Finland, said that Iceland’s moral reasons for the push to censor Internet pornography is “justifying rather than condemning the actions of totalitarian regimes.”

Critics – including Jillian C. York, Director for International Freedom of Expression, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Sunil Abraham, Executive Director for India’s Internet and Society Center, and Ot van Daalen, head of the Dutch Bits of Freedom Center – have described the controversial measure as “an affront to basic principles of the society.”

They also argued that those advocating the Web porn ban have offered “no definition, no evidence, and suggested no technology.”

The authors of the letter warned that the prohibition of pornographic content could create demand for an underground porn industry, unregulated and most certainly affiliated with other illegal activities, “as we have seen in the case of drugs or alcohol prohibition. Hiding the problem is not a solution and may in fact make things worse.”

The solution, according to the activists, could be better sex education at home and schools: “Sex education that deals not only with conception, contraception and sexually transmitted diseases, but also relationships, communication and respect.”

Iceland, known for its feminist policies, could become the first Western country to censor online pornography, despite concerns over who will be given the authority to choose what is banned.

“It is tempting to regard filtering the Internet as a quick and easy way to restrict unwanted speech, opinions, or media, which the government regards as harmful for either them or the people,” the letter said. “The right to see the world as it is, is critical to the very tenets and functions of a democracy and must be protected at all costs.”

The activists claimed that it is technically impossible to censor the Internet without monitoring all telecommunications with automated machines: “This level of government surveillance directly conflicts with the idea of a free society.”

Iceland is not the only European country that has tried to implement such a ban. In December, the UK proposed blocking access to all pornographic websites, but UK ministers rejected the idea over a lack of public support.

According to supporters of the Icelandic ban, pornography has unquestionably damaging effects on both children and women.

"We have to be able to discuss a ban on violent pornography, which we all agree has a very harmful effects on young people and can have a clear link to incidences of violent crime," Interior Minister Jonasson, the author of the proposed ban, was quoted as saying.

While Iceland has already passed a law banning the distribution and printing of pornography, the proposed ban would eventually restrict access to pornographic websites in the country, and make it impossible to use Icelandic credit cards on X-rated sites.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/rt-march-1-2013-icelands-proposed-porn-ban

Press controls ‘send wrong message to rest of world’

praskrishna — 2013-03-26T04:51:54Z

Britain could trigger an international media crackdown if the Government goes ahead with plans for a Royal Charter to introduce a new Press regulator, free speech campaigners warned yesterday.

Read the article written by Jerome Starkey from Johannesburg, Francis Elliott from Delhi and David Brown. It was published in the Times on March 21, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Oppressive regimes will use the example of the planned regulation in Britain to justify tighter controls on their own media, it was claimed. Campaigners from across the Commonwealth are preparing to urge the Queen not to approve the Royal Charter when it is presented by the Privy Council on May 8. Senior journalists and campaigners in Africa and Asia accused Britain of “chilling media freedom” by legitimising state interference in the media.

Phenyo Butale, the director of South Africa’s Freedom of Expression Institute, said: “African governments have shown they are uncomfortable with free press acting as a watchdog, holding them to account. A move to statutory regulation in the UK would really be a gift for them.”

In Somalia, one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a journalist, reporters said that they were alarmed by the British plans. “It’s alarming that the British Government is regulating the freedom of its press,” said Mohammed Ibrahim, secretary-general of the Somali Union of Journalists.

Sunil Abraham, director of the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based organisation that campaigns against the Indian Government’s often heavy-handed attempts to regulate online content, said that the UK had surrendered the moral high ground in an important international debate.

“The UK has traditionally made free speech an important component of their foreign policy and when their own internal actions contradict their external position . . . they no longer have any influence on the Indian situation,” he said.

The Editorial Board of The New York Times wrote that the proposed regulation would “do more harm than good”, adding: “It is worth keeping in mind that journalists at newspapers like The Guardianand The [New York] Times, not the police, first brought to light the scope and extent of hacking by British tabloids. It would be perverse if regulations . . . ended up stifling the kind of hard-hitting investigative journalism that brought it to light in the first place.”

Mumsnet, one of the most popular blogging sites, has sought a guarantee from the Government that it would not be caught by the regulations. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport told the website that it “will ultimately be for the court to decide on the definition of a ‘relevant publisher’ ” covered by the new regulations “but our view is that Mumsnet would not be covered by the new regime”.

Justine Roberts, the website’s founder, has asked to be specifically included in the list of exempted websites.

The House of Lords will vote on Monday on the definition of “relevant publisher” when peers consider new amendments to the Crime and Courts Bill. Some of Britain’s major newspaper and magazine publishers have indicated that they will not join the new regulator.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-times-uk-jerome-starkey-francis-elliott-david-brown-march-21-2013-press-controls-send-wrong-message-to-rest-of-world

CIS Welcomes Standing Committee Report on IT Rules

pranesh — 2013-04-03T10:54:52Z

The Centre for Internet and Society welcomes the report by the Standing Committee on Subordinate Legislation, in which it has lambasted the government and has recommended that the government amend the Rules it passed in April 2011 under section 79 of the Information Technology Act.

Click to read the Parliamentary Standing Committee Report on the IT Rules. A modified version was published in CiOL on March 27, 2013.

These rules have been noted by many, including CIS, Software Freedom Law Centre, and Society for Knowledge Commons, and many eminent lawyers, as being unconstitutional. The Standing Committee, noting this, has asked the government to make changes to the Rules to ensure that the fundamental rights to freedom of speech and privacy are safeguarded, and that the principles of natural justice are respected when a person’s freedom of speech or privacy are curtailed.

Ambiguous and Over-reaching Language

The Standing Committee has noted the inherent ambiguity of words like "blasphemy", "disparaging", etc., which are used in the Intermediary Guidelines Rules, and has pointed out that unclear language can lead to harassment of people as has happened with Section 66A of the IT Act, and can lead to legitimate speech being removed. Importantly, the Standing Committee recognizes that many categories of speech prohibited by the Intermediary Guidelines Rules are not prohibited by any statute, and hence cannot be prohibited by the government through these Rules. Accordingly, the Standing Committee has asked the government to ensure "no new category of crimes or offences is created" by these Rules.

Government Confused Whether Rules Are Mandatory or Advisory

The Standing Committee further notes that there is a discrepancy in the government’s stand that the Intermediary Guidelines Rules are not mandatory, and are only "of advisory nature and self-regulation", and that "it is not mandatory for the Intermediary to disable the information, the rule does not lead to any kind of censorship". The Standing Committee points out the flaw in this, and notes that the language used in the rules is mandatory language (“shall act” within 36 hours). Thus, it rightly notes that there is a "need for clarity on the aforesaid contradiction". Further, it also notes that there is "there should be safeguards to protect against any abuse", since this is a form of private censorship by intermediaries."

Evidence Needed Against Foreign Websites

The government has told the Standing Committee that "foreign websites repeatedly refused to honour our laws", however, it has not provided any proof for this assertion. The government should make public all evidence that foreign web services are refusing to honour Indian laws, and should encourage a public debate on how we should tackle this problem in light of the global nature of the Internet.

Cyber Cafes Rules Violate Citizens’ Privacy

The Standing Committee also pointed out that the Cyber Cafe Rules violated citizens’ right to privacy in requiring that "screens of the computers installed other than in partitions and cubicles should face open space of the cyber café". Unfortunately, the Standing Committee did not consider the privacy argument against retention of extensive and intrusive logs. Under the Cyber Cafe Rules, cyber cafes are required to retain (for a minimum of one year) extensive logs, including that of "history of websites accessed using computer resource at cyber café" in such a manner that each website accessed can be linked to a person. The Committee only considered the argument that this would impose financial burdens on small cybercafes, and rejected that argument. CIS wishes the Committee had examined the provision on log maintenance on grounds of privacy as well."

Government’s Half-Truths

In one response, the government notes that "rules under Section 79 in particular have undergone scrutiny by High Courts in the country. Based on the Rules, the courts have given reliefs to a number of individuals and organizations in the country. No provision of the Rules notified under Sections 43A and 79 of the IT Act, 2000 have been held ultra vires."

What the government says is a half-truth. So far, courts have not struck down any of the IT Rules. But that is because none of the High Court cases in which the vires of the Rules have been challenged has concluded. So it is disingenuous of the government to claim that the Rule have "undergone scrutiny by High Courts". And in those cases where relief has been granted under the Intermediary Guidelines, the cases have been ex-parte or have been cases where the vires of the Rules have not been challenged. The government, if it wants to defend the Rules, should point out to any case in which the vires of the Rules have been upheld. Not a single court till date has declared the Rules to be constitutional when that question was before it.

Lack of Representation of Stakeholders in Policy Formulation

Lastly, the Standing Committee noted that it is not clear whether the Cyber Regulatory Advisory Committee (CRAC), which is responsible for policy guidance on the IT Act, has "members representing the interests of principally affected or having special knowledge of the subject matter as expressly stipulated in Section 88(2) of the IT Act". This is a problem that we at CIS also noted in November 2012, when the CRAC was reconstituted after having been defunct for more than a decade.

CIS hopes that the government finally takes note of the view of legal experts, the Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation, the Parliamentary motion against the Rules, and numerous articles and editorials in the press, and withdraws the Intermediary Guidelines Rules and the Cyber Cafe Rules, and instead replaces them with rules that do not infringe our constitutional rights.

The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness, and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities. It was among the organizations that submitted evidence to the Standing Committee on Subordinate Legislation on the IT Rules.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-welcomes-standing-committee-report-on-it-rules

FOEX Live: June 1-7, 2014

geetha — 2014-06-07T13:33:45Z

A weekly selection of news on online freedom of expression and digital technology from across India (and some parts of the world).

Delhi NCR:

Following a legal notice from Dina Nath Batra, publisher Orient BlackSwan “set aside… for the present” Communalism and Sexual Violence: Ahmedabad Since 1969 by Dr. Megha Kumar, citing the need for a “comprehensive assessment”. Dr. Kumar’s book is part of the ‘Critical Thinking on South Asia’ series, and studies communal and sexual violence in the 1969, 1985 and 2002 riots of Ahmedabad. Orient BlackSwan insists this is a pre-release assessment, while Dr. Kumar contests that her book went to print in March 2014 after extensive editing and peer review. Dina Nath Batra’s civil suit led Penguin India to withdraw Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History earlier this year.

The Delhi Police’s Facebook page aimed at reaching out to Delhi residents hailing from the North East proved to be popular.

Goa:

Shipbuilding engineer Devu Chodankar’s ordeal continued. Chodankar, in a statement to the cyber crime cell of the Goa police, clarified that his allegedly inflammatory statements were directed against the induction of the Sri Ram Sene’s Pramod Muthalik into the BJP. Chodankar’s laptop, hard-disk and mobile Internet dongle were seized.

Jammu & Kashmir:

Chief Minister Omar Abdullah announced the withdrawal of a four-year-old SMS ban in the state. The ban was instituted in 2010 following widespread protests, and while it was lifted for post-paid subscribers six months later, pre-paid connections were banned from SMSes until now.

Maharashtra:

In a move to contain public protests over ‘objectionable posts’ about Chhatrapati Shivaji, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and the late Bal Thackeray (comments upon whose death led to the arrests of Shaheen Dhada and Renu Srinivasan under Section 66A), Maharashtra police will take action against even those who “like” such posts. ‘Likers’ may be charged under the Information Technology Act and the Criminal Procedure Code, say Nanded police.

A young Muslim man was murdered in Pune, apparently connected to the online publication of ‘derogatory’ pictures of Chhatrapati Shivaji and Bal Thackarey. Members of Hindu extremists groups celebrated his murder, it seems. Pune’s BJP MP, Anil Shirole, said, “some repercussions are natural”. Members of the Hindu Rashtra Sena were held for the murder, but it seems that the photographs were uploaded from foreign IP addresses. Across Maharashtra, 187 riotingcases have been registered against a total of 710 persons, allegedly in connection with the offensive Facebook posts.

On a lighter note, Bollywood hopes for a positive relationship with the new government on matters such as film censorship, tax breaks and piracy.

News & Opinion:

Shocking the world, Vodafone reported the existence of secret, direct-access wires that enable government surveillance on citizens. India is among 29 governments that sought access to its networks, says Vodafone.

I&B Minister Prakash Javadekar expressed his satisfaction with media industry self-regulation, and stated that while cross-media ownership is a matter for debate, it is the legality of transactions such as the Reliance-Network18 acquisition that is important.

Nikhil Pahwa of Medianama wrote of a ‘right to be forgotten’ request they received from a user in light of the recent European Court of Justice ruling. The right raises a legal dilemma in India, LiveMint reports. Medianama also comments on Maharashtra police’s decision to take action against Facebook ‘likes’, noting that at the very least, a like and a comment do not amount to the same thing.

The Hindu was scorching in its editorial on the Pune murder, warning that the new BJP government stands to lose public confidence if it does not clearly demonstrate its opposition to religious violence. The Times of India agrees.

Sanjay Hegde wrote of Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (as amended in 2008) as a medium-focused criminalization of speech. dnaEdit also published its criticism of Section 66A.

Ajit Ranade of the Mumbai Mirror comments on India as a ‘republic of hurt sentiments’, criminalizing exercises of free speech from defamation, hate speech, sedition and Section 66A. But in this hurt and screaming republic, dissent is crucial and must stay alive.

A cyber security expert is of the opinion that the police find it difficult to block webpages with derogatory content, as servers are located outside India. But data localization will not help India, writes Jayshree Bajoria.

Dharma Adhikari tries to analyze the combined impact of converging media ownership, corporate patronage of politicians and elections, and recent practices of forced and self-censorship and criminalization of speech.

Elsewhere in the world:

In Pakistan, Facebook has been criticized for blocking pages of a Pakistani rock band and several political groups, primarily left-wing. Across the continent in Europe, Google is suffering from a popularity dip.

The National Council for Peace and Order, the military government in Thailand, has taken over not only the government,but also controls the media. The military cancelled its meetings with Google and Facebook. Thai protesters staged a quiet dissent. The Asian Human Rights Commission condemned the coup. For an excellent take on the coup and its dangers, please redirect here. For a round-up of editorials and op-eds on the coup, redirect here.

China has cracked down on Google, affecting Gmail, Translate and Calendar. It is speculated that the move is connected to the 25^th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests and government reprisal. At the same time, a Tibetan filmmaker who was jailed for six years for his film, Leaving Fear Behind, has been released by Chinese authorities. Leaving Fear Behind features a series of interviews with Tibetans of the Qinghai province in the run-up to the controversial Beijing Olympics in 2008.

Japan looks set to criminalize possession of child pornography. According to reports, the proposed law does not extend to comics or animations or digital simulations.

Egypt’s police is looking to build a social media monitoring system to track expressions of dissent, including “profanity, immorality, insults and calls for strikes and protests”.

Human rights activists asked Facebook to deny its services to the election campaign of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, ahead of elections on June 3.

Call for inputs:

The Law Commission of India seeks comments from stakeholders and citizens on media law. The consultation paper may be found here. The final date for submission is June 19, 2014.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

For feedback and comments, Geetha Hariharan is available by email at geetha@cis-india.org or on Twitter, where her handle is @covertlight.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/foex-live-june-1-7-2014

Your telco could help spy on you

praskrishna — 2013-07-30T06:13:07Z

Telecom minister gives approval to changes in rules for mobile licences to enable such mass surveillance.

The article by Joji Thomas Philip, Leslie D'Monte and Shauvik Ghosh was originally published in Livemint on July 30, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Telecom companies and Internet service providers will soon help the government monitor every call made, every email sent and every website visited, with the Centre deciding to connect their networks to its automated surveillance platform known as the Centralised Monitoring System (CMS).

Communications minister Kapil Sibal has approved changes in existing rules and new clauses to be inserted in mobile licences for enabling such mass surveillance, copies of documents reviewed by Mint reveal.

	The department of telecommunications (DoT) will shortly send a letter to all telcos asking them to connect their “lawful interception system (LIS)” to the CMS “at a regional monitoring centre through an interception, store and forward (ISF) server placed in the licensee’s premises”, according to the documents. Telcos including Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL), Reliance Communications Ltd, Bharti Airtel Ltd, Vodafone India Ltd and Tata TeleServices Ltd declined to comment on questions emailed in this regard.

The department of telecommunications (DoT) will shortly send a letter to all telcos asking them to connect their “lawful interception system (LIS)” to the CMS “at a regional monitoring centre through an interception, store and forward (ISF) server placed in the licensee’s premises”, according to the documents.

Telcos including Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL), Reliance Communications Ltd, Bharti Airtel Ltd, Vodafone India Ltd and Tata TeleServices Ltd declined to comment on questions emailed in this regard.

“The automated process of the CMS will be subjected to the same regulatory scrutiny as is available in the present manual system under Section 5(2) of Indian Telegraph Act and Rules 419-A thereunder, with the added advantage of having a safeguard against any illegal provisioning by the telecom service providers in the present system, however, remote it may be,” DoT said in an email reply to a questionnaire with a brief on CMS.

“Safeguard has also been built against any unauthorized provisioning by having a different interception provisioning agency than the interception requisitioning and monitoring agencies thus having an inbuilt system of checks and balances. Further, a non-erasable command log will be maintained by the system, which can be examined anytime for misuse, thus having an additional safeguard,” DoT said.

The CMS was approved by the cabinet committee on security (CCS) on 16 June 2011, with government funding of Rs.400 crore. It is expected to enable the government to monitor all forms of communication, from emails to online activity to phone calls, text messages and faxes by automating the existing process of interception and monitoring. The government completed a pilot project in September 2011 under which the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT) installed two ISF servers, one of them for MTNL.

“The interception services have been integrated and tested successfully for these two telecom services providers (TSPs),” the note said, referring to MTNL and Tata Communications Ltd. MTNL officials declined to comment. There was no response to queries by Tata Communications.

It added that training had been imparted to six law enforcement agencies—the Intelligence Bureau, the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, the Research and Analysis Wing, the Delhi Police and the National Investigation Agency.

However, the documents also reveal that the CMS project is getting delayed over technical issues such as lawful interception systems sending the intercept-related information (IRI) in “their own proprietary format”; difficulty in tracing the movement of “the target from the home network to the roaming network”; and how to independently provision voice and data interception of mobile users.

The government is simultaneously devising a strategy to counter criticism from the media and privacy lobby groups that this surveillance platform has no privacy safeguards. Mint reported on 13 July that fresh questions were raised on the CMS infringing on the rights of individuals, especially in the wake of the US government’s PRISM surveillance project.

In an internal note on 16 July to help Sibal brief the media, DoT said even as the CMS will automate the existing process of interception and monitoring “... all safeguards that are currently in place in the manual mode of interception will continue”.

The note argued that implementation of the CMS “will rather enhance the privacy of the citizens” since it will not be necessary to take the authorization (for tapping) to the nodal officer of the telecom service providers “who comes to know whose or which phone is being intercepted”. The note added that after the CMS is implemented, provisioning of interception will be done by a CMS authority, who would be different from the law enforcement agency authorities.

“The law enforcement agency (LEA) cannot provision for interception and monitoring and the CMS authority cannot see the content but would be able to provision the request from the LEA.Hence, complete check and balance will be ensured. Further, a non-erasable command log will be maintained by the system, which can be examined anytime for misuse, thus having an additional safeguard,” added the department’s note briefing the minister.

Also, acknowledging that “questions were being asked about the practices of Indian agencies and the privacy and rights of its citizens”, national security adviser Shivshankar Menon in a 23 June note to the ministries of home, external affairs and telecom, the department of electronics and information technology, and the cabinet secretary said: “Only home secretaries of the Centre and states can authorize such monitoring; orders are valid for two months, are not extendable beyond six months; records are to be maintained, use of storage is limited and a review committee of cabinet secretary, law secretary and secretary of the telecom department regularly screens all cases.”

Menon also admitted that when it came to individual privacy rights, there were “larger issues that needed serious consideration and wider consultation with industry, advocacy groups and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) as has been the case so far in the draft privacy Bill... For data protection and retention in India, however, there may be a need to consider legislation or strengthening existing legislation, as the march of technology has made most present laws irrelevant.”

Privacy experts are convinced that safeguards are needed, especially since India does not have a privacy law.

“To safeguard public interest, the government should also draft a law that will make it a criminal offence if a CMS authority is found in possession of any personal information culled through the CMS. That will prove to be a deterrent,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, a privacy lobby body. “Also, the government must build an audit trail using PKI (public key encryption) and people as an additional safeguard.”

“As I understand it, there is also no clear statutory backing for the CMS,” said Apar Gupta, a partner at law firm Advani and Co. that specializes in information technology (IT) law. “What is important is that every tapping order should be backed by a reason. This was the case with the manual process. Will this be possible in an automated surveillance system such as the CMS?”

“What is disturbing is that there is no transparency with regard to the CMS. Everything is happening under the radar with media reports periodically giving us glimpses into the project,” he said. “A state should protect its interests but should do so in a manner that safeguards privacy and limits abuse.”

According to the Freedom on the Net 2012 report by Freedom House, an independent privacy watchdog body, of the 47 countries analysed, 19 had introduced new laws or other directives since January 2011 that could affect free speech online, violate users’ privacy, or punish individuals who post certain types of content. India, which scored 39 points out of 100 (score achieved out of 100 for censoring the Internet), was termed partly free by the report, which was released on 24 September.

Globally, 79% of the respondents in another study said they were concerned about their privacy online, with India (94%), Brazil (90%) and Spain (90%) showing the highest level of concern, according to a June survey undertaken by research firm ComRes, and commissioned by Big Brother Watch, an online privacy campaign.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/livemint-july-30-2013-joji-thomas-philip-leslie-d-monte-shauvik-ghosh-your-telco-could-help-spy-on-you

India won't censor social media: Telecom Minister

praskrishna — 2012-03-01T07:15:29Z

India does not intend to censor online social networks such as Facebook, a minister said Tuesday, but he demanded that they obey the same rules governing the press and other media. The article by AFP was published in the Tribune on February 14, 2012.

“I never wanted to censor social media and no government wants to do so. But like the print and electronic media, they have to obey the laws of the country.” He held a number of meetings with leading Internet companies late last year in which he asked about the possibility of checking content before it is posted online by users.

The minister was said to have shown Internet executives examples of obscene images found on the Internet that risked offending Muslims or defaming politicians, including the boss of the ruling Congress party, Sonia Gandhi. “The media reported I had said I wanted to pre-screen the content on social media. I have never even heard the word pre-screen,” he told the summit.

Since these meetings, 19 Internet firms including Google, Yahoo! and Facebook have been targeted in criminal and civil cases lodged in lower courts, holding them responsible for content posted by users of their platforms. The government has given its sanction for the firms to be tried for serious crimes such as fomenting religious hatred and spreading social discord — offences that could land company directors in prison.

“All I want is that they (social media) should follow the laws of the land. Social media must not consider itself to be above that,” Sibal said. But Internet privacy groups say social media sites may not have the resources to screen obscene material that violates local laws posted on the Internet. Local laws prohibit the sale or distribution of obscene material as well as those that can hurt religious sentiments in overwhelmingly-Hindu India.

“It is just not humanly possible to pre-censor content and Sibal knows that very well,” said Rajan Gandhi, founder of a New Delhi-based advocacy group Society in Action. Pranesh Prakash of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society said he was “glad Sibal does not believe in censorship and that companies operating in India should follow local laws.” “But on the other hand he has asked them to evolve new guidelines and actively monitor user content which is not legally sanctioned. This makes him look two-faced,” Prakash added.

Google and Facebook said earlier this month they had removed the allegedly offensive content used as evidence in the court cases.

The groups have appealed to the Delhi High Court asking for the cases against them to be quashed on the basis they cannot be held responsible for their clients’ actions. The comments of a judge hearing the case raised further fears that freedom of expression online could be restricted. “You must have a stringent check. Otherwise, like in China, we may pass orders banning all such websites,” the judge said at the January hearing. Facebook is banned in China and Google moved its operations out of the country in 2010 in protest at censorship laws there.

The debate about social networks mirrors a larger national dialogue about freedom of speech in the world’s biggest democracy following recent protests by religious groups. Indian-origin writer Salman Rushdie was prevented from speaking at a literature festival in Jaipur last month after Muslim groups protested against his presence over his allegedly blasphemous 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses.” A group led by author and journalist Nilanjana Roy organised public readings of banned literary works on Monday to protest against what it said were recent curbs on intellectual freedom.

The initiative, called “Flashreads for free speech”, was widely advertised on social networks including Twitter and Facebook.

Originally published by AFP and reproduced in the Tribune.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/india-wont-censor-social-media

India's struggle for online freedom

praskrishna — 2012-06-18T06:39:32Z

"65 years since your independence," a new battle for freedom is under way in India — according to a YouTube video uploaded by an Indian member of Anonymous, the global "hacktivist" movement.

Rebecca MacKinnon's article was published in the Sydney Morning Herald on June 9, 2012

With popular websites like Vimeo.com blocked across India by court order, the video calls for action: "Fight for your rights. Fight for India." Over the past several weeks, the group has launched distributed denial-of-service attacks against websites belonging to internet service providers, government departments, India's Supreme Court, and two political parties.

Street protests are being planned for today in as many as 18 cities to protest laws and other government actions that a growing number of Indian internet users believe have violated their right to free expression and privacy online.

A lively national internet freedom movement has grown rapidly across India since the beginning of this year.

The most colourful highlight so far was a seven-day Gandhian hunger strike, otherwise known as a "freedom fast," held in early May on a New Delhi pavement by political cartoonist Aseem Trivedi and activist-journalist Alok Dixit. Trivedi's website was shut down this year in response to a police complaint by a Mumbai-based advocate who alleged that some of Trivedi's works "ridicule the Indian Parliament, the national emblem, and the national flag."

Escalating political and legal battles over internet regulation in India are the latest front in a global struggle for online freedom — not only in countries like China and Iran where the internet is heavily censored and monitored by autocratic regimes, but also in democracies where the political motivations for control are much more complicated.

Democratically elected governments all over the world are failing to find the right balance between demands from constituents to fight crime, control hate speech, keep children safe, and protect intellectual property, and their duty to ensure and respect all citizens' rights to free expression and privacy. Popular online movements — many of them globally interconnected — are arising in response to these failures.

Only about 10 per cent of India's population uses the web, making it unlikely that internet freedom will be a decisive ballot-box issue anytime soon. Yet activists are determined to punish New Delhi's "humourless babus," as one columnist recently called India's censorious politicians and bureaucrats, in the country's media. Grassroots organisers are bringing a new generation of white-collar protesters to the streets to defend the right to use a technology that remains alien to the majority of India's people.

The trouble started with the 2008 passage of the Information Technology (Amendment) Act, whose Section 69 empowers the government to direct any internet service to block, intercept, monitor, or decrypt any information through any computer resource.

Company officials who fail to comply with government requests can face fines and up to seven years in jail. Then, in April 2011, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology issued new rules under which internet companies are expected to remove within 36 hours any content that regulators designate as "grossly harmful," "harassing," or "ethnically objectionable" — designations that are open to a wide variety of interpretations and that free speech advocates argue have opened the door to abuse.

It is thanks to these rules that the website of the hunger-striking cartoonist, Trivedi, was taken offline. Also thanks to the 2011 rules, Facebook and Google are facing trial for having failed to remove objectionable content. If found guilty, the companies could face fines, and executives could be sentenced to jail time.

Saturday's protesters are calling for annulment of the 2011 rules and the repeal of part of the 2008 act. They are also calling for internet service companies to reverse the wholesale blocking of hundreds of websites, including the file-sharing services isoHunt and The Pirate Bay, as well as the video-sharing site Vimeo and Pastebin, which is primarily used for the sharing of text and links.

Internet service providers were responding to a court order from the Madras High Court demanding the blockage, which is aimed at preventing the online distribution of pirated versions of one particular film. The internet companies, fearing that they would not be able to catch every individual instance on every possible site they host, instead chose to block entire services along with all of their content — which had nothing to do with the film in question.

Such "John Doe" orders, named because they are directed against unknown potential offenders in the present and future, are characterised "by their overly broad and sweeping nature," argue lawyer Lawrence Liang and researcher Achal Prabhala, which extends "to a range of non-infringing activities as well, thus catching a whole range of legal acts in their net."

More broadly, as Delhi-based journalist Shivam Vij wrote in a recent essay: "The current mechanisms of internet censorship in India — blocking, direct removal requests to websites, intermediary rules — are draconian and unconstitutional. They need to be replaced with a new set of rules that are fair, transparent and accessible for public scrutiny. They should not be amenable to misuse by the powers-that-be for their own private interests."

Not only are the rules abused, but researchers find that they are causing extralegal censorship by companies that overcompensate in order to err on the side of caution. Last year, the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society performed an experiment in which it sent "legally flawed" takedown demands to seven companies that provide a range of online services, including search, online shopping, and news with user-generated comments.

The legal flaws in the notices were such that the companies could have rejected them without being in breach of the law. Yet "of the 7 intermediaries to which takedown notices were sent, 6 intermediaries over-complied with the notices, despite the apparent flaws in them," reads the Centre for Internet and Society report.

Despite the growing public opposition, a motion to annul the 2011 rules was defeated by voice vote in the upper house of Parliament last month. Yet the criticism was sufficiently sharp that Communications Minister Kapil Sibal announced that he will hold consultations with all members of Parliament, representatives of industry, and other "stakeholders" to discuss the law's problems and how it might be revised.

Many of the law's critics, however, are skeptical that this will eliminate the law's deep flaws and loopholes for abuse, especially given the government's failure to listen so far. Comments on the 2011 rules submitted last year by the Centre for Internet and Society were not even acknowledged as having been received by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. "Sibal uses the excuse of national security and hate speech," says the center's director, Sunil Abraham, "but that is not what is happening."

Abraham worries that what is really happening is a government effort at Internet "behavior modification" through a process akin to an experiment involving caged monkeys, bananas, and ice water. Put four monkeys in a cage and hang a bunch of bananas on the ceiling. Every time one of them climbs up to reach the bananas, you drench all of them with ice water.

Soon enough, the monkeys will start policing themselves — attacking anybody who tries to reach the bananas, making it unnecessary for their masters to deploy the ice water. "This is why the government is being so aggressive so early on, with only 10 percent of India's population online," says Abraham. "If you start the drenching early on, by the time you get to 50 per cent [internet penetration], every one will be well-behaved monkeys."

Companies will act as private internet police for fear of legal punishment before the government is called upon to step in and enforce the law. If it works, Indian politicians could have fewer reasons to worry about online critiques or mockery, because companies fearing prosecution will proactively delete speech that could potentially be designated "harassing" or "grossly harmful."

India is not China or Iran, however. Its politicians may be corrupt, and most of its voters may not understand why Internet freedom matters because they've never used the Internet. But it still has an independent press and boisterous civil society that are not going to give up their critiques and protests anytime soon. India also has a strong, independent judiciary, with a record of ruling against censorship and surveillance measures when a strong case can be made that they conflict with constitutional protections of individual rights. "On free speech I have high faith in the Indian judiciary," says Abraham. "There is a good chance to launch a constitutional challenge."

If Google and Facebook lose at their impending trial — now scheduled for July — they will most certainly appeal, which activists hope could provide just such an opportunity to prevent the sort of "behaviour modification" process that Abraham warns against.

Now India's burgeoning internet freedom movement needs its own reverse "behaviour modification" strategy — imposing consistent and regular doses of political and legal ice water upon India's bureaucrats, politicians, and companies whenever they do things that threaten to corrode the rights of India's internet users. Saturday's protest is just the beginning.

Sunil Abraham is quoted in the article. The report on Intermediary Guidelines co-produced by CIS and Google is also mentioned.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/indias-struggle-for-online-freedom

India: The New Front Line in the Global Struggle for Internet Freedom

praskrishna — 2012-06-18T07:10:21Z

The government tussles with Internet freedom activists in the world's largest democracy.

This article was published in the Atlantic on June 7, 2012

This Saturday, Indian Internet freedom advocates are planning to stage a nation-wide protest against what they see as their government's increasingly restrictive regulation of the Internet. An amorphous alliance of concerned citizens and activist hackers intend to use the streets and the Internet itself to make their opposition felt.

Over the last year, as Americans were focused on the domestic debates surrounding the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), or on the more brazen displays of online censorship by mainstays of Internet restriction like China, Iran and Pakistan, India was rapidly emerging as a key battleground in the worldwide struggle for Internet freedom.

The confrontation escalated in April 2011, when the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology introduced sweeping new rules regulating the nature of material that Internet companies could host online. In response, civil liberties groups, Internet freedom supporters, and a growing assembly of online activist hackers have been fighting back, initiating street protests, organizing online petitions, and launching -- under the banner of the "Anonymous" hacker group -- a torrent of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against Indian government and industry web sites.

The April 2011 rules, an update to India's Information Technology Act (IT Act) of 2000 (amended in 2008), popularly known as the "intermediary guidelines," instruct online "intermediaries" -- companies that provide Internet access, host online content, websites, or search services -- to remove, within 36 hours, any material deemed to be "grossly harmful, harassing, blasphemous," "ethnically objectionable," or "disparaging" by any Internet user who submits a formal objection letter to that intermediary. Under the guidelines, any resident of India can compel Google, at the risk of criminal and/or civil liability, to remove content from its site that the resident finds politically, religiously, or otherwise "objectionable."

Information Technology Minister Kapil Sibal -- the intermediary guidelines' most important government evangelist, and the head of the agency responsible for administering the guidelines -- even instructed Internet companies to go one step further and start pre-screening content for removal before it was flagged by concerned users. This requires companies like Facebook, in effect, to determine what material might offend its users and thus violate Indian law, and then remove it from the website. With over 100 million Internet users in India, no company could possibly monitor all its content through human intervention alone; web companies would have to set up filters and other mechanisms to take down potentially objectionable content more or less automatically.

India's constitution, in large part crafted in response to the modern country's harrowing history of religious and communal violence, allows for "reasonable restrictions" on free speech. Indian officials have at times banned certain books, movies, or other materials touching on such sensitive subjects as religion and caste.

Left with little choice but to comply or risk legal action, Google, Yahoo!, and other Internet companies acquiesced and began pulling down webpages after receiving requests to do so. Yet many companies refused to remove all the content requested, prompting Mufti Aijaz Arshad Qasm, an Islamic scholar, and journalist Vinay Rai, respectively, to file civil and criminal suits against 22 of the largest Internet companies operating in India. The targets, including Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, and Microsoft, were accused of failing to remove material deemed to be offensive to the Prophet Mohammed, Jesus, several Hindu gods and goddesses, and various political leaders.

The companies have had some success in the litigation: Google India, Yahoo!, and Microsoft have all been dropped from the civil case after the court heard preliminary arguments; the Delhi High Court recently dismissed Microsoft from the criminal case. Otherwise, both cases are still ongoing.

India has taken its Internet regulation internationally, asking the United States government to ensure that India-specific objectionable content is removed from sites such as Facebook, Google, and YouTube, and suggesting that these companies should be asked to relocate their servers to India in to order better to regulate the content locally.

The Indian government's state-centric view of Internet regulation and governance is also clear in their approach to international governance. Citing the need for more governmental input in the Internet's development and what happens online, India formally proposed the creation of the Committee for Internet Related Policies (CIRP) at the 2011 United Nations General Assembly. The CIRP would be an entirely new multilateral UN body responsible for coordinating virtually all Internet governance functions, including multilateral treaties.

To be fair, some Indians see these as efforts not to impose censorship but to allow a greater degree of Indian and international control over a system considered by many in India and elsewhere to be under the thumb of the U.S. government.

Yet some Internet experts in both India and the West are criticizing the CIRP proposal as part of "thinly masked efforts to control or shape the Internet," as one Indian official put it. They warn that a state-centric system of Internet governance could lead to serious restrictions on the type of information available online, and damage the Internet's potential for innovation.

India's Internet freedom advocates are straining to keep up with the rapid pace of the last year. But, now, they're gathering some steam. Online petitions against the intermediary guidelines, the IT Act, and censorship in India in general have appeared on Change.org and Facebook; protest videos are popping up on Youtube. The Centre for Internet and Society, a web-focused think tank, released an extensive report highlighting the intermediary guidelines' effects on freedom online. The Internet Democracy Project organized a day-long training program on freedom of expression and censorship for bloggers entitled "Make Blog not War." FreeSoftware Movement Karnataka organized a protest of hundreds of students in Bangalore, India's IT hub. And Save Your Voice activists held a sit in outside Delhi's Jantar Mantar monument to pressure lawmakers.

Yet, not all the opposition has been so civil. Hackers, operating under the umbrella of the techno-libertarian hacker community, "Anonymous," are waging their own, less lawful fight against the government as well as the Internet companies that have, in their view, too readily complied with the government's censorship demands.

On May 17, Anonymous hackers attacked a number of Indian government websites, including the Indian Supreme Court, the Reserve Bank of India, the ruling Congress Party and its coalition partners, as well as the opposition Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), making them all inaccessible for several hours.

Moreover, just this past week, Anonymous broke into the websites and servers of a number of Internet Service Providers, including Reliance Communications, seemingly to punish them for complying with government orders to block file-sharing hosts such as Pirate Bay and Vimeo. Once in the ISPs' servers, the hackers accessed their lists of blocked sites -- which they then distributed to media outlets. They also redirected people who tried to reach Reliance's site to an Anonymous protest page.

Building on the momentum of these attacks, and on the anti-censorship outrage growing across India, Anonymous has called for a national day of protest in 11 Indian cities this Saturday, and an additional series online attacks against government and industry websites. The occupy-style protests -- which Anonymous insists will be non-violent -- are to include awareness campaigns on Facebook and other social networking sites. Protesters are being asked to don the Guy Fawkes mask, a symbol now associated with Anonymous, among other protest movements, both in the streets and on their Facebook profiles.

It's unclear how much support the June 9 protest will receive, or how serious the planned Anonymous attacks with be, but given the attention that the announcement has attracted in the Indian media, it seems likely that people will at least be paying attention. And even if this weekend the protest fails to attract the type of large and vocal response protest organizers are hoping it will, that it's come so far is an indication that neither side looks ready to back down.

Still, the government has given some small signs recently that it is reconsidering its position on the "intermediary guidelines," if not on Internet regulation more generally. Information Technology Minister Sibal, under pressure from the political opposition and after Parliament Member P. Rajeeve tabled a motion to seek rescission of the new rules, indicated that he would reconsider his previous positions, and the government has agreed to reexamine the rules.

This is an encouraging sign, although it's unlikely that any government action will come in time to forestall this weekend's protests. But even if the intermediary guidelines are ultimately rescinded, India will likely continue its soul-searching on how it deals with the Internet.

As the world's largest democracy and a model for much of the developing world, and with an Internet population anticipated to surpass that of the United States in the next few years, India is an important, maybe the most important, test case for the future of Internet freedom globally. Should India continue down a course of restriction, other nations eager to restrict online speech could see precedent to impose their own technical and political barriers to free expression online. It would be a tragic irony if India, as one of the developing world's greatest beneficiaries of the information revolution, ended up curbing those same free flows of information and ideas.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/india-the-new-front-line-in-the-global-struggle-for-internet-freedom

A beauty’s blog creates furore

praskrishna — 2012-04-11T03:50:47Z

Her first Tamil poetry anthology Otraiyilaiyena (As a single leaf) saw three editions and the second one Ulagin Azhagiya Muthal Penn (The first beautiful woman in the world) invited mixed reactions like Iyal Poetry Award and a call for a ban by Hindu Makkal Katchi. Parathaiyarul Raani (Queen of sluts) her third collection was a reaction to all the moral policing.

Lakshmi Krupa's article was published in Deccan Chronicle on April 10, 2012

While her film Sengadal The Dead Sea was stopped from being screened to the public, until the Supreme Court’s Appellate tribunal intervened with regional censor board for the film clearance, groups like the Makkal Kalai Ilakiya Kazhagam attacked her beliefs. Adding to this list is the latest revelation that the Principal Secretary of IT Department of the Tamil Nadu government requested that her blog be blocked along with a host of others.

In a text sent from A.K. Kaushik, Additional Director & CPIO Cyber Laws & E-Security in response to an RTI petition on Website Blocking, it was reported that Leena’s blog http://ulaginazhagiyamuthalpenn.blogspot.com was requested to be blocked on 21.07.2010 by the Principal Secretary, IT Department.

This recent revelation has led to an outrage over the fact that artists and activists like Leena have had to constantly knock on the doors of the legal system to exercise the most basic of their rights. In an interview from London where she is currently the Charles Wallace Visiting Scholar at the University of London, Leena says, “Center for Internet and Society in Bengaluru that works towards upholding Civil Liberties Online, had obtained a list of all websites that were sought to be blocked by Governmental authorities with the use of Right to Information Act.

They sent me all the details on how my blog was one amongst them as the Principal Secretary, IT Department, Govt of TN had asked for it to be blocked. As the Internet’s role in free speech becomes increasingly prevalent, tactics to control the Internet are growing more refined each year. Methods of accessing private data and censoring content vary between countries, but all maintain an element of oppression. We, who are concerned about civil liberties should wake up to the secret missions of our government on Internet Censorship and protect freedom of speech online.”

Leena’s blog has been in the center of controversies before too. “Hindu Makkal Katchi, the right wing moral police lodged a police complaint to ban my poetry collections and ban my blog ulaginazhagiyamuthalpenn. blogspot.com. They went to every possible media house and were making threat calls and there were discussions on the alleged obscenity in my poems. They even wanted the Iyal International Poetry Prize and Sirpi Literary Awards to be revoked.”

Leena’s poetry challenges fanatic minds. “My poetry has a feminist agenda and it is just not about equal rights for women. It is a socialist, anti-institutional political movement which calls for women to break the code, destroy capitalism, live their sexuality and witch hunt every possible patriarchal design. I am not amused about the fact that my poetry gave jitters to ultra blasphemous right and left wingers,” she concludes.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/beauty-blog-creates-furore

No more blocking of entire websites?

praskrishna — 2012-06-26T09:47:02Z

The Madras HC has taken one step to ensure that entire websites are no longer blocked, but it doesn't mean that arbitrary takedowns will cease.

CIS research is quoted in this article by Danish Sheikh published in the Business Standard on June 24, 2012

Vimeo’s back. As is Pastebin, and Pirate Bay and IsoHunt. For your, you know, legitimate file-sharing practices.

Having been approached by a consortium of Internet Service Providers, the Madras High Court has issued a welcome clarification of its “John Doe order” issued in favour of RK Productions for the films 3 and Dammu. Designed to protect against potential offences by yet-unidentified persons, the sweeping scope of the order left a very wide, undefined scope to ISPs dealing with potentially infringing material. The ISPs over-complied, a host of file-sharing websites were barred from Indian servers overnight — oh, and “Anonymous” got more annoyed. Note here that the vagueness of the order extended to not specifying any infringing websites in particular.

Following the representation from the ISPs, the Court has provided them a specific directive. The new order states that the interim injunction was granted only with respect to the particular URL which featured the infringing movie, and not the entire website. No more blocking entire websites — the ISPs are now required to be informed about the particulars of where the infringing movie is kept within 48 hours.

The clarification couldn’t have come at a more vital time, and will hopefully serve as a precedent to curb an alarming practice that can be traced back to 2002. Back then, the Delhi High Court was approached in a matter concerning the unauthorised transmission of Ten Sports by unlicensed cable operators. The result was the Court’s first John Doe order with respect to media transmission: a commissioner was appointed to search premises of unnamed cable operators and seize evidence by taking photographs and video films. This particular order was then relied on by the Court almost a decade later in pre-emptively injuncting piracy of UTV Software Communication’s Saat Khoon Maaf and Thank You. The trend escalated from there, with similar orders being obtained for a number of films including Don 2, Bodyguard, Kahaani and Department, to name a few.

Where the last few years have seen a steadily rising output of orders largely from the Delhi and Madras High Court, just last week it was the Bombay High Court that joined the fray. Approached by Viacom 18 Motion Pictures, it passed a John Doe pre-emptively banning the piracy of Viacom’s Gangs of Wasseypur prior to its June 22 release. Considering the Bombay High Court’s noted apprehension in granting ex-parte orders, this decision looked set to add further momentum to the John Doe juggernaut.

Instead, we get the Madras High Court’s welcome restraint. That vague injunctions are an abuse of process is a principle that has been noted time and again, with the Delhi High Court even noting that “vague and general injunction of anticipatory nature can never be granted”. This is coupled with the larger access to information and free speech issue that has been raised more vocally following the ire with the mass block of file-sharing websites. The antecedents to this scenario may well be the media infrastructure cases of the ‘50s and ‘60s, where newspaper content was indirectly being regulated by way of regulation of newsprint, advertisement space, etc. Recognising these indirect control mechanisms in their ultimate speech-restricting form, the Supreme Court struck them down as unreasonable restrictions to the right to free expression under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution.

Prevention isn’t always better than cure. The Madras High Court has thankfully taken one step in the direction. What is left dangling is the other big question — that of the intermediary rules. There may now be a barrier to blocking of entire websites in this manner, but as so many internet users have found, one doesn’t have to necessarily approach the Courts if they want internet service providers to take down content: the ISPs are happy to do that for free. As a Centre for Internet and Society study found, takedown requests sent to ISPs, no matter how trivial or flimsy, will for the most part be met by acquiescence of the order. Without appropriate checks and balances, the intermediary will over-comply.

While the ISPs’ intervention before the Madras High Court is an encouraging sign, it doesn’t mean that the arbitrary takedowns under the intermediary rules will cease to happen. The digital media site Medianama quotes an ISP representative citing concern that ISPs were being wrongfully vilified on the Internet — and (significantly) that it would adversely impact their business if video streaming was disabled for users. The same commercial considerations wouldn’t likely stand when it comes to the bit-by-bit requests that come forward under the IT rules. Along with focusing attention on the High Court’s clarification, we need to sustain the movement to strike down the intermediary rules and push for a more transparent and fair mechanism.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/no-more-blocking-of-websites

Regulating Sexist Online Harassment: A Model of Online Harassment as a Form of Censorship

amber — 2021-05-31T09:39:14Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/it-for-change-february-2021-amber-sinha-regulating-sexist-online-harassment.pdf

Internet Censorship, Surveillance, and Corporate Transparency

praskrishna — 2013-03-25T10:29:50Z

Google’s Dorothy Chou will be in conversation with international experts Annenberg School of Communication, St., Philadelphia, on April 3, 2013, from 4.30 p.m. to 6.00 p.m. Malavika Jayaram is participating in the event as a panelist. The event is organised by Center for Global Communication Studies and Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.

Read full details of the event was published on the website of Center for Global Communication Studies.

Since mid 2010 Google has been publishing data about the requests it receives from governments to remove content or hand over user data. This regularly updated Transparency Report reveals alarming trends: Government surveillance is on the rise, everywhere. Even worse, a large number of government censorship and surveillance requests are of dubious legality even according to the host countries’ own laws. In a world where citizens increasingly rely on digital products and services owned and operated by private corporations for their civic and political lives, the implications for human rights and democracy around the world are troubling.

Dorothy Chou, Senior Policy Analyst who leads Google's efforts to increase transparency about how it responds to government censorship and surveillance demands, will discuss Google's Transparency Report with Rebecca MacKinnon, Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and an international panel of experts:

Ronald Lemos, the Director of the Center for Technology and Society at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV) School of Law in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Hu Yong, Associate Professor, Peking University School of Journalism and Communication

Malavika Jayaram, Fellow, Center for Internet and Society, Bangalore and Annenberg CGCS;

Gregory Asmolov, PhD Candidate, London School of Economics; Global Voices "RuNet Echo" contributor and Russian social media expert.

This event is part of the cross-disciplinary, university-wide “New Technologies, Human Rights, and Transparency” project funded by the university’s Global Engagement Fund and hosted by Annenberg’s Center for Global Communications Studies in partnership with Wharton, PennLaw, Engineering, and the School of Arts and Sciences. The project aims to examine the relationship between government and corporate power in today’s digitally networked world, bringing together research partners from across the university and around the world to develop a methodology to evaluate and compare the policies and practices of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) companies as they affect Internet users’ freedom expression and privacy in a human rights context.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/global-asc-upenn-events-internet-censorship-surveillance-and-corporate-transparency

India’s Civil Liberties Crisis: Of Bans, Blocks, Bullying and Biometrics

praskrishna — 2013-03-25T10:39:43Z

Malavika Jayaram will be a speaker at this event which is organized by the Center for Global Communication Studies and will be held at Annenberg School of Communication, University of Pennslyvania, Philadelphia, on March 28, 2013, from 12 p.m. to 1.30 p.m.

Read about the event on the website of the Center for Global Communication Studies.

Unlike the US First Amendment, the first amendment to the Constitution of India actually strengthened state regulation over freedom of speech. Irony aside, the amendment that is considered by many scholars as the first media crisis in post-colonial India has increasing relevance today. Its prioritization of sovereignty and national security over democratic rights and institutions has resulted in a zone of contestation between nation building and free speech. This is playing out through a series of battles involving website blocking, book banning, biometric databases and bullying of all kinds.

In the last few months, an all-girl rock band in Kashmir was silenced, a village in Bihar banned women and girls from using mobile phones, and we had yet another Salman Rushdie controversy. Movies were blocked. Facebook and Google were taken to court for hosting objectionable content. Paintings were removed from an art gallery at the “suggestion” of the police because they depicted Hindu deities as semi-nude. At the same time, there was a drive to digitize governance and to build biometric databases to enumerate and record every individual. The impacts on free speech, anonymity, and privacy were considered fair game in the drive towards progress, inclusion, and maintenance of public order.

The relationship between the citizen and the state is undergoing a radical transformation mediated by the marriage of welfare schemes and commercial interests. The privacy of one’s body and identity is challenged by initiatives to capture fingerprints, irises, faces, and transactions. The heckler’s vote is increasingly powerful in silencing free expression. Civil society is under siege for resisting the onslaught of draconian legislation, arbitrary restrictions, and the banning of various forms of cultural output. Narratives are being constructed that attribute all civic engagement with “western values” and with being mouthpieces of foreign interests.

In this talk, I will give an overview of the strands of discord that are forming the fabric of India’s latest crisis of democracy. I will unpack some of the rhetoric behind the government’s drive to grasp the individual, and make the citizen visible to the state in an unprecedented manner. I will also discuss my experiences working with civil society in India, and the tools and techniques used to engage with policy formation and to adapt to the future of advocacy.

A dual-qualified lawyer, Malavika Jayaram spent eight years in London - with global law firm Allen & Overy in the Communications, Media & Technology group, and then with Citigroup. She relocated to India in 2006, and wears 3 hats as a practising lawyer, a Fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and a PhD scholar. As a partner at Jayaram & Jayaram, Bangalore, she focuses on corporate/tech transactions and has a special interest in new media and the arts. At CIS, Malavika collaborates on projects that study legislative and policy changes in the internet governance and privacy domains. As a PhD scholar, she is looking at data protection and privacy in India, with a special focus on e-governance schemes and the new biometric ID project.

A graduate of the National Law School of India, she has an LL.M. from Northwestern University, Chicago. She is on the advisory board of the Indian Journal of Law & Technology and is the author of the India chapter for the Data Protection & Privacy volume in the Getting the Deal Through series, launched this year. She is one of 10 Indian lawyers featured in “The International Who's Who of Internet e- Commerce & Data Protection Lawyers 2012” directory.

She is currently running a research project for Internews, studying internet policy in India. This will produce a landscape overview and interviews with various stakeholders in this domain.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/global-asc-upenn-events-indias-civil-liberties-crisis

A dangerous trend: social media adds fire to Muzaffarnagar clashes

praskrishna — 2013-09-12T10:50:26Z

As access to the Internet grows, especially in small Indian towns and cities, social media has revealed a darker side as a hatred-mongering tool capable of setting off serious violence.

This article by Zia Haq was published in the Hindustan Times on September 9, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Malicious content, such as fake YouTube videos and morphed photographs, are usually spread rapidly to trigger rioting.

In UP’s Muzzafarnagar, a video clip purportedly showing a Muslim mob lynching two boys, which police now suspect is from neighboring Pakistan or Afghanistan, was used to stir unease, deepening hatred between Muslims and Hindus.

A series of rioting in western UP district has left at least 41 dead. The circulation of the video had led to violence spreading to new areas. The fake video that escalated clashes portends a new trend in India’s discordant politics.

“From word of mouth, communal polarization, especially by Hindutva organisations, is now moving online. This is a dangerous trend since the Internet is very potent,” said Prof Badri Narayan of the GB Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad.

Research shows social media sites, including sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, are more persuasive than television ads. Nearly 100 million Indians use the Internet each day, more than Germany’s population. Of this, 40 million have assured broadband, the ones who mostly subscribe to social-media accounts.

The country also has about 87 million mobile-Internet users, according to Internet and Mobile Association of India.

UP’s police have blocked the video, invoking sections under 420 (forgery), 153-A (promoting enmity on religious grounds) and 120-B (conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code, along with section 66 of the Information Technology Act.

Section 66, however, is the heart of a free-speech debate. Activists say section 66 has been used at the drop of a hat.

Last November, two Mumbai girls faced arrests for questioning the city’s shutdown for Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray’s funeral. The arrests were declared illegal after being roundly criticised, including by the Supreme Court.

“In this case, the government has a legitimate reason to censor speech. However, this requires the authorities to very focused and action should be targeted, rather than sweeping,” said Sunil Abraham of the Bangalore-based The Centre for Internet and Society.

The government’s action, Abraham said, tended to be broad-based. He said in such situations, the government could use public-service messaging to present the alternate view.

“Legal provisions could be made whereby Twitter users from India, for example, (compulsorily) see the public service message by default when they log in,” Abraham said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/hindustan-times-september-9-2013-zia-haq-a-dangerous-trend