Centre for Internet and Society

No Civil Society Members in the Cyber Regulations Advisory Committee

pranesh — 2013-01-09T17:56:57Z

The Government of India has taken our advice and reconstituted the Cyber Regulations Advisory Commitee. But there is no representation of Internet users, citizens, and consumers — only government and industry interests.

In multiple op-eds (Indian Express and Mint), I have pointed out the need for the government to reconstitute the "Cyber Regulations Advisory Committee" (CRAC) under section 88 of the Information Technology Act. That it be reconstituted along the model of the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee was also part of the suggestions that CIS sent to the government after a meeting FICCI had convened along with the government on September 4, 2012.

Section 88 requires that people "representing the interests principally affected" by Internet policy or "having special knowledge of the subject matter" be present in this advisory body. The main function of the CRAC is to advise the the Central Government "either generally as regards any rules or for any other purpose connected with this Act".

Despite this important function, the CRAC had — till November 2012 — only ever met twice, both times in 2001. The response to an RTI informed us that the body had never provided any advice to the government.

Government Not Serious

The increasing pressure on the government for botching up Internet regulations has led it to reconstitute the CRAC. However, the list of members of the committee shows that the government is not serious about this committee representing "the interests primarily affected" by Internet policy.

Importantly, this goes against the express wish of the Shri Kapil Sibal, the Union Minister for Communications and IT, who has repeatedly stated that he believes that Internet-related policymaking should be an inclusive process. Most recently, at the 2012 Internet Governance Forum he stated that we need systems that are:

"collaborative, consultative, inclusive and consensual, for dealing with all public policies involving the Internet"

Interestingly, despite the Hon'ble Minster verbally inviting civil society organizations (on November 23, 2012) for a meeting of the CRAC that happened on November 25, 2012, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology refused to send us invitations for the meeting. This hints at a disconnect between the political and bureaucratic wings of the government, at least at some levels.

Interestingly, this isn't the first time this has been pointed out. Na. Vijayashankar was levelling similar criticisms against the CRAC way back in August 2000 when the original CRAC was constituted.

Breakdown by Stakeholder Groupings

While there is no one universal division of stakeholders in Internet governance, but four goups are widely recognized: governments (national and intergovernmental), industry, technical community, and civil society. Using that division, we get:

Government - 15 out of 22 members
Industry bodies - 6 out of 22 members
Technical community / Academia - 1 out of 22 members
Civil society - 0 out of 22 members.

List of Members of Cyber Regulatory Advisory Committee

The official notification (G.S.R. 827(E)) is available on the DEIT website and came into force on November 16, 2012.

(Note: Names with ~~strikethroughs~~ have been removed from the CRAC since 2000, and those with emphasis have been added.)

Minister, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology - Chairman
Minister of State, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology - Member
Secretary, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Department of Electronics and Information Technology - Member
Secretary, Department of Telecommunications - Member
~~Finance Secretary - Member~~
Secretary, Legislative Department - Member
Secretary, Department of Legal Affairs - Member
~~Shri T.K. Vishwanathan, Presently Member Secretary, Law Commission - Member~~
Secretary, Ministry of Commerce - Member
Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs - Member
Secretary, Ministry of Defence - Member
Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India - Member
Information Technology Secretary from the states by rotation - Member
Director, IIT by rotation from the IITs - Member
Director General of Police from the States by rotation - Member
President, NASSCOM - Member
President, Internet Service Provider Association - Member
Director, Central Bureau of Investigation - Member
Controller of Certifying Authority - Member
Representative of CII - Member
Representative of FICCI - Member
Representative of ASSOCHAM - Member
President, Computer Society of India - Member
Group Coordinator, Department of Electronic and Information Technology - Member Secretary

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cyber-regulations-advisory-committee-no-civil-society

Smart Cities in India: An Overview

vanya — 2016-01-11T01:30:07Z

The Government of India is in the process of developing 100 smart cities in India which it sees as the key to the country's economic and social growth. This blog post gives an overview of the Smart Cities project currently underway in India. The smart cities mission in India is at a nascent stage and an evolving area for research. The Centre for Internet and Society will continue work in this area.

Overview of the 100 Smart Cities Mission

The Government of India announced its flagship programme- the 100 Smart Cities mission in the year 2014 and was launched in June 2015 to achieve urban transformation, drive economic growth and improve the quality of life of people by enabling local area development and harnessing technology. Initially, the Mission aims to cover 100 cities across the countries (which have been shortlisted on the basis of a Smart Cities Proposal prepared by every city) and its duration will be five years (FY 2015-16 to FY 2019-20). The Mission may be continued thereafter in the light of an evaluation to be done by the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) and incorporation of the learnings into the Mission. The Mission aims to focus on area-based development in the form of redevelopment of existing spaces, or the development of new areas (Greenfield) to accommodate the growing urban population and ensure comprehensive planning to improve quality of life, create employment and enhance incomes for all - especially the poor and the disadvantaged. ^{^[1]} On 27th August 2015 the Centre unveiled 98 smart cities across India which were selected for this Project. Across the selected cities, 13 crore population ( 35% of the urban population will be included in the development plans. ^{^[2]} The mission has been developed for the purpose of achieving urban transformation. The vision is to preserve India's traditional architecture, culture & ethnicity while implementing modern technology to make cities livable, use resources in a sustainable manner and create an inclusive environment. ^{^[3]}

The promises of the Smart City mission include reduction of carbon footprint, adequate water and electricity supply, proper sanitation, including solid waste management, efficient urban mobility and public transport, affordable housing, robust IT connectivity and digitalization, good governance, citizen participation, security of citizens, health and education.

Questions unanswered

Why and How was the Smart Cities project conceptualized in India? What was the need for such a project in India?
What was the role of the public/citizens at the ideation and conceptualization stage of the project?
Which actors from the Government, Private industry and the civil society are involved in this mission? Though the smart cities mission has been initiated by the Government of India under the Ministry of Urban Development, there is no clarity about the involvement of the associated offices and departments of the Ministry.

How are the Smart Cities being selected?

The 100 cities were supposed to be selected on the basis of Smart cities challenge^{^[4]} involving two stages. Stage I of the challenge involved Intra-State city selection on objective criteria to identify cities to compete in stage-II. In August 2015, The Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India announced 100 smart cities ^{^[5]} evaluated on parameters such as service levels, financial and institutional capacity, past track record, called as the 'shortlisted cities' for this purpose. The selected cities are now competing for selection in the Second stage of the challenge, which is an All India competition. For this crucial stage, the potential 100 smart cities are required to prepare a Smart City Proposal (SCP) stating the model chosen (retrofitting, redevelopment, Greenfield development or a mix), along with a Pan-City dimension with Smart Solutions. The proposal must also include suggestions collected by way of consultations held with city residents and other stakeholders, along with the proposal for financing of the smart city plan including the revenue model to attract private participation. The country saw wide participation from the citizens to voice their aspirations and concerns regarding the smart city. 15th December 2015 has been declared as the deadline for submission of the SCP, which must be in consonance with evaluation criteria set by The MoUD, set on the basis of professional advice. ^{^[6]} On the basis of this, 20 cities will be selected for the first year. According to the latest reports, the Centre is planning to fund only 10 cities for the first phase in case the proposals sent by the states do not match the expected quality standards and are unable to submit complete area-development plans by the deadline, i.e. 15th December, 2015. ^{^[7]}

Questions unanswered

Who would be undertaking the task of evaluating and selecting the cities for this project?
What are the criteria for selection of a city to qualify in the first 20 (or 10, depending on the Central Government) for the first phase of implementation?

How are the smart cities going to be Funded?

The Smart City Mission will be operated as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS) and the Central Government proposes to give financial support to the Mission to the extent of Rs. 48,000 crores over five years i.e. on an average Rs. 100 crore per city per year. ^{^[8]} The additional resources will have to be mobilized by the State/ ULBs from external/internal sources. According to the scheme, once list of shortlisted Smart Cities is finalized, Rs. 2 crore would have been disbursed to each city for proposal preparation.^{^[9]}

According to estimates of the Central Government, around Rs 4 lakh crore of funds will be infused mainly through private investments and loans from multilateral institutions among other sources, which accounts to 80% of the total spending on the mission. ^{^[10]} For this purpose, the Government will approach the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for a loan costing £500 million and £1 billion each for 2015-20. If ADB approves the loan, it would be it will be the bank's highest funding to India's urban sector so far.^{^[11]} Foreign Direct Investment regulations have been relaxed to invite foreign capital and help into the Smart City Mission. ^{^[12]}

Questions unanswered

The Government notes on Financing of the project mentions PPPs for private funding and leveraging of resources from internal and external resources. There is lack of clarity on the external resources the Government has/will approach and the varied PPP agreements the Government is or is planning to enter into for the purpose of private investment in the smart cities.

How is the scheme being implemented?

Under this scheme, each city is required to establish a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) having flexibility regarding planning, implementation, management and operations. The body will be headed by a full-time CEO, with nominees of Central Government, State Government and ULB on its Board. The SPV will be a limited company incorporated under the Companies Act, 2013 at the city-level, in which the State/UT and the Urban Local Body (ULB) will be the promoters having equity shareholding in the ratio 50:50. The private sector or financial institutions could be considered for taking equity stake in the SPV, provided the shareholding pattern of 50:50 of the State/UT and the ULB is maintained and the State/UT and the ULB together have majority shareholding and control of the SPV. Funds provided by the Government of India in the Smart Cities Mission to the SPV will be in the form of tied grant and kept in a separate Grant Fund.^{^[13]}

For the purpose of implementation and monitoring of the projects, the MoUD has also established an Apex Committee and National Mission Directorate for National Level Monitoring^{^[14]}, a State Level High Powered Steering Committee (HPSC) for State Level Monitoring^{^[15]} and a Smart City Advisory Forum at the City Level ^{^[16]}.

Also, several consulting firms^{^[17]} have been assigned to the 100 cities to help them prepare action plans.^{^[18]} Some of them include CRISIL, KPMG, McKinsey, etc. ^{^[19]}

Questions unanswered

What policies and regulations have been put in place to account for the smart cities, apart from policies looking at issues of security, privacy, etc.?
What international/national standards will be adopted while development of the smart cities? Though the Bureau of Indian Standards is in the process of formulating standardized guidelines for the smart cities in India^{^[20]}, yet there is lack of clarity on adoption of these national standards, along with the role of international standards like the ones formulated by ISO.

What is the role of Foreign Governments and bodies in the Smart cities mission?

Ever since the government's ambitious project has been announced and cities have been shortlisted, many countries across the globe have shown keen interest to help specific shortlisted cities in building the smart cities and are willing to invest financially. Countries like Sweden, Malaysia, UAE, USA, etc. have agreed to partner with India for the mission.^{^[21]} For example, UK has partnered with the Government to develop three India cities-Pune, Amravati and Indore.^{^[22]} Israel's start-up city Tel Aviv also entered into an agreement to help with urban transformation in the Indian cities of Pune, Nagpur and Nashik to foster innovation and share its technical know-how.^{^[23]} France has piqued interest for Nagpur and Puducherry, while the United States is interested in Ajmer, Vizag and Allahabad. Also, Spain's Barcelona Regional Agency has expressed interest in exchanging technology with the Delhi. Apart from foreign government, many organizations and multilateral agencies are also keen to partner with the Indian government and have offered financial assistance by way of loans. Some of them include the UK government-owned Department for International Development, German government KfW development bank, Japan International Cooperation Agency, the US Trade and Development Agency, United Nations Industrial Development Organization and United Nations Human Settlements Programme. ^{^[24]}

Questions unanswered

Do these governments or organization have influence on any other component of the Smart cities?
How much are the foreign governments and multilateral bodies spending on the respective cities?
What kind of technical know-how is being shared with the Indian government and cities?

What is the way ahead?

On the basis of the SCP, the MoUD will evaluate, assess the credibility and select 20 smart cities out of the short-listed ones for execution of the plan in the first phase. The selected city will set up a SPV and receive funding from the Government.

Questions unanswered

Will the deadline of submission of the Smart Cities Proposal be pushed back?
After the SCP is submitted on the basis of consultation with the citizens and public, will they be further involved in the implementation of the project and what will be their role?
How will the MoUD and other associated organizations as well as actors consider the implementation realities of the project, like consideration of land displacement, rehabilitation of the slum people, etc.
How are ICT based systems going to be utilized to make the cities and the infrastructure "smart"?
How is the MoUD going to respond to the concerns and criticism emerging from various sections of the society, as being reflected in the news items?
How will the smart cities impact and integrate the existing laws, regulations and policies? Does the Government intend to use the existing legislations in entirety, or update and amend the laws for implementation of the Smart Cities Mission?

^{^[1]} Smart Cities, Mission Statement and Guidelines, Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India, June 2015, Available at : http://smartcities.gov.in/writereaddata/SmartCityGuidelines.pdf

^{^[2]} http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2015-08-27/news/65929187_1_jammu-and-kashmir-12-cities-urban-development-venkaiah-naidu

^{^[3]} http://india.gov.in/spotlight/smart-cities-mission-step-towards-smart-india

^{^[4]} http://smartcities.gov.in/writereaddata/Process%20of%20Selection.pdf

^{^[5]} Full list : http://www.scribd.com/doc/276467963/Smart-Cities-Full-List

^{^[6]} http://smartcities.gov.in/writereaddata/Process%20of%20Selection.pdf

^{^[7]} http://www.ibtimes.co.in/modi-govt-select-only-10-cities-under-smart-city-project-this-year-report-658888

^{^[8]} http://smartcities.gov.in/writereaddata/Financing%20of%20Smart%20Cities.pdf

^{^[9]} Smart Cities presentation by MoUD : http://smartcities.gov.in/writereaddata/Presentation%20on%20Smart%20Cities%20Mission.pdf

^{^[10]} http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/smart-cities-projectfrom-france-to-us-a-rush-to-offer-assistance-funds/

^{^[11]} http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/funding-for-smart-cities-key-to-coffer-lies-outside-india/#sthash.5lnW9Jsq.dpuf

^{^[12]} http://india.gov.in/spotlight/smart-cities-mission-step-towards-smart-india

^{^[13]} http://smartcities.gov.in/writereaddata/SPVs.pdf

^{^[14]} http://smartcities.gov.in/writereaddata/National%20Level%20Monitoring.pdf

^{^[15]} http://smartcities.gov.in/writereaddata/State%20Level%20Monitoring.pdf

^{^[16]} http://smartcities.gov.in/writereaddata/City%20Level%20Monitoring.pdf

^{^[17]} http://smartcities.gov.in/writereaddata/List_of_Consulting_Firms.pdf

^{^[18]} http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=128457

^{^[19]} http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/49242050.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

^{^[20]} http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/in-a-first-bis-to-come-up-with-standards-for-smart-cities-115060400931_1.html

^{^[21]} http://accommodationtimes.com/foreign-countries-have-keen-interest-in-development-of-smart-cities/

^{^[22]} http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2015-11-20/news/68440402_1_uk-trade-three-smart-cities-british-deputy-high-commissioner

^{^[23]} http://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/Tech/Tel-Aviv-to-help-India-build-smart-cities-435161?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=socialnetwork

^{^[24]} http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/smart-cities-projectfrom-france-to-us-a-rush-to-offer-assistance-funds/#sthash.nCMxEKkc.dpuf

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/smart-cities-in-india-an-overview

Start-up India turns the heat on Facebook Free Basics

praskrishna — 2015-12-29T15:54:30Z

Facebook launched its "Save Free Basics" campaign last week, asking users to support "digital equality" in India.

The article by Anita Babu was published in Business Standard on December 22, 2015. Pranesh Prakash gave inputs.

Nearly a week after Facebook launched its controversial "Save Free Basics" campaign in India, the net neutrality debate has come to the fore again. This time around, India's star internet entrepreneurs such as Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and chief executive of Paytm, and Dippak Khurana of Vserv have joined the crusade for free internet.

"Oh my fellow Indians, either choose this and do a jihad for independent internet later or pick net neutrality today," Sharma of Paytm, India's largest digital wallet, tweeted on Tuesday. "Digital world war heads! We have to load http://www.savetheinternet.in for #NetNeutrality," said Sharma in another tweet. Savetheinternet.in, a volunteer group, has urged people to lend their support for an unfettered internet in India.

Facebook launched its "Save Free Basics" campaign last week, asking users to support "digital equality" in India, in response to a paper by the telecom regulator which is seeking comments on differential pricing practices like Airtel Zero of Facebook's Free Basics, which was earlier called Internet.org.

Facebook launched a print and digital media campaign for a "connected India" asking users to give a missed call, automatically sending a message to the regulator in support of Free Basics.

Facebook has also been asking its users to send an e-mail to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) supporting "essential internet for all". The social network claims to have gained support from 3.2 million of its 130 million users in India.

On Tuesday, the social media giant earned flak for soliciting support from international users for the campaign. Later, Facebook withdrew the campaign outside India claiming it was an "accident".

However, some net neutrality volunteers said that many of Facebook's 3.2 million supporters for Free Basics were non-Indians.

Activists and tech leaders are calling the Facebook campaign "misleading" and "destructive".

"People are being tricked into supporting Free Basics under the guise of digital equality," wrote Amol Malviya, former chief technology officer at Flipkart, India's largest e-commerce firm, on his blog. "Notice the language on the page? It makes any critic of Free Basics appear to be an enemy of digital equality. People will listen to the critics' arguments much lesser when there's a question mark on their intent."

Nikhil Pahwa, editor and publisher of MediaNama, said India should question the intent of Facebook and its campaign. "There is misrepresentation in the language they have used. It makes people assume that we can't have universal internet access without net-neutrality violating services such as Free Basics. It is important for a country to take note of how much power a platform with as much reach as Facebook has to influence an important government process," said Pahwa, who led a fight against TRAI's move to allow telecom firms charge for internet services like WhatsApp and Hike.

The basic premise of net neutrality is that of freedom - an open internet that protects and enables free communication. Anything that takes away this freedom violates the fundamentals of free Internet. "Facebook's Free Basics is neither free nor basic - it is a cleverly disguised way of walling a garden, and hardly the philanthropic initiative that it is marketed to be," said Khurana of Vserv. He urged internet users to uninstall the Facebook App from their mobile phones in protest.

Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, said, "Facebook, a foreign company, is allowed to campaign with impunity, but NGOs receiving funding from foreign trusts are subject to all manners of restrictions and may not campaign in India."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-anita-babu-december-23-2015-start-up-india-turns-the-heat-on-facebook-free-basics

Millions of Indians Slam Facebook's ‘Free Basics’ App

subha — 2015-12-30T14:37:09Z

It has been less than two months since the nationwide launch of the Free Basics app in India. The smart phone application (formerly known as Internet.org) offers free access to Facebook, Facebook-owned products like WhatsApp, and a select suite of other websites for users who do not pay for mobile data plans.

This was published in Global Voices on December 29, 2015.

But the app has already been suspended, at least temporarily, as the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority considers new rules governing network neutrality. Depending on how they're written, the rules could render Free Basics a violation of the policy.

Free Basics, which has been deployed in 30 developing countries across the globe, gives users free access to websites that meet Facebook's technical standards for the application. The application does not give users access to the Internet at large. For open Internet advocates, this undercuts consumer choice and violates the principle of network neutrality, under which Internet providers are to treat all Internet traffic equally. Net neutrality allows users equal access to any website they want to visit, and gives website operators equal opportunities to attract visitors.

Facebook has responded to the pending regulation with an aggressive ad campaign both online and off. Over the last week, Facebook users across India (and some in the US) upon logging into the site have been greeted with notifications urging them to take action. The Free Basics page on Facebook now leads to a pleading form that asks users to contact the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and voice their support for making Free Basics available in India. The company has also purchased a smattering of billboard advertisements across the country and taken out numerous two-page ads in leading national newspapers, as seen above.

The Indian Internet bites back

Indian netizens and activists have spoken out against the company's actions en masse, protesting heavily on social media, blogs and newspapers.

The grassroots open Internet group, SavetheInternet.in, that has been advocating for net neutrality in India throughout 2015, has launched an email campaign asking users to send letters to TRAI explaining how Free Basics violates net neutrality principles and propagates an inaccurate picture of the Internet for new users by placing it inside the confines of Facebook's application.

Multiple stand-up comedy groups have created videos explaining the regulatory debate and supporting net neutrality, which have gone viral:

Above, the third in a series of videos created by All India Bakchod, in partnership with SavetheInternet.in. Below, a video by East India Comedy.

The issue has also been hotly debated on Twitter, with technology and law experts leading the way.

Internet policy expert and lead staff member of the Center for Internet and Society in Bengaluru Pranesh Prakash tweeted:

New Delhi-based technology lawyer Mishi Choudhary, who leads the legal team at the Software Freedom Law Center, tweeted:

The Free Software Movement of India, a non-profit promoting use of free software and its philosophy in India via their local chapters, also has taken the campaign to the streets where the volunteers raised public awareness about Free Basic's adverse side.

Apart from local experts and activists, companies like Reddit, Truecaller and Indian e-commerce platform Paytm have publicly shared their opposition to Facebook's actions.

Facebook targets open Web activists

Facebook is paying close attention to civil society opposition to its activities in India. Across the globe, the company's Free Basics page now opens to a plea for users to contact TRAI, and includes a statement that directly targets open Internet advocates, suggesting that their motives are somehow driven by financial incentives:

…Free Basics is in danger in India. A small, vocal group of critics are lobbying to have Free Basics banned on the basis of net neutrality. Instead of giving people access to some basic internet services for free, they demand that people pay equally to access all internet services – even if that means 1 billion people can't afford to access any services.

SavetheInternet.in explicitly states in their About page that they are entirely volunteer-run and have no affiliation with any political party in India or elsewhere.

Users also have tweeted screenshots alleging that Facebook is restricting access for individuals sending messages opposing Free Basics. This has not been confirmed, but the tweets have only further stoked public frustration with the company.

Zuckerberg vs. SavetheInternet

On December 28, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg penned a piece in the Times of India arguing that Free Basics will help “achieve digital equality for India,” and claiming that the initiative “isn’t about Facebook’s commercial interests.” India represents the world's largest market of Internet users after the US and China, where Facebook remains blocked.

In response, Nikhil Pawa, founder of online portal MediaNama and a volunteer with Savetheinternet.in, authored a critical opinion piece in the same newspaper:

[…] Why hasn’t Facebook chosen the options that do not violate Net Neutrality? For example, in India, Aircel has begun providing full internet access for free at 64 kbps download speed for the first three months….In Bangladesh, Grameenphone users get free data in exchange for watching an advertisement. In Africa, Orange users get 500 MB of free access on buying a $37 handset…

[…]

Facebook is being disingenuous — as disingenuous as the company’s promotional programmes for Free Basics to its Indian users — when it says that Free Basics is in conformity with Net Neutrality.

Pawa also quoted Naveen Patnaik, Chief Minister of Indian state of Odisha, who wrote to TRAI supporting net neutrality. “If you dictate what the poor should get, you take away their right to choose what they think is best for them,” he wrote.

“If you dictate what the poor should get, you take away their right to choose what they think is best for them.”

Writing for Quartz, technology critic Alice Truong expressed similar sentiment: “Zuckerberg almost portrays net neutrality as a first-world problem that doesn’t apply to India because having some service is better than no service.”

For Mahesh Murthy, an Indian venture capitalist and self-described net neutrality activist, it all comes down to revenue. On the Wire, Murthy offered untempered criticism of Facebook and Zuckerberg's efforts to appease the country's leaders:

[..] Unlike Facebook, who tried to silently slime this thing through last year when it was called Internet.org, and then are spending about Rs. 100 crores on ads – a third of its India revenue? – to try and con us Indians this year again. This is after we’d worked hard to ban these kind of products, technically called “zero rating apps” last year.[..] This Facebook ad [spread] doesn’t include the full-on Mark Zuckerberg love event put up for our Prime Minister when he visited the US, aimed again at greasing the way for this Free Basics thing through our government.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/millions-of-indians-slam-facebooks-2018free-basics2019-app

Eight Key Privacy Events in India in the Year 2015

Amber Sinha — 2016-01-03T05:43:42Z

As the year draws to a close, we are enumerating some of the key privacy related events in India that transpired in 2015. Much like the last few years, this year, too, was an eventful one in the context of privacy.

While we did not witness, as one had hoped, any progress in the passage of a privacy law, the year saw significant developments with respect to the ongoing Aadhaar case. The statement by the Attorney General, India's foremost law officer, that there is a lack of clarity over whether the right to privacy is a fundamental right, and the fact the the matter is yet unresolved was a huge setback to the jurisprudence on privacy. [1] However, the court has recognised a purpose limitation as applicable into the Aadhaar scheme, limiting the sharing of any information collected during the enrollment of residents in UID. A draft Encryption Policy was released and almost immediately withdrawn in the face of severe public backlash, and an updated Human DNA Profiling Bill was made available for comments. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's much publicised project "Digital India" was in news throughout the year, and it also attracted its' fair share of criticism in light of the lack of privacy safeguards it offered. Internationally, a lawsuit brought by Maximilian Schrems, an Austrian privacy activist, dealt a body blow to the fifteen year old Safe Harbour Framework in place for data transfers between EU and USA. Below, we look at what were, according to us, the eight most important privacy events in India, in 2015.

1. August 11, 2015 order on Aadhaar not being compulsory

In 2012, a writ petition was filed by Judge K S Puttaswamy challenging the government's policy in its attempt to enroll all residents of India in the UID project and linking the Aadhaar card with various government services. A number of other petitioners who filed cases against the Aadhaar scheme have also been linked with this petition and the court has been hearing them together. On September 11, 2015, the Supreme Court reiterated its position in earlier orders made on September 23, 2013 and March 24, 2014 stating that the Aadhaar card shall not be made compulsory for any government services. [2] Building on its earlier position, the court passed the following orders:

a) The government must give wide publicity in the media that it was not mandatory for a resident to obtain an Aadhaar card,

b) The production of an Aadhaar card would not be a condition for obtaining any benefits otherwise due to a citizen,

c) Aadhaar card would not be used for any purpose other than the PDS Scheme, for distribution of foodgrains and cooking fuel such as kerosene and for the LPG distribution scheme.

d) The information about an individual obtained by the UIDAI while issuing an Aadhaar card shall not be used for any other purpose, save as above, except as may be directed by a Court for the purpose of criminal investigation.[3]

Despite this being the fifth court order given by the Supreme Court[4] stating that the Aadhaar card cannot be a mandatory requirement for access to government services or subsidies, repeated violations continue. One of the violations which has been widely reported is the continued requirement of an Aadhaar number to set up a Digital Locker account which also led to activist, Sudhir Yadav filing a petition in the Supreme Court.[5]

2. No Right to Privacy - Attorney General to SC

The Attorney General, Mukul Rohatgi argued before the Supreme Court in the Aadhaar case that the Constitution of India did not provide for a fundamental Right to Privacy.[6] He referred to the body of case in the Supreme Court dealing with this issue and made a reference to the 1954 case, MP Sharma v. Satish Chandra[7] stating that there was "clear divergence of opinion" on the Right to Privacy and termed it as "a classic case of unclear position of law." He also referred to the discussion on this matter in the Constitutional Assembly Debates and pointed to the fact the framers of the Constitution did not intend for this to be a fundamental right. He said the matter needed to be referred to a nine judge Constitution bench.[8] This raises serious questions over the jurisprudence developed by the Supreme Court on the right to privacy over the last five decades. The matter is currently pending resolution by a larger bench which needs to be constituted by the Chief Justice of India.

3. Shreya Singhal judgment and Section 69A, IT Act

In the much celebrated judgment, Shreya Singhal v. Union of India, in March 2015, the Supreme Court struck down Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 as unconstitutional and laid down guidelines for online takedowns under the Internet intermediary rules. However, significantly, the court also upheld Section 69A and the blocking rules under this provision. It was held to be a narrowly-drawn provision with adequate safeguards. The rules prescribe a procedure for blocking which involves receipt of a blocking request, examination of the request by the Committee and a review committee which performs oversight functions. However, commentators have pointed to the opacity of the process in the rules under this provisions. While the rules mandate that a hearing is given to the originator of the content, this safeguard is widely disregarded. The judgment did not discuss Section 69 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 which deal with decrypting of electronic communication, however, the Department of Electronic and Information Technology brought up this issue subsequently, through a Draft Encryption Policy, discussed below.

4. Circulation and recall of Draft Encryption Policy

On October 19, 2015, the Department of Electronic and Information Technology (DeitY) released for public comment a draft National Encryption Policy. The draft received an immediate and severe backlash from commentators, and was withdrawn by September 22, 2015. [9] The government blamed a junior official for the poor drafting of the document and noted that it had been released without a review by the Telecom Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad and other senior officials.[10] The main areas of contention were a requirement that individuals store plain text versions of all encrypted communication for a period of 90 days, to be made available to law enforcement agencies on demand; the government's right to prescribe key-strength, algorithms and ciphers; and only government-notified encryption products and vendors registered with the government being allowed to be used for encryption.[11] The purport of the above was to limit the ways in which citizens could encrypt electronic communication, and to allow adequate access to law enforcement agencies. The requirement to keep all encrypted information in plain text format for a period of 90 days garnered particular criticism as it would allow for creation of a 'honeypot' of unencrypted data, which could attract theft and attacks.[12] The withdrawal of the draft policy is not the final chapter in this story, as the Telecom Minister has promised that the Department will come back with a revised policy. [13] This attempt to put restrictions on use of encryption technologies is not only in line with a host of surveillance initiatives that have mushroomed in India in the last few years,[14] but also finds resonance with a global trend which has seen various governments and law enforcement organisations argue against encryption. [15]

5. Privacy concerns raised about Digital India

The Digital India initiative includes over thirty Mission Mode Projects in various stages of implementation. [16] All of these projects entail collection of vast quantities of personally identifiable information of the citizens. However, most of these initiatives do not have clearly laid down privacy policies.[17] There is also a lack of properly articulated access control mechanisms and doubts over important issues such as data ownership owing to most projects involving public private partnership which involves private organisation collecting, processing and retaining large amounts of data. [18] Ahead of Prime Minister Modi's visit to the US, over 100 hundred prominent US based academics released a statement raising concerns about "lack of safeguards about privacy of information, and thus its potential for abuse" in the Digital India project. [19] It has been pointed out that the initiatives could enable a "cradle-to-grave digital identity that is unique, lifelong, and authenticable, and it plans to widely use the already mired in controversy Aadhaar program as the identification system." [20]

6. Issues with Human DNA Profiling Bill, 2015

The Human DNA Profiling Bill, 2015 envisions the creation of national and regional DNA databases comprising DNA profiles of the categories of persons specified in the Bill.[21] The categories include offenders, suspects, missing persons, unknown deceased persons, volunteers and such other categories specified by the DNA Profiling Board which has oversight over these banks. The Bill grants wide discretionary powers to the Board to introduce new DNA indices and make DNA profiles available for new purposes it may deem fit. [22] These, and the lack of proper safeguards surrounding issues like consent, retention and collection pose serious privacy risks if the Bill becomes a law. Significantly, there is no element of purpose limitation in the proposed law, which would allow the DNA samples to be re-used for unspecified purposes.[23]

7. Impact of the Schrems ruling on India

In Schrems v. Data Protection Commissioner, the Court of Justice in European Union (CJEU) annulled the Commission Decision 2000/520 according to which US data protection rules were deemed sufficient to satisfy EU privacy rules enabling transfers of personal data from EU to US, otherwise known as the 'Safe Harbour' framework. The court ruled that broad formulations of derogations on grounds of national security, public interest and law enforcement in place in the US goes beyond the test of proportionality and necessity under the Data Protection rules.[24] This judgment could also have implications for the data processing industry in India. For a few years now, a framework similar to the Safe Harbour has been under discussion for transfer of data between India and EU. The lack of a privacy legislation has been among the significant hurdles in arriving at a framework.[25] In the absence of a Safe Harbour framework, the companies in India rely on alternate mechanisms such as Binding Corporate Rules (BCR) or Model Contractual Clauses. These contracts impose the obligation on the data exporters and importers to ensure that 'adequate level of data protection' is provided. The Schrems judgement makes it clear that 'adequate level of data protection' entails a regime that is 'essentially equivalent' to that envisioned under Directive 95/46.[26] What this means is that any new framework of protection between EU and other countries like US or India will necessarily have to meet this test of essential equivalence. The PRISM programme in the US and a host of surveillance programmes that have been initiated by the government in India in the last few years could pose problems in satisfying this test of essential equivalence as they do not conform to the proportionality and necessity principles.

8. The definition of "unfair trade practices" in the Consumer Protection Bill, 2015

The Consumer Protection Bill, 2015, tabled in the Parliament towards the end of the monsoon session[27] has introduced an expansive definition of the term "unfair trade practices." The definition as per the Bill includes the disclosure "to any other person any personal information given in confidence by the consumer."[28] This clause exclude from the scope of unfair trade practices, disclosures under provisions of any law in force or in public interest. This provision could have significant impact on the personal data protection law in India. Currently, the only law governing data protection law are the Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information Rules, 2011[29] prescribed under Section 43A of the Information Technology Act, 2000. Under these rules, sensitive personal data or information is protected in that their disclosure requires prior permission from the data subject. [30] For other kinds of personal information not categorized as sensitive personal data or information, the only recourse of data subjects in case to claim breach of the terms of privacy policy which constitutes a lawful contract. [31] The Consumer Protection Bill, 2015, if enacted as law, could significantly expand the scope of protection available to data subjects. First, unlike the Section 43A rules, the provisions of the Bill would be applicable to physical as well as electronic collection of personal information. Second, disclosure to a third party of personal information other than sensitive personal data or information could also have similar 'prior permission' criteria under the Bill, if it can be shown that the information was shared by the consumer in confidence.

What we see above are events largely built around a few trends that we have been witnessing in the context of privacy in India, in particular and across the world, in general. Lack of privacy safeguards in initiatives like the Aadhaar project and Digital India is symptomatic of policies that are not comprehensive in their scope, and consequently fail to address key concerns. Dr Usha Ramanathan has called these policies "powerpoint based policies" which are implemented based on proposals which are superficial in their scope and do not give due regard to their impact on a host of issues. [32] Second, the privacy concerns posed by the draft Encryption Policy and the Human DNA Profiling Bill point to the motive of surveillance that is in line with other projects introduced with the intent to protect and preserve national security. [33] Third, the incidents that championed the cause of privacy like the Schrems judgment have largely been initiated by activists and civil society actors, and have typically entailed the involvement of the judiciary, often the single recourse of actors in the campaign for the protection of civil rights. It must be noted that jurisprudence on the right to privacy in India has not moved beyond the guidelines set forth by the Supreme Court in PUCL v. Union of India.[34] However, new mass surveillance programmes and massive collection of personal data by both public and private parties through various schemes mandated a re-look at the standards laid down twenty years ago. The privacy issue pending resolution by a larger bench in the Aadhaar case affords an opportunity to revisit those principles in light of how surveillance has changed in the last two decades and strengthen privacy and data protection.

^{^[1]} Right to Privacy not a fundamental right, cannot be invoked to scrap Aadhar: Centre tells Supreme Court, available at http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2015-07-23/news/64773078_1_fundamental-right-attorney-general-mukul-rohatgi-privacy

^{^[2]} SC allows govt to link Aadhaar card with PDS and LPG subsidies, available at http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/SC-allows-govt-to-link-Aadhaar-card-with-PDS-and-LPG-subsidies/articleshow/48436223.cms

^{^[3]} http://judis.nic.in/supremecourt/imgs1.aspx?filename=42841

^{^[4]} Five SC Orders Later, Aadhaar Requirement Continues to Haunt Many, available at http://thewire.in/2015/09/19/five-sc-orders-later-aadhaar-requirement-continues-to-haunt-many-11065/

[5] Digital Locker scheme challenged in Supreme Court, available at http://www.moneylife.in/article/digital-locker-scheme-challenged-in-supreme-court/42607.html

^{^[6]} Privacy not a fundamental right, argues Mukul Rohatgi for Govt as Govt affidavit says otherwise, available at http://www.legallyindia.com/Constitutional-law/privacy-not-a-fundamental-right-argues-mukul-rohatgi-for-govt-as-govt-affidavit-says-otherwise

^{^[7]} 1954 SCR 1077.

^{^[8]} Supra Note 1.

^{^[9]} Government to withdraw draft encryption policy, available at http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/govt-to-withdraw-draft-encryption-policy/article7677348.ece

^{^[10]} Encryption policy poorly worded by officer: Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, available at http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/49068406.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

^{^[11]} Updated: India's draft encryption policy puts user privacy in danger, available at http://www.medianama.com/2015/09/223-india-draft-encryption-policy/

^{^[12]} Bhairav Acharya, The short-lived adventure of India's encryption policy, available at http://notacoda.net/2015/10/10/the-short-lived-adventure-of-indias-encryption-policy/

^{^[13]} Supra Note 9.

^{^[14]} Maria Xynou, Big democracy, big surveillance: India's surveillance state, available at https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/maria-xynou/big-democracy-big-surveillance-indias-surveillance-state

^{^[15]} China passes controversial anti-terrorism law to access encrypted user accounts, available at http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/27/10670346/china-passes-law-to-access-encrypted-communications ; Police renew call against encryption technology that can help hide terrorists, available at http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/nov/16/paris-terror-attacks-renew-encryption-technology-s/?page=all .

^{^[16]} http://www.mmp.cips.org.in/digital-india/

[17] http://slides.com/cisindia/big-data-in-indian-governance-preliminary-findings#/

^{^[18]} Indira Jaising, Digital India Schemes Must Be Preceded by a Data Protection and Privacy Law, available at http://thewire.in/2015/07/04/digital-india-schemes-must-be-preceded-by-a-data-protection-and-privacy-law-5471/

^{^[19]} US academics raise privacy concerns over 'Digital India' campaign, available at http://yourstory.com/2015/08/us-digital-india-campaign/

^{^[20]} Lisa Hayes, Digital India's Impact on Privacy: Aadhaar numbers, biometrics, and more, available at https://cdt.org/blog/digital-indias-impact-on-privacy-aadhaar-numbers-biometrics-and-more/

^{^[21]} http://www.prsindia.org/uploads/media//draft/Draft%20Human%20DNA%20Profiling%20Bill%202015.pdf

^{^[22]} Comments on India's Human DNA Profiling Bill (June 2015 version), available at http://www.genewatch.org/uploads/f03c6d66a9b354535738483c1c3d49e4/IndiaDNABill_FGPI_15.pdf

^{^[23]} Elonnai Hickok, Vanya Rakesh and Vipul Kharbanda, CIS Comments and Recommendations to the Human DNA Profiling Bill, June 2015, available at http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-comments-and-recommendations-to-human-dna-profiling-bill-2015

^{^[24]} http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2015-10/cp150117en.pdf

^{^[25]} Jyoti Pandey, Contestations of Data, ECJ Safe Harbor Ruling and Lessons for India, available at http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/contestations-of-data-ecj-safe-harbor-ruling-and-lessons-for-india

^{^[26]} Simon Cox, Case Watch: Making Sense of the Schrems Ruling on Data Transfer, available at https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/case-watch-making-sense-schrems-ruling-data-transfer

^{^[27]} http://www.prsindia.org/billtrack/the-consumer-protection-bill-2015-3965/

^{^[28]} Section 2(41) (I) of the Consumer Protection Bill, 2015.

^{^[29]} http://www.ijlt.in/pdffiles/IT-%28Reasonable%20Security%20Practices%29-Rules-2011.pdf

^{^[30]} Rule 6 of Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information Rules, 2011

^{^[31]} Rule 4 of Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information Rules, 2011

^{^[32]} http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/communication-rights-in-the-age-of-digital-technology

^{^[33]} Supra Note 11.

^{^[34]} Chaitanya Ramachandra, PUCL V. Union of India Revisited: Why India's Sureveillance Law must be redesigned for the Digital Age, available at http://nujslawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Chaitanya-Ramachandran.pdf

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/eight-key-privacy-events-in-india-in-the-year-2015

Ground Zero Summit

Amber Sinha — 2016-01-03T06:06:56Z

The Ground Zero Summit which claims to be the largest collaborative platform in Asia for cyber-security was held in New Delhi from 5th to 8th November. The conference was organised by the Indian Infosec Consortium (IIC), a not for profit organisation backed by the Government of India. Cyber security experts, hackers, senior officials from the government and defence establishments, senior professionals from the industry and policymakers attended the event.

Keynote Address

The Union Home Minister, Mr. Rajnath Singh, inaugurated the conference. Mr Singh described cyber-barriers that impact the issues that governments face in ensuring cyber-security. Calling the cyberspace as the fifth dimension of security in addition to land, air, water and space, Mr Singh emphasised the need to curb cyber-crimes in India, which have grown by 70% in 2014 since 2013. He highlighted the fact that changes in location, jurisdiction and language made cybercrime particularly difficult to address. Continuing in the same vein, Mr. Rajnath Singh also mentioned cyber-terrorism as one the big dangers in the time to come. With a number of government initiatives like Digital India, Smart Cities and Make in India leveraging technology, the Home Minister said that the success of these projects would be dependent on having robust cyber-security systems in place.

The Home Minister outlined some initiatives that Government of India is planning to take in order to address concerns around cyber security - such as plans to finalize a new national cyber policy. Significantly, he referred to a committee headed by Dr. Gulshan Rai, the National Cyber Security Coordinator mandated to suggest a roadmap for effectively tackling cybercrime in India. This committee has recommended the setting up of Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I-4C). This centre is meant to engage in capacity building with key stakeholders to enable them to address cyber crimes, and work with law enforcement agencies. Earlier reports about the recommendation suggest that the I-4C will likely be placed under the National Crime Records Bureau and align with the state police departments through the Crime and Criminal Tracking and Network Systems (CCTNS). I-4C is supposed to be comprised of high quality technical and R&D experts who would be engaged in developing cyber investigation tools.

Other keynote speakers included Alok Joshi, Chairman, NTRO; Dr Gulshan Rai, National Cyber Security Coordinator; Dr. Arvind Gupta, Head of IT Cell, BJP and Air Marshal S B Dep, Chief of the Western Air Command.

Technical Speakers

There were a number of technical speakers who presented on an array of subjects. The first session was by Jiten Jain, a cyber security analyst who spoke on cyber espionage conducted by actors in Pakistan to target defence personnel in India. Jiten Jain talked about how the Indian Infosec Consortium had discovered these attacks in 2014. Most of these websites and mobile apps posed as defence news and carried malware and viruses. An investigation conducted by IIC revealed the domains to be registered in Pakistan. In another session Shesh Sarangdhar, the CEO of Seclabs, an application security company, spoke about the Darknet and ways to break anonymity on it. Sarangdhar mentioned that anonymity on Darknet is dependent on all determinants of the equation in the communication maintaining a specific state. He discussed techniques like using audio files, cross domain on tor, siebel attacks as methods of deanonymization. Dr. Triveni Singh. Assistant Superintendent of Police, Special Task Force, UP Police made a presentation on the trends in cyber crime. Dr. Singh emphasised the amount of uncertainty with regard to the purpose of a computer intrusion. He discussed real life case studies such as data theft, credit card fraud, share trading fraud from the perspective of law enforcement agencies.

Anirudh Anand, CTO of Infosec Labs discussed how web applications are heavily reliant on filters or escaping methods. His talk focused on XSS (cross site scripting) and bypassing regular expression filters. He also announced the release of XSS labs, an XSS test bed for security professionals and developers that includes filter evasion techniques like b-services, weak cryptographic design and cross site request forgery. Jan Siedl, an authority on SCADA presented on TOR tricks which may be used by bots, shells and other tools to better use the TOR network and I2P. His presentation dealt with using obfuscated bridges, Hidden Services based HTTP, multiple C&C addresses and use of OTP. Aneesha, an intern with the Kerala Police spoke about elliptical curve cryptography, its features such as low processing overheads. As this requires elliptic curve paths, efficient Encoding and Decoding techniques need to be developed. Aneesha spoke about an algorithm called Generator-Inverse for encoding and decoding a message using a Single Sign-on mechanism. Other subjects presented included vulnerabilities that remained despite using TLS/SSL, deception technology and cyber kill-chain, credit card frauds, Post-quantum crypto-systems and popular android malware.

Panels

There were also two panels organised at the conference. Samir Saran, Vice President of Observer Research Foundation, moderated the first panel on Cyber Arms Control. The panel included participants like Lt. General A K Sahni from the South Western Air Command; Lt. General A S Lamba, Retired Vice Chief Indian Army, Alok Vijayant, Director of Cyber Security Operation of NTRO and Captain Raghuraman from Reliance Industries. The panel debated the virtues of cyber arms control treaties. It was acknowledged by the panel that there was a need to frame rules and create a governance mechanism for wars in cyberspace. However, this would be effective only if the governments are the primary actors with the capability for building cyber-warfare know-how and tools. The reality was that most kinds of cyber weapons involved non state actors from the hacker community. In light of this, the cyber control treaties would lose most of their effectiveness.

The second panel was on the Make for India’ initiatives. Dinesh Bareja, the CEO of Open Security Alliance and Pyramid Cyber Security was the moderator for this panel which also included Nandakumar Saravade, CEO of Data Security Council of India; Sachin Burman, Director of NCIIPC; Dr. B J Srinath, Director General of ICERT and Amit Sharma, Joint Director of DRDO. The focus of this session was on ‘Make in India’ opportunities in the domain of cyber security. The panelist discussed the role the government and industry could play in creating an ecosystem that supports entrepreneurs in skill development. Among the approaches discussed were: involving actors in knowledge sharing and mentoring chapters which could be backed by organisations like NASSCOM and bringing together industry and government experts in events like the Ground Zero Summit to provide knowledge and training on cyber-security issues.

Exhibitions

The conference was accompanied by a exhibitions showcasing indigenous cybersecurity products. The exhibitors included Smokescreen Technologies, Sempersol Consultancy, Ninja Hackon, Octogence Technologies, Secfence, Amity, Cisco Academy, Robotics Embedded Education Services Pvt. Ltd., Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), Skin Angel, Aksit, Alqimi, Seclabs and Systems, Forensic Guru, Esecforte Technologies, Gade Autonomous Systems, National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC), Indian Infosec Consortium (IIC), INNEFU, Forensic Guru, Event Social, Esecforte Technologies, National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) and Robotic Zone.

The conference also witnessed events such Drone Wars, in which selected participants had to navigate a drone, a Hacker Fashion Show and the official launch of the Ground Zero’s Music Album.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/ground-zero-summit

Facebook’s Free Basics Shuts Down In Egypt, Continuing Troubled Run

praskrishna — 2016-01-03T06:11:51Z

The report was published by TV Newsroom on January 1, 2016. Pranesh Prakash gave inputs.

“This isn’t about Facebook’s commercial interests – there aren’t even any ads in the version of Facebook in Free Basics”, he said. Initiatives like Internet.org are attempting to change that, but not without backlash. A similar proposal called zero internet was put forward later by Airtel.

Facebook now has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

“The India fight is helping shape debates elsewhere”, said Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based nonprofit advocacy group.

That prompted Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to write an op-ed piece published in the Times of India that asks, “Who could possibly be against this?” There was fulsome praise for Modi from the young internet billionaire. Etisalat Egypt could not be reached for comment at this time. “For example, Facebook can just provide 50 or 100 megabytes for their data connection free every month”.

On Wednesday, Trai extended the last date for submission of comments and counter comment to 7 and 14 January, respectively.

But Zuckerberg is not having a walk in the park with this Free Basics proposition. It sounds a perfectly good idea.

Internet.org is a partnership, led by Facebook and including Samsung, Ericsson, MediaTek, Opera, Nokia and Qualcomm. Through a deal between Facebook and local mobile operators, the data to access those services is free.

The coalition has said that Facebook is misleading users and cautioned that the free service could be replete with advertising if and when it’s implemented. Similarly, signature drives are going on by those staunchly opposed to it. Now the problem for this is that we had asked for response to the specific question of differential pricing… instead we have got responses on supporting Free Basics.

Those campaigning to protect net neutrality in India suggest data providers should not favour some online services over others by offering cheaper or faster access.

The founders and executives mention that the difference in pricing through zero rating “affects the ability of new players to compete” with well-established companies. A situation where the haves can access the Internet and enjoy its tremendous opportunities and the have nots are kept out. Zuckerberg said that India’s progress depends on providing Web access to the 1 billion Indians without it.

Listing three main flaws within the programme, the scientists urged the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India to “completely reject” Facebook’s “free fundamentals” proposal. Such as providing a tiered system of broad band access.

It would make sense for the government to target free Internet services while it clamps down on physical gathering places.

Read the original here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/facebook2019s-free-basics-shuts-down-in-egypt-continuing-troubled-run

Foreign Media on Zuckerberg's India Backlash

praskrishna — 2016-01-03T09:20:41Z

When Facebook's co-founder proposed bringing free Web services to India, his stated aim was to help connect millions of impoverished people to unlimited opportunity. Instead, critics have accused him of making a poorly disguised land grab in India's burgeoning Internet sector. The growing backlash could threaten the very premise of Internet.org, his ambitious, two-year-old effort to connect the planet.

The blog post was published in NDTV on December 30, 2015. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

Indian authorities are circumspect because the Facebook initiative provides access to only a limited set of websites -- undermining the equal-access precepts of net neutrality. The telecommunications regulator is calling for initial comments by Jan 7, extending the deadline from today, on whether wireless carriers can charge differently for data usage across websites, applications and platforms.

Losing this fight could imperil Facebook's Free Basics, which allows customers to access the social network and select services such as Messenger and Microsoft's Bing without a data plan.

"The India fight is helping shape debates elsewhere," said Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based non-profit advocacy group. "Activists in other countries such as Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia are watching this debate and will seize the momentum created in India."

Zuckerberg's argument for free Web access is based in part on Deloitte research showing that for every 10 people who are connected to the Web, one is lifted out of poverty and one job is created.

Facebook argues that by giving people free access to a small slice of the Internet, they will quickly see the value in paying for the whole thing. Zuckerberg has said his biggest challenge in connecting people to the Web isn't access to cellular networks, but a social hurdle: he needs to prove to people who have never been online that the Internet is useful.

"Who could possibly be against this?" Zuckerberg wrote in an impassioned op-ed in the Times of India this week. "Surprisingly, over the last year there's been a big debate about this in India."

Zuckerberg's pleas underscore what's at stake. Facebook already attracts 1.55 billion people monthly, or about half of the Internet-connected global population. To keep growing, the world's largest social network needs to get more people online. Hence the billions of dollars Facebook is spending on projects to deliver the Web to under-served areas via drones, satellites and lasers. And Internet.org, which now spans 37 nations.

India, as the world's second most populous nation, is arguably the most important piece of Zuckerberg's Free Basics strategy. But the opposition is fierce. Critics note that the Facebook service doesn't offer Web favorites such as Google's search. Facebook has said it would be open to adding more features from competitors, but critics are skeptical of giving the social-networking giant such influence on the Internet.

Critics also say that by offering a limited swath of the Internet at comparatively slow speeds, the company is creating a diluted version of the Web. That could stifle innovation by causing disadvantages for Indian startups building rival apps, or allow Facebook and its telecommunications carrier-partners to act as Internet gatekeepers.

In a sign of the importance he attaches to the issue, Zuckerberg on Tuesday called one of India's most prominent entrepreneurs to make his case.

One97 Communications, the mobile payments startup backed by Alibaba Group Holding, is one of several tech companies that have come out against Facebook's plans.

"We are totally against telcos preferring one developer over another," One97 founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma said in a phone interview before that call. "We are asking for access neutrality. We are hoping that all startups will be treated equally."

Sonia Dhawan, a spokeswoman for One97's payment website Paytm, said the call took place but didn't describe the conversation further. Sharma wasn't available for further comment.

Facebook is now scrambling to drum up support. It's started a "Save Free Basics In India" campaign, asking Indian users to support "digital equality" by filling out a form that shoots an e-mail to regulators. That also has the effect of sending notifications to user's friends unless they opt out.
Facebook has also taken out full-page advertisements, including one featuring a smiling Indian farmer and his family who the ads say used new techniques to double his crop yield.

While countries such as the Philippines have embraced Free Basics, India has been "the outlier and more challenging," Chris Daniels, vice president of Internet.org, said in a Dec. 26 chat on Reddit.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/ndtv-bhuma-shrivastava-december-30-2015-foreign-media-on-zukerberg-india-backlash

Consultation on "Understanding the Freedom of Expression Online and Offline"

praskrishna — 2016-01-03T10:27:08Z

The event organized by Digital Empowerment Foundation and Association for Progressive Communications was held at YMCA, New Delhi on December 10, 2015. Jyoti Panday attended the event as a speaker. She covered imposition of legitimate expression specifically in the context of intermediary liability practices in India.

The sessions were divided as under:

Welcome & Overview of the consultation by Digital Empowerment Foundation
Launch of the Country Research Report & Keynote Address
Introducing the Country Research Report titled “Limited Access and Restricting Expression by Osama Manzar, Founder and Director, Digital Empowerment Foundation
Working Session I: Understanding the “Freedom of Expression Online and Offline” in conversation with experts
Working Session II: “Unboxing the Freedom of Expression Online & Offline”
Sub-Group Presentations
Concluding Remarks

Download the Agenda here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/consultation-on-understanding-the-freedom-of-expression-online-and-offline

Unbundling Issues of Privacy, Data Security, Identity Matrics, for Financial Inclusion

praskrishna — 2016-01-03T10:45:19Z

This event was organized by Indicus Foundation and MicroSave on December 10, 2015 at the Metropolitan Hotel and Spa, New Delhi. Sunil Abraham was a speaker.

While the initiative towards financial inclusion has gathered new impetus with the PMJDY and the accelerated roll out of benefits, there is also a parallel narrative of concerns over the legality and fundamental constitutionality of identity verification, which is a centre piece for delivery of financial benefits and services. These divergent narratives have now reached the Supreme Court.

At one end of the spectrum are the voices that avow the power of biometric technology to irrepudiately establish biological identity; at the other, the alarmism over targeting, concentration and misuse of personal information contained in the world’s biggest personal database. There is also a third extreme position of whether Indian citizens are entitled to the right to privacy constitutionally, and whether the right to privacy includes the right to refuse a national identity number or metric altogether. That India has yet to enact a Privacy Bill and the National Identity Authority Bill on which rests the statutory basis for UIDAI and Aadhaar only adds to the quagmire.

Several issues lie intertwined in this miasma: Privacy as an absolute right; Definition and Limits of Personal Information and Sensitive Personal Information; Consent protocols over use of personal information; Data Security; Appropriate and inclusive technology platforms; and Responsibilities and Liabilities governing the use of personal information for bonafide purposes. These straddle multiple domains: data accuracy and irrepudiability; storage, security and encryption; and sharing of information for transaction processing including across national boundaries. Unfortunately, all of these tend to get lumped together in the public debate.

The aim of this workshop is to unbundle the issues and understand each of them from the perspective of financial inclusion, to be able to answer these questions:

How essential and critical is a unified Identity metric for digital financial transactions? How essential is that such a metric be biometric?
To what extent does the centralised storage of biometric data represent risks of personal safety and national security, compared to the information on election voter lists, passport offices, census data, and bank accounts?
What are the possible sources of transactional risk and security breaches in data sharing, and what are the international best practices?
Is the present Aadhaar architecture robust enough to: address all the genuine and reasonable concerns over leakage and misuse of sensitive personal information; and to ensure that no genuine identity holder is turned away from a service, entitlement or benefit to which (s)he has a right or claim?

In this direction, we have the privilege to interact in this workshop with experts from The Centre for Internet and Society, and Data Security Council of India who have been at the forefront of the discussions on privacy and data security aspects of technology based innovations including for financial inclusion.

Download the Workshop Schedule here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/unbundling-issues-of-privacy-data-security-identity-matrics-for-financial-inclusion

December 2015 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2016-01-13T14:07:01Z

Our newsletter for the month of December 2015 is below.

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is happy to share the twelfth issue of CIS newsletter (December 2015). Previous editions of the newsletter can be accessed at http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters.

Highlights
The 4th edition of the Global Congress themed around "Three Decades of Openness, Two Decades of TRIPS" was organized in New Delhi from December 15 - 17, 2015. The largest ever in Asia, the Congress was jointly organised by CIS, NLU-D, Open A.I.R., CREATe, Columbia University and American University. Nehaa Chaudhari summarized the developments of the 4th Global Congress on IP and the Public Interest in a blog post that was originally published on the Global Congress blog. Sunil Abraham wrote a blog entry stating the institutional position of CIS on the Net Neutrality discussion going on in India. Catch News interviewed Sunil Abraham about the recent advertisement by Facebook titled "What Net Neutrality Activists won't Tell You or, the Top 10 Facts about Free Basics" . Sunil argued against the validity of all the 'top 10 facts'. Odia author and cultural historian Jagannath Prasad Das has recently permitted 30 volumes of his notable works to be re-license under an open license (Creative Commons Share-Alike 4.0 or CC-BY-SA 4.0) . Subhashish Panigrahi wrote a blog post on this in Discover Bhubaneswar, a web portal in Odisha. CIS has established institutional partnerships with University of Mysore and Guru G Learning Labs for furthering Wikipedia growth. Tanveer Hasan analyses the developments and lists out the possible future plans in this regard. CIS along with Observer Research Foundation, Centre for Global Communication Studies, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, and Internet Policy Observatory organized an event in New Delhi on Net Neutrality across South Asia . Today the quantity of data being generated is expanding at an exponential rate. From smartphones and televisions, trains and airplanes, sensor-equipped buildings and even the infrastructures of our cities, data now streams constantly from almost every sector and function of daily life, stated Scott Mason in a blog post. The Government of India is in the process of developing 100 smart cities in India which it sees as the key to the country's economic and social growth. Vanya Rakesh gave an overview of the Smart Cities project currently underway in India in a blog post. For the second part of the Smart City podcast series, Sruthi Krishnan and Harsha K from Fields of View spoke with Sumandro Chattapadhyay on data, people, and smart cities. Fields of View has produced and shared the recording. An extended survey of digital initiatives in arts and humanities practices in India was undertaken last year. The 'mapping digital humanities in India' enquiry began with the term 'digital humanities' itself, as a 'found' name for which one needs to excavate some meaning, context, and location in India at the present moment. P.P Sneha published the third,fourth, and fifth sections of the study this month. The RAW programme has initiated a new annual conference series titled Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC). The first edition of the Conference, organised around the theme of "studying internet in India" will be held in Delhi in February 2016

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Accessibility and Inclusion
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Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing a project on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

►NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Updates

● December 2015 Report (Suman Dogra; December 31, 2015).

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Access to Knowledge
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As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

►Copyright and Patent

Blog Entries

Abuse of Dominant Position in Indian Competition Law: A Brief Guide (Sarthak Sood; December 9, 2015).
GCIP2015: Notes from the Inaugural Session (Spadika Jayaraj; SpicyIP; December 14, 2015).
GCIP Day 1 Session 3: Challenges in Re-Articulating Public Interest (Spadika Jayaraj; SpicyIP; December 17, 2015).
GCIP 15 Day 2: Discussions on Health Technology, Innovation and Access (Spadika Jayaraj; SpicyIP; December 17, 2015).
Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions in abeyance (Anubha Sinha; Anubha Sinha; December 21, 2015).
4th Global Congress on IP and the Public Interest: Statement of Conclusion for the IP and Development track (Nehaa Chaudhari; December 25, 2015). This was also published on the Global Congress Blog.

Event Organized

Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest (Organized by National Law University, Delhi, American Assembly, Columbia University, Open A.I.R., American University, and CIS; New Delhi, December 15 - 17, 2015).

Participation in Event

CODE Session (Organized by IDRC; December 17, 2015; New Delhi). Nehaa Chaudhari and Anubha Sinha participated in the event.

Media Coverage

NLSIU Conference on Access to Copyrighted Works for Persons with Disability: An enriching experience (Abolee Vaidya and Nuhar Bansal; SINAPSE; December 14, 2015). This is an event report on a one-day national conference on the 'Access to Copyrighted Works for Persons with Disability' for which Pranesh Prakash was a speaker .

►Wikipedia

As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).

Articles

30 Books of Odia Author and Historian Jagannath Prasad Das to Come Online on Odia Wikisource (Subhashish Panigrahi; Discover Bhubaneswar; December 4, 2015).
ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପାଠାଗାର (Subhashish Panigrahi; Sambad; December 6, 2015).

Blog Entries

Open access in the Marathi language expands by a thousand books (Subhashish Panigrahi and Abhinav Garule; December 3, 2015). This was published on Wikimedia Blog.
Guru-G Learning Labs and CIS A2K Institutional Partnership (Tanveer Hasan; December 3, 2015).
Community Prioritisation of Content Donation: Kannada Wikisource (Tanveer Hasan; December 5, 2015).
Analysis of Institutional Partnerships: University of Mysore and Guru G Learning Labs (Tanveer Hasan; December 5, 2015).
Touch Point Report: Department of Tourism Studies, Christ University and St. Aloysius College, Mangalore (Tanveer Hasan; December 5, 2015).
TTT 2015 (Tanveer Hasan; December 5, 2015).
Kannada Wikipedia Editathon at Mangaluru (Dr. U.B. Pavanaja; December 29, 2015).

Events Organized

Talk on bringing 1000 books about the culture of Maharashtra on Marathi Wikipedia (The Energy and Resources Institute; Bangalore; December 1, 2015). Avinash Chaphekar, Joint Secretary, Maharashtra Granthottejak Sanstha gave a talk.
Odia Wikimedia community meetup (Organized by Odia Wikipedia Community and CIS; Cuttack; December 3, 2015).
Sau Dhuni Teen Project: December Edit-a-thon (Women's Studies Centre, University of Pune; December 3, 2015).

Participation in Events

Telugu Wikipedia Day 2015, Photo Walk (Organized by Telugu Wikipedians; Dr. YSR State Archaeological Museum, Hyderabad; December 13, 2015). Pavan Santhosh attended the event. One of the popular Telugu news channel TV9 covered the event and telecasted the same. Eenadu published a special item on photo walk on December 13, 2015.
English Wikipedia and the Telugu Wikipedia joint meetup and edit-a-thon (Organized by Wikipedia community; Golden Threshold, Hyderabad; December 20, 2015). The event was covered inSakshi and Andhra Jyoti.

Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Post More Articles on Kannada Wikipedia (Indian Express; Mangaluru edition; December 12, 2015).

A Kannada Wikipedia Editathon was conducted in Mangalore on December 10, 2015. The following are the media coverage for the same:

Kannada Wikipedia Editathon (Udayavani; December 7, 2015).
Kannada Wikipedia Editathon (Vijayavani; December 11, 2015).
Kannada Wikipedia Editathon (Vijaya Karnataka; December 11, 2015).
Kannada Wikipedia Editathon (Udayavani; December 11, 2015).
Kannada Wikipedia Editathon (Prajavani; December 10, 2015).
Kannada Wikipedia Editathon (Prajavani; December 13, 2015).

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Internet Governance
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As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and International Development Research Centre (IDRC)) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on studying the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government.

►Free Speech and Expression

Interview

Facebook shares 10 key facts about Free Basics. Here's what's wrong with all 10 of them (Shweta Sengar; Catch News; December 24, 2015).

Blog Entry

CIS's Position on Net Neutrality (Sunil Abraham; December 4, 2015).

Event Organized

Net Neutrality across South Asia (Organized by Observer Research Foundation, Centre for Global Communication Studies, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Internet Policy Observatory and CIS; New Delhi; December 12, 2015).

Participation in Event

Consultation on "Understanding the Freedom of Expression Online and Offline" (Organized by Digital Empowerment Foundation and Association for Progressive Communications; YMCA, New Delhi; December 10, 2015). Jyoti Panday was a speaker at this event.

►Big Data

Blog Entry

Benefits and Harms of "Big Data" (Scott Mason; December 30, 2015).

►Cyber Security

Blog Entry

Ground Zero Summit (Amber Sinha; December 22, 2015).

Participation in Events

Second Regional Conference on Connectivity for All: Future Technologies, Markets and Regulation (Organized by International Telecommunications Society, IIMA IDEA Telecom Centre of Excellence and Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; New Delhi; December 13 - 15, 2015). Sunil Abraham was a panelist.

Event Organized

Bangalore Chapter Meet - DSCI (CIS, Bangalore; December 1, 2015). CIS hosted the Bangalore Chapter Meet of DSCI. Pronab Mohanty, Inspector General of Police gave a talk on Cybercrimes. Sunil Abraham presented the outcome of his study "Anonymity in Cyberspace".

►Privacy

Blog Entries

UID Research (Vanya Rakesh; December 2, 2015).
DNA Research (Vanya Rakesh; December 2, 2015).
Privacy Policy Research (Vanya Rakesh; December 2, 2015).
Sectoral Privacy Research (Vanya Rakesh; December 2, 2015).
Security Research (Vanya Rakesh; December 3, 2015).
Eight Key Privacy Events in India in the Year 2015 (Amber Sinha; December 31, 2015).

Participation in Events

Kick Off Meeting for the Politics of Data Project (Organized by Tactical Tech; Phnom Penh; December 7-8, 2015). Amber Sinha participated in the event.
Unbundling Issues of Privacy, Data Security, Identity Matrics, for Financial Inclusion (Organized by Indicus Foundation and MicroSave; December 10, 2015; Metropolitan Hotel and Spa, New Delhi). Sunil Abraham was a speaker.

►Miscellaneous

Blog Entry

Smart Cities in India: An Overview (Vanya Rakesh; December 21, 2015).

Participation in Event

Elite Capture of Governance (Organized by Forum for Urban Governance and Commons; December 16, 2015; Bangalore). Vanya Rakesh participated in the event.

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Telecom
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CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Articles

The Free Basics debate: Trai has a point in imposing temporary ban on net neutrality (Sunil Abraham; FirstPost; December 24, 2015).
Millions of Indians Slam Facebook's 'Free Basics' App (Subhashish Panigrahi; December 29, 2015).

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Researchers at Work
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The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by contemporary concerns to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It is interested in producing local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:

Upcoming Events

A.I. Hype Cycles and Artistic Subversions (CIS, Bangalore; January 22, 2016). Gene Kogan will give a talk.
First Edition of Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC) 2016 - Studying Internet in India: Call for Sessions (Organized by CIS; New Delhi; February 25 - 27, 2016).

Blog Entries

RAW Lecture #01: Nishant Shah on 'Stories and Histories of Internet in India' - Video (P.P. Sneha; December 1, 2015).
FOV Podcast - Data, People, and Smart Cities (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; December 2, 2015).
Reading from a Distance - Data as Text (P.P. Sneha; December 7, 2015).
The Infrastructure Turn in the Humanities (P.P. Sneha; December 7, 2015).
Living in the Archival Moment (P.P. Sneha; December 14, 2015).

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News & Media Coverage
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CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

India's net neutrality debate is unique and complex (Pratap Vikram Singh; Governance Now; December 14, 2015).
Start-up India turns the heat on Facebook Free Basics (Anita Babu; Business Standard; December 22, 2015).
A Scam Masquerading as Santa (Apurva Venkat & Vandana Kamath; Bangalore Mirror; December 25, 2015).
Facebook goes out all guns blazing in push for Free Basics, Net neutrality advocates cry foul (IBN Live; December 29, 2015).
Foreign Media on Zuckerberg's India Backlash (Bhuma Shrivastava; NDTV; December 30, 2015).
Mark Zuckerberg's India backlash imperils vision for free global web (Bhuma Shrivastava; Livemint; December 30, 2015).

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About CIS
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The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

► Offices

Bengaluru - No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru, 560071. Location on Google Map .

Delhi - First floor, B 1/8, Hauz Khas, near G Block market, after Crunch, New Delhi, 110016. Location on Google Map.

► Follow Us

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

► Support Us

Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of 'The Centre for Internet and Society' and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru, 560 071.

► Request for Collaboration

We invite researchers, practitioners, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at sumandro@cis-india.org (for academic research), with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia projects, write to Tanveer Hasan, Programme Officer, at tanveer@cis-india.org.

CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/december-2015-bulletin

Facebook Free Basics vs Net Neutrality: The top arguments in the debate

praskrishna — 2016-01-07T02:26:16Z

On Twitter, there's a whole conversation around Facebook Free Basics and whether zero-rating platforms should be allowed in India. Here's a look at the debate.

The article was published in the Indian Express on December 31, 2015. Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash were quoted.

Facebook’s Free Basics app, which aims to provide ‘free Internet access’ to users who can’t afford data packs, has run into trouble in India over the last two weeks. After regulator TRAI issued a paper questioning the fairness of zero-rating platforms, it also asked Reliance Communications (the official telecom partner for Free Basics) to put the service on hold.

Facebook on its part has gone for an aggressive campaign, both online and offline, to promote Free Basics and ensure that its platform is not banned permanently. For Net Neutrality activists, zero-rating platforms are in violation of the principle as it restricts access to free, full Internet for users.

On Twitter too, there’s a serious debate unfolding around Free Basics and whether zero-rating platforms should be allowed in India. Here’s a look at some of the prominent voices around this Net Neutrality vs Free Basics debate.

Watch our video

Nikhil Pahwa, founder of news website MediaNama, has been campaigning for quite some time against zero-rating platforms in general and Net Neutrality. On Twitter, Pahwa points out that the problem with the zero-rating apps is that it gives telecos right to play kingmaker, and get into a direct relationship between a website and a user.

Pahwa also wrote a counter-blog to Mark Zuckerberg’s column in The Times of India questioning why Facebook is going with this restricted version of the web on Free Basics, rather than giving access to all websites.

He posted recently on Twitter, “Why hasn’t Facebook tried any model other than on which gives it a competitive advantage?”

Pahwa adds, “With zero rating, telcos insert themselves into a previously direct relationship between a site and user. Some sites made cheaper versus others. Said it earlier, saying it again. Problem with zero rating is that it gives telcos the right to play kingmaker through pricing. So Net Neutrality battle isn’t just about Facebook. It’s about telcos lobbying for differential pricing+revenue share from Internet companies.”

Check out some of this tweets on the issue of Net Neutrality:

Pranesh Prakash, the director for policy at Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bangalore, has said that a total ban might not be the ideal solution and one should look at the platforms on a case by case basis.

He writes on Twitter, “My position: We should ban some zero-rating, allow some zero-rating, and deal w/ middle category either w/ +ve obligation or case-by-case. I’m all for banning Free Basics if it harms people more than it benefits them. I’ve even proposed tests for determining this. The regulator needs more data on a) conversion rates to full-Internet; b) cost of subsidy & c) QoE (speed, etc.) of Free Basics.”

Check out Pranesh's tweets below

Sunil Abraham, executive director at Centre for Internet and Society, has however questioned Free Basics on Twitter. He also posted counter-points to Pranesh’s tweets about data on conversion being used to create regulations around zero-ratings. He’s also called for a ban on Free Basics.

Check out his tweets below

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/indian-express-december-31-2015-facebook-free-basics-vs-net-neutrality-the-top-arguments-in-the-debate

Facebook Free Basics: Gatekeeping Powers Extend to Manipulating Public Discourse

vidushi — 2016-01-09T13:43:56Z

15 million people have come online through Free Basics, Facebook's zero rated walled garden, in the past year. "If we accept that everyone deserves access to the internet, then we must surely support free basic internet services. Who could possibly be against this?" asks Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, in a recent op-ed defending Free Basics.

The article was published in Catchnews on January 6, 2015. For more info click here.

This rhetorical question however, has elicited a plethora of answers. The network neutrality debate has accelerated over the past few weeks with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) releasing a consultation paper on differential pricing.

While notifications to "Save Free Basics in India" prompt you on Facebook, an enormous backlash against this zero rated service has erupted in India.

The policy objectives that must guide regulating net neutrality are consumer choice, competition, access and openness. Facebook claims that Free Basics is a transition to the full internet and digital equality. However, by acting as a gatekeeper, Facebook gives itself the distinct advantage of deciding what services people can access for free by virtue of them being "basic", thereby violating net neutrality.

Amidst this debate, it's important to think of the impact Facebook can have on manipulating public discourse. In the past, Facebook has used it's powerful News Feed algorithm to significantly shape our consumption of information online.

In July 2014, Facebook researchers revealed that for a week in January 2012, it had altered the news feeds of 689,003 randomly selected Facebook users to control how many positive and negative posts they saw. This was done without their consent as part of a study to test how social media could be used to spread emotions online.

Their research showed that emotions were in fact easily manipulated. Users tended to write posts that were aligned with the mood of their timeline.

Another worrying indication of Facebook's ability to alter discourse was during the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge in July and August, 2014. Users' News Feeds were flooded with videos of individuals pouring a bucket of ice over their head to raise awareness for charitable cause, but not entirely on its merit.

The challenge was Facebook's method of boosting its native video feature which was launched at around the same time. Its News Feed was mostly devoid of any news surrounding riots in Ferguson, Missouri at the same time, which happened to be a trending topic on Twitter.

Each day, the news feed algorithm has to choose roughly 300 posts out of a possible 1500 for each user, which involves much more than just a random selection. The posts you view when you log into Facebook are carefully curated keeping thousands of factors in mind. Each like and comment is a signal to the algorithm about your preferences and interests.

The amount of time you spend on each post is logged and then used to determine which post you are most likely to stop to read. Facebook even keeps into account text that is typed but not posted and makes algorithmic decisions based on them.

It also differentiates between likes - if you like a post before reading it, the news feed automatically assumes that your interest is much fainter as compared to liking a post after spending 10 minutes reading it.

Facebook believes that this is in the best interest of the user, and these factors help users see what he/she will most likely want to engage with. However, this keeps us at the mercy of a gatekeeper who impacts the diversity of information we consume, more often than not without explicit consent. Transparency is key.

(Vidushi Marda is a programme officer at the Centre for Internet and Society)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/catchnews-january-6-2016-vidushi-marda-facebook-free-basics-gatekeeping-powers-extend-to-manipulating-public-discourse

Human Rights in the Age of Digital Technology: A Conference to Discuss the Evolution of Privacy and Surveillance

Amber Sinha — 2016-01-11T02:12:49Z

The Centre for Internet and Society organised a conference in roundtable format called ‘Human Rights in the Age of Digital Technology: A Conference to discuss the evolution of Privacy and Surveillance. The conference was held at Indian Habitat Centre on October 30, 2015. The conference was designed to be a forum for discussion, knowledge exchange and agenda building to draw a shared road map for the coming months.

In India, the Right to Privacy has been interpreted to mean an individual's’ right to be left alone. In the age of massive use of Information and Communications Technology, it has become imperative to have this right protected. The Supreme Court has held in a number of its decisions that the right to privacy is implicit in the fundamental right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, though Part III does not explicitly mention this right. The Supreme Court has identified the right to privacy most often in the context of state surveillance and introduced the standards of compelling state interest, targetted surveillance and oversight mechanism which have been incorporated in the forms of rules under the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885. Of late, privacy concerns have gained importance in India due to the initiation of national programmes like the UID Scheme, DNA Profiling, the National Encryption Policy, etc. attracting criticism for their impact on the right to privacy. To add to the growing concerns, the Attorney General, Mukul Rohatgi argued in the ongoing Aadhaar case that the judicial position on whether the right to privacy is a fundamental right is unclear and has questioned the entire body of jurisprudence on right to privacy in the last few decades.

Participation

The roundtable saw participation from various civil society organisation such as Centre for Communication Governance, The Internet Democracy Project, as well as individual researchers like Dr. Usha Ramanathan and Colonel Mathew.

Introductions

Vipul Kharbanda, Consultant, CIS made the introductions and laid down the agenda for the day. Vipul presented a brief overview of the kind of work of CIS is engaged in around privacy and surveillance, in areas including among others, the Human DNA Profiling Bill, 2014, the Aadhaar Project, the Privacy Bill and surveillance laws in India. It was also highlighted that CIS was engaged in work in the field of Big Data in light of the growing voices wanting to use Big Data in the Smart Cities projects, etc and one of the questions was to analyse whether the 9 Privacy Principles would still be valid in a Big Data and IoT paradigm.

The Aadhaar Case

Dr. Usha Ramanathan began by calling the Aadhaar project an identification project as opposed to an identity project. She brought up various aspects of project ranging from the myth of voluntariness, the strong and often misleading marketing that has driven the project, the lack of mandate to collect biometric data and the problems with the technology itself. She highlighted inconsistencies, irrationalities and lack of process that has characterised the Aadhaar project since its inception. A common theme that she identified in how the project has been run was the element of ad-hoc-ness about many important decisions taken on a national scale and migrating from existing systems to the Aadhaar framework. She particularly highlighted the fact that as civil society actors trying to make sense of the project, an acute problem faced was the lack of credible information available. In that respect, she termed it as ‘powerpoint-driven project’ with a focus on information collection but little information available about the project itself. Another issue that Dr. Ramanathan brought up was that the lack of concern that had been exhibited by most people in sharing their biometric information without being aware of what it would be used, was in some ways symptomatic of they way we had begun to interact with technology and willingly giving information about ourselves, with little thought. Dr Ramanathan’s presentation detailed the response to the project from various quarters in the form of petitions in different high courts in India, how the cases were received by the courts and the contradictory response from the government at various stages. Alongside, she also sought to place the Aadhaar case in the context of various debates and issues, like its conflict with the National Population Register, exclusion, issues around ownership of data collected, national security implications and impact on privacy and surveillance. Aside from the above issues, Dr. Ramanathan also posited that the kind of flat idea of identity envisaged by projects like Aadhaar is problematic in that it adversely impacts how people can live, act and define themselves. In summation, she termed the behavior of the government as irresponsible for the manner in which it has changed its stand on issues to suit the expediency of the moment, and was particularly severe on the Attorney General raising questions about the existence of a fundamental right to privacy and casually putting in peril jurisprudence on civil liberties that has evolved over decades.

Colonel Mathew concurred with Dr. Ramanathan that the Aadhaar Project was not about identity but about identification. Prasanna developed on this further saying that while identity was a right unto the individual, identification was something done to you by others. Colonel Mathew further presented a brief history of the Aadhaar case, and how the significant developments over the last few years have played out in the courts. One of the important questions that Colonel Mathew addressed was the claim of uniqueness made by the UID project. He pointed to research conducted by Hans Varghese Mathew which analysed the data on biometric collection and processing released by the UID and demonstrated that there was a clear probability of a duplication in 1 out of every 97 enrolments. He also questioned the oft-repeated claim that UID would give identification to those without it and allow them to access welfare schemes. In this context, he pointed at the failures of the introducer system and the fact that only 0.03% of those registered have been enrolled through the introducer system. Colonel Mathew also questioned the change in stance by the ruling party, BJP which had earlier declared that the UID project should be scrapped as it was a threat to national security. According to him, the prime mover of the scheme were corporate interests outside the country interested in the data to be collected. This, he claimed created very serious risks to the national security. Prasanna further added to this point stating that while, on the face of it, some of the claims of threats to national security may sound alarmist in nature, if one were to critically study the manner in which the data had collected for this project, the concerns appeared justified.

The Draft Encryption Policy

Amber Sinha, Policy Officer at CIS, made a presentation on the brief appearance of the Draft Encryption Policy which was released in October this year, and withdrawn by the government within a day. Amber provided an overview of the policy emphasising on clauses around limitations on kind of encryption algorithms and key sizes individuals and organisations could use and the ill-advised procedures that needed to be followed. After the presentation, the topic was opened for discussion. The initial part of the discussion was focussed on specific clauses that threatened privacy and could serve the ends of enabling greater surveillance of the electronic communications of individuals and organisations, most notably having an exhaustive list of encryption algorithms, and the requirement to keep all encrypted communication in plain text format for a period of 90 days. We also attempted to locate the draft policy in the context of privacy debates in India as well as the global response to encryption. Amber emphasised that while mandating minimum standards of encryption for communication between government agencies may be a honorable motive, as it is concerned with matters of national security, however when this is extended to private parties and involved imposes upward thresholds on the kinds of encryption they can use, it stems from the motive of surveillance. Nayantara, of The Internet Democracy Project, pointed out that there had been global push back against encryption by governments in various countries like US, Russia, China, Pakistan, Israel, UK, Tunisia and Morocco. In India also, the IT Act places limits on encryption. Her points stands further buttressed by the calls against encryption in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris last month.

It also intended to have a session on the Human DNA Profiling Bill led by Dr. Menaka Guruswamy. However, due to certain issues in scheduling and paucity of time, we were not able to have the session.

Questions Raised

On Aadhaar, some of the questions raised included the question of applicability of the Section 43A, IT Act rules to the private parties involved in the process. The issue of whether Aadhaar can be tool against corruption was raised by Vipul. However, Colonel Mathew demonstrated through his research that issues like corruption in the TPDS system and MNREGA which Aadhaar is supposed to solve, are not effectively addressed by it but that there were simpler solutions to these problems.

Ranjit raised questions about the different contexts of privacy, and referred to the work of Helen Nissenbaum. He spoke about the history of freely providing biometric information in India, initially for property documents and how it has gradually been used for surveillance. He argued has due to this tradition, many people in India do not view sharing of biometric information as infringing on their privacy. Dipesh Jain, student at Jindal Global Law School pointed to challenges like how individual privacy is perceived in India, its various contexts, and people resorting to the oft-quoted dictum of ‘why do you want privacy if you have nothing to hide’. In the context, it is pertinent to mention the response of Edward Snowden to this question who said, “Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” Aakash Solanki, researcher

Vipul and Amber also touched upon the new challenges that are upon us in a world of Big Data where traditional ways to ensure data protection through data minimisation principle and the methods like anonymisation may not work. With advances in computer science and mathematics threatening to re-identify anonymized datasets, and more and more reliances of secondary uses of data coupled with the inadequacy of the idea of informed consent, a significant paradigm shift may be required in how we view privacy laws.

A number of action items going forward were also discussed, where different individuals volunteered to lead research on issues like the UBCC set up by the UIDAI, GSTN, the first national data utility, looking the recourses available to individual where his data is held by parties outside India’s jurisdiction.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/human-rights-in-the-age-of-digital-technology-a-conference-to-discuss-the-evolution-of-privacy-and-surveillance

Reply to RTI Application under RTI Act of 2005 from Vanya Rakesh

vanya — 2016-01-13T02:40:57Z

Unique Identification Authority of India replied to the RTI application filed by Vanya Rakesh.

Madam,

Please refer to your RTI application dated 3.12.2015 received in the Division on 10.12.2015 on the subject mentioned above requesting to provide the information in electronic form via the email address vanya@cis-india.org, copies of the artwork in print media released by UIDAI to create awareness about use of Aadhaar not being mandatory.
I am directed to furnish herewith in electronic form, copy of the artwork in print media released / published in the epapers edition of the Times of India and Dainik Jagran in their respective editions of dated 29.8.2015 in a soft copy, about obtaining of Aadhaar not being mandatory for a citizen, as desired.
In case, you want to go for an appeal in connection with the information provided, you may appeal to the Appellate Authority indicated below within thirty days from the date of receipt of this letter.
Shri Harish Lal Verma,
Deputy Director (Media),
Unique Identification Authority of India
3nd Floor, Tower – II, Jeevan Bharati Building,
New Delhi – 110001.

Yours faithfully,

(T Gou Khangin)
Section Officer & CPIO Media Division

Copy for information to: Deputy Director (Establishment) & Nodal CPIO

Below scanned copies:

RTI Reply

Coverage in Dainik Jagran

Download the coverage in the Times of India here. Read the earlier blog entry here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/reply-to-rti-application-under-rti-act-of-2005-from-vanya-rakesh

Centre for Internet and Society

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Smart Cities in India: An Overview

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How are the smart cities going to be Funded?

How is the scheme being implemented?

What is the role of Foreign Governments and bodies in the Smart cities mission?

What is the way ahead?

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Watch our video

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Human Rights in the Age of Digital Technology: A Conference to Discuss the Evolution of Privacy and Surveillance

Participation

Introductions

The Aadhaar Case

The Draft Encryption Policy

Questions Raised

Reply to RTI Application under RTI Act of 2005 from Vanya Rakesh