Centre for Internet and Society

Internet Analysts Question India’s Efforts to Stem Panic

praskrishna — 2012-09-04T11:46:03Z

The Indian government’s efforts to stem a weeklong panic among some ethnic minorities has again put it at odds with Internet companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter.

This article by Vikas Bajaj was published by New York Times on August 21, 2012. Sunil Abraham is quoted. This was reposted in NDTV on August 22, 2012.

Officials in New Delhi, who have had disagreements with the companies over restrictions on free speech, say the sites are not responding quickly enough to their requests to delete and trace the origins of doctored photos and incendiary posts aimed at people from northeastern India. After receiving threats online and on their phones, tens of thousands of students and migrants from the northeast have left cities like Bangalore, Pune and Chennai in the last week.

The government has blocked 245 Web pages since Friday, but still many sites are said to contain fabricated images of violence against Muslims in the northeast and in neighboring Myanmar meant to incite Muslims in cities like Bangalore and Mumbai to attack people from the northeast. India also restricted cellphone users to five text messages a day each for 15 days in an effort to limit the spread of rumors.

Officials from Google and industry associations said they were cooperating fully with the authorities. Some industry executives and analysts added that some requests had not been heeded because they were overly broad or violated internal policies and the rights of users.

The government, used to exerting significant control over media like newspapers, films and television, has in recent months been frustrated in its effort to extend similar and greater regulations to Web sites, most of which are based in the United States. Late last year, an Indian minister tried to get social media sites to prescreen content created by their users before it was posted. The companies refused and the attempt failed under withering public criticism.

While just 100 million of India’s 1.2 billion people use the Internet regularly, the numbers are growing fast among people younger than 25, who make up about half the country’s population. For instance, there were an estimated 46 million active Indian users on Facebook at the end of 2011, up 132 percent from a year earlier.

Sunil Abraham, an analyst who has closely followed India’s battles with Internet companies, said last week’s effort to tackle hate speech was justified but poorly managed. He said the first directive from the government was impractically broad, asking all Internet “intermediaries” — a category that includes small cybercafes, Internet service providers and companies like Google and Facebook — to disable all content that was “inflammatory, hateful and inciting violence.”

“The Internet intermediaries are responding slowly because now they have to trawl through their networks and identify hate speech,” said Mr. Abraham, executive director of the Center for Internet and Society, a research and advocacy group based in Bangalore. “The government acted appropriately, but without sufficient sophistication.”

In the days since the first advisory went out on Aug. 17, government officials have asked companies to delete dozens of specific Web pages. Most of them have been blocked, but officials have not publicly identified them or specified the sites on which they were hosted. Ministers have blamed groups in Pakistan, a neighbor with which India has tense relations, for creating and uploading many of the hateful pages and doctored images.

A minister in the Indian government, Milind Deora, acknowledged that officials had received assistance from social media sites but said officials were hoping that the companies would move faster.

“There is a sense of importance and urgency, and that’s why the government has taken these out-of-the-way decisions with regards to even curtailing communications,” Mr. Deora, a junior minister of communications and information technology, said in a telephone interview. “And we are hoping for cooperation from the platforms and companies to help us as quickly as possible.”

Indian officials have long been concerned about the power of modern communications to exacerbate strife and tension among the nation’s many ethnic and religious groups. While communal violence has broadly declined in the last decade, in part because of faster economic growth, many grievances simmer under the surface. Most recently, fighting between the Bodo tribe and Muslims in the northeastern state of Assam has displaced about half a million people and, through text messages and online posts, affected thousands more across India.

Officials at social media companies, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid offending political leaders, said that they were moving as fast as they could but that policy makers must realize that the company officials have to follow their own internal procedures before deleting content and revealing information like the Internet protocol addresses of users.

“Content intended to incite violence, such as hate speech, is prohibited on Google products where we host content, including YouTube, Google Plus and Blogger,” Google said in a statement. “We act quickly to remove such material flagged by our users. We also comply with valid legal requests from authorities wherever possible.”

Facebook said in a statement that it also restricts hate speech and “direct calls for violence” and added that it was “working through” requests to remove content. Twitter declined to comment on the Indian government’s request.

Telecommunications company executives criticized the government’s response to the crisis as being excessive and clumsy. There was no need to limit text messages to just five a day across the country when problems were concentrated in a handful of big cities, said Rajan Mathews, director general of the Cellular Operators Association of India.

“It could have been handled much more tactically,” he said.

Others said the government could have been more effective had it quickly countered hateful and threatening speech by sending out its own messages, which it was slow to do when migrants from the northeast began leaving Bangalore on Aug. 15.

“It has to also reach out on social networking and Internet platforms and dismantle these rumors,” Mr. Abraham said, “and demonstrate that they are false.”

A version of this article appeared in print on August 22, 2012, on page B4 of the New York edition with the headline: Internet Moves by India to Stem Rumors and Panic Raise Questions.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-nytimes-vikas-bajaj-aug-21-2012-internet-analysts-question-indias-efforts-to-stem-panic

Intermediary Liability in India: Chilling Effects on Free Expression on the Internet

Rishabh Dara — 2012-12-14T10:22:24Z

The Centre for Internet & Society in partnership with Google India conducted the Google Policy Fellowship 2011. This was offered for the first time in Asia Pacific as well as in India. Rishabh Dara was selected as a Fellow and researched upon issues relating to freedom of expression. The results of the paper demonstrate that the ‘Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules 2011’ notified by the Government of India on April 11, 2011 have a chilling effect on free expression.

Intermediaries are widely recognised as essential cogs in the wheel of exercising the right to freedom of expression on the Internet. Most major jurisdictions around the world have introduced legislations for limiting intermediary liability in order to ensure that this wheel does not stop spinning. With the 2008 amendment of the Information Technology Act 2000, India joined the bandwagon and established a ‘notice and takedown’ regime for limiting intermediary liability.

On the 11th of April 2011, the Government of India notified the ‘Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules 2011’ that prescribe, amongst other things, guidelines for administration of takedowns by intermediaries. The Rules have been criticised extensively by both the national and the international media. The media has projected that the Rules, contrary to the objective of promoting free expression, seem to encourage privately administered injunctions to censor and chill free expression. On the other hand, the Government has responded through press releases and assured that the Rules in their current form do not violate the principle of freedom of expression or allow the government to regulate content.

This study has been conducted with the objective of determining whether the criteria, procedure and safeguards for administration of the takedowns as prescribed by the Rules lead to a chilling effect on online free expression. In the course of the study, takedown notices were sent to a sample comprising of 7 prominent intermediaries and their response to the notices was documented. Different policy factors were permuted in the takedown notices in order to understand at what points in the process of takedown, free expression is being chilled.

The results of the paper clearly demonstrate that the Rules indeed have a chilling effect on free expression. Specifically, the Rules create uncertainty in the criteria and procedure for administering the takedown thereby inducing the intermediaries to err on the side of caution and over-comply with takedown notices in order to limit their liability; and as a result suppress legitimate expressions. Additionally, the Rules do not establish sufficient safeguards to prevent misuse and abuse of the takedown process to suppress legitimate expressions.

Of the 7 intermediaries to which takedown notices were sent, 6 intermediaries over-complied with the notices, despite the apparent flaws in them. From the responses to the takedown notices, it can be reasonably presumed that not all intermediaries have sufficient legal competence or resources to deliberate on the legality of an expression. Even if such intermediary has sufficient legal competence, it has a tendency to prioritize the allocation of its legal resources according to the commercial importance of impugned expressions. Further, if such subjective determination is required to be done in a limited timeframe and in the absence of adequate facts and circumstances, the intermediary mechanically (without application of mind or proper judgement) complies with the takedown notice.

The results also demonstrate that the Rules are procedurally flawed as they ignore all elements of natural justice. The third party provider of information whose expression is censored is not informed about the takedown, let alone given an opportunity to be heard before or after the takedown. There is also no recourse to have the removed information put-back or restored. The intermediary is under no obligation to provide a reasoned decision for rejecting or accepting a takedown notice.

The Rules in their current form clearly tilt the takedown mechanism in favour of the complainant and adversely against the creator of expression.

The research highlights the need to:

increase the safeguards against misuse of the privately administered takedown regime

reduce the uncertainty in the criteria for administering the takedown

reduce the uncertainty in the procedure for administering the takedown

include various elements of natural justice in the procedure for administering the takedown

replace the requirement for subjective legal determination by intermediaries with an objective test

Click to download the report [PDF, 406 Kb]

Appendix 2

The above documents have been sent to:

Shri Kapil Sibal, Minister of Human Resource Development and Minister of Communications and Information Technology
Shri Milind Murli Deora, Minister of State of Communications and Information Technology
Shri Sachin Pilot, Minister of State, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology
Dr. Anita Bhatnagar, Joint Secretary, Department of Electronics & Information Technology, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology
Dr. Ajay Kumar, Joint Secretary, Department of Electronics & Information Technology, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology
Dr. Gulshan Rai, Scientist G & Group Coordinator, Director General, ICERT, Controller Of Certifying, Authorities and Head of Division, Cyber Appellate Tribunal

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/chilling-effects-on-free-expression-on-internet

Intermediary Liability in India: Chilling Effects on Free Expression on the Internet 2011

Rishabh Dara — 2012-04-21T18:05:58Z

On the 11th of April 2011, the Government of India notified the Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules 2011 that prescribe, amongst other things, guidelines for administration of takedowns by intermediaries. The Rules have been criticised extensively by both national and international media. The media has projected that the Rules, contrary to the objective of promoting free expression, seem to encourage privately administered injunctions to censor and chill free expression. On the other hand, the Government has responded through press releases and assured that the Rules in their current form do not violate the principle of freedom of expression or allow the government to regulate content.

This study has been conducted with the objective of determining whether the criteria, procedure and safeguards for administration of the takedowns as prescribed by the Rules lead to a chilling effect on online free expression. In the course of the study, takedown notices were sent to a sample comprising of 7 prominent intermediaries and their response to the notices was documented. Different policy factors were permuted in the takedown notices in order to understand at what points in the process of takedown, free expression is being chilled.

The results of the paper clearly demonstrate that the Rules indeed have a chilling effect on free expression. Specifically, the Rules create uncertainty in the criteria and procedure for administering the takedown thereby inducing the intermediaries to err on the side of caution and over-comply with takedown notices in order to limit their liability and as a result suppress legitimate expressions. Additionally, the Rules do not establish sufficient safeguards to prevent misuse and abuse of the takedown process to suppress legitimate expressions.

Of the 7 intermediaries to which takedown notices were sent, 6 intermediaries over-complied with the notices, despite the apparent flaws in them. From the responses to the takedown notices, it can be reasonably presumed that not all intermediaries have sufficient legal competence or resources to deliberate on the legality of an expression. Even if such intermediary has sufficient legal competence, it has a tendency to prioritise the allocation of its legal resources according to the commercial importance of impugned expressions. Further, if such subjective determination is required to be done in a limited timeframe and in the absence of adequate facts and circumstances, the intermediary mechanically (without application of mind or proper judgement) complies with the takedown notice.

The results also demonstrate that the Rules are procedurally flawed as they ignore all elements of natural justice. The third party provider of information whose expression is censored is not informed about the takedown, let alone given an opportunity to be heard before or after the takedown. There is also no recourse to have the removed information put-back or restored. The intermediary is under no obligation to provide a reasoned decision for rejecting or accepting a takedown notice. The Rules in their current form clearly tilt the takedown mechanism in favour of the complainant and adversely against the creator of expression.

The research highlights the need to:

increase the safeguards against misuse of the privately administered takedown regime;

reduce the uncertainty in the criteria for administering the takedown;

reduce the uncertainty in the procedure for administering the takedown;

include various elements of natural justice in the procedure for administering the takedown; and

replace the requirement for subjective legal determination by intermediaries with an objective test.

This executive summary is a research output of the Google Policy Fellowship 2011. The Centre for Internet & Society was the host organization. For the entire paper along with references, please write to rishabhdara@gmail.com or sunil@cis-india.org

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/intermediary-liability-in-india

Indians Rank Second For Online Snooping

praskrishna — 2012-11-30T06:10:24Z

Indians rank second globally when it comes to seeking details of private individuals online, as per Google transparency report.

The blog post was published in Indolink on November 23, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

India recorded for 2,319 requests for the entire period of 2012, where various government agencies have been looking for individual user details contained in online records, as reported by Dailybhaskar.com. U.S. topped the list with 7,969 requests, while Brazil was on the third spot with 1,566 requests.

It was seen that in the first six months this year, India made 2,319 requests involving 3,467 users, while the U.S. made 7,969 requests in the same period. Globally, it was seen that there were 20,938 requests for user data in the period of January-June. The data includes an individual’s complete Gmail account, chat logs, Orkut profile and search terms among others. Google prepares this report every six months, and was started in July-December 2009.

The report also stated that the percentage of data requests fully or partially complied with by India stood at 64 percent.

The Director for policy at Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Pranesh Prakash said "Though India is a large country with a significant number of internet users, this data is nonetheless an indicator of growing surveillance," as reported by Daily Bhaskar.com.Apart from snooping on user details, Indian authorities are also known to send requests for taking down certain web content, which is considered to be sensitive for national security or defamatory in general. A new trend also revealed that untrue court orders are being used as a key instrument for the same.

On one hand the nation is seeking to go net savvy, while on the other hand authorities are looking to stamp authority on freedom of a larger population.

If was also noted that there were 20 court orders and 64 requests from executive/police that resulted in 596 items being taken down from the web between January and June this year. Comparatively, there were only eight court orders and 22 executive/police requests in January-June 2010, resulting in 125 items being taken down.

Google said “In response to a court order, we removed 360 search results. The search results were linked to 360 web pages that had adult videos, which allegedly violated an individual’s personal privacy,” as reported by Business Standard.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/indolink-november-2012-indians-rank-second-for-online-shopping

Indian surveillance laws & practices far worse than US

pranesh — 2013-07-12T11:09:39Z

Explosive would be just the word to describe the revelations by National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Pranesh Prakash's column was published in the Economic Times on June 13, 2013. This research was undertaken as part of the 'SAFEGUARDS' project that CIS is undertaking with Privacy International and IDRC.

Now, with the American Civil Liberties Union suing the Obama administration over the NSA surveillance programme, more fireworks could be in store. Snowden's expose provides proof of what many working in the field of privacy have long known. The leaks show the NSA (through the FBI) has got a secret court order requiring telecom provider Verizon to hand over "metadata", i.e., non-content data like phone numbers and call durations, relating to millions of US customers (known as dragnet or mass surveillance); that the NSA has a tool called Prism through which it queries at least nine American companies (including Google and Facebook); and that it also has a tool called Boundless Informant (a screenshot of which revealed that, in February 2013, the NSA collected 12.61 billion pieces of metadata from India).

Nothing Quite Private

The outrage in the US has to do with the fact that much of the data the NSA has been granted access to by the court relates to communications between US citizens, something the NSA is not authorised to gain access to. What should be of concern to Indians is that the US government refuses to acknowledge non-Americans as people who also have a fundamental right to privacy, if not under US law, then at least under international laws like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the ICCPR.

US companies such as Facebook and Google have had a deleterious effect on privacy. In 2004, there was a public outcry when Gmail announced it was using an algorithm to read through your emails to serve you advertisements. Facebook and Google collect massive amounts of data about you and websites you visit, and by doing so, they make themselves targets for governments wishing to snoop on you, legally or not.

Worse, Indian-Style

That said, Google and Twitter have at least challenged a few of the secretive National Security Letters requiring them to hand over data to the FBI, and have won. Yahoo India has challenged the authority of the Controller of Certifying Authorities, a technical functionary under the IT Act, to ask for user data, and the case is still going on.

To the best of my knowledge, no Indian web company has ever challenged the government in court over a privacy-related matter. Actually, Indian law is far worse than American law on these matters. In the US, the NSA needed a court order to get the Verizon data. In India, the licences under which telecom companies operate require them to provide this. No need for messy court processes.

The law we currently have â€” sections 69 and 69B of the Information Technology Act â€” is far worse than the surveillance law the British imposed on us. Even that lax law has not been followed by our intelligence agencies.

Keeping it Safe

Recent reports reveal India's secretive National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) â€” created under an executive order and not accountable to Parliament â€” often goes beyond its mandate and, in 2006-07, tried to crack into Google and Skype servers, but failed. It succeeded in cracking Rediffmail and Sify servers, and more recently was accused by the Department of Electronics and IT in a report on unauthorised access to government officials' mails.

While the government argues systems like the Telephone Call Interception System (TCIS), the Central Monitoring System (CMS) and the National Intelligence Grid (Natgrid) will introduce restrictions on misuse of surveillance data, it is a flawed claim. Mass surveillance only increases the size of the haystack, which doesn't help in finding the needle. Targeted surveillance, when necessary and proportional, is required. And no such systems should be introduced without public debate and a legal regime in place for public and parliamentary accountability.

The government should also encourage the usage of end-to-end encryption, ensuring Indian citizens' data remains safe even if stored on foreign servers. Merely requiring those servers to be located in India will not help, since that information is still accessible to American agencies if it is not encrypted. Also, the currently lax Indian laws will also apply, degrading users' privacy even more.

Indians need to be aware they have virtually no privacy when communicating online unless they take proactive measures. Free or open-source software and technologies like Open-PGP can make emails secure, Off-The-Record can secure instant messages, TextSecure for SMSes, and Tor can anonymise internet traffic.

http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/economic-times-june-13-2013-pranesh-prakash-indian-surveillance-laws-and-practices-far-worse-than-us

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/economic-times-june-13-2013-pranesh-prakash-indian-surveillance-laws-and-practices-far-worse-than-us

Indian Supreme Court Overturns Law Barring ‘Offensive Messages’ Online

praskrishna — 2015-03-25T16:18:29Z

India’s Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down legislation barring “offensive messages” online, saying it violated constitutional guarantees of free expression.

The article by Niharika Mandhana published by Wall Street Journal on March 24, 2015 quotes Sunil Abraham.

A two-judge panel voided a part of India’s Information Technology Act that made it a crime to share information through computers or other communications devices that could cause “annoyance, inconvenience” and “enmity, hatred or ill will.”

Announcing the ruling in a crowded courtroom in the Indian capital, Justice Rohinton Nariman said the law’s provisions were too vague and didn’t provide “clearly defined lines” for law-enforcement officials. “What is offensive to one person may not be offensive to another,” he said.

The court also ruled that Internet companies, such as Facebook and Google, could be required to remove or block access to online content only if ordered to do so by a court or by a notification from the government. Previously, they were expected to act when they had “actual knowledge” of allegedly illegal materials.

Free-speech activists had long argued against the broad language in the law, which was enacted in part as an effort to prevent the incitement of violence among different religious and ethnic groups in the world’s second-most-populous nation.

On Tuesday they applauded the decision.

“This provision was hugely problematic for anyone using the Internet in India and that is gone,” said Sunil Abraham, head of the Bangalore-based Center for Internet and Society. “The court has removed the additional, unconstitutional limits to free speech.”

India’s Information Technology minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, said in a televised interview after the ruling that the government “supports free social media.”

“If the security establishment needs a response in cases of terrorism, extremism, communal violence, the government will take a view after wider consultations,” Mr. Prasad said. “But only with adequate safeguards.”

Enforcement of the law has sparked controversy for years. In 2012, a 21-year-old was detained after complaining on Facebook about the effective shutdown of Mumbai for the funeral of a right-wing Hindu leader. Another person was also detained for “liking” her comment.

That year, political cartoonist Aseem Trivedi was also charged under this law for his work lampooning Parliament. Mr. Trivedi said Tuesday that the court’s decision would “put a stop to years of misuse of the law by the government and politicians.”

“It sends a strong message that Indian law is with free speech,” Mr. Trivedi said.

According to a recent report by Facebook, the U.S. social media company blocked 5,832 pieces of content in the second half of 2014 on requests from Indian law-enforcement agencies and the government.

That was up from 4,960 pieces blocked from January to June last year. Facebook said it restricted access in India to a lot of “anti-religious content” and “hate speech that Indian officials reported could cause unrest and disharmony.”

J. Sai Deepak, a New Delhi-based lawyer involved in the case, said Tuesday’s decision was a significant victory for Internet companies in India. He said the law’s implementation—which earlier was “subject to the vagaries of the political winds of the state,” he said—would now be guided only by the free-speech rules laid down in the Indian constitution.

The order, however, rejected an argument by free-speech advocates that information shared on the Internet must be treated the same way as other kinds of speech, such as a live address or printed material. The court said lawmakers could create a separate law to deal with online speech because such content, unlike others, “travels like lightning and can reach millions of persons all over the world.”

But the current law, the court said, was too vague and included terms which “take into the net a very large amount of protected and innocent speech.” The law “is cast so widely that virtually any opinion on any subject would be covered by it,” the order said.

—Newley Purnell contributed to this article.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/wall-street-journal-niharika-mandhana-march-24-2015-indian-supreme-court-overturns-law-barring-hate-speech-online

Indian Porn Ban is Partially Lifted But Sites Remain Blocked

pranesh — 2015-09-13T09:00:03Z

The Indian government made a quick about-face on its order to block hundreds of pornography websites on Tuesday, partially lifting the ban after political backlash against the moral policing.

The article was published in Wall Street Journal on August 5, 2015. Pranesh Prakash gave his inputs.

But the websites remained blocked because Internet service providers were afraid of legal trouble.

The new order from the Department of Telecommunications said that Internet service providers could unblock any of the 857 websites, so long as they don’t contain child pornography. However, the websites remain blocked because service providers say they have no way of knowing whether they contain child porn, and no control over whether they will in the future.

Ravi Shankar Prasad, the IT minister, said Tuesday night that the government would trim down the list of banned sites, to focus only on those that contain child porn.

“A new notification will be issued shortly. The ban will be partially withdrawn. Sites that do not promote child porn will be unbanned,” said Mr. Prasad on the TV news channel India Today.

The wording of the new order created confusion, because it appears to put the responsibility for policing the Internet for child pornography on service providers.

“How can we go ahead? What if something comes up tomorrow [on one of these sites], which has child porn, or something else?,” said an executive at an Indian service provider who asked not to be named.

“The onus cannot be put on the service providers. What the government is doing is inherently unfair, it is not what the law requires,” said Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based civil liberties advocacy group. It is the government’s job to determine what violates the law, not private companies, Mr. Prakash said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-wall-street-journal-august-5-2015-sean-mclain-indian-porn-ban-is-partially-lifted-but-sites-remain-blocked

Indian PM Narendra Modi’s digital dream gets bad reception

praskrishna — 2015-09-29T15:23:04Z

As Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Silicon Valley’s most powerful chief executives this week how his government “attacked poverty by using the power of networks and mobile phones’’, the entire population of the state of Kashmir remained offline — by order of the state.

The article by Amanda Hodge was published in the Australian on September 29, 2015. Sunil Abraham gave inputs.

“I see technology as a means to empower and as a tool that bridges the distance between hope and opportunity,” Mr Modi said yesterday on a trip in which he will also discuss development at the UN.

Earlier, in a “town hall” meeting with Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg Mr Modi hailed the power of social media networks that gave governments the opportunity to correct themselves “every five minutes”, rather than every five years.

His remarks during his Digital India tour of the US west coast sparked a storm of Twitter protest.

The northern state’s former chief minister Omar Abdullah, who noted the “irony of listening to Prime Minister Modi lecturing about connected digital India, while we are totally disconnected”.

The ban on mobile and broadband internet in Jammu and Kashmir was imposed last Friday, the beginning of the Muslim holiday of Eid-ul-Zuha during which animals are slaughtered and the meat fed to the poor, for fear social media could inflame tensions over the state government’s decision to enforce a beef ban.

It was to have lasted 24 hours but — notwithstanding Twitter feedback — was extended twice as a “precautionary” measure.

As Mr Modi outlined his dreams of a broadband network connecting the country’s most remote communities, millions of New Delhi mobile phone users continued their daily wrestle with line dropouts.

“We are bringing technology, transparency, efficiency, ease and effectiveness in governance,” he said, as in New Delhi the government talked of pulling down more mobile towers.

Centre for Internet and Society director Sunil Abraham said yesterday: “Schizophrenia between rhetoric and reality (on digital policy) is the global standard for all world leaders.

“Politicians in opposition are invariably opposed to surveillance and in favour of free speech but the very day that politician assumes office even if it is someone as splendid as Barack Obama, they change their opinions on these topics and become pro-surveillance and pro-censorship.”

Certainly successive Indian governments have had a patchy record on such issues. Last March India’s activist Supreme Court struck down a controversial section of the Information Technology Act which made posting information of a “grossly offensive or menacing character” punishable by up to three years’ jail.

That month police in northern Uttar Pradesh arrested a teenager for a Facebook post, which they said “carried derogatory language against a community”.

Previous cases under the former Congress-led government include that of a university professor detained for posting a cartoon about the chief minister of West Bengal and the arrest of two young women over a Facebook post criticising the shutdown of Mumbai following the death of a Hindu right politician.

While Mr Modi’s government welcomed the Supreme Court ruling as a “landmark day for freedom of speech and expression”, last month it attempted to block 857 random porn sites.

Notwithstanding the gulf between Mr Modi’s digital dream rhetoric and the reality at home, his second US visit in 17 months has reaped dividends. Google has committed to a joint initiative to roll out free Wi-Fi to 500 railway stations across the country, and Qualcomm has pledged a $US150 million ($213m) tech startup fund.

But Mr Abraham warned of the potential for such investments to compromise net neutrality — the principle of allowing internet users access to all content and applications.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-australian-amanda-hodge-september-29-2015-indian-pm-narendra-modi-digital-dream-gets-bad-reception

Indian Netizens Criticize Online Censorship of ‘Jihadi’ Content

subha — 2015-02-10T02:43:17Z

The article on online censorship by Subhashish Panigrahi was published in Global Voices on January 6, 2015.

Click to view the article on Global Voices here.

Indian Netizens Criticize Online Censorship of ‘Jihadi’ Content · Global Voices


Mock-up of a blocked URL (Image: Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-by-SA 3.0)

The Government of India in the last week of 2014 asked Internet service providers (ISPs) to block 32 websites including code repository Github, video streaming sites Vimeo and Dailymotion, online archive Internet Archive, free software hosting site Sourceforge and many other websites on the basis of hosting anti-India content from the violent extremist group known as ISIS.

The blanket block on many resourceful sites has been heavily criticized on social media and blogs by reviving the hashtag #GoIblocks that evolved in the past against internet censorship by the government.

Nikhil Pahwa at MediaNama notes that this time many ISPs published the list of the blocked sites:

Typically, users are not informed about which websites are blocked, so this was a welcome move from the ISP.

“Say No to Censorship. #GOIBlocks” (taken from Facebook page of Free Software Foundation, Tamil Nadu)

In 2012, opposition party leader Narendra Modi (who is now India's Prime Minister) tweeted against the URL blocks by the earlier ruling of India's National Congress when then-Minister of Communications and Information Technology Kapil Sibal ordered to block 300 websites. Many eyebrows were raised when Modi repeated the move this time around.

Internet censorship in India has been increasingly prominent since 1999 when Pakistani newspaper Dawn was blocked by the Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited for post-Kargil War views against India. These caught heavy criticism from netizens, often under the hashtag #IdiotKapilSibal. Since then there have been many instances of government-mediated censorship, particularly with the enactment of India's Information Technology Act of 2000.

Arvind Gupta, head of Information Technology for India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, tweeted to clarify that the sites were blocked as advised by the Anti-Terrorism Squad.

Arvind Gupta ✔ @buzzindelhi
Follow

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

3:11 PM - 31 Dec 2014

362 Retweets 82 favorites

After agreeing to remove anti-India content posted by accounts that appeared to have some association with ISIS, weebly.com, vimeo.com, Pastebin, dailymotion.com and gist.github.com were unblocked.

These websites have undertaken not to allow pasting of such propaganda information on their website and also work with the government to remove such material as per the compliance with the laws of land.

- Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India (posted in Business Standard)

Arvind Gupta ✔ @buzzindelhi
Follow

Action has been initiated to unblock -- http://weebly.com , http://vimeo.com , http://dailymotion.com and (1/2)

12:36 AM - 1 Jan 2015

63 Retweets 25 favorites

Arvind Gupta ✔ @buzzindelhi

gist.github.com :: http://wap.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/government-decides-to-unblock-four-websites-out-of-32-114123101162_1.html … (2/2)

12:36 AM - 1 Jan 2015

39 Retweets 12 favorites

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/global-voices-january-6-2015-subhashish-panigrahi-indian-netizens-criticize-online-censorship-of-jihadi-content

Indian net service providers too play censorship tricks

praskrishna — 2013-02-13T04:20:53Z

The study by a Canadian university has found that some major Indian ISPs have deployed web-censorship and filtering technology.

The article by T Ramachandran was published in the Hindu on February 9, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Your internet service provider (ISP) could be blocking some content. A study conducted by a Canadian university has found that some major Indian ISPs have deployed web-censorship and filtering technology widely used in China and some West Asian countries.

The findings, published on January 15, were the result of a search for censorship software and hardware on public networks like those operated by ISPs.

A research team at Citizen Lab, an interdisciplinary laboratory based at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, found a software-hardware combo package called PacketShaper being used in many parts of the world, including India.

The study identified the presence of four PacketShaper installations on the networks of three major ISPs in India during the period of study in late 2012. These ISPs had been earlier “implicated in filtering to some degree,” the report said.

The deployment of such traffic management technologies by ISPs could threaten privacy, freedom of expression and competition, said Sunil Abraham, Executive Director of the Bangalore-based NGO, Centre for Internet and Society.

He said tools like PacketShaper could be used by ISPs for two types of censorship —“to block entire websites or choke traffic on certain services or destinations in a highly granular fashion.”

The U.S.-based producers of the technology, Blue Coat Systems, are quite open about the product features on the company’s website. They say it could be used to control and weed out undesirable content. It could also be used to slow down or speed up the operation of programmes and content flow to achieve the goals set by the operators of the networks.

Transparency is the key

Technology experts said such products could be used to exercise legitimate control over the internet traffic and prioritise the use of bandwidth and resources, if used ethically.

“If done in a transparent manner that does not discriminate against different actors within a class it does benefit the collective interest of the ISP’s clients. However, it could also be used to engage in hidden censorship against legitimate speech and also for anti-competitive behaviour,” said Mr. Abraham.

The study focussed on countries where concerns exist over “compliance with international human rights law, legal due process, freedom of speech, surveillance, and censorship.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-feb-9-2013-t-ramachandran-indian-net-service-providers-too-play-censorship-tricks

Indian mobiles go quiet amid SMS curbs

praskrishna — 2012-08-27T07:15:01Z

India’s 900m-plus mobile telephones have fallen unusually quiet since Saturday, when the government curbed text and multimedia messages for 15 days in an attempt to dispel panic among north-easterners fearing attacks from angry Muslims.

This article written by Victor Mallet in New Delhi and James Crabtree in Mumbai was published in Financial Times on August 21, 2012. Additional reporting by Jyotsna Singh in New Delhi. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The order limiting the number of SMS and MMS messages to five a day from each pre-paid account – which comprise 97 per cent of the market – has disrupted personal communications and threatens to squeeze the revenues of the mobile operating companies.

The government has also urged social media websites including Facebook and Twitter to remove “inflammatory” content it said had helped spread rumours that caused an exodus of migrants from some cities last week. Access to 245 web pages containing doctored videos and images had been blocked, the government claimed, and the relevant sites told to take the pages down.

Indians send more than a billion text messages a day, although it is not clear how many people have been affected by the restrictions or how many of the messages are mass mailings.

Akshat Dwivedi, 20, an undergraduate student at Delhi University, said the restrictions were “a stupid idea”.

“How can the government take away something that has become a basic, fundamental need today?” he said. “The ban has affected mostly students who use pre-paid connections because pre-paid connections are cheaper and more affordable for students like us. The ban has hugely disrupted our life. There are many people who rely on text messages because you can’t always call everybody.”

Civil rights activists wary of censorship accept that the ban may have been necessary to ease ethnic and religious tensions.

“There is the fear that the state will exercise inordinate powers,” said Akila Shivdas, a civil and consumer rights activist. “But regulation and state control are two different things … This is an opportunity to look at regulation seriously.”

India’s mobile industry earned about $20bn in revenue last year, of which 15-18 per cent was from data services, according to the Cellular Operators Association of India, a trade body. This suggests operators are set to suffer a loss of about $133m for the 15-day period, according to COAI figures.

“When we are going through the trauma of increased costs, being challenged on revenues does not help,” said Rajan Matthew, COAI director-general. “The government’s heart is in the right place in trying to address this issue ... But when we are fighting for every nickel and dime, this loss is not a small amount.”

Other analysts cautioned that the likely revenue impact would be much smaller, noting that most customers bought pre-paid SMS packages. “I’m not saying there will be no loss, but it will not be dramatic”, said Rohit Chordia, a telecoms analyst at Kotak, a Mumbai-based brokerage.

Industry sources and analysts also questioned the government’s decision to impose an extended nationwide ban, rather than experimenting with more limited short-term restrictions targeted to particular trouble spots.

“Some kind of limitation on communication was a reasonable step, but restricting everyone to just five per day I don’t think is reasonable at all,” said Pranesh Prakash, programme manager at the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based think tank.

Thousands of north-easterners – physically similar to the Bodo people who have been fighting Muslim migrants over land and political power in Assam – fled from cities such as Bangalore and Hyderabad last week after threats of violence sent by SMS.

Muslims in Mumbai had previously been inflamed by media messages purportedly showing brutality towards their fellow followers of Islam, though the Indian government said some pictures were doctored and had been uploaded from Pakistan.

Events in Bangalore, said Pavan Duggan, a lawyer specialising in IT issues, were “a classic case of mobile cyberterrorism”. He backed the government’s measures despite concerns about censorship. “Obviously there are some rumblings, but these are still small murmurs because everyone is very clear that the national interest will come over [mobile] revenues.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-ft-com-aug-21-2012-victor-mallet-james-crabtree-indian-mobiles-go-quiet-amid-sms-curb

Indian govt blocks 40 smut sites, forgets to give reason

praskrishna — 2013-07-01T09:04:26Z

Don't mind us, we're just censoring your content for you...

The article by Phil Muncaster was published in "The Register" on June 27, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

The Indian government has ordered ISPs to block 39 smut flick web sites hosted outside the country without giving any explanation, stoking further fears of online censorship by the back door.

Most of the sites are web forums and so allow for the uploading of naughty images and URLs where smut-seekers can download their grumble flicks, according to Times of India.

However, the sites claim to operate under the 18 USC 2257 rule, meaning actors are (supposedly) over 18 years of age, and there is apparently no indication from the Department of Telecom's order why ISPs are being asked to comply.

The message greeting web users who try to visit a blocked site now reads as follows:

This website has been blocked until further notice either pursuant to court orders or on the directions issued by the Department of Telecommunications.

While the law, updated in 2011, does forbid production, transmission and sharing of smutty content in India - therefore requiring internet cafes, for example, to block such content - there is no ban on consumption, especially from sites hosted outside India.

Sunil Abraham, director of Indian not-for-profit the Centre for Internet and Society, told ToI that the government is probably interpreting the law to serve its own ends, and that its ISP order “is a clear overreach”.

The Union government has certainly been quick in the past to order blocks on any content deemed inappropriate.

Facebook and Google were forced to remove “objectionable content” from their Indian sites last year after complaints it was offensive to Muslims, Hindus and Christians.

The government was also one of many across the globe to force Google to block notorious YouTube video Innocence of Muslims.

A controversial anti-piracy ruling last June, meanwhile, led to a clumsy, large-scale block on a number of legitimate sites in the country – drawing the ire of hacktivist group Anonymous.

The government also closed hundreds of sites and social media accounts in August last year in a bid to prevent the escalation of sectarian violence across the country.

In fact, the number of content removal requests received by Google increased by 90 per cent from July-December 2012 compared with the previous six months.

For these reasons, India only enjoys “Partly Free” status, according to the Freedom on the Net 2012 report from not-for-profit Freedom House.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-register-phil-muncaster-june-27-2013-indian-govt-blocks-40-smut-sites-forgets-to-give-reason

Indian government wakes up to risk of Hotmail, Gmail

praskrishna — 2013-12-30T04:24:57Z

Worried by US spying revelations, India has begun drawing up a new email policy to help secure government communications, but the man responsible for drafting the rules still regularly uses Hotmail.

This was originally published by AFP on December 7, 2013, was also mirrored by the Times of India, Livemint, Reuters, Dawn, NDTV, Yahoo News, The Malaysian Insider and Asia One Digital. A slightly modified version was published by Silicon India on December 11. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Like many of his peers in ministries across New Delhi, IT Minister Kapil Sibal's office recently sent an email inviting journalists to the launch of his new personal website using the free email service.

Others, including senior foreign ministry officials, the information and broadcasting minister and the health ministry secretary, also use Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo instead of their government accounts.

When asked why he continued to use his Hotmail for official use, Sibal declined to comment, but a senior bureaucrat in his ministry admitted that he personally preferred Gmail because it is "just a lot easier".

"We keep moving, get different designations, go different places and with that, our emails change. You lose contacts and important emails, which you don't need to worry about with a Gmail account," the bureaucrat told AFP.

"To be honest, the quality of our official mail isn't that great yet. It still needs some work," he added on condition of anonymity.

Security concerns

IT security expert Sunil Abraham said the use of Gmail and the like was highly risky since the American services had their servers in the US and the National Security Agency has been known to tap into their database systems.

It is unclear how many state and federal public workers actively use popular email services for office, but some of the estimates are startling.

"As much as 90 percent of government officials use private email (services) for official use... that's because their official email is not as stable or speedy," said Abraham, executive director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society.

In September Sibal's ministry announced a new "Email Policy of the Government of India" in the wake of spying allegations about the NSA revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
NSA's tentacles not only crept into the Indian embassy in Washington and its UN office in New York, but also accessed email and chat messenger contact lists of hundreds of millions of ordinary citizens worldwide, according to media reports.

During a single day last year, the NSA's Special Source Operations branch collected 444,743 email address books from Yahoo, 105,068 from Hotmail, 82,857 from Facebook, 33,697 from Gmail and 22,881 from unspecified other providers, The Washington Post said, according to an internal NSA presentation.

The $11 million Indian project aims to bring some five million public employees onto the government's email domain powered by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) as early as mid-December.

It is awaiting clearances and suggestions from all ministries before the proposal goes to the cabinet this month.

J. Satyanarayana, secretary of the department of electronics and IT, dismissed claims that the policy was too late and was a response to the Snowden scandal.

"The policy is not a reaction to any global spying revelations, it was already in the works. It is just a mere coincidence that both came around the same time," he said.

Fresh doubts

Some cyber security experts say bringing millions aboard a centralised server could make a hacker's job easier, with all critical government information available on a single platform.
More than 11,000 Indian websites were hacked or defaced between May and August this year, with a large number of attacks on the ".in" domain whose servers are in India, the Times of India reported last month.

"Making the use of a centralised government server is not the best way to proceed. Having everything on one platform makes it even more vulnerable to cyber attacks and hacking," said Abraham.

"It also brings about new worries of the NIC becoming the local snoop."

Some also predict that the ambitious policy would eventually fizzle out for lack of attention from ministers and bureaucrats, who work in government offices where stacks of yellowing files and papers are still a common sight.

"It's sad but most of these officials don't understand much about technology, so mastering email is something that is miles and miles away," said Vijay Mukhi, a Mumbai-based cyber security expert.

"These guys saw all the snooping news and suddenly they woke up and said 'lets make an email policy'. Enforcing this is not possible on a practical basis."

The IT ministry also plans to conduct workshops to teach employees about email security such as when to change passwords and user names and how to use email.

"Every employee should know how, what and when critical data can be vulnerable... with most work still done on paper, it is important to know the nitty-gritty of using email," Satyanarayana said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/afp-december-7-2013-annie-banerjee-indian-government-wakes-up-to-risk-of-hotmail-gmail

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

praskrishna — 2015-01-03T03:47:16Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indian government defends Internet blocking

praskrishna — 2012-08-28T10:07:50Z

India on Friday defended itself against accusations of heavy-handed online censorship, saying it had been successful in blocking content blamed for fuelling ethnic tensions.

Published by AFP on August 23, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The government over the past week has ordered Internet service providers to block 309 webpages, images and links on sites including Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, news channel ABC of Australia and Qatar-based Al-Jazeera.

The orders were an effort to halt the spread of "hateful" material and rumours that Muslims planned to attack students and workers who have migrated from the northeast region to live in Bangalore and other southern cities.

"We have met with success. These pages were a threat to India's national security and we demanded their immediate deletion," Kuldeep Singh Dhatwalia, a spokesman for India's home ministry, told AFP.

"Spreading rumours to encourage violence or cause tension will not be tolerated. The idea is not to restrict communication."

The government has blamed Internet activity for fanning fears that resulted in tens of thousands of migrants fleeing back to the northeast last week from Bangalore and elsewhere.

But Twitter users, legal experts and analysts criticised the government's approach, which appeared to have resulted in only partial blocking of material, much of which was still accessible.

"The officials who are trusted with this don't know the law or modern technology well enough," Pranesh Prakash, programme manager at the Centre for Internet and Society research group, told AFP.

"I hope that this fiasco shows the folly of excessive censorship and encourages the government to make better use of social networks and technology to reach out to people."

Among the blocked content were photographs by AFP and other news agencies from Myanmar in the British Daily Telegraph, a parody Twitter account pretending to be from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and dozens of YouTube videos.

ABC issued a statement saying it was "surprised by the action" after content on its website about unrest in Myanmar between Muslims and Buddhists was included on the blocking list.

India's Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde insisted in a statement the government was "only taking strict action against those accounts or people which are causing damage or spreading rumours."

Shinde added that the government sought to block the Myanmar online photos because they were "disturbing the atmosphere here in India."

The government said photographs of clashes in Myanmar were circulating on the Internet with fake captions claiming the scenes were from the northeastern Indian state of Assam, where 80 people have died in recent ethnic violence.

Vivek Sood, senior Supreme Court lawyer and an author on Internet legalisation, called the government's step "a gross abuse of power."

"It's completely illegal under the Indian IT Act," he told The Economic Times.

Indian journalist Kanchan Gupta, who is often critical of the government, had his Twitter account targeted by a government blocking order in a move he called a "political vendetta".

Al Jazeera webpages on the blocking list, including a report on the exodus from Bangalore, appeared unaffected by the government orders, the channel's Delhi bureau chief Anmol Saxena told AFP.

Ministers earlier complained they had not received cooperation from websites and social network groups.

The government on Thursday said Twitter had agreed to remove six fake accounts parodying Prime Minister Singh.

The prime minister's office issued a statement on Friday quoting Twitter that they have "removed the reported profiles from circulation due to violation of our Terms of Service regarding impersonation".

United States State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said as India "seeks to preserve security, we are urging them also to take into account the importance of freedom of expression in the online world".

The above was carried in the following places as well:

The National (August 25, 2012)
MSN News (August 24, 2012)
StarAfrica.com (August 24, 2012)
Jakarta Globe (August 24, 2012)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/afp-com-aug-23-2012-indian-govt-defends-internet-blocking