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The Technology behind Big Data
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/technology-behind-big-data
<b>The authors undertakes a high-level literature review of the most commonly used technological tools and processes in the big data life cycle. The big data life cycle is a conceptual construct that can be used to study the various stages that typically occur in collecting, storing and analysing big data, along with the principles that can govern these processes.</b>
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<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Introduction</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Defining big data is a disputed area in the field of computer science<a name="_ftnref1" href="#_ftn1"><sup><sup>[1]</sup></sup></a>, there is some consensus on a basic structure to its definition<a name="_ftnref2" href="#_ftn2"><sup><sup>[2]</sup></sup></a>. Big data is data that is collected in the form of datasets that has three main criteria: size, variety & velocity, all of which operate at an immense scale<a name="_ftnref3" href="#_ftn3"><sup><sup>[3]</sup></sup></a>. It is ‘big’ in size, often running into petabytes of information, has vast variety within its components, and is created, captured and analysed at an incredibly rapid velocity. All of this also makes big data difficult to handle using traditional technological tools and techniques.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This paper will attempt to perform a high-level literature review of the most commonly used technological tools and processes in the big data life cycle. The big data life cycle is a conceptual construct that can be used to study the various stages that typically occur in collecting, storing and analysing big data, along with the principles that can govern these processes. The big data life cycle consists of four components, which will also be the key structural points of the paper, namely: Data Acquisition, Data Awareness, Data Analytics & Data Governance.<strong><sup>4</sup> </strong>The paper will focus on the aspects that the author believes are relevant for analysing the technological impact of big data on both technology itself and society at large.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Scope: </strong>The scope of the paper is to study the technology used in big data using the "Life Cycle of Big Data" as model structure to categorise & study the vast range of technologies that are involved in big data. However, the paper will be limited to the study of technology related directly to the big data life cycle. It shall specifically exclude the use/utilisation of big data from its scope since big data is most often being fed into other, unrelated technologies for consumption leading to rather limitless possibilities.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Goal:</strong> Goal of the paper is twofold: a.) to use the available literature on the technological aspects of big data, to perform a brief overview of the technology in the field and b.) to frame the relevant research questions for studying the technology of big data and its possible impact on society.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Data Acquisition</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Acquiring big data has two main sub components to it, the first being sensing the existence of the data’ itself and the second, the stage of collecting and storing this data. Both of these subcomponents are incredibly diverse fields, with lots of rapid change occurring in the technology utilised to carry out these tasks. The section will provide a brief overview of the subcomponents and then discuss the technology used to fulfil the tasks.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Data Sensing</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Data does not exist in a vacuum and is always created as a part of a larger process, especially in the aspect of modern technology. Therefore, the source of the data itself plays a vital role in determining how it can be captured and analysed in the larger scheme of things. Entities constantly emit information into the environment that can be utilised for the purposes of big data, leading to two main kinds of data: data that is “born digital” or “born analogue.”<a name="_ftnref4" href="#_ftn4"><sup><sup>[4]</sup></sup></a></p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Born Digital Data</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Information that is “born digital,” is created, by a user or by a digital system, specifically for use by a computer or data‐processing system. This is a vast range of information and newer fields are being added to this category on a daily basis. It includes, as a short, indicative list: email and text messaging, any form of digital input, including keyboards, mouse interactions and touch screens, GPS location data, data from daily home appliances (Internet of Things), etc. All of this data can be tracked and tagged to users as well as be aggregated to form a larger picture, massively increasing the scope of what may constitute the ‘data’ in big data.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Some indicative uses of how such born digital data is catalogued by technological solutions on the user side, prior to being sent for collection/storage are:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">a.) Cookies - There are small, often just text, files that are left on user devices by websites in order to that visit, task or action (for example, logging into an email account) with a subsequent event.<a name="_ftnref5" href="#_ftn5"><sup><sup>[5]</sup></sup></a> (for example, revisiting the website)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">b.) Website Analytics<a name="_ftnref6" href="#_ftn6"><sup><sup>[6]</sup></sup></a> - Various services, such as Google Analytics, Piwik, etc., can use JavaScript and other web development languages to record a very detailed, intimate track of a user's actions on a website, including how long a user hovers above a link, the time spent on the website/application and in some cases, even the time spent specific aspects of the page.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">c.) GPS<a name="_ftnref7" href="#_ftn7"><sup><sup>[7]</sup></sup></a> - With the almost pervasive usage of smartphones with basic location capabilities, GPS sensors on these devices are used to provide regular, minute driven updates to applications, operating systems and even third parties about the user's location. Modern variations such as A-GPS can be used to provide basic positioning information even without satellite coverage, vastly expanding the indoor capabilities of location collection.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">All of these instances of sensing born digital data are common terms, used in daily parlance by billions of people from all over the world, which is a symbolic of just how deeply they have pervaded into our daily lifestyle. Apart from privacy & security concerns this in turn also leads to an exponential increase in the data available to collect for any interested party.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Sensor Data</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Information is said to be “analogue” when it contains characteristics of the physical world, such as images, video, heartbeats, etc. Such information becomes electronic when processed by a “sensor,” a device that can record physical phenomena and convert it into digital information. Some examples to better illustrate information that is born analogue but collected via digital means are:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">a.) Voice and/or video content on devices - Apart from phone calls and other forms communication, video and voice based interactions have started to regularly be captured to provide enhanced services. These include Google Now<a name="_ftnref8" href="#_ftn8"><sup><sup>[8]</sup></sup></a>, Cortana<a name="_ftnref9" href="#_ftn9"><sup><sup>[9]</sup></sup></a> and other digital assistants as well as voice guided navigation systems in cars, etc.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">b.) Personal health data such as heartbeats, blood pressure, respiration, velocity, etc. - This personal, potentially very powerful information is collected by dedicated sensors on devices such as Fitbit<a name="_ftnref10" href="#_ftn10"><sup><sup>[10]</sup></sup></a>, Mi Band<a name="_ftnref11" href="#_ftn11"><sup><sup>[11]</sup></sup></a>, etc. as well as by increasingly sophisticated smartphone applications such as Google Fit that can do so without any special device.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">c.) Camera on Home Appliances - Cameras and sensors on devices such as video game consoles (Kinect<a name="_ftnref12" href="#_ftn12"><sup><sup>[12]</sup></sup></a> being a relevant example) can record detailed human interactions, which can be mined for vast amounts of information apart from carrying out the basic interactions with the devices itself.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">While not as vast a category as born digital data, the increasingly lower costs of technology and ubiquitous usage of digital, networked devices is leading to information that was traditionally analogue in nature to be captured for use at a rapidly increasing rate.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Data Collection & Storage</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Traditional data was normally processed using the Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) methodology, which was used to collect the data from outside sources, modify the data to fit needs, and then upload the data into the data storage system for future use.<a name="_ftnref13" href="#_ftn13"><sup><sup>[13]</sup></sup></a> Technology such as spreadsheets, RDBMS databases, Structured Query Languages (SQL), etc. were all initially used to carry out these tasks, more often than not manually. <a name="_ftnref14" href="#_ftn14"><sup><sup>[14]</sup></sup></a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">However, for big data, the methodology traditionally followed is both inefficient and insufficient to meet the demands of modern use. Therefore, the Magnetic, Agile, Deep (MAD) process is used to collect and store data<a name="_ftnref15" href="#_ftn15"><sup><sup>[15]</sup></sup></a><a name="_ftnref16" href="#_ftn16"><sup><sup>[16]</sup></sup></a>. The needs and benefits of such a system are: attracting all the data sources regardless of their quality (magnetic), logical and physical contents of storage systems adapting to the rapid data evolution in big data (agile) and complex algorithmic statistical analysis required of big data on a very short notice<a name="_ftnref17" href="#_ftn17"><sup><sup>[17]</sup></sup></a>. (deep)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The technology used to perform data storage using the MAD process requires vast amount of processing power, which is very difficult to create in a single, physical space/unit for nonstate or research entities, who cannot afford supercomputers. Therefore, most solutions used in big data rely on two major components to store data: distributed systems and Massive Parallel Processing<a name="_ftnref18" href="#_ftn18"><sup><sup>[18]</sup></sup></a> (MPP) that run on non-relational (in-memory) database systems. Database performance and reliability is traditionally gauged using pure performance metrics (FLOPS per second, etc.) as well as the Atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability (ACID) criteria.<a name="_ftnref19" href="#_ftn19"><sup><sup>[19]</sup></sup></a> The most commonly used database systems for big data applications are given below. The specific operational qualities and performance of each of these databases is beyond the scope of this review but the common criteria that makes them well suited for big data storage have been delineated below.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Non-relational databases</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Databases traditionally used to be structured entities that operated solely on the ability to correlate information stored in them using explicitly defined relationships. Even prior to the advent of big data, this outlook was turning out to be a limiting factor in how large amounts of stored information could be leveraged, this led to the evolution of non relational database systems. Before going into them in detail, a basic primer on their data transfer protocols will be helpful in understanding their operation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">A protocol is a model that structures instructions in a particular manner so that it can be reproduced from one system to another<a name="_ftnref20" href="#_ftn20"><sup><sup>[20]</sup></sup></a><a name="_ftnref21" href="#_ftn21"><sup><sup>[21]</sup></sup></a>. The protocols which govern technology in the case of big data have gone through many stages of evolution, starting off with simple HTML based systems<a name="_ftnref22" href="#_ftn22"><sup><sup>[22]</sup></sup></a>, which then evolved to XML driven SOAP systems<a name="_ftnref23" href="#_ftn23"><sup><sup>[23]</sup></sup></a>, which led to JavaScript Object Notation, or JSON<a name="_ftnref24" href="#_ftn24"><sup><sup>[24]</sup></sup></a>, the currently used form for in most big database systems. JSON is an open format used to transfer data objects, using human-readable text and is the basis for most of the commonly used non-relational database management systems. Examples of Non-relational databases also known as NoSQL databases, include MongoDB<a name="_ftnref25" href="#_ftn25"><sup><sup>[25]</sup></sup></a>, Couchbase<a name="_ftnref26" href="#_ftn26"><sup><sup>[26]</sup></sup></a>, etc. They were developed for both managing as well as storing unstructured data. They aim for scaling, flexibility, and simplified development. Such databases rather focus on the high-performance scalable data storage, and allow tasks to be written in the application layer instead of databases specific languages, allowing for greater interoperability.<a name="_ftnref27" href="#_ftn27"><sup><sup>[27]</sup></sup></a></p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">In-Memory Databases</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In order to overcome performance limitation of traditional database systems, some modern databases now use in-memory databases. These systems manage the data in the RAM memory of the server, thus eliminating storage disk input/output. This allows for almost realtime responses from the database, in comparisons to minutes or hours required on traditional database systems. This improvement in the performance is so massive that, entirely new applications are being developed for using IMDB systems.<a name="_ftnref28" href="#_ftn28"><sup><sup>[28]</sup></sup></a> These IMDB systems are also being used for advanced analytics on big data, especially to increase the access speed to data and increase the scoring rate of analytic models for analysis.<a name="_ftnref29" href="#_ftn29"><sup><sup>[29]</sup></sup></a> Examples of IMDB include VoltDB<a name="_ftnref30" href="#_ftn30"><sup><sup>[30]</sup></sup></a>, NuoDB<a name="_ftnref31" href="#_ftn31"><sup><sup>[31]</sup></sup></a>, SolidDB<a name="_ftnref32" href="#_ftn32"><sup><sup>[32]</sup></sup></a> and Apache Spark<a name="_ftnref33" href="#_ftn33"><sup><sup>[33]</sup></sup></a>.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Hybrid Systems</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">These are the two major systems used to store data prior to it being processed or analysed in a big data application. However, the divide between data storage and data management is a slim one and most database systems also contain various unique attributes that cater them to specific kinds of analysis. (as can be seen from the IMDB example above) One example of a very commonly used Hybrid system that deals with storage as well as awareness of the data is Apache Hadoop<sup>33</sup>, which is detailed below.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Apache Hadoop</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Hadoop consists of two main components: the HDFS for the big data storage, and MapReduce for big data analytics, each of which will be detailed in their respective section.</p>
<ol style="text-align: justify;">
<li>The HDFS<a name="_ftnref34" href="#_ftn34"><sup><sup>[34]</sup></sup></a><a name="_ftnref35" href="#_ftn35"><sup><sup>[35]</sup></sup></a> storage function in Hadoop provides a reliable distributed file system, stored across multiple systems for processing & redundancy reasons. The file system is optimized for large files, as single files are split into blocks and spread across systems known as cluster nodes.<a name="_ftnref36" href="#_ftn36"><sup><sup>[36]</sup></sup></a> Additionally, the data is protected among the nodes by a replication mechanism, which ensures availability even if any node fails. Further, there are two types of nodes: Data Nodes and Name Nodes.<a name="_ftnref37" href="#_ftn37"><sup><sup>[37]</sup></sup></a> Data is stored in the form of file blocks across the multiple Data Nodes while the Name Node acts as an intermediary between the client and the Data Node, where it directs the requesting client to the particular Data Node which contains the requested data.</li></ol>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This operating structure for storing data also has various variations within Hadoop such as HBase for key/value pair type queries (a NoSQL based system), Hive for relational type queries, etc. Hadoop’s redundancy, speed, ability to run on commodity hardware, industry support and rapid pace of development have led to it being almost co-equivalently associated with big data.<a name="_ftnref38" href="#_ftn38"><sup><sup>[38]</sup></sup></a></p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Data Awareness</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Data Awareness, in the context of big data, is the task of creating a scheme of relationships within a set of data, to allow different users of the data to determine a fluid yet valid context and utilise it for their desired tasks.<a name="_ftnref39" href="#_ftn39"><sup><sup>[39]</sup></sup></a> It is a relatively new field, in which most of the work is currently being done on semantic structures to allow data to gain context in an interoperable format, in contrast to the current system where data is given context using unique, model specific constructs.<a name="_ftnref40" href="#_ftn40"><sup><sup>[40]</sup></sup></a> (such as XML Schemes, etc.)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Some of the original work on this field was carried out in the form of utilising the Resource Description Framework (RDF), which was built primarily to allow describing of data in a portable manner, especially being agnostic towards platforms and systems for Semantic Web at the W3C. SPARQL is the language used to implement RDF based designs but both largely remain underutilised in both the public domain as well as big data. Authors such as Kurt</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Cagle<a name="_ftnref41" href="#_ftn41"><sup><sup>[41]</sup></sup></a> and Bob DuCharme<a name="_ftnref42" href="#_ftn42"><sup><sup>[42]</sup></sup></a> predict its explosion in the next couple of years. Companies have also started realising the value of interoperable context, with Oracle Spatial<a name="_ftnref43" href="#_ftn43"><sup><sup>[43]</sup></sup></a> and IBM’s DB2<a name="_ftnref44" href="#_ftn44"><sup><sup>[44]</sup></sup></a> already including RDF and SPARQL support in the past 3 years.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">While underutilised, the rapid developments taking place in the field will make the impact that data awareness may have on big data as big as Hadoop and maybe even SQL. Some aspects of it are already beginning to be used in Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, etc. with tremendous scope for development.<a name="_ftnref45" href="#_ftn45"><sup><sup>[45]</sup></sup></a></p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Data Processing & Analytics</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Data Processing largely has three primary goals: a. determines if the data collected is internally consistent; b. make the data meaningful to other systems or users using either metaphors or analogy they can understand; and (what many consider most importantly) provide predictions about future events and behaviours based upon past data and trends.<a name="_ftnref46" href="#_ftn46"><sup><sup>[46]</sup></sup></a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Being a very vast field with rapidly changing technologies governing its operation, this section will largely concentrate on the most commonly used technologies in data analytics.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Data analytics requires four primary conditions to be met in order to carry out effective processing: fast, data loading, fast query processing, efficient utilisation of storage and adaptivity to dynamic workload patterns. The analytical model most commonly associated with meeting this criteria and with big data in general is MapReduce, detailed below. There are other, more niche models and algorithms (such as Project Voldemort<a name="_ftnref47" href="#_ftn47"><sup><sup>[47]</sup></sup></a> used by LinkedIn), which are used in big data but they are beyond the scope of the review, and more information about them can be read at article linked in the previous citation. (Reference architecture and classification of technologies, products and services for big data system)</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">MapReduce</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">MapReduce is a generic parallel programming concept, derived from the “Map” and “Reduce” of functional programming languages, which makes it particularly suited for big data operations. It is at the core of Hadoop<a name="_ftnref48" href="#_ftn48"><sup><sup>[48]</sup></sup></a>, and performs the data processing and analytics functions in other big data systems as well.<a name="_ftnref49" href="#_ftn49"><sup><sup>[49]</sup></sup></a> The fundamental premise of MapReduce is scaling out rather than scaling up, i.e., (adding more numerical resources, rather than increasing the power of a single system)<a name="_ftnref50" href="#_ftn50"><sup><sup>[50]</sup></sup></a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">MapReduce operates by breaking a task down into steps and executing the steps in parallel, across many systems. This comes with two advantages, a reduction in the time needed to finish the task and also a decrease in the amount of resources one has to expend to perform the task, in both power and energy. This model makes it ideally suited for the large data sets and quick response times required of big data operations generally.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The first step of a MapReduce job is to correlate the input values to a set of keys/value pairs as output. The “Map” function then partitions the processing tasks into smaller tasks, and assigns them to the appropriate key/value pairs.<a name="_ftnref51" href="#_ftn51"><sup><sup>[51]</sup></sup></a> This allows unstructured data, such as plain text, to be mapped to a structured key/value pair. As an example, the key could be the punctuation in a sentence and the value of the pair could be the number of occurrences of the punctuation overall. This output of the Map function is then passed on “Reduce” function.<a name="_ftnref52" href="#_ftn52"><sup><sup>[52]</sup></sup></a> Reduce then collects and combines this output, using identical key/value pairs, to provide the final result of the task.<a name="_ftnref53" href="#_ftn53"><sup><sup>[53]</sup></sup></a> These steps are carried using the Job Tracker & Task Tracker in Hadoop but different systems have different methodologies to carry out similar tasks.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Data Governance</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Data Governance is the act of managing raw big data as well as the processed information that arises from big data in order to meet legal, regulatory and business imposed requirements. While there is no standardized format for data governance, there have been increasing call with various sectors (especially healthcare) to create such a format to ensure reliable, secure and consistent big data utilisation across the board. The following tactics and techniques have been utilised or suggested for data governance, with varying degrees of success:</p>
<ol style="text-align: justify;">
<li><strong>Zero-knowledge systems</strong>: This technological proposal maintains secrecy with respect to the low-level data while allowing encrypted data to be examined for certain higherlevel abstractions.<a name="_ftnref54" href="#_ftn54"><sup><sup>[54]</sup></sup></a> For the system to be zero-knowledge, the client’s system will have to encrypt the data and send it to the storage provider. Due to this, the provider stores the data in the encrypted format and cannot decipher the same unless he/she is in possession of the key which will decrypt the data into plaintext. This allows the individual to store his data with a storage provider while also maintaining anonymity of the details contained in such information. However, these are currently just beginning to be used in simple situations. As of now, they are not expandable to unstructured and complex cases and have to be developed marginally before they can be used for research and data mining purposes.</li>
<li><strong>Homomorphic encryption</strong>: Homomorphic encryption is a privacy preserving technique which performs searches and other computations over data that is encrypted while also protecting the individual’s privacy.<a name="_ftnref55" href="#_ftn55"><sup><sup>[55]</sup></sup></a> This technique has however been considered to be impractical and is deemed to be an unlikely policy alternative for near future purposes in the context of preserving privacy in the age of big data.<a name="_ftnref56" href="#_ftn56"><sup><sup>[56]</sup></sup></a></li>
<li><strong>Multi-party computation</strong>: In this technique, computation is done on encrypted distributed data stores.<a name="_ftnref57" href="#_ftn57"><sup><sup>[57]</sup></sup></a> This mechanism is closely related to homomorphic encryption where individual data is kept private using encryption algorithms called “collusion-robust” while the same is used to calculate statistics.<a name="_ftnref58" href="#_ftn58"><sup><sup>[58]</sup></sup></a> The parties involved are aware of some private data and each of them use a protocol which produces results based on the information they are aware of and the information they are not aware of, without revealing the data they are not already aware of.<a name="_ftnref59" href="#_ftn59"><sup><sup>[59]</sup></sup></a> Multi-party computations thus help in generating useful data for statistical and research purposes without compromising the privacy of the individuals.</li></ol>
<ol style="text-align: justify;">
<li><strong>Differential Privacy</strong>: Although this technological development is related to encryption, it follows a different technique. Differential privacy aims at maximizing the precision of computations and database queries while reducing the identifiability of the data owners who have records in the database, usually through obfuscation of query results.<a name="_ftnref60" href="#_ftn60"><sup><sup>[60]</sup></sup></a> This is widely applied today in the existence of big data in order to ensure preservation of privacy while trying to reap the benefits of large scale data collection.<a name="_ftnref61" href="#_ftn61"><sup><sup>[61]</sup></sup></a></li>
<li><strong>Searchable encryption</strong>: Through this mechanism, the data subject can make certain data searchable while minimizing exposure and maximizing privacy.<a name="_ftnref62" href="#_ftn62"><sup><sup>[62]</sup></sup></a> The data owner can make his information available through search engines by providing the data in an encrypted format but by adding tags consisting of certain keywords which can be deciphered by the search engine. This encrypted data shows up in the search results when searched with these particular keywords but can only be read when the person is in possession of the key which is required for decrypting the information.</li></ol>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This technique of encryption provides maximum security to the individual’s data and preserves privacy to the greatest possible extent.</p>
<ol style="text-align: justify;">
<li><strong>K-anonymity</strong>: The property of k-anonymity is being applied in the present day in order to preserve privacy and avoid re-identification.<a name="_ftnref63" href="#_ftn63"><sup><sup>[63]</sup></sup></a> A certain data set is said to possess the property of k-anonymity if individual specific data can be released and used for various purposes without re-identification. The analysis of the data should be carried out without attributing the data to the individual to whom it belongs and should give scientific guarantees for the same.</li>
<li><strong>Identity Management Systems</strong>: These systems enable the individuals to establish and safeguard their identities, explain those identities with the help of attributes, follow the activity of their identities and also delete their identities if they wish to.<a name="_ftnref64" href="#_ftn64"><sup><sup>[64]</sup></sup></a> It uses cryptographic schemes and protocols to make anonymous or pseudonymous the identities and credentials of the individuals before analysing the data.</li>
<li><strong>Privacy Preserving Data Publishing</strong>: This is a method in which the analysts are provided with the individual’s personal information with the ability to decipher particular information from the database while preventing the inference of certain other information which might lead to a breach of privacy.<a name="_ftnref65" href="#_ftn65"><sup><sup>[65]</sup></sup></a> Data which is essential for the analysis will be provided for processing while sensitive data will not be disclosed. This tool primarily focuses on microdata.</li>
<li><strong>Privacy Preserving Data Mining</strong>: This mechanism uses perturbation methods and randomization along with cryptography in order to permit data mining on a filtered version of the data which does not contain any form of sensitive information. PPDM focuses on data mining results unlike PPDP.<a name="_ftnref66" href="#_ftn66"><sup><sup>[66]</sup></sup></a> </li></ol>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Conclusion</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Studying the technology surrounding big data has led to two major observations: the rapid pace of development in the industry and the stark lack of industry standards or government regulations directed towards big data technologies. These observations have been the primary motivating factor for framing further research in the field. Understanding how to deal with big data technologically, rather than just the potential regulation of possible harms after the technological processes have been performed might be critical for the human rights dialogue as these processes become even more extensive, opaque and technologically complicated.</p>
<hr style="text-align: justify;" />
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn1" href="#_ftnref1">[1]</a> EMC: Data Science and Big Data Analytics. In: EMC Education Services, pp. 1–508 (2012)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn2" href="#_ftnref2">[2]</a> Bakshi, K.: Considerations for Big Data: Architecture and Approaches. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Aerospace Conference, pp. 1–7 (2012)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn3" href="#_ftnref3">[3]</a> Adams, M.N.: Perspectives on Data Mining. International Journal of Market Research 52(1), 11–19 (2010) <sup>4</sup> Elgendy, N.: Big Data Analytics in Support of the Decision Making Process. MSc Thesis, German University in Cairo, p. 164 (2013)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn4" href="#_ftnref4">[4]</a> Big Data and Privacy: A Technological Perspective - President’s Council of Advisors on Science and</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Technology (May 2014)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn5" href="#_ftnref5">[5]</a> Chen, Hsinchun, Roger HL Chiang, and Veda C. Storey. "Business Intelligence and Analytics: From Big Data to Big Impact." MIS quarterly 36.4 (2012): 1165-1188.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn6" href="#_ftnref6">[6]</a> Chandramouli, Badrish, Jonathan Goldstein, and Songyun Duan. "Temporal analytics on big data for web advertising." 2012 IEEE 28th international conference on data engineering. IEEE, 2012.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn7" href="#_ftnref7">[7]</a> Laurila, Juha K., et al. "The mobile data challenge: Big data for mobile computing research." Pervasive Computing. No. EPFL-CONF-192489. 2012.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn8" href="#_ftnref8">[8]</a> Lazer, David, et al. "The parable of Google flu: traps in big data analysis." <em>Science</em> 343.6176 (2014): 12031205.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn9" href="#_ftnref9">[9]</a> <em>ibid</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn10" href="#_ftnref10">[10]</a> Banaee, Hadi, Mobyen Uddin Ahmed, and Amy Loutfi. "Data mining for wearable sensors in health monitoring systems: a review of recent trends and challenges." <em>Sensors</em> 13.12 (2013): 17472-17500.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn11" href="#_ftnref11">[11]</a> <em>ibid</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn12" href="#_ftnref12">[12]</a> Chung, Eric S., John D. Davis, and Jaewon Lee. "Linqits: Big data on little clients." <em>ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News</em>. Vol. 41. No. 3. ACM, 2013.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn13" href="#_ftnref13">[13]</a> Kornelson, Kevin Paul, et al. "Method and system for developing extract transform load systems for data warehouses." U.S. Patent No. 7,139,779. 21 Nov. 2006.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn14" href="#_ftnref14">[14]</a> Henry, Scott, et al. "Engineering trade study: extract, transform, load tools for data migration." <em>2005 IEEE Design Symposium, Systems and Information Engineering</em>. IEEE, 2005.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn15" href="#_ftnref15">[15]</a> Cohen, Jeffrey, et al. "MAD skills: new analysis practices for big data." <em>Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn16" href="#_ftnref16">[16]</a> .2 (2009): 1481-1492.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn17" href="#_ftnref17">[17]</a> Elgendy, Nada, and Ahmed Elragal. "Big data analytics: a literature review paper." <em>Industrial Conference on Data Mining</em>. Springer International Publishing, 2014.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn18" href="#_ftnref18">[18]</a> Wu, Xindong, et al. "Data mining with big data." <em>IEEE transactions on knowledge and data engineering</em> 26.1 (2014): 97-107.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn19" href="#_ftnref19">[19]</a> Supra Note 17</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn20" href="#_ftnref20">[20]</a> Hu, Han, et al. "Toward scalable systems for big data analytics: A technology tutorial." <em>IEEE Access</em> 2 (2014):</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn21" href="#_ftnref21">[21]</a> -687.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn22" href="#_ftnref22">[22]</a> Kurt Cagle, Understanding the Big Data Lifecycle - LinkedIn Pulse (2015)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn23" href="#_ftnref23">[23]</a> Coyle, Frank P. <em>XML, Web services, and the data revolution</em>. Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., 2002.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn24" href="#_ftnref24">[24]</a> Pautasso, Cesare, Olaf Zimmermann, and Frank Leymann. "Restful web services vs. big'web services: making the right architectural decision." <em>Proceedings of the 17th international conference on World Wide Web</em>. ACM, 2008.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn25" href="#_ftnref25">[25]</a> Banker, Kyle. <em>MongoDB in action</em>. Manning Publications Co., 2011</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn26" href="#_ftnref26">[26]</a> McCreary, Dan, and Ann Kelly. "Making sense of NoSQL." <em>Shelter Island: Manning</em> (2014): 19-20.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn27" href="#_ftnref27">[27]</a> <em>ibid</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn28" href="#_ftnref28">[28]</a> Zhang, Hao, et al. "In-memory big data management and processing: A survey." <em>IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering</em> 27.7 (2015): 1920-1948.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn29" href="#_ftnref29">[29]</a> <em>ibid</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn30" href="#_ftnref30">[30]</a> <em>ibid</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn31" href="#_ftnref31">[31]</a> Supra Note 20</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn32" href="#_ftnref32">[32]</a> Ballard, Chuck, et al. <em>IBM solidDB: Delivering Data with Extreme Speed</em>. IBM Redbooks, 2011.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn33" href="#_ftnref33">[33]</a> Shanahan, James G., and Laing Dai. "Large scale distributed data science using apache spark." <em>Proceedings of the 21th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining</em>. ACM, 2015. <sup>33</sup> Shvachko, Konstantin, et al. "The hadoop distributed file system." <em>2010 IEEE 26th symposium on mass storage systems and technologies (MSST)</em>. IEEE, 2010.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn34" href="#_ftnref34">[34]</a> Borthakur, Dhruba. "The hadoop distributed file system: Architecture and design." <em>Hadoop Project Website</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn35" href="#_ftnref35">[35]</a> .2007 (2007): 21.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn36" href="#_ftnref36">[36]</a> <em>ibid</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn37" href="#_ftnref37">[37]</a> <em>ibid</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn38" href="#_ftnref38">[38]</a> Zikopoulos, Paul, and Chris Eaton. <em>Understanding big data: Analytics for enterprise class hadoop and streaming data</em>. McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, 2011.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn39" href="#_ftnref39">[39]</a> Bizer, Christian, et al. "The meaningful use of big data: four perspectives--four challenges." <em>ACM SIGMOD Record</em> 40.4 (2012): 56-60.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn40" href="#_ftnref40">[40]</a> Kaisler, Stephen, et al. "Big data: issues and challenges moving forward." <em>System Sciences (HICSS), 2013 46th Hawaii International Conference on</em>. IEEE, 2013.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn41" href="#_ftnref41">[41]</a> Supra Note 21</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn42" href="#_ftnref42">[42]</a> DuCharme, Bob. "What Do RDF and SPARQL bring to Big Data Projects?." <em>Big Data</em> 1.1 (2013): 38-41.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn43" href="#_ftnref43">[43]</a> Zhong, Yunqin, et al. "Towards parallel spatial query processing for big spatial data." <em>Parallel and </em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><em>Distributed Processing Symposium Workshops & PhD Forum (IPDPSW), 2012 IEEE 26th International</em>. IEEE, 2012.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn44" href="#_ftnref44">[44]</a> Ma, Li, et al. "Effective and efficient semantic web data management over DB2." <em>Proceedings of the 2008 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data</em>. ACM, 2008.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn45" href="#_ftnref45">[45]</a> Lohr, Steve. "The age of big data." <em>New York Times</em> 11 (2012).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn46" href="#_ftnref46">[46]</a> Pääkkönen, Pekka, and Daniel Pakkala. "Reference architecture and classification of technologies, products and services for big data systems." <em>Big Data Research</em> 2.4 (2015): 166-186.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn47" href="#_ftnref47">[47]</a> Sumbaly, Roshan, et al. "Serving large-scale batch computed data with project voldemort." <em>Proceedings of the 10th USENIX conference on File and Storage Technologies</em>. USENIX Association, 2012.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn48" href="#_ftnref48">[48]</a> Bar-Sinai, Michael. "Big Data Technology Literature Review." <em>arXiv preprint arXiv:1506.08978</em> (2015).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn49" href="#_ftnref49">[49]</a> ibid</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn50" href="#_ftnref50">[50]</a> Condie, Tyson, et al. "MapReduce Online." <em>Nsdi</em>. Vol. 10. No. 4. 2010.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn51" href="#_ftnref51">[51]</a> Supra Note 47</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn52" href="#_ftnref52">[52]</a> Dean, Jeffrey, and Sanjay Ghemawat. "MapReduce: a flexible data processing tool." <em>Communications of the ACM</em> 53.1 (2010): 72-77.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn53" href="#_ftnref53">[53]</a> ibid</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn54" href="#_ftnref54">[54]</a> Big Data and Privacy: A Technological Perspective, White House,</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/PCAST/pcast_big_data_and_privacy__may_2014</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn55" href="#_ftnref55">[55]</a> Tene, Omer, and Jules Polonetsky. "Big data for all: Privacy and user control in the age of analytics." <em>Nw. J. Tech. & Intell. Prop.</em> 11 (2012): xxvii.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn56" href="#_ftnref56">[56]</a> Big Data and Privacy: A Technological Perspective, White House,</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/PCAST/pcast_big_data_and_privacy__may_2014</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn57" href="#_ftnref57">[57]</a> Privacy by design in big data, ENISA</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn58" href="#_ftnref58">[58]</a> Big Data and Privacy: A Technological Perspective, White House,</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/PCAST/pcast_big_data_and_privacy__may_2014</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn59" href="#_ftnref59">[59]</a> Id</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn60" href="#_ftnref60">[60]</a> Id</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn61" href="#_ftnref61">[61]</a> Tene, Omer, and Jules Polonetsky. "Privacy in the age of big data: a time for big decisions." <em>Stanford Law Review Online</em> 64 (2012): 63.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn62" href="#_ftnref62">[62]</a> Lane, Julia, et al., eds. <em>Privacy, big data, and the public good: Frameworks for engagement</em>. Cambridge University Press, 2014.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn63" href="#_ftnref63">[63]</a> Crawford, Kate, and Jason Schultz. "Big data and due process: Toward a framework to redress predictive privacy harms." <em>BCL Rev.</em> 55 (2014): 93.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn64" href="#_ftnref64">[64]</a> http://homes.esat.kuleuven.be/~sguerses/papers/DanezisGuersesSurveillancePets2010.pdf</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn65" href="#_ftnref65">[65]</a> Seda Gurses and George Danezis, A critical review of 10 years of privacy technology, August 12th 2010, http://homes.esat.kuleuven.be/~sguerses/papers/DanezisGuersesSurveillancePets2010.pdf</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn66" href="#_ftnref66">[66]</a> Id</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/technology-behind-big-data'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/technology-behind-big-data</a>
</p>
No publisherGeethanjali Jujjavarapu and Udbhav TiwariBig DataPrivacyInternet GovernanceFeaturedHomepage2016-12-04T09:53:43ZBlog EntryThe Supreme Court Delivers
https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/organizing-india-blogspot-october-11-2012-shyam-ponappa-the-supreme-court-delivers
<b>Now, the spectrum and licence issues need resolution. On September 27, 2012, the Supreme Court of India delivered the opinion of a bench comprising five Judges on the Presidential Reference regarding the auction of 2G spectrum.</b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Published in <a class="external-link" href="http://organizing-india.blogspot.in/2012/10/the-supreme-court-delivers.html">Organizing India Blogspot</a> on October 11, 2012 and in <a class="external-link" href="http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/shyam-ponappasupreme-court-delivers/488420/">Business Standard</a> on October 4, 2012.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Supreme Court’s opinion on the Presidential reference<a href="#fn*" name="fr*">[*]</a>dismissed two preposterous claims. One is that it is beyond the ambit of Parliament and the government to formulate economic policies. The second is that the government must allocate resources only through auctions. It’s like the end of a self-destructive nightmare. True, our heedless kleptocracy as a society of rogue politicians, bureaucrats, defence personnel, and complicit citizens, led to this pass. Even so, the anarchic “destructionism” of these claims is as reprehensible as the kleptocracy they seek to tear down. Fortunately, the Supreme Court opinion rose above the populist clamour.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There’s still a mess to clear. The big picture is that the Supreme Court left its decision on spectrum auctions unaddressed. In matters of detail, some points need resolution based on facts. These are discussed below to dispel prevalent myths.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Myth 1: Auctions maximise govt revenues</h3>
<p>"Auctions may be the best way of maximising revenue…": paragraph 116 of the opinion. This contravenes the evidence after the National Telecom Policy -99, that revenue-sharing maximises government revenues as well as public benefits. It also ignores the many auction failures.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Consider the evidence: auction revenues foregone were estimated at under Rs 20,000 crore for 1999-2007, because the sector was mired in losses and was unable to provide services effectively or pay those dues. By comparison, actual collections from revenue-sharing by March 2007 were more than double, at Rs 40,000 crore. Collections by March 2010 were Rs 80,000 crore. Current annual contributions to government revenues may be about Rs 18,000 crore on Adjusted Gross Revenues estimated at Rs 1,40,000 crore, plus taxes, amounting to perhaps Rs 36,000 crore.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Re public benefits, access to telephony grew from a few million users in 1999 to about 700 million today (excluding around 250 million shadow subscriptions).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">An ameliorating caveat in paragraph 12 states: "…if the State arrives at the conclusion … that maximum revenue would be earned by auction of the natural resource in question, then that alone would be the process", and this is expanded in paragraph 119:<br /><br />"Where revenue maximisation is not the object of a policy of distribution, the question of auction would not arise. Revenue considerations may assume secondary consideration to developmental considerations."<br /><br />This has not prevented erroneous conclusions in the press that auctions are the only valid process, notwithstanding that the conditions stipulated in the order, eg, that government’s actions be “fair, reasonable, non-discriminatory”, were always operative, if not adhered to in instances of abuse, as in the 2G scam.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Myth 2: Maximum govt collections are in the public interest</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Government collections as the public interest criterion may work for colonial powers extorting revenues from subject states, or possibly for utopias whose political economy is so balanced that such cross-subsidisation works. Developing economies like India presumably can and should seek the welfare of their people. The same populists crusading for maximum government collections accuse governments of corruption and waste. This doesn’t provide a coherent approach to infrastructure, where each capital-intensive sector is configured to deliver a specific service. For instance, the energy sector has to deliver power, while telecommunications must deliver communications services. Neither can be expected to deliver toilets or water. Yet, many well-intentioned people seem to nurture such irrational expectations.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">The spectrum and broadband link</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The first prerequisite for broadband is high-speed connectivity. The second is reasonably priced services. Our objectives are, therefore: (a) a broadband network, (b) available anywhere (c) at reasonable prices. Our networks are deficient, however, particularly in rural and semi-urban areas. A host of factors are responsible, ranging from limited public sector network rollout, combined with a private sector focus on the most lucrative urban centres, with incentives skewed to voice telephony. Applications need connectivity based on networks that require spectrum.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Problems and solutions</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Consider an application like distance education. The need is for networks and services of high quality (followed by the additional requirement of content). What is apparent is that such applications cannot be effective without the connectivity. So we’re back to the need for networks, of fibre where feasible, and wireless elsewhere. This brings us back to the need for spectrum.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Reviewing facts</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As regards the facts relating to the 2G judgment deserving review:<br />The solution the Supreme Court has not considered is that operators need only to use spectrum, for which they can be charged a fee. The evidence of widely available Wi-fi shows that innovation and usage thrive if spectrum is available. The Supreme Court, the government, and the public need to recognise that allocating spectrum to operators is only one way to use spectrum.<br /><br />There need be no alienation of spectrum at all, if policies allow open access and charge fees. Then, spectrum could be used like any infrastructure network, eg, airports, highways, or rail, on payment of usage charges. The sharing could be in at least two ways. Operators could pool spectrum for collective use. For this, (i) regulations must allow pooling/active facilities sharing, and (ii) operators must agree on terms and procedures. Another way is for mandatory spectrum sharing using the database-driven systems being implemented in the US by Spectrum Bridge and Telcordia. Similar deployments are planned in the UK, the European Union, and in Singapore. The TV white space is shared because this range is available for sharing, and not because other bands cannot be shared.<br /><br />There are immense societal costs of duplication in capital investments in multiple networks, including the last-mile spectrum access, of operators using dedicated networks with limited passive facilities sharing (such as towers), compared with the benefits of open-access to common networks, if policies changed. These would employ active facilities sharing (equipment, and not just construction) to reduce capital equipment, construction costs, energy for towers, carbon emissions from a more limited physical network, possibly reduced radiation from a rationalised network with small cells with lower-powered equipment, and the multiplier effect on the finite available spectrum.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Enormous productivity benefits could accrue through ICT applications in infrastructure such as smart grids for energy, transportation, education, healthcare, and government services, as well as many commercial applications.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Supreme Court could also uphold contractual obligations, by discriminating against actual transgressors in the 2G spectrum allocation, while rehabilitating those who operated within the law.</p>
<hr />
<p>[<a href="#fr*" name="fn*">*</a>].<a class="external-link" href="http://supremecourtofindia.nic.in/outtoday/op27092012.pdf">http://supremecourtofindia.nic.in/outtoday/op27092012.pdf</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/organizing-india-blogspot-october-11-2012-shyam-ponappa-the-supreme-court-delivers'>https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/organizing-india-blogspot-october-11-2012-shyam-ponappa-the-supreme-court-delivers</a>
</p>
No publisherShyam PonappaTelecomFeatured2012-12-21T09:57:57ZBlog EntryThe State of the Internet's Languages Report
https://cis-india.org/raw/state-of-the-internet-languages-report-2022
<b>The first-ever State of the Internet’s Languages Report was launched by Whose Knowledge? on February 23, 2022 (just after the International Mother Language day), along with research partners Oxford Internet Institute and the Centre for Internet and Society. This extraordinarily community-sourced effort, with over 100 people involved is now available online, with translations in multiple languages. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify;">There are over 7000 (spoken and signed) languages in the world, but only a few can be fully experienced online. Challenges in accessing the internet and digital technologies in our preferred languages also means that a vast body of knowledge, especially from and by marginalised communities, is not represented and remains inaccessible to the world, thereby reiterating existing social inequalities. The State of the Internet's Languages report explores these and many other aspects related to ongoing efforts in creating a multilingual and multi-modal internet. Comprising both numbers and stories, the report features contributions in 13 languages, representing 22 language communities from 12 countries, and explores how communities across the world experience the internet.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;">Read the full report <strong><a class="external-link" href="https://internetlanguages.org/en/">here</a>. </strong>See more details of the project<strong> <a class="external-link" href="https://whoseknowledge.org/initiatives/state-of-the-internets-languages/">here</a></strong></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/state-of-the-internet-languages-report-2022'>https://cis-india.org/raw/state-of-the-internet-languages-report-2022</a>
</p>
No publisherPuthiya Purayil SnehaRAW ResearchFeaturedResearchers at WorkRAW Blog2022-03-07T15:01:11ZBlog EntryThe Right to Read Campaign, now in Delhi
https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/right-to-read-campaign
<b>The Right to Read campaign, this time in Delhi, the national capital of the country has been announced. This is the third in the series. The previous two held in Calcutta and Chennai were highly successful and Delhi too promises quite a lot. </b>
<p>About 70 million Indians are unable to read printed material owing to various forms of disabilities. According to industry estimates, around 80,000-100,000 books get published every year in India of which only about 700 are made available for these persons. Technologies like screen readers make it possible for persons with disabilities to access knowledge in alternate formats like Braille, e-text, audio, large print, et cetera. Yet people are unable to convert books into accessible formats thanks to the provisions of the Indian Copyright Act, 1957.</p>
<p>India needs to change the situation quickly and put an end to the shortage of books and enable these 70 million persons to participate in social life. For this we need to make use of the developments in technology which makes it possible for all persons to access knowledge and enable them to live a life of social inclusion and participation on par with the rest of society. People with disabilities too have a right to access information like other persons- let copyright laws recognize the diverse needs of persons with disabilities and open up the gates of knowledge to all.</p>
<h3>Objectives of the Right to Read Campaign</h3>
<ul><li>To expedite copyright law reform by informing policy makers on the necessity and nature of amendment. This has to be made to the Indian Copyright Act 1957 to give effect to the rights of persons with disabilities. </li><li>To raise awareness on the issue amongst the parliamentarians, members of the judiciary, educationalists, publishers and the public. </li></ul>
<h3>The Campaign</h3>
<p>The Indian campaign is a part of the global Right to Read campaign which was started by the World Blind Union in 2008. It is a nationwide campaign and seeks to:</p>
<ul><li>Accelerate change in the copyright law;</li><li>Raise public awareness on the issue of access to reading for the print-impaired; and</li><li>Gather Indian support for the Treaty for the Blind proposed by the World Blind Union at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).<br /></li></ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/right-to-read-campaign'>https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/right-to-read-campaign</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaFeaturedAccessibility2011-08-17T08:45:56ZBlog EntryThe Right of Persons with Disabilities Bill 2013 and the Lack of Access to Accessibility Rights
https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/rights-of-persons-with-disabilities-bill-2013-and-lack-of-access-to-accessibility-rights
<b>The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill, 2013 (The RPD Bill) went through three avatars since its commissioning in 2009 under the Sudha Kaul Committee. This blog post brings you a summary of the three stages since it was initially commissioned.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The first was the one the Committee proposed in 2011, after consultations with persons with disabilities and Disabled People's Organizations across the country; the second was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.socialjustice.nic.in/pdf/draftpwd12.pdf">notified by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment in 2012</a>, which was in parts opposed to by several stakeholders; and the third, the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/cabinet-okays-disabilities-bill/article5456834.ece">RPD BIll of 2013</a>, has actually brought the entire disability lobby, as it were, together, in being entirely appalled at the turn of events. The Bill, which is being furiously evaluated in the short time available between its being made available to the public and its impending introduction (and possible passing in the House), is full of flaws. Not only does it not adhere to the standards of the UNCRPD, but it also violates the spirit of the Indian Constitution, as well as contradicting existing case law, and most importantly it betrays the consensus and recommendations of persons with disabilities who were initially part of these recommendations. <br /><br />Doubtlessly, while access to government establishments and entities like courts, collectorates, municipal offices, is important for persons with disabilities, there are other establishments which are equally important for persons with disabilities, for purposes of recreation, access to culture, and private services. I've made the point elsewhere that the law proposed is less of an empowering statute and more on the lines of the charity model – and in line with that, the indication is that persons with disabilities will only ever have to come in contact with the government and other entities, so they can enforce rights, take grants, petition government servants, etc. But if the statute itself is rights based, why so much focus on access to forums for rights enforcement, and not on others beyond this?<br /><br />While they did have their flaws, the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.socialjustice.nic.in/pwd2011.php">2011 and 2012 versions of the Bill</a>, which had rather comprehensive provisions with regard to ensuring accessibility. To start with, the right of persons with disabilities, on an equal basis with others to the physical environment, transportation, information and communications, including appropriate technologies and systems, and other facilities and services open or provided to the public, both in urban and in rural areas, was recognized. The RPD Bill recognizes the obligation of the government to provide accessibility measures, but by now wording it in terms of a right, it does not do complete justice. The 2011 and 2012 drafts were replete with separate sections on the right to transport, personal mobility, communications, services, the built environment, etc. On the other hand, the RPD Bill clumsily lops all of these into a few sections, with repeated emphasis on infrastructure and services run by "establishments", which is, in effect, the government. There is no mention of website accessibility, though a cursory mention is made to the appropriate government ensuring that all contents available in audio, print and electronic media are in accessible format; and that persons with disabilities have access to electronic media by providing audio description, sign language interpretation and close captioning. Again, the ambiguity as to whether this extends to websites which are not run by the government, is not clear. <br /><br />There is another aspect to accessibility which is lost under the Act by its failure to recognize it as a right. A senior person in the sector, who is blind, told me of an instance where he was barred from entering a bar with some friends. "You won't be able to tell what the bill is or how many drinks you've had", said the manager. He was therefore, being discriminated against entering a place, solely on the grounds of his disability. Persons who have been cured of leprosy are denied access to transport and other public facilities on the basis of outdated statutes. Persons who use crutches and calllipers are denied entry to religious places. The understanding of the Bill on accessibility is extremely limited, and limited to the built environment of government establishments, and this does nothing to extend the rights of persons with disabilities. Groups which are forwarding non negotiables for amendments to the Bill do not consider, at present, the right to accessibility to be a non negotiable. I do wonder, however, whether any of the other rights make sense when express and implied bars to access exist and are effectively encouraged, under this proposed law.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/rights-of-persons-with-disabilities-bill-2013-and-lack-of-access-to-accessibility-rights'>https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/rights-of-persons-with-disabilities-bill-2013-and-lack-of-access-to-accessibility-rights</a>
</p>
No publishersalelkarFeaturedAccessibility2014-02-03T02:21:45ZBlog EntryThe new Guidelines for Computer Related Inventions are a big win for FOSS in India!
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/the-new-guidelines-for-computer-related-inventions-are-a-big-win-for-foss-in-india
<b>India is one of the few countries which permits patenting of software – a monopolization that has only benefited established corporations and largely throttled innovation in the software industry, worldwide. CIS has consistently advocated against patentablity of software and in a major victory last week, software patenting in India died a little more. This happened via the newly issued Guidelines for the Examination of Computer Related Inventions, which introduces a new test to restrict software patenting – in essence the same legal test that CIS had been proposing since 2010. This post highlights the new test and other noteworthy changes in the Guidelines. </b>
<p> </p>
<p>When
the Guidelines for examination of Computer Related Inventions(“
2015 Guidelines”) were released last year, it became <a href="http://www.livemint.com/Industry/XGBbgNllmvuEUhJWs2cWgK/Revised-guidelines-for-software-patents-put-on-hold.html">obvious
that they would have an adverse impact on innovation in the Indian
software industry</a>. Further, the 2015 Guidelines were legally
defective since they ran counter to the object of Section 3(k) of the
Patents Act, 1970, which is to unconditionally exclude mathematical
and business methods, computer programs per se, and algorithms from
patentable subject matter. To stop and prevent egregious harms, <a href="http://sflc.in/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Letter_CRIGuidelines2015-Prime-Minister.pdf">civil
society organisations collectively wrote to the Prime Minister's
Office</a> flagging off the defects and requested for a recall of the
Guidelines. In
December 2015, the Indian Patent Office <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/guidelines-for-examination-of-computer-related-inventions-in-abeyance">promptly
recalled the 2015 Guidelines</a> and held a consultation to discuss
the concerns raised in the letter.</p>
<p>Based
on submissions by various stakeholders, the Patent Office released a
<a href="http://ipindia.nic.in/iponew/GuidelinesExamination_CRI_19February2016.pdf">new
set of Guidelines</a>(“Guidelines”), which are not only a
staggering improvisation from all previous versions, but also
introduce a new three step test to determine applicability of section
3(k), an area of Indian patent law that has been notoriously full of
uncertainties:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>5.
Tests/ Indicators to determine Patentability of CRIs (“Computer
Related inventions”):</p>
<p>Examiners
may rely on the following three stage test in examining CRI
applications:</p>
<p>(1)
Properly construe the claim and identify the actual contribution;</p>
<p>(2)
If the contribution lies only in mathematical method, business method
or algorithm, deny the claim;</p>
<p>(3)
If the contribution lies in the field of computer programme, check
whether it is claimed in conjunction with a novel hardware and
proceed to other steps to determine patentability with respect to the
invention. The computer programme in itself is never patentable. If
the contribution lies solely in the computer programme, deny the
claim. If the contribution lies in both the computer programme as
well as hardware, proceed to other steps of patentability.</p>
</blockquote>
<p> </p>
<p>CIS
had proposed the exact same test in its <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-submission-draft-patent-manual-2010">earlier
submissions(2010)</a> to the Patent Office, albeit worded differently. We
submitted:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>"We
propose a new part to the above test to make the clause clearer. The
Manual should specify that “the computer programme portions of any
claimed invention should be treated as if it were covered by prior
art and patentability should thus be determined with respect to the
other features of the invention”. This way, we can ensure that an
invention which merely uses or implements a computer programme is not
granted patent on the basis of the inventiveness of the computer
programme </em>per
se<em>."</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Further,
the Guidelines also recognise that CRIs may fall under sections 3(k), 3(l), 3(m) and 3(n):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>2.2. The Patents (Amendment) Act, 2002 also introduced explicit exclusions from patentability under section 3 for CRIs as under:</p>
<p>3(k)
a mathematical or business method or a computer programme per se or
algorithms;</p>
<p>(l)
a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work or any other aesthetic
creation whatsoever including cinematographic works and television
productions;</p>
<p>(m)
a mere scheme or rule or method of performing mental act or method of
playing game;</p>
<p>(n)
a presentation of information;</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And thus CRIs as such cannot be patentable, if they fall in either of the above
mentioned exclusions. Overall,
the new Guidelines offer more clarity and stick to the Patents Act,
1970's intention of disqualifying patentability of computer
programmes per se. We will soon post a detailed analysis of the Guidelines. In the meantime, you may read CIS' research on the subject in the section below.</p>
<h3><br /></h3>
<h3>CIS' Research and Submissions against Software Patenting<br /></h3>
<p>Over
the past years, CIS has produced research and consistently made
submissions advocating the roll- back of software patenting:</p>
<p><a name="parent-fieldname-title4"></a><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/arguments-against-software-patents">Arguments
Against Software Patents in India, 2010</a></p>
<p><a name="parent-fieldname-title"></a><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-submission-draft-patent-manual-2010">CIS
Submission on Draft Patent Manual, 2010</a></p>
<p><a name="parent-fieldname-title1"></a><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/comments-on-draft-guidelines-for-computer-related-inventions">Comments
on the Draft Guidelines for Computer Related Inventions, 2013</a></p>
<p><a name="parent-fieldname-title3"></a><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/guidelines-for-examination-of-computer-related-inventions">Guidelines
for Examination of Computer Related Inventions: Mapping the
Stakeholders' Response</a>, 2014</p>
<p><a name="parent-fieldname-title2"></a><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/comments-on-the-guidelines-for-examination-of-computer-related-inventions-cris">Comments
on the Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions
(CRIs), 2015</a></p>
<p><a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-submission-to-indian-patent-office-on-examples-of-excluded-patentable-subject-matter-under-section-3-k-for-incorporation-in-the-yet-to-be-released-guidelines-for-computer-related-inventions">CIS'
submission to Indian Patent Office on Examples of Excluded Patentable
subject-matter under Section 3(k) for incorporation in the
yet-to-be-released Guidelines for Computer Related Inventions</a>,
2016</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/the-new-guidelines-for-computer-related-inventions-are-a-big-win-for-foss-in-india'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/the-new-guidelines-for-computer-related-inventions-are-a-big-win-for-foss-in-india</a>
</p>
No publishersinhaFeaturedPatentsAccess to KnowledgeSoftware Patents2016-02-24T06:30:37ZBlog EntryThe Fundamental Right to Privacy: An Analysis
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-fundamental-right-to-privacy-an-analysis
<b>Last month’s judgment by the nine judge referral bench was an emphatic endorsement of the the constitutional right to privacy. In the course of a 547 page judgment, the bench affirmed the fundamental nature of the right to privacy reading it into the values of dignity and liberty. In the course of a few short papers, we will dissect the various aspects of the right to privacy as put forth by the nine judge constitutional bench in the Puttaswamy matter. The papers will focus on the sources, structure, scope, breadth, and future of privacy. Here are the first three papers, authored by Amber Sinha and edited by Elonnai Hickok.
</b>
<p> </p>
<h3><strong>The Fundamental Right to Privacy - Part I: Sources</strong></h3>
<p>Much of the debate and discussion in the hearings before the constitutional bench was regarding where in the Constitution a right to privacy may be located. In this paper, we analyse the different provisions and tools of interpretations use by the bench to read a right to privacy in Part III of the Constitution.</p>
<h4>Download: <a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/amber-sinha-the-fundamental-right-to-privacy-i-sources-pdf/at_download/file">PDF</a></h4>
<hr />
<h3><strong>The Fundamental Right to Privacy - Part II: Structure</strong></h3>
<p>In the previous paper, we delved into the sources in the Constitution and the interpretive tools used to locate
the right to privacy as a constitutional right. This paper follows it up with an analysis of the structure of the right to privacy as articulated by the bench. We will look at the various facets of privacy which form a part of the fundamental right, the basis for such dimensions and what their implications may be.</p>
<h4>Download: <a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/amber-sinha-the-fundamental-right-to-privacy-ii-structure-pdf/at_download/file">PDF</a></h4>
<hr />
<h3><strong>The Fundamental Right to Privacy - Part III: Scope</strong></h3>
<p>While the previous papers dealt with the sources in the Constitution and the interpretive tools used by the bench to locate the right to privacy as a constitutional right, as well as the structure of the right with its various dimensions, this paper will look at the judgment for guidance on principles to determine what the scope of the right of privacy may be.</p>
<h4>Download: <a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/the200b-200bfundamental200b-200bright200b-200bto200b-200bprivacy-200b-200bpart200b-200biii-scope/at_download/file" class="external-link">PDF</a></h4>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-fundamental-right-to-privacy-an-analysis'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-fundamental-right-to-privacy-an-analysis</a>
</p>
No publisheramberFeaturedHomepageInternet GovernancePrivacy2017-10-04T11:19:46ZBlog EntryThe Fundamental Right to Privacy - A Visual Guide
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-fundamental-right-to-privacy-a-visual-guide
<b>Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves, or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. This visual guide to the story of privacy law in India and the recent judgement of the Puttaswamy v.
Union of India case is developed by Amber Sinha (research and content) and Pooja Saxena (design and conceptualisation).
</b>
<p> </p>
<h4>The Fundamental Right to Privacy - A Visual Guide: <a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/amber-sinha-and-pooja-saxena-the-fundamental-right-to-privacy-a-visual-guide/at_download/file">Download</a> (PDF)</h4>
<hr />
<iframe src="//www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/key/1MMYCXyxa2YBip" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" height="485" width="595"> </iframe>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-fundamental-right-to-privacy-a-visual-guide'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-fundamental-right-to-privacy-a-visual-guide</a>
</p>
No publisheramberPrivacyInternet GovernanceFeaturedData GovernanceData Protection2018-02-16T05:31:37ZBlog EntryThe Free Basics debate: Trai has a point in imposing temporary ban on net neutrality
https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/the-free-basics-debate-trai-has-a-point-in-imposing-temporary-ban-on-net-neutrality
<b>The argument against net neutrality in India is simple. Regulation cannot be based on dogma – evidence of harm must be provided before you can advocate for rules for ISPs and telecom operators.</b>
<p>The article was published in <a class="external-link" href="http://www.firstpost.com/india/the-free-basics-debate-trai-has-a-point-in-imposing-temporary-ban-on-net-neutrality-2558884.html"><b>FirstPost</b></a> on December 24, 2015.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But net neutrality regardless of your preferred definition is a very complex regulatory question and there is no global or even national consensus on what counts as relevant evidence. To demonstrate the chain of causality between network neutrality violations and a variety of potential harms - expertise in a wide variety of fields such as economics, competition law, telecom policy, spectrum allocation, communications engineering and traffic management is required. Even with a very large research budget and a multidisciplinary team it would be impossible to predict with confidence what the impact of a particular regulatory option will be on the digital divide or innovation. And therefore the advocates of forbearance say that the Indian telecom regulator — Trai — should not regulate unprecedented technical and business model innovations like Facebook's Free Basics since we don't understand them.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Till recently I agreed with this empirical line of argument. But increasingly I am less convinced that scientific experiment and evidence is the only basis for regulation. Perhaps there is a small but necessary role for principles or ideology. Like the subtitle of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book, we need to ask: How to Live in a World We Don't Understand. Let us take another area of technological regulation – cyber security. Do we really need to build a centralised database containing the passwords of all netizens and perform scientific experiments on it to establish that it can be compromised? A 100 percent centralised system has a single point of failure and therefore from a security perspective centralisation is almost always a bad idea. How are we so sure that such a system will be compromised at some date? To quote Sherlock Holmes: “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” Decentralisation eliminates the possibility of a single point of failure thereby growing resilience. The Internet is perhaps the most famous example. It is not necessarily true that all decentralized systems are more secure than all centralised system of a decentralized network but it is usually the case. In other words, the principle of decentralisation in cyber security does not require repeated experimental confirmation across<br />markets and technologies.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">To complicate matters, the most optimal solutions developed using economics and engineering may not be acceptable to most stakeholders. Professor Vishal Misra has provided a Shapley Value solution using cooperative game theory in the multi-sided market to determine how surplus should be divided between three types of ISPs [eyeball, transit and content] and Internet companies using transparent paid transit arrangements. But a migration from the current opaque arrangement to the Misra solution may never happen because Internet companies will resist such proposals and are increasingly getting into access provision themselves through projects like Google Fibre and Loom. Walter Brown from South African Communications Forum proposes that billing by minutes for phone calls and billing by message for SMSes should be prohibited because on 4G networks voice and text messages are carried as data and price is the best signal to consumers to ensure optimum use of network resources. This according to Walter Brown will eliminate the incentive for telcos to throttle or block or charge differently for VOIP traffic. Again this solution will not be adopted by any regulator because regulators prefer incremental changes with the least amount of disruption.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">So given that we only have numbers that we can't trust - what should be some of the principles that form the bedrock of our net neutrality policy? To begin with there is the obvious principle of non-discrimination. The premise is simple – anyone who has gate-keeping powers might abuse it. Therefore we need to eliminate the possibility through regulation. Non-exclusivity is the result of non-discrimination and transparency is its precondition. That can also be considered as a principle and now we have three core principles to work with. Maybe that is sufficient since we should keep principles to the bare minimum to keep regulation and compliance with regulation simple. Some net<br />neutrality experts have also identified fairness and proportionality as additional principles. How do we settle this? Through transparent and participatory policy development as has been the case so far. Once we have principles articulated in law - how can we apply them to a specific case such as Facebook's Free Basics? Through the office of the appropriate regulator. As Chris Marsden advocates, net neutrality regulations should ideally be positive and forward looking. Positive in the sense that there should be more positive obligations and incentives than prohibitions and punitive measures. Forward looking in the sense that that the regulations should not retard or block technological and business model innovations. For example zero-rated walled gardens could be regulated by requiring that promoters such as Facebook also provide 50Mb of data per day to all users of Free Basics and also by requiring that Reliance provides the very same free service to other parties that want to compete with Facebook with similar offerings. Alternatively, users of Free Basics should get access to the whole Internet every other hour. All these proposal ensure that Facebook and it business partners have a incentive to innovate but at the same time ensures that resultant harms are mitigated.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Just to be absolutely clear, my defense of principle based regulation does not mean that I see no role for evidence and research. As regulation gets under way – further regulation or forbearance should be informed by evidence. But lack of evidence of harm is not an excuse for regulatory forbearance. India is the last market on the planet where the walled garden can be bigger than the Internet – and Facebook is sure giving it its very best shot. Fortunately for us Trai has acted and acted appropriately by issuing a temporary prohibition till regulation has been finalised. Like the US, coming up with stable regulation may take 10 years and we cannot let Facebook shape the market till then.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/the-free-basics-debate-trai-has-a-point-in-imposing-temporary-ban-on-net-neutrality'>https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/the-free-basics-debate-trai-has-a-point-in-imposing-temporary-ban-on-net-neutrality</a>
</p>
No publishersunilTelecomFeaturedNet Neutrality2015-12-25T14:58:30ZBlog EntryThe Embodiment of the Right to Privacy within Domestic Legislation
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-embodiment-of-right-to-privacy-within-domestic-legislation
<b>The Right to Privacy is a pivotal construct, essential to the actualization of justice, fairness and equity within any democratic society. It is an instrument used to secure the boundaries of an individual’s personal space, in his interaction with not only the rest of society but also the State. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is within this realm of the social transaction that there exists an unending conflict between the Right to Privacy of an individual and the overbearing hand of the State as a facilitator of public interest. This right thus acts as a safety valve providing individuals with a sacred space within which their interactions in their personal capacity have no bearing on their conduct in the public sphere. The preservation of this space is incredibly important in order to ensure a willingness of individuals to engage and cooperate with the State in its fulfillment of public welfare measures that would otherwise be deemed as intrusive. It is in this regard that the Right to Privacy, one of the last sustaining rights that an individual holds against a larger State interest, ought to be protected by the law.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There are numerous dimensions to the idea of the Right to Privacy. These include but are not limited to the privacy of person, privacy of communication, personal privacy, transactional privacy, privacy of information and the privacy of personal data.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Supreme Court of India has come to the rescue of individuals, time and again by construing "Right to Privacy" as an extension of the Fundamental Right to “Protection of Life and Personal liberty” under Article 21 of the Constitution. This has been reflected in the adjudicatory jurisprudence of the Constitutional courts in the country. However, there exists no Constitutional remedy to redress the breach of privacy by a nongovernmental actor, except under tortuous liability. The power and authority of public and private institutions to use an individual’s personal data for larger interests of national security or effectuation of socio-economic policies is still under extensive scrutiny. It is in this regard that we have compiled a number of sectoral legislations, regulating domains ranging from Finance and Telecom to Healthcare, Freedom of Expression, Consumer rights and Procedural codes. The highlighted provisions under each Act pertain to the mechanisms embodied within the legislation for the regulation of privacy within their respective sectors. Through this we aim to determine the threshold for permissible collection of confidential data and regulatory surveillance, provided a sufficient need for the same has been established. The determination of such a threshold is imperative to formulating a consistent and effective regime of privacy protection in India.</p>
<hr />
<h3>Click to download the below resources:</h3>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>Legislations</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/master-circulars.zip" class="external-link">Master Circulars</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/finance-and-privacy.zip" class="external-link">Finance and Privacy</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cpc-crpc.zip" class="external-link">Code of Civil Procedure and Code of Criminal Procedure</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/freedom-of-expression.zip" class="external-link">Freedom of Expression</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/identity-and-privacy.zip" class="internal-link">Identity and Privacy</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/national-security-and-privacy.zip" class="internal-link">National Security and Privacy</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/consumer-protection-privacy.zip" class="external-link">Consumer Protection</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/transparency-and-privacy.zip" class="internal-link">Transparency and Privacy</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/healthcare.zip" class="external-link">Healthcare</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/telecom-chapters.zip" class="external-link">Telecom</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<ol> </ol>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>Case Laws</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/code-of-civil-procedure.zip" class="external-link">Code of Civil Procedure and Code of Criminal Procedure</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/freedom-expression.zip" class="internal-link">Freedom of Expression</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/identity-cases.zip" class="external-link">Identity and Privacy</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/national-security-cases.zip" class="external-link">National Security and Privacy</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/consumer-protection.zip" class="internal-link">Consumer Protection</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/transparency-privacy.zip" class="internal-link">Transparency and Privacy</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/health-care.zip" class="internal-link">Healthcare</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/telecom-cases.zip" class="internal-link">Telecom</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<ol> </ol> <ol> </ol>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-embodiment-of-right-to-privacy-within-domestic-legislation'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-embodiment-of-right-to-privacy-within-domestic-legislation</a>
</p>
No publishertanviFeaturedHomepageInternet GovernancePrivacy2014-09-08T02:37:39ZBlog EntryThe Digital Classroom: Social Justice and Pedagogy
https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/pathways/facultyworkshop
<b>What happens when we look at the classroom as a space of social justice? What are the ways in which students can be engaged in learning beyond rote memorisation? What innovative methods can be evolved to make students stakeholders in their learning process? These were some of the questions that were thrown up and discussed at the 2 day Faculty Training workshop for participant from colleges included in the Pathways to Higher Education programme, supported by Ford Foundation and collaboratively executed by the Higher Education Innovation and Research Application and the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.</b>
<p></p>
<p>The workshop focused on 3 chief challenges in contemporary
pedagogy and teaching in higher education in India as identified by <a class="external-link" href="http://heira.in/">HEIRA</a>: The need for innovative
curricula, challenges to social justice in education, and possibilities offered
by the intersection of digital and internet technologies with classroom
teaching and evaluation. In the open discussions, the participating faculty
members used their multidisciplinary skills and teaching experience to look at possibilities that we might implement in our classrooms to create a more
inclusive and participatory environment. The conversations were varied, and
through 3 blog entries I want to capture the focus points of the workshop. In
this first post, I focus specifically on the changing nature of student
engagement with education and innovative ways by which we can learn from the
digital platforms of learning and knowledge production and implement certain
innovations in pedagogy that might better help create inclusive and just learning
environments in the undergraduate classroom in India.</p>
<p><strong>Peer 2 Peer:</strong> One of the observations that was made
unanimously by all the faculty members was that students respond better, learn
faster, engage more deeply with their syllabus when the instructor has a
personal rapport with them. Traditionally, the teachers who have established
human contact which goes beyond the call of duty are also the teachers that
have become catalysts and inspirations for the students. Especially with the
digital aesthetics of non-hierarchical information interaction, this has become
the call of the day.</p>
<p>Establishing the teacher as a peer within the classroom,
rather than the fountainhead of information flow, is an experiment worth
conducting. Like on other digital platforms, can we think of the classroom as a
space where the interlocutors each bring their life experience and learning to
start an information exchange and dialogue that would make them stakeholders in
the process of learning? This would mean that the teacher would be a <em>facilitator</em> who builds conditions of
knowledge production and dissemination, thus also changing his/her relationship
with the idea of curriculum and teaching.</p>
<p><strong>Reciprocal evaluation</strong>: It was pointed out that the grade
oriented academic system often leads to students disengaging with innovative
and meaningful learning practices. With the pressure of completing the
curriculum, the students’ instrumental relationship with their classroom
learning and the highly conservative structures of higher education that do not
offer enough space to experiment with the teaching methods, it often becomes
difficult to initiate innovative pedagogic practices. Learning from the
differently hierarchised digital spaces, it was suggested that one of the ways
by which this could be countered is by introducing reciprocal evaluation
patterns which might not directly be associated with the grades but would
recognise and appreciate the skills that students bring to their learning.</p>
<p>Inspired by the Badges contest at <a class="external-link" href="http://hastac.org/tag/badges">HASTAC</a>,
it was suggested that evaluation has to take into account, more than grades.
Different students bring different skills, experiences, personalities and
behaviours to bear upon the syllabus. They work individually and in clusters to
understand and analyse the curriculum. Recognising these skills and the roles
that they play in their learning environments is essential. Getting students to
offer different badges to each other as well as to the teachers involved, helps
them understand their own learning process and engages them in new ways of
learning.</p>
<p><strong>Role based learning: </strong>Within the Web 2.0 there is a peculiar
condition where individuals are recognised simultaneously as experts and
novices. They bring certain knowledges and experiences to the table which make
them credible sources of information and analysis in those areas. At the same
time, they are often beginner learners in certain other areas and they harness
the power of the web to learn. Such a distributed imagination of a student as
not equally proficient in all areas, but diversely equipped to deal with
different disciplines is missing from our understanding of the higher education
classroom.</p>
<p>We discussed the possibility of making the student responsible not
only for his/her own learning but also the learning of the peers in the
classroom. Making the student aware of what s/he is good at and where s/he is
lacking allows them to gain confidence and also realise that everybody has
differential strengths and aptitudes. Such a classroom might look different
because the students don’t have to be pitched in stressful competition with
each other but instead work collaboratively to learn, research and produce
knowledge in a nurturing and supportive learning environment.</p>
<p>These initial discussions look at the possibility of
innovative classroom teaching that can accommodate for the skills and
differences of the students in higher education in India. The conversations
opened up the idea that the classroom can be reshaped so that it becomes a more
inclusive space where the quality of students’ access to education can be
improved. It also ties in with the larger imagination of classrooms as spaces
where principles of social justice can be invoked so that students who are
disadvantaged in language, learning skills, socio-economic backgrounds, are not
just looked at as either ‘beyond help’ or ‘victims of a system’. Instead, it
encourages to look at the students as differential learners who need to be made
stakeholders in their own processes of learning and education.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/pathways/facultyworkshop'>https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/pathways/facultyworkshop</a>
</p>
No publishernishantHigher EducationAccess to KnowledgeDigital NativesFeaturedNew PedagogiesResearchers at WorkDigital Pluralism2015-05-08T12:36:29ZBlog EntryThe Bots That Got Some Votes Home
https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/bots-got-some-votes-home
<b>Nilofar Ansher gives us some startling updates on the "Digital Natives Video Contest" voting results declared in May 2012, in this blog post.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify;">It was a hint of suspicion raised by one of our colleagues at the Centre for Internet & Society that spurred our Web Analytics team to check into the voting activity of the contest that was all about the ‘<a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/vote-for-digital-natives" class="external-link">Everyday Digital Native</a>’. And while we acknowledged and celebrated the ‘digital’ in the native (users of technology), we forgot the human part that the digital has to engage with. Following weeks of deliberations, we now have conclusive evidence that points to irregularities in voting numbers of the Top 10 contestants. We are now staring at the elephant in the room: those innocuous little automated scripts we sweetly nicknamed, ‘bots’.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Internet bots, also known as web robots or simply bots, are software applications that run automated tasks over the Internet. Typically, bots perform tasks that are both simple and structurally repetitive, at a much higher rate than would be possible for a human alone. The largest use of bots is in web spidering, in which an automated script fetches, analyzes and files information from web servers at many times the speed of a human. Each server can have a file called robots.txt, containing rules for the spidering of that server that the bot is supposed to obey. In addition to their uses outlined above, bots may also be implemented where a response speed faster than that of humans is required (e.g., gaming bots and auction-site robots) or less commonly in situations where the emulation of human activity is required, for example chat bots (Source: Wikipedia).</p>
<h3>What irregularities?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">You would see how a script or bot would have played a role in ‘automating’ the votes for a video. The Top 10 videos received a combined voting number of 20,000+. The discrepancy occurs at the juncture where the votes polled on the front end (the webpage where the contestant video was visible to the public) did not match with the number of hits the page received on the backend (this is the analytics part). For instance, the top polled video has some few thousand votes more than the number of people who actually visited our CIS website in the same duration. This prompted a review of the logs and the possible “hand” of a nonhuman agent acting on its human creator’s command to drive up the votes.</p>
<h3>How was this done? The Technicalities</h3>
<p>The following graph shows the extremely high level of voting requests just before the closing date (March 31, 2012). This would not be extraordinary except for the fact that two or three entries had an exceptionally higher vote count relative to their page views as per the analytics statistics.</p>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/scripted-voting-report/quickhist_march_april.png" alt="null" class="image-inline" title="Voting requests by date" /></p>
<h3>Analysis of the voting against the http requests for the voting link against page views</h3>
<div>
<table class="vertical listing">
<tbody>
<tr style="text-align: center;">
<th>
<p>Entry</p>
</th>
<th>Actual Votes Recorded (1)<br /></th>
<th>Direct http requests to votes (2)<br /></th>
<th>http requests for normal page view access (3)<br /></th>
<th>Recommended adjusted vote count (4)<br /></th>
</tr>
<tr style="text-align: right;">
<td>
<p><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/digital-media-dance" class="internal-link">Digital Dance</a></p>
</td>
<td>268</td>
<td>448</td>
<td>198</td>
<td><span class="visualHighlight">198</span></td>
</tr>
<tr style="text-align: right;">
<td>
<p><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/big-stories-small-towns" class="internal-link">Big Stories, Small Town</a></p>
</td>
<td>3</td>
<td>10</td>
<td>112</td>
<td>3</td>
</tr>
<tr style="text-align: right;">
<td>
<p><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/digital-natives-contest/entries/connecting-souls-bridging-dreams" class="internal-link">Connecting Souls, Bridging Dreams</a></p>
</td>
<td>1113</td>
<td>2018</td>
<td>1685</td>
<td>1113</td>
</tr>
<tr style="text-align: right;">
<td>
<p><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/finalist-summary/deployed" class="internal-link">Deployed</a></p>
</td>
<td>191</td>
<td>479</td>
<td>195</td>
<td>191</td>
</tr>
<tr style="text-align: right;">
<td>
<p class="internal-link"><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/from-the-wild-into-the-digital-world" class="internal-link">From The Wild Into The Digital World</a></p>
</td>
<td>10317</td>
<td>11880</td>
<td>810</td>
<td><span class="visualHighlight">810</span></td>
</tr>
<tr style="text-align: right;">
<td>
<p><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/i-am-a-ghetto-digital-native" class="internal-link">I Am A Ghetto Digital Native</a></p>
</td>
<td>321</td>
<td>365</td>
<td>844</td>
<td>321</td>
</tr>
<tr style="text-align: right;">
<td>
<p><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/life-in-the-city-slums" class="internal-link">Life in the City Slums</a></p>
</td>
<td>13</td>
<td>18</td>
<td>94</td>
<td>13</td>
</tr>
<tr style="text-align: right;">
<td>
<p><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/who-is-a-digital-native" class="internal-link">Digital Natives</a></p>
</td>
<td>111</td>
<td>328</td>
<td>102</td>
<td><span class="visualHighlight">102</span></td>
</tr>
<tr style="text-align: right;">
<td>
<p><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/with-no-distinction" class="internal-link">With No Distinction</a></p>
</td>
<td>369</td>
<td>557</td>
<td>1232</td>
<td>369</td>
</tr>
<tr style="text-align: right;">
<td>
<p><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/digital-coverage-in-a-digital-world" class="internal-link">Digital Coverage in a Digital World</a></p>
</td>
<td>9622</td>
<td>13650</td>
<td>181</td>
<td><span class="visualHighlight">181</span></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3></h3>
<span class="internal-link"> </span>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify;">These are the public votes displayed on the contestant’s page through the thumbs up icon</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">These are http requests to the voting link against each video when the user clicked on the thumbs up icon.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">These are http requests which are collectively related to the video page (page view). A normal human user would browse through a page first, which downloads some other urls, such as the HTML for the page, JavaScript, images, and so on. A normal vote request would be included collectively. A direct http request to the voting link on the other hand does not do this, and only makes a specific request to vote without downloading the other parts that make up the page.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">A normal human vote count should be the same or less than the number of page views. Only three videos highlighted show abnormal behaviour and it is recommended these be adjusted to the page view counts.</li></ol>
<h3>Are you saying contestants cheated?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">While the use of programming scripts to accrue votes is no new tactic and we should, in fact, have a more robust mechanism to monitor such activity during a contest, we cannot prove the culpability of the human agents. The contestants might be innocent actors with overzealous friends or colleagues who ran the voting scripts. As of now, since there is no way to ascertain their part in this irregularity, it’s best we give them the benefit of the doubt. What comes through loud and clear is that once you do away with the scripted votes, four contestants still manage to have enough votes to maintain their positions in the final five. In the fifth position, we now have a contestant from the top ten finalists, who has secured the requisite votes (after vote adjustment) to propel him into the final five.</p>
<h3>Recommendation</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">‘Digital Dance’ (Cijo Abraham), ‘From the Wild into the Digital World’ (John Musila) and ‘Digital Coverage in a Digital World’ (T.J. Burks) had additional vote url counts than page views. It is recommended that the total votes for these videos be adjusted to the page view counts, and not the actual vote counts as displayed on their individual web pages (thumbs up icon) during the voting period.</p>
<p>The rankings of the adjusted voting would now read as:</p>
<ol>
<li>Connecting Souls, Bridging Dreams – Marie Jude Bendiola (1113)</li>
<li>From The Wild Into The Digital World - John Musila (810)</li>
<li>With No Distinction - T.J. K. M. (369)</li>
<li>I Am A Ghetto Digital Native – MJ (321)</li>
<li>Digital Dance – Cijo Abraham (198)</li></ol>
<h3>Transparency at CIS</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">‘The Digital Natives with a Cause?’ research inquiry is shaped around concerns of transparency, equity and community accountability. In our research methods as well as in outputs of the different activities, we have always maintained a complete transparency of decision making processes as well as in depending upon the incredible people we work with to help us learn, grow and reflect openly on the concerns that we have been engaged with. We strive to follow this method and in publishing these statistics, we want to ensure that there is complete transparency about the votes that were accrued and how the final winners were selected. We also take this opportunity as a learning experience to re-think the question of the non-human actors in our networks and further about the nature of participation and reputation online. We hope that the publishing of these results will help answer any inquiries on how the process unfolded.</p>
<h3>View Logs and Source Code</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/scripted-voting-report/logs-during-voting-period" class="external-link">All logs from the web server for this period</a> (24.7MB) Identical IPs are from caching server.</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://www.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/scripted-voting-report/main.R">R script to evaluate data for table</a></li></ul>
<h3>What next?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Since we spotted the error in time, we haven’t disbursed the prize money of EUR 500 to each of the Top 5 contestants. They will now receive the prize along with a chance to participate in the Digital Native workshop-cum-Webinar, slated to be held in July 2012. The top 10 videos will be showcased in this event.</p>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/bots-got-some-votes-home'>https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/bots-got-some-votes-home</a>
</p>
No publisherNilofar AnsherFeaturedResearchers at WorkDigital Natives2015-04-24T11:56:10ZBlog EntryThe All India Privacy Symposium: Conference Report
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/all-india-privacy-delhi-report
<b>Privacy India, the Centre for Internet and Society and Society in Action Group, with support from the International Development Research Centre, Privacy International and Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative had organised the All India Privacy Symposium at the India International Centre in New Delhi, on February 4, 2012. Natasha Vaz reports about the event.</b>
<p>The symposium was organized around five thematic panel discussions:<br />
Panel 1: Privacy and Transparency<br />
Panel 2: Privacy and E-Governance Initiatives<br />
Panel 3: Privacy and National Security<br />
Panel 4: Privacy and Banking<br />
Panel 5: Privacy and Health</p>
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p>Elonnai Hickok (Policy Advocate, Privacy India) introduced the
objectives of Privacy India. The primary objectives were to raise
national awareness about privacy, do an in-depth study of privacy in
India and provide feedback on the proposed ‘Right to Privacy’ Bill.
Privacy India has reviewed case laws, legislations, including the
upcoming policy and conducted state-level privacy workshops and
consultations across India in Kolkata, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Guwahati,
Chennai, and Mumbai. India like the rest of the world is answering some
fundamental questions about the powers of the government and citizen’s
rights and complications that arise from emerging technologies. Through
our research we have come to understand that privacy varies across
cultures and contexts, and there is no one concept of privacy but
instead several distinct core notions that serve as complex duties,
claims and obligations. </p>
<h2>Privacy and Transparency</h2>
<p>Panelists: Ponnurangam K, (Assistant Professor, IIIT New Delhi), ),
Chitra Ahanthem (Journalist, Imphal), Nikhil Dey (Social & Political
Activist), Deepak Maheshwari (Director, Corporate Affairs, Microsoft),
Gus Hosein (Executive Director, Privacy International, UK), and Prashant
Bhushan, (Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India).<br />
Moderator: Sunil Abraham (Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore) <br />
Poster: Srishti Goyal (Law Student, NUJS)</p>
<p>Srishti Goyal provided the general contours, privacy protections,
limits to privacy and loopholes of policy relating to transparency and
privacy, specifically analyzing the Right to Information Act, Public
Interest Disclosures Act, and the Official Secrets Act.</p>
<p>Nikhil Dey commented on the interaction between the right to privacy
and the right to information (RTI). He referred to Gopal Gandhi, the
former Governor of West Bengal, “we must ensure that tools like the UID
must help the citizen watch every move of government; not allow the
government watch every move of the citizen.” Currently, the RTI and the
UID stand on contrary sides of the information debate. A privacy law
could allow for a backdoor to curb RTI. So, utmost care has to be taken
while drafting legislation with respect to right to privacy.</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td align="center"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/1.JPG/image_preview" alt="p1" class="image-inline image-inline" title="p1" /></td>
<td>Data and information has leaked furiously in India and it has leaked
to the powerful. A person who is in a position of power can access
private information irrespective of any laws in place to safeguard
privacy. It is necessary to look at the power dynamics, which exists in
the society before formulating legislation on right to privacy.
According to Nikhil Dey, there should be different standards of privacy
with respect to public servants. A citizen should be entitled to
information related to funds, functions and functionaries. The main
problem arises while defining the private space of a public servant or
functionaries.<br /><br />The RTI Act has failed to address the legal protection for the right
to privacy. Perhaps, rules regarding privacy can be added to the Act. It
can be defined by answering the questions: (i) what is ‘personal
information’? (ii) what is it’s relation to public activity or public
interest? (iii) what is the unwarranted invasion of the privacy of an
individual? and (iv) what is the larger public good? Expanding on these
four points can provide greater legal protection for the right to
privacy. <br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Gus Hosein described the intersection and interaction of the right to
information and the right to privacy. He referred to a petition filed by
Privacy International requesting information on the expenses of members
of parliament. Privacy and transparency of the government are
compatible in the public interest. Gross abuse of the public funds by
MPs was revealed by this particular petition such as pornography or
cleaning of moats of MPs homes. Privacy advocates are supporters of RTI,
however, it cannot be denied that there is no tension between
transparency and privacy. In order chalk out the differences, there is a
need of a legal framework. According to Gus Hosein, in many countries
the government office that deals with right to information also deals
with cases related to right to privacy.</p>
<p>Mumbai and New Delhi police have started using social media very
aggressively, encouraging citizens to take photographs of traffic
violations and upload them to Facebook or Twitter. In reference to this,
Ponnurangam described the perceptions of privacy and if it agreed or
conflicted with his research findings. Ponnurangam has empirically
explored the awareness and perspective of privacy in India with respect
to other countries. He conducted a privacy survey in Hyderabad, Chennai
and Mumbai. People are very comfortable in posting pictures of others
committing a traffic violation or running a red light. Ironically, many
people have posted pictures of police officers committing a traffic
violation such as not wearing a helmet or running a red light.<br />
<br />
Chitra Ahanthem described the barriers and challenges of using RTI in
Manipur. There are more than 40 armed militia groups, which are banned
by the central and state government. The central government provides
economic packages for the development of the north-east region. However,
the state government officials and armed groups pocket the economic
packages. These armed groups have imposed a ban on RTI. Furthermore,
Manipur is a very small community. If people try and access information
through RTI they risk getting threatened by the Panchayat members and
being ostracized from the community or their clan. <br />
<br />
People are apprehensive about filing RTI because they believe that these
procedures are costly and the police and government may also get
involved. Officials use the privacy plea to avoid giving out
information. Since certain information are private and not in the public
domain, government officials, use the defense of privacy to hide
information. In addition, the police brutality prevalent in the area
deters people to even have interactions with government officials. <br />
<br />
According to Deepak Maheshwari, the open data initiative is a subset
within the larger context of open information. There is an onus on the
government to publish information, which is in the public domain. As a
result, one does not necessarily have to go through the entire process
of filing an RTI to get information, which is already there in the
public domain. Moreover, if it is freely available in public domain,
then one can anonymously access such information; this further
strengthens the privacy aspects of requesting information and
facilitating anonymity with respect to access to such information in the
public domain. It has also to be noted that it is not sufficient to put
data out in the public domain but it should also disclose the basis of
the data for example, if there is representation of a data on a pie
chart, the data which was used to arrive at the pie chart should also be
available in the public domain. The main intention of releasing data to
the public domain or having open data standards should not only be to
provide access to such data but also should be in such a fashion so as
to enable people to use the data for multiple purposes.</p>
<p>Prashant Bhushan noted that one of the grounds for withholding
information in the RTI Act is privacy. An RTI officer can disclose
personal information if he feels that larger public interest warrants
the disclosure, even if it is personal information, which has no
relationship to public activity or interest. This raises the important
question, “what constitutes personal information?” He referred to the
Radia Tapes controversy. Ratan Tata has filed a petition in the Supreme
Court on the grounds that the Nira Radia tapes contained personal
information and that the release of these tapes into the public domain
violated his privacy. The Centre for Public Interest Litigation has
filed a counter petition on the grounds that the nature of the
conversations was not personal but in relation to public activity. They
were between a lobbyist and bureaucrats, journalists and ministers.
Prashant Bhushan stressed the importance of releasing these tapes into
the public domain to show glimpses of all kinds of fixing, deal-making
and show how the whole ruling establishment functions. It is absurd for
Ratan Tata to claim that this is an invasion of privacy. Lastly, he felt
when drafting a privacy law, clearly defining and distinguishing
personal information and public is extremely important.</p>
<p>One of the interesting comments made during the panel was on the
assumption that data is transparent. Transparency can be staged;
questions have to be asked around whether the word is itself
transparent.</p>
<h2>Privacy and E-Governance Initiatives</h2>
<p>Panelists: Anant Maringanti, (Independent Social Researcher), Usha
Ramanathan, (Advocate & Social Activist), Gus Hosein, (Executive
Director, Privacy International, UK), Apar Gupta, (Advocate, Supreme
Court of India), and Elida Kristine Undrum Jacobsen (Doctoral
Researcher, The Peace Research Institute Oslo).<br />
Moderator: Sudhir Krishnaswamy (Centre for Law and Policy Research)<br />
Poster: Adrija Das (Law Student, NUJS)</p>
<p>Adrija Das discussed the legal provision relating to identity
projects and e-governance initiatives in India. The objective of any
e-governance project is to increase efficiency and accessibility of
public services. However, a major problem that arises is the linkage of
the data results in the creation of a central database, accessible by
every department of the government. Furthermore, implementing data
protection and security standards are very expensive.</p>
<p>Sudhir Krishnaswamy highlighted the default assumptions surrounding
e-governance initiatives: e-governance initiatives solve governance
problems, increase efficiency, increase transparency and increase
accountability. It is important to analyze the problems that arise from
e-governance initiatives, such as privacy. </p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Usha Ramanathan described the increased number and vastness of
e-governance initiatives such as UID, NPR, IT Rules and NATGRID. There
are also many burdens on privacy that emanate from the introduction and
existence of electronic data management systems. Electronic data
management systems have allowed state to collect, store and use personal
information of individual. Currently, the DNA Profiling Bill is pending
before the Parliament. It is important to question the purpose and need
for the government to collect such personal information. It is also to
be noted that, there are certain laws such as Collection of Statistics
Act, 2008 that penalize individuals if they do not comply with the
information requests of the government.</td>
<td><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Usha.JPG/image_preview" title="Usha" height="124" width="148" alt="Usha" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Anant Maringanti discussed the limitations of data sharing that once
existed. Currently, data can move across space in a very short time. He
analyzed the state and market rationalities involved in e-governance
initiatives, which raise the question “who can access data and at what
price?”. Data may seem to be innocent or neutral, but data in the hands
of wrong people becomes very crucial due to abuse and misuse. For
example, Andhra Pradesh was praised as the model state for UID
implementation. However, during the process of collecting data for UID a
company bought personal information and sold the data to third parties.<br />
<br />
Apar Gupta discussed the dilemmas of e-governance. Generally information
in the form of an electronic record is presumed to be authentic. The
data which government collects is most often inaccurate and wrong. So
the digital identity of a person can be totally different from the real
identity of that particular person. The process for correcting such
information is also very inconvenient and sometimes impossible. <br />
Under the evidence law any electronic evidence is presumed to be
authentic and admissible as evidence. The Bombay High Court decided a
case involving the authenticity of a telephone bill generated by a
machine. The judgment said that since it is being generated by a
machine, through and automated process, there is no need to challenge
the authenticity of the document, it is presumed to true and authentic.
The main danger in such case is that one does away with the process of
law and attaches certain sanctity to the electronic record and evidence.
<br />
<br />
It should be also observed that how government maintains secrecy as to
the ways in which it collects data. For example, the Election Commission
has refused to disclose the functioning and design of electronic voting
machines. The reason given for such secrecy is that if such information
is put in the public domain then the electronic voting machines will be
vulnerable and can be tampered with. But we, who use the voting
machines, will never find out its vulnerabilities.</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>According to Gus Hosein, politicians generally have this wrong notion
that technology can solve complex administrative problems. Furthermore,
the industry is complicit; they indulge in anti-competitive market
practice to sell these technologies as a solution to problems. However,
such technology does not solve any problems rather it gives rise to
problems.<br /><br />Huge amount of government funds is associated with collection of
personal data but such data is rendered useless or rather misused,
because the government does not have clue as to how to use the data for
development and security purposes. The UK National Health Records
project estimated to cost around twelve to twenty billion pounds.
However, a survey carried out by a professor in University College
London showed that the hospital and other health institutions do not use
the information collected by the National Health Records. Similarly,
the UK Identity Card scheme was estimated to cost 1.3 billion pounds and
finally it was estimated to cost five billion pounds. The identity
cards are rendered obsolete, the sole department interested in the
identity card was the Home Office Department, no other department
intended on using it.<br /></td>
<td><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Gus.JPG/image_preview" alt="Gus " class="image-inline image-inline" title="Gus " /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Technology should be built in such a manner that it empowers the
individual. Technology should allow the individual to control his
identity and as well as access all kinds of information available to the
government and private bodies on that individual. <br />
<br />
According to Elida Kristine Undrum Jacobsen, technology is regarded in
this linear manner. It is increasingly being naturalized and as an
all-encompassing solution. The use of biometric systems in the UID
raises three areas of concern: power, value and social relationships. </p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Elida.JPG/image_preview" alt="Elida" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Elida" /></td>
<td>With regards to power, there is a difference between providing
documentation and information for identification. However, problems
arise when the mode of identification becomes one’s body. It also leads
to absolute reliance on technology, if the machine says that this is an
individual’s identity then it is considered to be the absolute truth and
it does not matter even if the individual is someone else. It becomes
furthermore problematic with biometric system because it is generally
used for forensic purposes. <br /><br />The other component of UID or any national identification scheme is
the question of consent and its relationship to privacy. In the case of
UID project, people are totally unaware about how their information will
be used and what purposes can it be used or misused for. Therefore,
there is no informed consent when it comes to collection of biometric
data under the UID project. <br />
<br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>On the issue of social value it is to be noted that the value of
efficiency becomes the most important value, which is valued. Many of
the UIDAI documents state that the UID will provide a transactional
identity. However, at the same time it takes away societal layers, which
is inherently part of one’s identity. In addition, it makes it possible
for the identity of a person to become a commodity to be sold. This
also means that the personal information has economic value and players
in the market such as insurance companies, banks can buy and sell the
information.<br />
<br />
When there is identification projects using biometrics it gives the
State a lot of power; the power to determine and dictate one’s identity
irrespective of the difference in real identity. Moreover, when such
identifications projects are carried out at a national level it also
gives rise to problem related to exclusion and inclusion of people or
various purposes. The classification of the society based on various
factors becomes easy and there is a huge risk involved with such
classification. </p>
<p>The issues, which came out from the Q&A session, were:</p>
<ul><li>The interplay between fairness and lawfulness in the context of
privacy and data collection. There has to be a question asked as to why
certain information is required by the State and how is it lawful. </li><li>In the neo-liberal era corporations are generally considered to be
private. This has to be questioned and furthermore the difference
between what is private and what is public. There are also concerns
about corporations increasingly collaborating with the State. Can it be
still considered as private?</li></ul>
<h2>Privacy and National Security</h2>
<p>Panelists: PK Hormis Tharakan (Former Chief of Research and Analysis
Wing, Government of India), Saikat Datta (Journalist), Menaka Guruswamy,
(Advocate, Supreme Court, New Delhi), Prasanth Sugathan, (Legal
Counsel, Software Freedom Law Center), and Oxblood Ruffin, (Cult of the
Dead Cow Security and Publishing Collective).<br />
Moderator: Danish Sheikh (Alternative Law Forum)<br />
Poster: Suchitra Menon (Law Student, NUJS) </p>
<p>Suchitra Menon discussed the legal provisions for national security
in relation to privacy. Specifically, she described the guidelines and
procedural safeguards with respect to phone tapping and interception of
communication decisional jurisprudence.</p>
<p>In the year 2000, the Information Technology Act (IT Act), 2000 was
enacted, this Act had under section 69 allowed the State to monitor and
intercept information through intermediaries. Prasanth Sugathan
described how the government has been trying to bypass the procedural
safeguard laid down by the Supreme Court in the PUCL case by using
Section 28 of the IT Act, 2000. The provision deals with certifying
authority for digital signatures. The certifying authority under the Act
also has the authority to investigate offences under the Act. The
provision mainly deals with digital signature but it is used by the
government to intercept communication without implementing the
procedural safeguards laid down for such interception. Furthermore, the
IT Rules which was notified by the government in April, 2007 allows the
government to intercept any communication with the help of the
intermediaries. The 2008 amendment to the IT Act was an after effect of
the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai. The legislation has become draconian since
then and privacy has been sacrificed to meet the ends of national
security.</p>
<p>Oxblood Ruffin read out his speech and the same is reproduced below.</p>
<p>“The online citizenry of any country is part of its national security
infrastructure. And the extent to which individual privacy rights are
protected will determine whether democracy continues to succeed, or
inches towards tyranny. The challenge then is to balance the legitimate
needs of the state to secure its sovereignty with protecting its most
valuable asset: The citizen.<br />
<br />
It has become trite to say that 9/11 changed everything. Yet it is as
true for the West as it is for the global South. 9/11 kick started the
downward spiral of individual privacy rights across the entire internet.
It also ushered in a false dichotomy of choice, that in choosing
between security and privacy, it was privacy that had adapted to the new
realities, or so we’ve been told.<br />
<br />
Let’s examine some of the fallacies of this argument.<br />
<br />
The false equation which many argue is that we must give up privacy to
ensure security. But no one argues the opposite. We needn’t balance the
costs of surveillance over privacy, because rarely banning a security
measure protects privacy. Rather, protecting privacy typically means
that government surveillance must be subjected to judicial oversight and
justification of the need to surveillance. In most cases privacy
protection will not diminish the state’s effectiveness to secure itself.<br />
<br />
The deference argument is that security advocates insist that the courts
should defer to elected officials when evaluating security measures.
But when the judiciary weighs privacy against surveillance, privacy
almost always loses. Unless the security measures are explored for
efficacy they will win every time, especially when the word terrorism is
invoked. The courts must take on a more active role to balance the
interests of the state and its citizens.<br />
<br />
For the war time argument security proponents argue that the war on
terror requires greater security and less privacy. But this argument is
backwards. During times of crisis the temptation is to make unnecessary
sacrifices in the name of security. In the United States, for example,
we saw that Japanese-American internment and the McCarthy-era witch-hunt
for communists was in vain. The greatest challenge for safeguarding
privacy comes during times when we are least inclined to protect it. We
must be willing to be coldly rational and not emotional during such
times.<br />
<br />
We are often told that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to
fear. This is the most pervasive argument the average person hears. But
isn’t privacy a little like being naked? We might not be ashamed of our
bodies but we don’t walk around naked. Being online isn’t so different.
Our virtual selves should be as covered as our real selves. It’s a form
of personal sovereignty. Being seen should require our consent, just as
in the real world. The state has no business taking up the role of
Peeping Tom.<br />
<br />
I firmly believe that the state has a right and a duty to secure itself.
And I equally believe that its citizens are entitled to those same
rights. Citizens are part of the national security infrastructure. They
conduct business; they share information; they are the benefactors of
democratic values. Privacy rights are what, amongst others, separate us
from the rule of tyrants. To protect them is to protect and preserve
democracy. It is a fight worth dying for, as so many have done before
us.</p>
<p>PK Hormis Tharakan discussed the importance of interception
communication in intelligence gathering. In the western liberal
democracies, restrictions of privacy were introduced for the
anti-terrorism campaigns and these measures are far restrictive than
what the Indian legislations contemplate. Preventive intelligence is a
major component in maintenance of national security and this
intelligence is generated and can be procured through interception. <br />
<br />
We do need laws to make sure that the power of interception is not
excessive or out of proportion. But the graver issue is that the
equipment used for interception of communication is freely available in
the market at a cheap price. This allows private citizens also to snoop
into others conversation. So, interception by civilians should be the
main concern.<br />
<br />
Menaka Guruswamy discussed the lack of regulation of Indian intelligence
agencies that creates burdens on privacy. When there is a conflict
between individual privacy and national security, the court will always
rule in favour of the national security. Public interest always takes
precedence over individual interest. <br />
<br />
When there is a claim right to privacy vis-à-vis national security,
generally these claims are characterized by dissent, chilling effects on
freedom of expression and government accountability. In India, privacy
is fragile and relatively a less justifiable right. Another challenge to
privacy is that, when communication is intercepted, which part of the
conversation can be considered to be private and which part cannot be
considered so.<br />
<br />
Saikat Datta described his experience of being under illegal
surveillance by an unauthorized intelligence agency. When a person is
under surveillance, he or she is already considered to be suspect. If
the State commits any mistake as to surveillance, carrying surveillance,
who is not at all a person of interest in such case upon discovery,
there is no penalty for such discrepancy.<br />
He warned of the dangers of excessive wiretapping, a practice that
currently generates such a “mountain” of information that anything with
real intelligence value tends to be ignored until it is too late, as
happened with the Mumbai bombings in 2008. It is clear that the Indian
government’s surveillance and interception programmes far exceed what is
necessary for legitimate law enforcement.<br />
<br />
The issues, which came during the Q&A session was:</p>
<ul><li>In case of national security vis-à-vis privacy in heavily
militarized zone, legislations such as Armed Forces Special Powers Act
actually give authority to the army to search and seizure on mere
suspicion? This amounts gross violation of privacy.</li></ul>
<h2>Privacy and Banking</h2>
<p>Panelists: M R Umarji, (Chief Legal Advisor, Indian Banks Associations), N A Vijayashankar, (Cyber Law Expert), Malavika Jayaram, (Advocate, Bangalore)<br />Moderator: Prashant Iyengar (Associate Professor, Jindal Law University)<br />Poster: Malavika Chandu (Law Student, NUJS)</p>
<p>Prashant Iyengar highlighted how privacy has been a central feature in banking and finance. Even before the notion of privacy came into existence, banks had developed an evolved notion of secrecy and confidentiality, which was fairly robust. Every legislation dealing with banking and finance generally have a clause related to privacy and confidentiality. It might seem that it would be easy to implement privacy in banking and finance given the long relationship between banking and secrecy and confidentiality. However, this is not the case in the contemporary times. Specifically, with the growth in issues related to national security, transparency and technology, the highly regarded notion of privacy seems to be slowly depleting.</p>
<p>Malavika Chandu described the data protection standards that govern the banking industry. As part of the know-you-customer guidelines, banks are required to provide the Reserve Bank with customer profiles and other identification information. Lastly, she described case laws in relation to privacy with respect to financial records.</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>N A Vijayashankar noted that the confidentiality and secrecy practices
in the banking sector emanate from the banker-customer relationship. In
the present context, secrecy and privacy maintained by the banks should
be analyzed from the perspective of the right of the customer to
safeguard his or her information from any third party. Generally, banks
and other financial institutions protect personal information as a fraud
control measure and not as duty to protect the privacy of a customer.<br /><br />There has been a paradigm shift in banking practices from traditional
banking practices to more efficient but less secure banking practice.
Some of the terms and conditions of internet banking are illegal and do
not stand the test of law. In contemporary times, banking institutions
use confidentiality to cover up problems and data breach rather than
protecting the customer. But the banks are not ready to disclose data
breach as it apprehends that it will result in public losing faith in
the system. The Reserve Bank of India, has recently notified that
protection which is provided to the customers in banking services should
also be extended to e-banking services. However, the banks have not
properly implemented this. <br /></td>
<td><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Naavi.JPG/image_preview" alt="NA Vijayashankar" class="image-inline image-inline" title="NA Vijayashankar" /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>M R Umarji highlighted fourteen laws related to banking which carries confidentiality clauses. In India, public sector banks dominate the market. These banks are created under a statute and such statute governs them. Therefore, they are duty bound to maintain secrecy and confidentiality. Private banks and cooperative banks are not bound by any statute. They do not have any obligations to maintain secrecy, but they do strictly observe confidentiality as a form of banking practice. <br /><br />Banks are not allowed to reveal any personal information of an individual unless it is sought by some authority that has a legitimate right to claim such information. There has been a constant erosion of confidentiality due to various laws which empowers authorities to seek confidential information from the banks. Recently, in the light of the growing national security concerns, banks also have an obligation to report suspicious transactions. These have caused heavy burdens on right to privacy of an individual.<br /><br />Under the Right to Information Act, 2005 public sector banks are considered to be public authorities. By the virtue of the Statute, any person can access information from banks. For example, in a recent case an information officer directed Reserve Bank of India, to disclose Inspection Reports. These reports generally contain information regarding doubtful accounts, non-performing account, etc. There is a need that banks should be exempted from the Right to Information Act, 2005. Since they are not dealing with public funds there is no need to apply transparency law to the banks. <br /><br />Malavika Jayaram described the major conflicts and tensions with respect to privacy vis-à-vis banking and financial systems and financial data. Other privacy and transparency issues include: the publication of online tax information and income data. <br /><br />Surveillance is built in the design of banking system, so it is capable of tracking personal information and activity. There is a need to implement more privacy friendly and privacy by design systems in the banking sector. Customers are generally ignorant about privacy policies and this influences informed consent and furthermore marketing institution may influence customers to behave in a particular manner. In this context privacy by design becomes very important.<br /><br />Data minimization principles should be applied; since the more data collected the more there is a risk of data breach and misuse. In case of data retention it is necessary that person giving such data should know how much proportion of the data is being retained and for how long it is stored and also what is the scope of the data and for what purpose will it be used. <br /><br />Personal information and data, which was previously collected by the government, are gradually being outsourced to private bodies. On one hand it is a good thing that private sector get their technology and security measures right as compared to the government agencies but it comes with the risk that it can be sold out by private bodies as commodities in the market. Private bodies that are harvesting the data can also be forced by the government to disclose it under a particular law or statute without taking into consideration the consent of the individual whose personal information is sought for. <br /><br />There is multiplicity of documentation for identification, which makes transactions less efficient. This has attracted customers to more convenient systems such as one-access point systems, but people tend to forget the issues related to privacy, in using such a system. What is portrayed as efficient for the consumer is a tool for social control and who has access and authority to use such information. <br /><br />Often the reason given for collecting information is that it will help the service provider to combat fraud. However, studies have shown people more often fake situation rather than identity. The other concerns are that of sharing of information and lack of choice with respect to such sharing. There should be check as to sharing of personal information as the data belongs to the individual and not the bank or any other institution which requires furnishing personal information in lieu of services. This gives rise to a binary choice to the user; either the individual has to provide information to avail the service or else one cannot avail the services.</p>
<p>There is supposed to be market for privacy. The notion of personal information is subjective and varies from person to person. For example, one might be comfortable to share certain information. However, others might not be.<br /><br />The issues that came out of the Q&A sessions are:</p>
<ul><li>The default settings are generally put at the low protection settings. Unless the user is aware of the privacy protection setting, he or she is prone to breach of privacy. Should the default privacy setting be set to maximum security and option can be given to the user to change it according to his or her preference?</li><li>Is there any system in the banks, which allows the customers of bank to know about which all third parties the bank has shared his or her personal information with?</li></ul>
<h2>Health Privacy</h2>
<p>Panelists: K. K. Abraham, (President, Indian Network for People with HIV), Dr. B. S. Bedi, (Advisor, CDAC & Media Lab Asia), and Raman Chawla, (Senior Advocacy Officer, Lawyers Collective).<br />Moderator: Ashok Row Kavi (Journalist and LGBT Activist) <br />Poster: Danish Sheikh (Researcher, Alternative Law Forum)</p>
<p>Danish Sheikh outlined the possible health privacy violations. These included the disclosure of personal health information to third parties without consent, inadequate notification to a patient of a data breach, the purpose of collecting data is not specified and improper security standards, storage and disposal. The disclosure of personal health information has the potential to be embarrassing, stigmatizing or discriminatory. <br /><br />Subsequently, Danish Sheikh examined the status of sexual minorities’ vis-à-vis the privacy framework. Culling out some real life examples based on various studies, media reports and judgments from the Supreme Court and the High Courts of Delhi and Allahabad, he also described privacy violations committed by both individuals as well as state authorities. <br /><br />Ashok Row Kavi recounted how privacy was very contextual when debating section 377 in the LGBT community. The paradigm upon which they were going to fight the anti-sodomy law was that it was consenting sex between two adults in private space. However, this paradigm was not well received by women, as women did not see private space as safe space, due to domestic violence. Perceptions of privacy are very subjective and it differs from person to person.<br /><br />Raman Chawla recounted the history of the Draft HIV/AIDS Bill. In 2002, the need for law related to HIV/AIDS was realized in order to protect right to consent, right against discrimination and right to confidentiality of HIV patients. The bill was finalized in the year 2006. Alarmingly, it is yet to be tabled before the Parliament. <br /><br />The privacy provisions in the HIV bill clearly state that no person can be tested, treated or researched for HIV without the consent of the patient. It also casts that in a fiduciary relationship the health care provider must maintain confidentiality, however if the patient provides written consent then their status may be disclosed. The HIV condition of the patient can also revealed by the doctor if there is a court order demanding such disclosure. The doctor may disclose the status of the patient to his or her partner but he has to follow a particular protocol. The doctor should have sufficient belief that his or her partner is at risk of contracting HIV. The person who is infected will be asked for his/her views and counseled before his/her partner is informed. However, there are doubts as to the implementation and enforcement of this protocol.</p>
<p>Danish Sheikh outlined the possible health privacy violations. These included the disclosure of personal health information to third parties without consent, inadequate notification to a patient of a data breach, the purpose of collecting data is not specified and improper security standards, storage and disposal. The disclosure of personal health information has the potential to be embarrassing, stigmatizing or discriminatory. <br /><br />Subsequently, Danish Sheikh examined the status of sexual minorities’ vis-à-vis the privacy framework. Culling out some real life examples based on various studies, media reports and judgments from the Supreme Court and the High Courts of Delhi and Allahabad, he also described privacy violations committed by both individuals as well as state authorities. <br /><br />Ashok Row Kavi recounted how privacy was very contextual when debating section 377 in the LGBT community. The paradigm upon which they were going to fight the anti-sodomy law was that it was consenting sex between two adults in private space. However, this paradigm was not well received by women, as women did not see private space as safe space, due to domestic violence. Perceptions of privacy are very subjective and it differs from person to person.<br /><br />Raman Chawla recounted the history of the Draft HIV/AIDS Bill. In 2002, the need for law related to HIV/AIDS was realized in order to protect right to consent, right against discrimination and right to confidentiality of HIV patients. The bill was finalized in the year 2006. Alarmingly, it is yet to be tabled before the Parliament. <br /><br />The privacy provisions in the HIV bill clearly state that no person can be tested, treated or researched for HIV without the consent of the patient. It also casts that in a fiduciary relationship the health care provider must maintain confidentiality, however if the patient provides written consent then their status may be disclosed. The HIV condition of the patient can also revealed by the doctor if there is a court order demanding such disclosure. The doctor may disclose the status of the patient to his or her partner but he has to follow a particular protocol. The doctor should have sufficient belief that his or her partner is at risk of contracting HIV. The person who is infected will be asked for his/her views and counseled before his/her partner is informed. However, there are doubts as to the implementation and enforcement of this protocol.</p>
<p align="center"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/AP.JPG/image_preview" alt="AI" class="image-inline image-inline" title="AI" /></p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>Natasha Vaz (Policy Advocate, Privacy India) brought the symposium to a close by thanking the partners, the panelists, the moderators and the participants for their sincere efforts in making the All India Privacy Symposium a grand success. In India, a public discussion regarding privacy has been long over due. The symposium provided a platform for dialogue and building greater awareness around privacy issues in health, banking, national security, transparency and e-governance. Using our research, expert opinions, personal experiences, questions and comments various facets of privacy were explored.</p>
<hr />
<h2>Press Coverage</h2>
<p>The event was featured in the media as well:</p>
<ol><li><a class="external-link" href="http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-02-02/news/31017368_1_privacy-law-privacy-international-cis">India needs an independent privacy law, says NGO Privacy India</a>, Economic Times, February 2, 2012</li><li><a class="external-link" href="http://www.tehelka.com/story_main51.asp?filename=Ws060212Privacy.asp">New Bill to decide on individual’s right to privacy</a>, Tehelka, February 6, 2012 </li><li><a class="external-link" href="http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column_lack-of-strong-privacy-law-in-healthcare-a-big-worry_1649366">Lack of strong privacy law in healthcare a big worry</a>, Daily News & Analysis, February 13, 2012</li><li><a class="external-link" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/privacy-concerns-grow-in-india/2012/01/26/gIQAyM0UmQ_story.html">Privacy concerns grow in India</a>, Washington Post, February 3, 2012</li></ol>
<hr />
<ul><li><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/privacy-symposium-agenda.pdf" class="internal-link" title="All India Privacy Symposium - Profiles & Speakers">Click </a>to download the Agenda and Profile of Speakers (PDF, 1642 Kb)</li></ul>
<ul><li><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/all-privacy-symposium.pdf" class="internal-link" title="All India Privacy Symposium (File)">Download the PDF</a> (555 Kb)</li><li><a href="https://cis-india.org/all-india-privacy-symposium-webcast" class="external-link">Follow the webcast of the event</a><br /></li></ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/all-india-privacy-delhi-report'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/all-india-privacy-delhi-report</a>
</p>
No publishernatashaFeaturedInternet GovernancePrivacy2012-04-30T05:16:41ZBlog EntryTechnology, Social Justice and Higher Education
https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/pathways/blog/higher-education
<b>Since the last two years, we at the Centre for Internet and Society, have been working with the Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, on a project called Pathways to Higher Education, supported by the Ford Foundation. </b>
<p>The main aim of the project is to research the state of social diversity and justice in undergraduate colleges in India and encourage students to articulate the axes of discrimination and exclusion which might keep them from interacting and engaging with educational resources and systems in their college environments.</p>
<h3>Peer-to-Peer Technologies<br /></h3>
<p>The entry point into these debates was digital technologies, where
through an introduction to peer-to-peer technologies, digital story
telling through various web based platforms, and a collaborative thought
environment mediated by internet and digital technologies, we
facilitated the students to identify, articulate and address questions
of discrimination, change and the possibility of engaging with these
critically in order to build a better learning environment for
themselves (and their peers) in their own colleges.</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr class="even">
<td><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/sies.jpg/image_preview" title="sies " height="266" width="400" alt="sies " class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
<td>
<div align="left">Each workshop was designed not only to be sensitive to
the specificities of the locations of the colleges, but also to
accommodate for the needs, desires and aspirations of the students
involved. The participants looked at their own personal, family and
community histories, their everyday experiences, their affective modes
of aspiration and desire, and their own circumstances which often
circumscribe them, in order to come up with certain themes that they
thought were relevant and crucial in their own contexts.</div>
<br />
<div align="left"> </div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>As a follow-up on the workshops, the students developed specific
projects and activities that will help them strengthen their hypotheses
by looking beyond the personal and finding ways by which they can engage
with the larger communities, spreading awareness, building histories
and acquiring skills to successfully bolster their classroom interaction
and learning.</p>
<p><em>The following is a bird’s eye view of the key themes that have emerged in the workshops:</em></p>
<h3>The Costs of Belonging</h3>
<p>Almost unanimously, though articulating it in different ways, the
students looked at different costs of belonging to a space. Sometimes it
was the space of the web, sometimes of the larger educational
institution, sometimes to distinct language groups which do not treat
English as the lingua franca, and sometimes to communities and friend
circles within the college environment.</p>
<p> </p>
<p align="center"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/problem.jpg/image_preview" title="problems" height="365" width="548" alt="problems" class="image-inline image-inline" /></p>
<div align="left">It was particularly insightful for us to understand
that granting access, providing infrastructure or equipping
‘underprivileged’ students with skills is not enough. In fact, it became
apparent that there is a certain policy driven, post-Mandal affirmative
action that has already bridged the infrastructural and access gap in
the educational institutions. The easy availability of computers,
internet access, the ubiquitous cell phone, were all indicators that for
most of the students, it wasn’t a question of affording access. Even
when we were dealing with economically disadvantaged students, there
were a plethora of technology devices they had access to and familiarity
with. Shared resources, public access to digital technologies, and
institutional support towards promoting digital familiarity all played a
significant role in demystifying the digital for them. In many ways,
these students were digital natives if defined through access, because
they had Facebook accounts and browsed Google to find everything they
wanted. Their phone was an extension of their selves and they used it in
creative ways to communicate and connect with their peers.<br /><br />Based
on this, the students are now prepared to work on documenting,
exploring and raising awareness about these questions, to see what the
gating factors are that disallow people with access to still feel
excluded from the power of the digital.<br /><br /></div>
<h3>The Need for Diversity<br /></h3>
<div align="left"><br />
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/others.jpg/image_preview" alt="others" class="image-inline image-inline" title="others" /></td>
<td>It is a telling sign about the state of the Internet in India that every
student presumed that the only way to be really fluent with the digital
web is to be fluent in English. The equation of English being
synonymous with being online was both fascinating and troubling to us.
Of course, a lot of it has to do with India’s own preoccupations, marked
by a postcolonial subjectivity, with English as the language of
modernity and privilege. But it also has to do with the fact that almost
all things digital in India, lack localisation. The digital
technologies and platforms remain almost exclusively in English,
fostered by the fact that input devices (keyboards, for example) and
display interfaces favour English as the language of computing.<br /><br /><br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
<p>Such an idea might also help in
reducing the distance between those who can fluently navigate the web
through its own language, and those who, through various reasons, find
themselves tentative and intimidated online.</p>
<p>The breakthrough that the
participants had, when they realised that they don’t have to be ‘proper
in English’ while being online – the ability to find local language
resources, fonts, translation machines, and the possibility of
transliterating their local language in the Roman script was a learning
lesson for us.</p>
<h3>Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Learning</h3>
<div align="left">As a part of their orientation to the world of the
digital, especially with the methodologies of the workshops, the
students literally had an overnight epiphany where they could see the
possibilities and potentials of P2P learning. The recognition that they
are not merely recipients of knowledge but also bearers of experience
and contexts which are rich and replete with knowledge, gave them new
insights on how to approach learning and education. Through digital
storytelling, the workshops demonstrated how, in our own stories and
accounts of life, there are many indicators and factors which can help
us engage with the realities of exclusion and injustice.<br /><br />Working
together in groups, not only to excavate knowledge from the outside, as
it were, but also to unearth the knowledge, experience, stories,
emotions that we all carry with ourselves and can serve as valuable
tools to bring to the classroom, is a lesson that all the groups
learned. The idea of a peer also led them to question the established
hierarchies within formal education. What was particularly interesting
was that they did not – as is often the case – translate P2P into DIY
education. They recognised that there are certain knowledge and skill
gaps that they would like experts to address and have incorporated
special trainings with different experts in areas of language,
communication, ethnography, interviews, film making, etc. However, the
methods for these trainings are going to emphasise a more P2P structure
that is different from the regular classroom learning.<br /><br />What would
happen if a teacher is looked at as a peer rather than a superior? How
would they navigate curricula if the scope of their learning was greater
than the curricula? How could they work together to learn from each
other, different ways of learning and understanding? These are some of
the questions that get reflected in their proposed campus activities,
where they are trying to now produce knowledge about their communities,
cities, families, groups and experiences, by conducting surveys,
ethnographies, historical archive work, etc. The digital helps them in
not only disseminating the information they are collecting but also in
re-establishing their relationship with learning and knowledge.<br /><br /><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/workshop.jpg/image_preview" title="classroom" height="337" width="509" alt="classroom" class="image-inline image-inline" /><br />
<div align="center"><br />
<div align="left">Ideas like open space dialogues, collaborative
story-telling, mobilising resources for knowledge production, creating
awareness campaigns and interacting with a larger audience through the
digital platforms are now a part of their proposals and promise to show
some creative, innovative and interesting uses of these technologies.
How the teachers would react to such an imagination of the students as
peers within the formal education system, remains to be seen as we
organise a faculty training workshop later in December. <br /><br />These
three large themes find different articulations, interpretations and
executions in different locations. However, they seem to be emerging as
the new forms of social exclusion that we need to take into account. It
is apparent that the role of technologies – both at the level of usage
and of imagination – is crucial in shaping these forms of social
inequities. But the technologies can also facilitate negotiations and
engagements with these concerns by providing new forms of knowledge
production and pedagogy, which can help the students in developing
better learning environments and processes. The Pathways to Higher
Education remains committed to not only documenting these learnings but
also to see how they might be upscaled and integrated into mainstream
learning within higher education in India.</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/pathways/blog/higher-education'>https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/pathways/blog/higher-education</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaFeaturedHigher EducationResearchers at WorkDigital Knowledge2015-03-30T14:54:21ZBlog EntrySVG Translation Workshop at KBC North Maharashtra University
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/subodh-kulkarni-april-10-2019-svg-translation-workshop-at-kbc-north-maharashtra-university
<b>The Centre for Internet & Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) wing organized an SVG translation workshop in collaboration with KBC North Maharashtra University, Jalgaon on 14-15 March 2019. The workshop was a part of India level campaign. Total 58 participants attended the workshop and contributed to Commons till 31 March 2019.</b>
<h3>Background</h3>
<p>During the edit-a-thons and thematic workshops, the need for images in Marathi was realised. Many articles on health and science have images with labels in English. The issue was discussed with few institutions. KBC University came forward to start the activity under this campaign.</p>
<h3>Objectives</h3>
<ul>
<li>Orientation of Wikimedia projects</li>
<li>Localisation of SVG images</li>
<li>Commons upload policies and process</li></ul>
<h3>Facilitators</h3>
<ul>
<li>Krishna Chaitanya Velaga -- <a title="User:KCVelaga" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:KCVelaga">User: KCVelaga</a></li>
<li>Subodh Kulkarni, CIS-A2K --<a title="User:Subodh (CIS-A2K)" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Subodh_(CIS-A2K)">Subodh (CIS-A2K)</a> </li>
<li>Prof. Manish Joshi, SOCS KBCNMU, Jalgaon -- <a title="User:Joshmanish" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Joshmanish">Joshmanish</a> </li>
<li>Dr. Snehalata B. Shirude, SOCS KBCNMU, Jalgaon --<a title="User:Snehalata Shirude" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Snehalata_Shirude">Snehalata Shirude</a> </li></ul>
<h3>Agenda</h3>
<ul>
<li>Introduction to Wikimedia projects, Marathi Wikipedia, Commons</li>
<li>Account creation, basic editing skills</li>
<li>Copyrights, Commons upload process</li>
<li>Graphics images, types of formats, features</li>
<li>Installation of fonts, Inkscape</li>
<li>Resources for translation, verification before uploads</li>
<li>Selection of images, tags, categories for upload</li>
<li>Using translated images in local Wikipedia</li></ul>
<h3>Report</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As the participants were not aware of Wikimedia projects, the first two sessions dedicated to an introduction to various projects. The participants opened accounts on a smartphone and created user pages after logging in on computers. They were introduced to basic skills in Wikipedia editing, giving references/wiki links and adding images from Commons. The Commons platform was explained in detail. The missing images in Marathi language articles and Commons as well were shown. The discussion on these topics resulted in understanding the need for SVG translation exercise.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The next session was to download and install the necessary software on each computer. The participants installed Google Input Tools for Marathi typing and also Inkscape. Before translating images on Inkscape, the students first practised Marathi typing on their sandboxes. After this, the main graphics sessions were conducted. Krishna explained various types of formats, differences between raster and vector graphics, the importance of SVGs and actual SVG file translation process. He demonstrated the process for images with different difficulty levels. They were introduced to resources available as a part of the campaign for SVG translation and necessary techniques. The usage of various online resources like encyclopedia and thesaurus available was also explained. The images were selected and working tags were applied by the participants. The faculty facilitated the process of work distribution among the students. The participants were able to upload 100+ images on the first day.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/SVGWorkshop.jpg/@@images/6d0456b2-a79a-49eb-abd0-73e551f0fbb0.jpeg" alt="null" class="image-inline" title="SVG Workshop" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: justify;">Pictured above: Students from Day 1 helping others on Day 2 (Picture by Subodh Kulkarni)</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">On Day 2, around 20 participants newly joined the workshop. This group comprised of teachers, journalists, doctors, and other enthusiastic citizens. Active students from Day 1 facilitated the training of this new batch. Having conducted a session on the previous day greatly helped to facilitate this session easily. The experienced teachers and citizens helped others to get correct translations and terms. This boosted the speed of the work. The images were also used in the articles on Marathi Wikipedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">With the help of science teachers, the images were verified before uploading to Commons. Due to active participatory work on the second day, the total images crossed 200 mark. The students continued to contribute till last day of campaign i.e. 31 March. At the end, due to consistent work <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Creations_from_STC19_in_mr">Marathi category</a> reached the highest number with a total of 357 images among <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Creations_from_STC19">all Indian languages</a>. The workshop and further work was well organized and motivated by Prof. Manish Joshi and Prof. Snehalata Shirude from Computer Science department.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;">Link to the Wikipedia page report<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/SVG_Translation_Workshop_at_KBC_North_Maharashtra_University,_Jalgaon_(14-15_March_2019)"> here</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/subodh-kulkarni-april-10-2019-svg-translation-workshop-at-kbc-north-maharashtra-university'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/subodh-kulkarni-april-10-2019-svg-translation-workshop-at-kbc-north-maharashtra-university</a>
</p>
No publishersubodhFeaturedCIS-A2KMarathi WikipediaAccess to Knowledge2019-04-26T06:47:40ZBlog Entry