Centre for Internet and Society

Aadhaar data leaks not from UIDAI: Centre

praskrishna — 2017-05-20T08:27:28Z

Aadhaar is foolproof, it tells SC

The article by Krishnadas Rajagopal was published in the Hindu on May 3, 2017.

Leaks of Aadhaar card details are not from the UIDAI, but at the State level, the Union government told the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

“As of today, Aadhaar is foolproof. Biometric technology is the best system in 2016. There has not been a single leak from the UIDAI. The leaks of details may have been from the States... their offices and agencies,” advocate Arghya Sengupta, counsel for the Centre, submitted in the court.

The Centre’s clarification comes in the midst of reports that data of over 130 million Aadhaar cardholders have been leaked from four government websites.

Reports, based on a study conducted by the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a Bengaluru-based organisation, said Aadhaar numbers, names and other personal details of people have been leaked.

The Centre was washing its hands of the alleged leaks for the second consecutive day in the Supreme Court.

A-G’s assurance

On Tuesday, Attorney-General Mukul Rohatgi had emphatically assured the Supreme Court that biometrics of Aadhaar cardholders were safe and had not fallen into other hands. He said the biometric details were kept in a central database run by the Centre.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindu-krishnadas-rajagopal-may-3-2017-aadhaar-data-leaks-not-from-uidai

Aadhaar data leak: Take precautions while sharing info on websites, MEITy tells all depts

praskrishna — 2017-05-19T14:59:38Z

‘Publishing identity info is in clear contravention of the provisions of the Aadhaar Act, 2016’

The article was published in the Indian Express on May 11, 2017.

In light of various Central and state government departments making public Aadhaar information of several users on their websites, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITy) has written to secretaries of all government departments asking them to sensitise the officials and take precautions while publishing or sharing data on their websites.

“It has come to notice that there have been instances wherein personal identity or information of residents, alongwith Aadhaar numbers and demographic information and other sensitive personal data such as bank details collected by ministries/departments, state departments for administration of welfare schemes etc. have been
published online,” IT secretary Aruna Sundararajan wrote in the letter dated April 24.

“Publishing identity information i.e. Aadhaar number along with demographic information is in clear contravention of the provisions of the Aadhaar Act, 2016 and constitutes an offence punishable with imprisonment up to three years. Further, publishing of financial information including bank details, being sensitive personal data, is also in contravention of provision under IT Act, 2000 with violations liable to pay damages by way of compensation to persons affected,” she noted.

According to media reports, Aadhaar numbers of hundreds of thousands of pension beneficiaries were published on a state government website, and was followed by Chandigarh’s Food and Civil Supplies Department revealing the Aadhaar information of beneficiaries of public distribution system. Following Sundararajan’s letter, various central government ministries have issued advisories to sensitise the officials and the web information managers to comply with the IT Act.

Earlier this month, a report by non-profit organisation The Centre for Internet and Society noted that up to 13.5 crore Aadhaar numbers were exposed and were publicly available on government websites, with about 10 crore of these being linked to bank account details. The 27-paged report — Information Security Practices of Aadhaar (or lack thereof): A documentation of public availability of Aadhaar Numbers with sensitive personal financial information — has collected Aadhaar data from four government portals.

Two of these are national portals: National Social Assistance Programme and Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, both under the rural development ministry. The other two studied by the report’s authors, Srinivas Kodali and Amber Sinha, are run by the AP government: a daily online payments report under MGNREGA by the state government, and Chandranna Bima Scheme.

“Based on the numbers available on the websites looked at, the estimated number of Aadhaar numbers leaked through these 4 portals could be around 130-135 million (13-13.5 crore) and the number of bank accounts numbers leaked at around 100 million (10 crore) from the specific portals we looked at,” the report stated.

The letter

“It has come to notice that there have been instances wherein…information of residents, alongwith Aadhaar numbers and demographic information…have been published online,” IT secretary Aruna Sundararajan wrote in the letter dated April 24

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-indian-express-may-11-2017-aadhaar-data-leak-take-precautions-while-sharing-info-on-websites-meity-tells-all-depts

Aadhaar Case: Beyond Privacy, An Issue of Bodily Integrity

Amber Sinha and Aradhya Sethia — 2017-05-03T16:02:02Z

The insertion of Section 139AA in the Income Tax Act has been challenged and is being heard by a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court.

The article was published in the Quint on May 1, 2017.

The Finance Act, 2017, among its various sweeping changes, also inserted a new provision into the Section 139AA of the IT ACT, which makes Aadhaar numbers mandatory for:

(a) applying for PAN and

(b) filing income tax returns

In case one does not have an Aadhaar number, she or he is required to submit the enrolment ID of one’s Aadhaar application. The overall effect of this provision is that it makes Aadhaar mandatory for filing tax returns and applying for a PAN. The SC hearings began on 26 April. In order to properly appreciate the tough task at hand for the counsel for the petitioners, it is important to do a quick recap of the history of the Aadhaar case.

Case Over Constitutional Validity

Back in August 2015, the Supreme Court had referred the question of the constitutional validity of the fundamental right to privacy to a larger bench.

This development came after the Union government pointed out that the judgements in MP Sharma vs Satish Chandra and Kharak Singh vs State of UP (decided by eight and six judge benches respectively) rejected a constitutional right to privacy.

The reference to a larger bench has since delayed the entire Aadhaar case, while an alarming number of government schemes have made Aadhaar mandatory in the meantime.

Since then, the Supreme Court has not entertained any arguments related to privacy in the court proceedings on Aadhaar pending the resolution of this issue by a constitutional bench, which is yet to to be set up. The petitioners have had to navigate this significant handicap in the current proceedings as well.

Ongoing Hearing in Aadhaar Case

At the beginning of Advocate Shyam Divan’s arguments on behalf of the petitioners, the Attorney General objected to the petitioners making any argument related to the right to privacy. Anticipating this objection, Divan assured the court, right at the outset that they “will not argue on privacy issue at all”.

In the course of his arguments, Divan referred to at least three rights which may otherwise have been argued as facets of the right to privacy – personal autonomy, informational self-determination and bodily integrity. However, in this hearing those rights were strategically not couched as dimensions of privacy.

Divan consistently maintained that these rights emanate from Article 21 and Article 19 of the Constitutions and are different from the right to privacy.

Many Layers of the Right to Privacy

If one follows the courtroom exchanges in the original Aadhaar matter (not the one being argued now), the debates around the privacy implications of Aadhaar have focussed on simplistic balancing exercises of “security vs privacy” and “efficient governance vs privacy”.

These observations depict the right to privacy as a monolithic concept, i.e. a single right which has a unity of harm it captures within itself. In other words, all privacy harms are considered to be on the same footing. "Privacy harms" here mean the undesirable effects of the violation of the right to privacy.

This monolithic conception was clearly reflected in the Supreme Court’s decision to refer the constitutionality of “right to privacy” to a larger bench.

In MP Sharma vs Satish Chandra, the Supreme Court had rejected certain dimensions of what is generally understood as the right to privacy in a specific context (and hence dealing with a specific kind of privacy harm). A monolithic conception of the right to privacy would mean that MP Sharma should be applicable to all kinds of privacy claims.

Prof Daniel Solove, a privacy law expert, in his landmark paper “Taxonomy of Privacy” argues that the right to privacy captures multiple kinds of harms within itself. The right to privacy is not a monolithic concept, but a plural concept; there is no one right to privacy, but multiple hues of right to privacy.

Sidestepping ‘Privacy’ in the Current Case

The plural conception of the right to privacy not only makes our privacy jurisprudence more nuanced and comprehensive, but also guides us to analyse differential privacy harms according to the standards appropriate for them.

Therefore, the refusal of the Supreme Court in MP Sharma to recognise a specific construction of privacy read into a specific constitutional provision should not have precluded the bench, even one smaller in number, from treating other conceptions of privacy into the same or other constitutional provisions.

As a lawyer, Divan was severely compromised from being unable to argue the right to privacy, which in my opinion, cuts at the heart of the constitutional issues with the Aadhaar project.

He refrained from couching any of his arguments on bodily integrity, informational self-determination, and personal autonomy as privacy arguments. What the approach reveals is that far from being a monolithic notion, the harms that privacy, as we understand it, addresses, are capable of being broken into multiple and distinct rights.

Moving Beyond Article 21

Divan further argues that coercing someone to give personal information is compelled speech and hence, violative of Article 19(1)(a) (the rights to free speech and expression). Once again, the harm described here – compelling someone to part with personal data – is conventionally a privacy harm.

However, it is important to note here that a privacy harm may also be a speech harm. Therefore, Article 21 is not the sole repository of these rights. They may also be located under other articles. The practical consequence of these rights being located under multiple constitutional provisions could be added protection of these rights.

For instance, if it can be shown that compelling an individual to part with personal data results into violation of Article 19(1)(a), the State will have to show which ground laid down under Article 19(2) does the specific restriction fall under.

This might be more challenging as opposed to the vague standard of “compelling state interest” test which has been the constitutional test for privacy violations under Article 21.

Changing the Definition of Right to Privacy

The arguments presented by Divan, if accepted by the Supreme Court, could represent a two-pronged shift in the landscape of the values popularly understood under the right to privacy in India:

1) first, the idea of the rights of bodily integrity, informational self-determination, and personal autonomy as part of a plural concept (whether arising from the right to privacy or another right) that encompasses several harms within it, and

2) second that some of these rights may be read into other Articles in the Constitution.

Under the circumstances, Mr Divan’s performance was nothing short of heroic. Whether they pass muster and impact the course of this long drawn legal battle remains to be seen.

(Amber Sinha is a lawyer and works as a researcher at the Centre for Internet and Society. Aradhya Sethia is a final year law student at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-quint-amber-sinha-and-aradhya-sethia-may-1-2017-aadhaar-case-beyond-privacy-an-issue-of-bodily-integrity

Aadhaar Card: One Identity, Multiple Disorders

praskrishna — 2017-05-26T00:01:54Z

It is still hazy to see the desperation of the union government to imposing the Aadhaar Card mandatory when matters related to Aadhaar Card are already sub judice.

This was blog post by Gaurav Raj was published by India Saga on May 25, 2017.

The constitutionality of Aadhaar is yet to be decided by the Supreme Court, however, the enrolment of Aadhaar has reached the mark of more than one billion. Recently, the government declared Aadhaar mandatory to file Income Tax Return (ITR) while the Supreme Court is opined not to treat Aadhaar mandatory, but voluntarily. Now it is imperative of the government to confide the citizens that the Aadhaar information- demography and biometrics-are in safe hands, a debate which has been heating up, and the contempt of the court’s decision by the government is for greater good. But the uproar against the speculation of identity revelation threat and possible misuse of Aadhaar details by the government-corporate nexus, plausible reasons to doubt the security of privacy, which is a fundamental right of Indian citizen. Ironically, after the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley defended the ‘Aadhaar Money Bill controversy’ filed by former congress MP Jairam Ramesh in the court, the Supreme Court is in dilemma and yet to decide whether ‘Right to Privacy' is a fundamental right or not.

Why Aadhaar Card Mandatory?

Nandan Nilekani, the co-founder of Infosys and the ideologue of Aadhaar, said that Aadhaar will change the PDS system in India since it ensures no ghost or fake beneficiaries to avail unentitled benefits of the various welfare schemes and subsidies. Nilekani also says that there might be margin of error up to 5 per cent in distributing the subsidies or benefits of various welfare schemes to the masses. The top-honcho technocrat has also defended Aadhaar that any breach of privacy of citizens is not possible as the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is efficient to secure the public data under CIDR.

The government claims that the corruption-mounted Public Distribution System (PDS) in India is reformed due to the introduction of the 12 digit unique identification number. More than 40000 crore have been saved in the form of exchequer due to curb of fake and ghost beneficiaries in the PDS system. Now if we believe Nilekani claim of 5% error, then more than 5 crore beneficiaries would be losing their benefits due the error in the biometric identification. The Infosys co-founder later said that if there is a margin of error then ‘One Time Password’ (OTP) comes in. However, he didn’t define what if there is a congestion of network in the remotest Indian villages where phone signals are rare? Standing on the PDS shop waiting for food grains and network, is certainly not an ideal way to avail the benefits of the government welfare schemes. In 2011, activist and writer Ruchika Gupta said in an interview to Tahalka, “The UID cannot address the bulk of delivery problems in the two of the biggest social sectors programmes like MGNREGA and PDS. Linking UID with social sector legislation is completely baseless.”

PAN Card Linked with Aadhaar Card?

The government has directed the Reserve Bank of India to make Aadhaar mandatory for Income Tax Return filing. Currently, there are approximately 24.37 crores PAN holders in India, however 3.8 crore people file income tax return every year. There have been cases of people owned not more than one but 100 PAN Cards with them. PAN cards in India are mostly used by the citizens as a proof of identity. The government believes that PAN card linking with Aadhaar will curb the tax evasion.

How Safe Is Your Data In This Panopticon Model Of Mass Surveillance?

In the late 18th century, the well-known English social reformer and jurist Jeremy Bentham wanted to build a ‘panoptican’ for a mass surveillance of the prisoners in England. He advocated designing an institutional building be used to keep an eye on all the jail inmates by a single watchman. Very similarly, India is witnessing the biggest surveillance program ever under the name of single identity and availing benefits of governments’ schemes. Another logic behind enrolment of Aadhaar is the ‘national security’. National security? How can any government ensure national security backing Aadhaar, when international companies have been hired in consortium to collect residents’ biometric and demography details? In 2010, Accenture, Mahindra-Satyam Morpho and L1 identity solutions were pooled in by UIDAI for leveraging de-duplication exercise of Aadhaar and data collection. L1 Identity Solutions’ top brasses are the former Director CIA George Tenet and former Homeland Security deputy secretary Adm James. With its headquarters in Connecticut, this company is one of the biggest defence contractors specialised in facial recognition and biometrics. L1 Identity Solutions and Accenture work in a close affinity to US intelligence agencies. This is an age of information. Corporate houses and big telecom players are dying to get details of consumers. Obvious are the concerns about the safety and security of the people’s data. It is feared that the database can be used for various marketing and business purposes.

CIDR, A Single Database Of People’s Data

Central Identities Data Repository (CIDR) is a data management and storing agency in India which is initiated for the Aadhaar project. It is regulated by the statutory body of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). This centralised database is probably one of the biggest repositories on this planet.

In 2010, experts had claimed that more than a thousand government sites and portals were attacked more than 4000 times by China alone in one year. In April 2011, 77 million Sony Playstations and digital media delivery service Qriocity were hacked which resulted into a shutdown of the network for a week. The London School of Economics also reported that a central database of vulnerable to hacking and other terrorist and cyber crime activities. Recently Wannacry Ransomware virus hits the globe. More than 99 countries were affected.

Building one single repository for billions of Aadhaar Card data seems to be a big risk in the most vulnerable country where dat breach is at most.

Data Leak Crisis

UIDAI has so far spent approximately 5982.62 crores for more than a billion enrolments of Aadhaar Cards. 1615.34 crores have been spent between the financial year 2015-2016. Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru-based organization (CIS) has learned that data of more than 130 million Aadhaar card holders has been leaked from four government websites. They are National Social Assistance Programme, National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, Chandranna Bima Scheme and Daily Online Payments Reports of NREGA. It also includes Bank details and other confidential details of millions of residents.

What is Next?

The Lok Sabha has passed the Aadhaar Bill as Money Bill. Mukul Rohatgi said in the Supreme Court that according to Article 110 of the constitution, there is use of consolidated funds of India so the bill is a Money bill. Chief Justice Khehar said, “Your object might be good but whether it is a ‘Money Bill’ or not is the question.” Justice Ramana referred to a 2014 judgment passed by the Apex court that courts had no jurisdiction over procedurals matters of legislative.” In response P. Chidambram, the counsel for Jairam Ramesh said, “This petition is not about a procedural matter. There has been substantive infraction.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-indiasaga-may-25-2017-aadhaar-card-one-identity-multiple-disorders

Aadhaar by Numbers

praskrishna — 2016-09-11T16:36:58Z

Sunil Abraham will be addressing a public seminar at an event organized by National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) in New Delhi on Friday, April 29, 2016.

This talk will reflect on several aspects of the Aadhaar project from a technical perspective. First, there will be a reflection on biometrics as a unique, identification and authentication technology. Second, there will be a critique of open washing by the UIDAI through their adoption of free software and open standards and finally there will be an analysis of alternative technical solutions and architecture which will allow India to harvest the benefits of identity management without the harms and risks of centralized biometrics.

Sunil Abraham

Sunil Abraham (an Ashoka Fellow) is the executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore/New Delhi. CIS is a 7 year old policy and academic research organisation that focuses on accessibility, access to knowledge, internet governance and telecommunications. He is also the founder and director of Mahiti, a 17 year old social enterprise that aims to reduce the cost and complexity of ICTs for the voluntary sector by using free software. Starting 2004, for 3 years, Sunil also managed the International Open Source Network, a project of UNDP's APDIP, serving 42 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Sunil currently serves on the advisory boards of OSF – Information Programme, Mahiti and Samvada.

The talk reflected on several aspects of the Aadhaar project from a technical perspective. First, there is a reflection on biometrics as a unique, identification and authentication technology. Second, there is a critique of open washing by the UIDAI through their adoption of free software and open standards and finally there is an analysis of alternative technical solutions and architecture which will allow India to harvest the benefits of identity management without the harms and risks of centralized biometrics.

Video

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/aadhaar-by-numbers

Aadhaar Body Talked About Virtual ID 7 Years Ago, Put It Off: UIDAI Chief

Admin — 2018-01-16T23:42:58Z

"And at that time, it was felt that let us first give Aadhaar number, let us see how it plays out and then, at an appropriate time, this will be introduced," Ajay Bhushan Pandey, the chief executive officer of UIDAI, or the Unique Identification Authority of India said in an interview to NDTV this week. He called it an "extra layer of security" for the 119 crore people issued Aadhaar numbers.

The blog post by Sukriti Dwivedi was published by NDTV on January 13, 2018.

Virtual ID, the 16-digit temporary number, announced by UIDAI this week had been suggested way back in 2009-10 when its architects were still designing the system. But the Aadhaar authority, which has called Virtual ID a unique innovation to enhance privacy and security, decided against rolling it out at that time.

It may be a step forward. But not everyone is as convinced.

Cyber security Jiten Jain is one of them. Mr Jain told NDTV that UIDAI should first of all decide if the Aadhaar number was confidential information or not because it had changed its stance on this aspect on more than one occasion.

Like when government departments put out lakhs of Aadhaar number, the government agency had insisted that there was nothing really confidential about the number which could not be misused. Or when The Tribune earlier this month claimed to have found gaps in UIDAI's security system that let the newspaper demographic details of an individual, UIDAI claimed that "the Aadhaar number is not a secret number" anyways.

Also, a point is being made that if hiding an Aadhaar number enhances privacy, then what about the crores of people who have been forced to share their Aadhaar numbers - and a copy of their Aadhaar cards - all these years.

Experts suggest the timing of the announcement may not have been a coincidence. The initiative came against the backdrop of mounting privacy concerns after the newspaper expose. The hearing by a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court to decide if the Aadhaar project violates citizens' privacy is to start hearing from next week, January 17.

Srinivas Kodali, cyber security expert and an Aadhaar researcher, said it was clear that the UIDAI had brought it hurriedly. "They said they will release the codes by March 1. So it clearly looks like they haven't planned this thoroughly," he said.

There are also concerns about the ability of people living in remote areas to generate the Virtual IDs, in terms of connectivity and literacy. That means a large proportion of people would not be able to generate the Virtual IDs.

UIDAI chief Mr Pandey said there was nothing to prevent them from continuing to use their Aadhaar number. It is an option, he stressed.

This, experts at the Bengaluru-based research group, Centre for Internet and Society, which has long advocated for a token system such as the Virtual ID, said was a problem area.

UIDAI chief Mr Pandey said there was nothing to prevent them from continuing to use their Aadhaar number. It is an option, he stressed.

This, experts at the Bengaluru-based research group, Centre for Internet and Society, which has long advocated for a token system such as the Virtual ID, said was a problem area.

"Privacy can be protected by design and not by choice," said CIS executive director Sunil Abraham, who believes the biggest flaw with Aadhaar was its design.

"Since it is not mandatory most people will just use the Aadhaar number instead of getting into the hassle of generating a VID... This is privacy through hurdles instead of privacy by design. I suggest authorities should generate VIDs for people and ensure that third parties only use VID and not the Aadhaar number," Pranesh Prakash at the CIS' policy director told NDTV.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/ndtv-sukriti-dwivedi-january-13-2018-aadhaar-body-talked-about-virtual-id-7-years-ago-put-it-off-uidai-chief

Aadhaar Bill fails to incorporate suggestions by the Standing Committee

amber — 2016-03-10T15:58:57Z

In 2011, a standing committee report led by Yashwant Sinha had been scathing in its indictments of the Aadhaar BIll introduced by the UPA government. Five years later, the NDA government has introduced a new bill which is a rehash of the same. I look at the concerns raised by the committee report, none of which have been addressed by the new bill.

The article was published by The Wire on March 10, 2016

In December, 2010, the UPA Government introduced the National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010 in the Parliament. It was subsequently referred to a Standing Committee on Finance by the Speaker of Lok Sabha under Rule 331E of the the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in Lok Sabha. This Committee, headed by BJP leader Yashwant Sinha took evidence from the Minister of Planning and the UIDAI from the government, as well as seeking the view of parties such as the National Human Rights Commission, Indian Banks Association and researchers like Dr Reetika Khera and Dr. Usha Ramanathan. In 2011, having heard from various parties and considering the concerns and apprehensions about the UID scheme, the Committee deemed the bill unacceptable and suggested a re-consideration of the the UID scheme as well as the draft legislation.

The Aadhaar programme has so far been implemented under the Unique Identification Authority of India, a Central Government agency created through an executive order. This programme has been shrouded in controversy over issues of privacy and security resulting in a Public Interest Litigation filed by Judge Puttaswamy in the Supreme Court. While the BJP had criticised the project as well as the draft legislation when it was in opposition, once it came to power and particularly, after it launched various welfare schemes like Digital India and Jan Dhan Yojna, it decided to continue with it and use Aadhaar as the identification technology for these projects. In the last year, there have been orders passed by the Supreme Court which prohibited making Aadhaar mandatory for availing services. One of the questions that the government has had to answer both inside and outside the court on the UID project is the lack of a legislative mandate for a project of this size. About five years later, the new BJP led government has come back with a rehash of the same old draft, and no comments made by the standing committee have been taken into account.

The Standing Committee on the old bill had taken great exception to the continued collection of data and issuance of Aadhaar numbers, while the Bill was pending in the Parliament. The report said that the implementation of the provisions of the Bill and continuing to incur expenditure from the exchequer was a circumvention of the prerogative powers of the Parliament. However, the project has continued without abeyance since its inception in 2009. I am listing below some of the issues that the Committee identified with the UID project and draft legislation, none of which have been addressed in current Bill.

One of the primary arguments made by proponents of Aadhaar has been that it would be useful in providing services to marginalized sections of the society who currently do not have identification cards and consequently, are not able to receive state sponsored services, benefits and subsidies. The report points that the project would not be able to achieve this as no statistical data on the marginalized sections of the society are being used to by UIDAI to provide coverage to them. The introducer systems which was supposed to provide Aadhaar numbers to those without any form of identification, has been used to enroll only 0.03% of the total number of people registered. Further, the Biometrics Standards Committee of UIDAI has itself acknowledged the issues caused due to a high number of manual laborers in India which would lead to sub-optimal fingerprint scans. A report by 4G Identity Solutions estimates that while in any population, approximately 5% of the people have unreadable fingerprints, in India it could lead to a failure to enroll up to 15% of the population. In this manner, the project could actually end up excluding more people.

The Report also pointed to a lack of cost-benefit analysis done before going ahead with scheme of this scale. It makes a reference to the report by the London School of Economics on the UK Identity Project which was shelved due to a) huge costs involved in the project, b) the complexity of the exercise and unavailability of reliable, safe and tested technology, c) risks to security and safety of registrants, d) security measures at a scale that will result in substantially higher implementation and operational costs and e) extreme dangers to rights of registrants and public interest. The Committee Report insisted that such global experiences remained relevant to the UID project and need to be considered. However, the new Bill has not been drafted with a view to address any of these issues.

The Committee comes down heavily on the irregularities in data collection by the UIDAI. They raise doubts about the ability of the Registrars to effectively verify the registrants and a lack of any security audit mechanisms that could identify issues in enrollment. Pointing to the news reports about irregularities in the process being followed by the Registrars appointed by the UIDAI, the Committee deems the MoUs signed between the UIDAI and the Registrars as toothless. The involvement of private parties has been under question already with many questions being raised over the lack of appropriate safeguards in the contracts with the private contractors.

Perhaps the most significant observation of the Committee was that any scheme that facilitates creation of such a massive database of personal information of the people of the country and its linkage with other databases should be preceded by a comprehensive data protection law. By stating this, the Committee has acknowledged that in the absence of a privacy law which governs the collection, use and storage of the personal data, the UID project will lead to abuse, surveillance and profiling of individuals. It makes a reference to the Privacy Bill which is still at only the draft stage. The current data protection framework in the Section 43A rules under the Information Technology Act, 2000 are woefully inadequate and far too limited in their scope. While there are some protection built into Chapter VI of the new bill, these are nowhere as comprehensive as the ones articulated in the Privacy Bill. Additionally, these protections are subject to broad exceptions which could significantly dilute their impact.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/aadhaar-bill-fails-to-incorporate-suggestions-by-the-standing-committee

Aadhaar Bill 2016 Evaluated against the National Privacy Principles

Pooja Saxena and Amber Sinha — 2016-03-21T08:38:34Z

In this infographic, we evaluate the privacy provisions of the Aadhaar Bill 2016 against the national privacy principles developed by the Group of Experts on Privacy led by the Former Chief Justice A.P. Shah in 2012. The infographic is based on Vipul Kharbanda’s article 'Analysis of Aadhaar Act in the Context of A.P. Shah Committee Principles,' and is designed by Pooja Saxena, with inputs from Amber Sinha.

Download the infographic: PDF and PNG.

License: It is shared under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/aadhaar-bill-2016-evaluated-against-the-national-privacy-principles

Aadhaar assurances fail to assuage privacy concerns

praskrishna — 2017-05-20T06:23:32Z

While Aadhaar may be secure from external attacks, a failsafe system hasn’t been developed to protect it from Edward Snowden-style leakages and hacks.

The article by Anirban Sen was published by Livemint on May 5, 2017. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

As calls for a privacy and data protection law grow louder with each passing day amid reports of a central government ministry having made up to 130 million Aadhaar numbers public on its website, widespread concerns continue to emerge over loopholes in the security of the unique identification programme, though the man who created the system continues to defend the security and integrity of the system.

Most worryingly, a consensus is emerging among security and privacy experts, who have argued that while the Aadhaar system may be secure from external attacks, a failsafe system has not been developed to protect it from Edward Snowden-style internal leaks or hacks.

“(What has been suggested by the Unique Identification Authority of India and Nandan Nilekani) is that there will never be a data breach like what we saw in the US with the National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, or Office of Personnel and Management breaches (data of federal government personnel, including more than 5.6 fingerprints, was leaked), or in Mexico or Turkey, or even in India when the department of defence was breached for cyber-espionage for multiple years without detection,” said Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society.

“While the system may be secure from external attacks, there is no failsafe system to make it invulnerable to Snowden-style breaches,” he added.

In an interview, former UIDAI chairman and Infosys Ltd co-founder Nandan Nilekani continued to defend the security of the system and said steps are being taken everyday to enhance the failsafe processes surrounding the system.

“I think the Aadhaar system is extremely well-designed. It’s not an online system that is exposed to the Internet. When enrolment happens, the packet is encrypted at source and sent, so that there can’t be a man-in-the-middle attack. And when the authentication happens, that is also encrypted—not compared to the original data, but to a digital minutiae. The point is that the system is very, very secure. So, if the objection is to centralization, then you should not have clouds. Clouds are also centralized,” said Nilekani. He added that Aadhaar was also safe from internal breaches, an assumption that is being challenged by security experts all across.

“Within seven years of its launch, the Aadhaar system has made a remarkable leap in terms of its security and privacy and it will keep improving things. Technology does not come through immaculate conception, where one morning some perfect technology is born. It has to evolve. It’s called learning by doing,” added Nilekani. He added that improving the security of the system is an ongoing process and conceded that a data protection and privacy law needs to be in place to supplement the current Aadhaar law.

“I know the government has sent a notice to everyone. If somebody has done it; they ought not to have done it—there’s a law for that,” said Nilekani when asked about recent instances of Aadhaar numbers being made public by government departments.

“We should have a data protection and privacy law which is an umbrella law, which looks at all these phenomena and certainly Aadhaar should be part of that. That’s perfectly fine—but people are behaving as if Aadhaar is the only reason why we should have a privacy law,” added Nilekani.

The last few weeks and months have witnessed a steady stream of negative news surrounding Aadhaar and three main cases are currently being fought in the Supreme Court, including one challenging the government’s decision to make the 12-digit ID mandatory for filing income tax returns as well as for obtaining and retaining a PAN Card.

Meanwhile, as Mint reported in April, questions are being raised on the Aadhaar biometric authentication failure rate in the rural job guarantee scheme in areas such as Telangana.

The report of Aadhaar numbers being listed on the government ministry website has caused widespread uproar, although a lawyer pointed out that it is not due to a breach in the Aadhaar system.

“It’s a misnomer to say this a leak because this was voluntarily, very actively put up there. A leak is when some information being kept securely gets breached somehow and comes out. Now, why is this information up on government websites? This is the problem of our government’s perception of transparency...The fact that the Aadhaar numbers are on the government website is not a flaw of the Aadhaar system, but it is a flaw of the understanding of what needs to be done to demonstrate transparency,” said Rahul Matthan, partner at Trilegal.

In a column in Mint, Matthan had also pointed out that while Aadhaar has been a transformative project, there remains enough scope of misusing the database.

“There is a legitimate fear that this identity technology will open us all up to discrimination, prejudice and the risk of identity theft,” Matthan wrote. “Aadhaar has given us the tools to harness data in large volumes. If used wisely, this technology can transform the nation. If not, it can cause us untold harm. We need to be prepared for the impending flood of data—we need to build dams, sluice gates and canals in its path so that we can guide its flow to our benefit.”

Even as both sides debate the issue of Aadhaar’s security, calls are getting louder to revamp the unique identification database.

“The point is that the UIDAI knows the device ID of the machine with which the biometric transaction took place along with the time and date, which means that by just using basic data analytics, any one with access to the transaction logs from the UIDAI (which have to be kept for a period of 5 years and 6 months) can have a complete view of a person’s Aadhaar-based interactions that are increasing day by day.”

“Further, the UIDAI has built up a biometric profile of the entire country. This means that courts can order UIDAI to provide law enforcement agencies the biometrics for an entire state (as the Bombay high court did) to check if they match against the fingerprints recovered from a crime scene. This too is surveillance, since it collects biometrics of all residents in advance rather than just that of criminal suspects,” said Prakash of CIS.

“The UIDAI could have chosen to derive unique 16 digit numbers from your Aadhaar number and provide a different one to each requesting entity. That would have prevented much of these fears. But the UIDAI did not opt for that more privacy-friendly design,” he added.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-may-5-2017-anirban-sen-aadhaar-assurances-fail-to-assuage-privacy-concerns

Aadhaar Act and its Non-compliance with Data Protection Law in India

vanya — 2016-04-18T11:43:02Z

This post compares the provisions of the Aadhaar Act, 2016, with India's data protection regime as articulated in the Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules, 2011.

Download the file: PDF.

Amidst all the hue and cry, the Aadhaar Act 2016, which was introduced with the aim of providing statutory backing to the use of Aadhaar, was passed in the Lok Sabha in its original form on March 16, 2016, after rejecting the recommendations made by Rajya Sabha . Though the Act has been vehemently opposed on several grounds, one of the concerns that has been voiced is regarding privacy and protection of the demographic and biometric information collected for the purpose of issuing the Aadhaar number.

In India, for the purpose of data protection, a body corporate is subject to section 43A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 ("IT Act ") and subsequent Rules, i.e. -The Information Technology (Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information) Rules, 2011 ("IT Rules"). Section 43A of the IT Act, 2000 holds a body corporate, which is possessing, dealing or handling any sensitive personal data or information, and is negligent in implementing and maintaining reasonable security practices resulting in wrongful loss or wrongful gain to any person, liable to compensate the affected person and pay damages.

Rule 3 of the IT Rules enlists personal information that would amount to Sensitive personal data or information of a person and includes the biometric information. Even the Aadhaar Act states under section 30 that the biometric information collected shall be deemed as "sensitive personal data or information", which shall have the same meaning as assigned to it in clause (iii) of the Explanation to section 43A of the IT Act; this reflects that biometric data collected in the Aadhaar scheme will receive the same level of protection as is provided to other sensitive personal data under Indian law. This implies that, the agencies contracted by the UIDAI (and not the UIDAI itself) to perform functions like collection, authentication, etc. like the Registrars, Enrolling Agencies and Requesting Entities, which meet the criteria of being a 'body corporate' as defined in section 43A, could be held responsible under this provision, as well as the Rules, to ensure security of the data and information of Aadhaar holder and could potentially be held liable for breach of information that results in loss to an individual if it can be proven that they failed to implement reasonable security practices and procedures.

In light of the fact that some actors in the Aadhaar scheme could be held accountable and liable under section 43A and associated Rules, this article compares the regulations regarding data security as found in section 43A and IT Rules 2011 with the provisions of Aadhaar Act 2016, and discusses the implications of the differences, if any.

1. Compensation and Penalty

Section 43A: Section 43A of the IT Act, 2000 (Amended in 2008) provides for compensation for failure to protect data. It states that a body corporate, which is possessing, dealing or handling any sensitive personal data or information, and is negligent in implementing and maintaining reasonable security practices resulting in wrongful loss or wrongful gain to any person, is liable to compensate the affected person and pay damages not exceeding five crore rupees.

Aadhaar Act : Chapter VII of the Act provides for offences and penalties, but does not talk about damages to the affected party.

Section 37 states that intentional disclosure or dissemination of identity information, to any person not authorised under the Aadhaar Act, or in violation of any agreement entered into under the Act, will be punishable with imprisonment up to three years or a fine up to ten thousand rupees (in case of an individual), and fine up to one lakh rupees (in case of a company).
Section 38 prescribes penalty with imprisonment up to three years and a fine not less than ten lakh rupees in case any of the acts listed under the provision are performed without authorisation from the UIDAI.
Section 39 prescribes penalty with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years and fine which may extend to ten thousand rupees for tampering with data in Central Identities Data Repository.
Section 40 holds a requesting entity liable for penalty for use of identity information in violation of Section 8 (3) with imprisonment up to three years and/or a fine up to ten thousand rupees (in case of an individual), and fine up to one lakh rupees (in case of a company).
Section 41 holds a requesting entity or enrolling agency liable for penalty for violation of Section 8 (3) or Section 3 (2) with imprisonment up to one year and/or a fine up to ten thousand rupees (in case of an individual), and fine up to one lakh rupees (in case of a company).
Section 42 provides general penalty for any offence against the Act or regulations made under it, for which no specific penalty is provided, with imprisonment up to one year and/or a fine up to twenty five thousand rupees (in case of an individual), and fine up to one lakh rupees (in case of a company).

Though the Aadhaar Act prescribes penalty in case of unauthorised access, use or any other act contravening the Regulations, it fails to guarantee protection to the information and does not provide for compensation in case of violation of the provisions.

2. Privacy Policy

IT Rules: Rule 4 requires a body corporate to provide a privacy policy on their website, which is easily accessible, provides for the type and purpose of personal, sensitive personal information collected and used, and Reasonable security practices and procedures.

Aadhaar Act: Though in practise the contracting agencies (the body corporates under the Aadhaar ecosystem) may maintain a privacy policy on their website, the Aadhaar Act does not require a privacy policy for the UIDAI or other actors.

Implications: Because contracting agencies will be covered by the IT Rules if they are 'body corporates', the requirement to maintain a privacy policy will be applicable to them.

3. Consent

IT Rules: Rule 5 requires that prior to the collection of sensitive personal data, the body corporate must obtain consent, either in writing or through fax regarding the purpose of usage before collection of such information.

Aadhaar Act: The Act is silent regarding consent being acquired in case of the enrolling agency or registrars. However, section 8 provides that any requesting entity will take consent from the individual before collecting his/her Aadhaar information for authentication purposes, though it does not specify the nature (written/through fax).

Implications: If the enrolling agency is a body corporate, they will also be required to take consent prior to collecting and processing biometrics. It is possible that since the Aadhaar Act envisages a scheme which is quasi-compulsory in nature, a consent provision was deliberately left out. This circumstance would give the enrolling agencies an argument against taking consent, by saying that the Aadhaar Act is a specific legislation which is also later in point of time than the IT Rules, and a deliberate omission of consent coupled with the compulsory nature of the Aadhaar scheme would mean that they are not required to take consent of the individuals before enrolment.

4. Collection Limitation

IT Rules: Rule 5 (2) requires that a body corporate should only collect sensitive personal data if it is connected to a lawful purpose and is considered necessary for that purpose.

Aadhaar Act: Section 3(1) of the Act states that every resident shall be entitled to obtain an aadhaar number by submitting his demographic information and biometric information by undergoing the process of enrolment.

5. Notice

IT Rules: Rule 5(3) requires that while collecting information directly from an individual, the body corporate must provide the following information:

The fact that information is being collected
The purpose for which the information is being collected
The intended recipients of the information
The name and address of the agency that is collecting the information
The name and address of the agency that will retain the information

Aadhaar Act: Section 3 of the Act states that at the time of enrolment and collection of information, the enrolling agency shall notify the individual as to how their information will be used; what type of entities the information will be shared with; and that they have a right to see their information and also tell them how they can see their information. However, the Act is silent regarding notice of name and address of the agency collecting and retaining the information.

6. Retention Limitation

IT Rules: Rule 5(4) requires that body corporate must retain sensitive personal data only for as long as it takes to fulfil the stated purpose or otherwise required under law.

Aadhaar Act: The Act is silent regarding this and does not mention the duration for which the personal information of an individual shall be retained by the bodies/organisations contracted by UIDAI.

7. Purpose Limitation

IT Rules: Rule 5(5) requires that information must be used for the purpose that it was collected for.

Aadhaar Act Section 57 contravenes this and states that the Act will not prevent use of Aadhaar number for other purposes under law by the State or other bodies. Section 8 of the Act states that for the purpose of authentication, a requesting entity is required to take consent before collection of Aadhaar information and use it only for authentication with the CIDR. Section 29 of the Act states that the core biometric information collected will not be shared with anyone for any reason, and must not be used for any purpose other than generation of Aadhaar numbers and authentication. Also, the Identity information available with a requesting entity will not be used for any purpose other than what is specified to the individual, nor will it be shared further without the individual's consent.

Act will not prevent use of Aadhaar number for other purposes under law by the State or other bodies.

8. Right to Access and Correct

IT Rules : Rule 5(6) requires a body corporate to provide individuals with the ability to review the information they have provided and access and correct their personal or sensitive personal information.

Aadhaar Act : The Act provides under section 3 that at the time of enrolment, the individual needs to be informed about the existence of a right to access information, the procedure for making requests for such access, and details of the person or department in-charge to whom such requests can be made. Section 28 of the Act provides that every aadhaar number holder may access his identity information except core biometric information. Section 32 provides that every Aadhaar number holder may obtain his authentication record. Also, if the demographic or biometric information about any Aadhaar number holder changes, is lost or is found to be incorrect, they may request the UIDAI to make changes to their record in the CIDR.

9. Right to 'Opt Out' and Withdraw Consent

IT Rules: Rule 5(7) requires that the individual must be provided with the option of 'opting out' of providing data or information sought by the body corporate. Also, they must have the right to withdraw consent at any point of time.

Aadhaar Act: The Aadhaar Act does not provide an opt- out provision and also does not provide an option to withdraw consent at any point of time. Section 7 of the Aadhaar Act actually implies that once the Central or State government makes aadhaar authentication mandatory for receiving a benefit then the individual has no other option but to apply for an Aadhaar number. The only concession that is made is that if an Aadhaar number is not assigned to an individual then s/he would be offered some alternative viable means of identification for receiving the benefit.

10. Grievance Officer

IT Rules: Rule 5(9) requires that body corporate must designate a grievance officer for redressal of grievances, details of which must be posted on the body corporate's website and grievances must be addressed within a month of receipt.

Aadhaar Act: The Aadhaar Act does not provide for any such mechanism for grievance redressal by the registrars, enrolling agencies or the requesting entities. However, since the contracting agencies will also get covered by the IT Rules if they are 'body corporates', the requirement to designate a grievance officer would be applicable to them as well due to the IT Rules.

11. Disclosure with Consent, Prohibition on Publishing and Further Disclosure

IT Rules: Rule 6 requires that body corporate must have consent before disclosing sensitive personal data to any third person or party, except in the case with Government agencies for the purpose of verification of identity, prevention, detection, investigation, on receipt of a written request. Also, the body corporate or any person on its behalf shall not publish the sensitive personal information and the third party receiving the sensitive personal information from body corporate or any person on its behalf shall not disclose it further.

Aadhaar Act: Regarding the requesting entities, the Act provides that they shall not disclose the identity information except with the prior consent of the individual to whom the information relates. The Act also states that the Authority shall take necessary measures to ensure confidentiality of information against disclosures. However, as an exception under section 33, the UIDAI may reveal identity information, authentication records or any information in the CIDR following a court order by a District Judge or higher. The Act also allows disclosure made in the interest of national security following directions by a Joint Secretary to the Government of India, or an officer of a higher rank, authorised for this purpose. The Act is silent on the issue of obtaining consent of the individual under these exceptions. Additionally, the Act also states that the Aadhaar number or any core biometric information collected or created regarding an individual under the Act shall not be published, displayed or posted publicly, except for the purposes specified by regulations.

12. Requirements for Transfer of Sensitive Personal Data

IT Rules : Rule 7 requires that body corporate may transfer sensitive personal data into another jurisdiction only if the country ensures the same level of protection and may be allowed only if it is necessary for the performance of the lawful contract between the body corporate or any person on its behalf and provider of information or where such person has consented to data transfer.

Aadhaar Act : The Act is silent regarding transfer of personal data into another jurisdiction by the any of the contracting bodies like the Registrar, Enrolling agencies or the requesting entities. However, if these agencies satisfy the requirement of being "body corporates" as defined under section 43A, then the above requirement regarding transfer of data to another jurisdiction under IT Rules would be applicable to them. However, considering the sensitive nature of the data involved, the lack of a prohibition of transferring data to another jurisdiction under the Aadhaar Act appears to be a serious lacuna.

13. Security of Information

IT Rules: Rule 8 requires that the body corporate must secure information in accordance with the ISO 27001 standard or any other best practices notified by Central Government. These practices must be audited annually or when the body corporate undertakes a significant up gradation of its process and computer resource.

Aadhaar Act: Section 28 of the Act states that the UIDAI must ensure the security and confidentiality of identity information and authentication records. It also states that the Authority shall adopt and implement appropriate technical and organisational security measures, and ensure the same are imposed through agreements/arrangements with its agents, consultants, advisors or other persons. However, it does not mention which standards/measures have to be adopted by all the actors in Aadhaar ecosystem for ensuring the security of information, though it can be argued that if the contractors employed by the UIDAI are body corporate then the standards prescribed under the IT Rules would be applicable to them.

Implications of the Differences for Body Corporates in Aadhaar Ecosystem

An analysis of the Rules in comparison to the data protection measures under the Aadhaar Act shows that the requirements regarding protection of personal or sensitive personal information differ and are not completely in line with each other.

Though the Aadhaar Act takes into account the provisions regarding consent of the individual, notice, restriction on sharing, etc., the Act is silent regarding many core measures like sharing of information across jurisdictions, taking consent before collection of information, adoption of security measures for protection of information, etc. which a body corporate in the Aadhaar ecosystem must adopt to be in compliance with section 43A of the IT Act. It is therefore important that the bodies collecting, handling, sharing the personal information and are governed by the Aadhaar Act, must adhere to section 43A and the IT Rules 2011. However, applicability of Aadhaar Act as well as section 43A and IT Rules 2011 would lead to ambiguity regarding interpretation and implementation of the Law. The differences must be duly taken into account and more clarity is required to make all the bodies under this Legislation like the enrolling agencies, Registrars and the Requesting Entities accountable under the correct provisions of Law. However, having two separate legislations governing the data protection standards in the Aadhaar scheme seems to have been overlooked. A harmonized and overarching privacy legislation is critical to avoid unclarity in the applicability of data protection standards and would also address many privacy concerns associated to the scheme.

Appendix I

The Rajya Sabha had proposed five amendments to the Aadhaar Act 2016, which are as follows:

i. Opt-out clause: A provision to allow a person to "opt out" of the Aadhaar system, even if already enrolled.

ii. Voluntary: To ensure that if a person chooses not to be part of the Aadhaar system, he/she would be provided "alternate and viable" means of identification for purposes of delivery of government subsidy, benefit or service.

iii. Amendment restricting the use of Aadhaar numbers only for targeting of government benefits or service and not for any other purpose.

iv. Amendment seeking change of the term "national security" to "public emergency or in the interest of public safety" in the provision specifying situations in which disclosure of identity information of an individual to certain law enforcement agencies can be allowed.

v. Oversight Committee: The oversight committee , which would oversee the possible disclosure of information, should include either the Central Vigilance Commissioner or the Comptroller and Auditor-General.

Sources:

Appendix II - Section 43A: Compensation for Failure to Protect Data

Where a body corporate, possessing, dealing or handling any sensitive personal data or information in a computer resource which it owns, controls or operates, is negligent in implementing and maintaining reasonable security practices and procedures and thereby causes wrongful loss or wrongful gain to any person, such body corporate shall be liable to pay damages by way of compensation to the person so affected.

For the purposes of this section:

"body corporate" means any company and includes a firm, sole proprietorship or other association of individuals engaged in commercial or professional activities;
"reasonable security practices and procedures" means security practices and procedures designed to protect such information from unauthorised access, damage, use, modification, disclosure or impairment, as may be specified in an agreement between the parties or as may be specified in any law for the time being in force and in the absence of such agreement or any law, such reasonable security practices and procedures, as may be prescribed by the Central Government in consultation with such professional bodies or associations as it may deem fit;
"sensitive personal data or information" means such personal information as may be prescribed by the Central Government in consultation with such professional bodies or associations as it may deem fit.'.

The term 'body corporate' has been defined under section 43A as "any company and includes a firm, sole proprietorship or other association of individuals engaged in commercial or professional activities"

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/aadhaar-act-and-its-non-compliance-with-data-protection-law-in-india

A Tweet and a poke from the CEO

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T01:30:17Z

The official grapevine has moved online, and Twitter is the new water-cooler.

The office grapevine has moved online, and Twitter is the new water cooler. Social media may be all the rage, and every company may want in, but for the majority of Indian companies grappling with the phenomenon, it is proving too tempestuous a beast to control.

From India alone, for instance, 18 million unique visitors logged on to Facebook in May, each of them posting multiple status messages that often dealt with their places of work. Ban these practices all you like, experts say, but employees will still find ways to log on to social media. Better, then, to ride the wave rather than risk going down with it.

Some Indian companies have already begun to learn this the hard way. When Infosys Technologies Ltd announced its IRace (Infosys Role and Career Enchancement) programme in April, changing the company’s hierarchy drastically, disgruntled employees lashed out at their company on blogs and Facebook.

“The company couldn’t do much then, because they didn’t have a social media policy in place,” says Mahesh Murthy, CEO of Pinstorm Consulting and a social media expert. Murthy mentions another large financial services firm that fired employees for commenting on Orkut about internal incentive programmes.

The time has arrived, then, for companies to institute social media policies—to define, in a sense, what sort of tweet is appropriate and what will earn a black mark. But Indian firms trying to do just this are emerging with very mixed results.

There are, on the one hand, the fast adopters. Technology and media companies that were the first to run head-on into social media were also, not surprisingly, the first to put basic guidelines in place.

Wipro Ltd and HCL Technologies Ltd not only have social media policies, they also promote communication and events for their employees on these media. A couple of months ago, the Spirit of Wipro run was promoted in real-time on Twitter and on its official Facebook page. “Wipro became one of the first companies to hold a Twitter conference, for our joint CEO to discuss our diversity initiatives,” says Rajan Kohli, Wipro’s chief marketing officer.

Also Read The Future of the Internet (Complete Series)

HCL has named digital ambassadors who use their social networks and online personas to share ideas and help the company reach out. In HCL’s annual exercise to articulate the company’s vision, employees communicate with the CEO through Facebook. Infosys has formulated its own social media policy now, and is preparing to roll it out over the next six months.

The other early adopter has been the media sector. As traditional media houses have started to build digital presences, conglomerates such as HT Media Ltd and Bennet, Coleman and Co. Ltd specify what a journalist’s digital avatar can and cannot say online. (Mint has an extensive social media policy for its employees.) Print journalists typically cannot reveal their employer on their Facebook or Twitter pages, or post original opinions.

But here’s the catch with such a strategy: The Internet is a hard place to be anonymous. “If you are a well-known writer, even if you don’t identify yourself, people can easily put two and two together,” says Nishant Shah, of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS). “Policies like that are hard to implement and don’t really make sense.”

To be sure, there are exceptions; Open, the weekly magazine, looks at Facebook and Twitter as channels to direct traffic to its online content. “We have no policy of employees not identifying themselves on social media or associating themselves with the magazine,” says Rajesh Jha, a deputy editor at Open.

Another surprisingly prompt responder to social media trends has been the education sector. While most institutions don’t have restrictive policies for public platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs, some have gone in a different direction and created closed networks. Shah argues that a closed network has the same features—and issues—as open social media.

“These are again peer-to-peer platforms, where teachers and students interact with each other, and any communication has a large audience and gets recorded for posterity,” he says. “This makes it as much of a social medium as Facebook or Twitter.”

Bangalore’s Christ University has created an institutional repository for every single submission made by students and faculty. Test grades and lesson plans are posted online, and students and teachers communicate through the system. The Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, has completely digitized its classrooms, so that write-ups on every lesson are available online. Students and teachers co-develop curricula through its platform as well.

One sector that has been slow to respond to these trends is the outsourcing sector. With annual attrition rates of 50-60%, these firms focus more on turnaround than on investment. Social media websites are typically banned altogether in call centres.

As social media evolves, ways to leverage it do as well. Large telecom firms such as Bharti Airtel Ltd, Tata Teleservices Ltd and Alcatel-Lucent use Facebook for research and development. Supriya Dhanda, Alcatel-Lucent’s head of human resources, says that her firm encourages “senior leaders...to keep blogs active and use them to promote key messages on strategy, people and operating mechanisms”.

In the US, a couple of smaller firms have been able to harness social media in innovative ways. Best Buy, an electronics retail chain, aggregates employee activity online, whether on blogs or Twitter, onto a platform called Best Buy Connect. Zappos, which sells shoes and bags online, has a similar Twitter aggregation tool that pulls any tweet mentioning the company. Employees are encouraged to post on the firm’s Facebook and YouTube pages, and its CEO, Tony Hsieh, has at least a million followers on Twitter.

But Murthy doesn’t necessarily think that Indian firms need to follow in the wake of US firms such as Intel, IBM and CNN, which have clearly defined social media policies. “First, the US is a litigious country and most social media policies there are circumscribed by what corporate lawyers allow employees to say and not say,” he says. “Two, Indian firms can actively use social media as a global marketing tool, especially because it involves no media costs. In the US, firms still look at it largely as a...customer-service function.”

Shah adds that India doesn’t have a clearly installed legal privacy framework, unlike the US or Australia. “What is public space and what is private is still largely a subject of interpretation,” Shah says. “So we will evolve our own path.”

Read the original in Livemint here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/tweet-and-poke

A trust deficit between advertisers and publishers is leading to fake news

sunil — 2018-10-02T06:44:55Z

Transparency regulations is need of the hour. And urgently for election and political advertising. What do the ads look like? Who paid for them? Who was the target? How many people saw these advertisements? How many times? Transparency around viral content is also required.

The article was published in Hindustan Times on September 24, 2018.

Traditionally, we have depended on the private censorship that intermediaries conduct on their platforms. They enforce, with some degree of success, their own community guidelines and terms of services (TOS). Traditionally, these guidelines and TOS have been drafted keeping in mind US laws since historically most intermediaries, including non-profits like Wikimedia Foundation were founded in the US.

Across the world, this private censorship regime was accepted by governments when they enacted intermediary liability laws (in India we have Section 79A of the IT Act). These laws gave intermediaries immunity from liability emerging from third party content about which they have no “actual knowledge” unless they were informed using takedown notices. Intermediaries set up offices in countries like India, complied with some lawful interception requests, and also conducted geo-blocking to comply with local speech regulation.

For years, the Indian government has been frustrated since policy reforms that it has pursued with the US have yielded little fruit. American policy makers keep citing shortcomings in the Indian justice systems to avoid expediting the MLAT (Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties) process and the signing of an executive agreement under the US Clout Act. This agreement would compel intermediaries to comply with lawful interception and data requests from Indian law enforcement agencies no matter where the data was located.

The data localisation requirement in the draft national data protection law is a result of that frustration. As with the US, a quickly enacted data localisation policy is absolutely non-negotiable when it comes to Indian military, intelligence, law enforcement and e-governance data. For India, it also makes sense in the cases of health and financial data with exceptions under certain circumstances. However, it does not make sense for social media platforms since they, by definition, host international networks of people. Recently an inter ministerial committee recommended that “criminal proceedings against Indian heads of social media giants” also be considered. However, raiding Google’s local servers when a lawful interception request is turned down or arresting Facebook executives will result in retaliatory trade actions from the US.

While the consequences of online recruitment, disinformation in elections and fake news to undermine public order are indeed serious, are there alternatives to such extreme measures for Indian policy makers? Updating intermediary liability law is one place to begin. These social media companies increasingly exercise editorial control, albeit indirectly, via algorithms to claim that they have no “actual knowledge”.

But they are no longer mere conduits or dumb pipes as they are now publishers who collect payments to promote content. Germany passed a law called NetzDG in 2017 which requires expedited compliance with government takedown orders. Unfortunately, this law does not have sufficient safeguards to prevent overzealous private censorship. India should not repeat this mistake, especially given what the Supreme Court said in the Shreya Singhal judgment.

Transparency regulations are imperative. And they are needed urgently for election and political advertising. What do the ads look like? Who paid for them? Who was the target? How many people saw these advertisements? How many times? Transparency around viral content is also required. Anyone should be able to see all public content that has been shared with more than a certain percentage of the population over a historical timeline for any geographic area. This will prevent algorithmic filter bubbles and echo chambers, and also help public and civil society monitor unconstitutional and hate speech that violates terms of service of these platforms. So far the intermediaries have benefitted from surveillance — watching from above. It is time to subject them to sousveillance — watched by the citizens from below.

Data portability mandates and interoperability mandates will allow competition to enter these monopoly markets. Artificial intelligence regulations for algorithms that significantly impact the global networked public sphere could require – one, a right to an explanation and two, a right to influence automated decision making that influences the consumers experience on the platform.

The real solution lies elsewhere. Google and Facebook are primarily advertising networks. They have successfully managed to destroy the business model for real news and replace it with a business model for fake news by taking away most of the advertising revenues from traditional and new news media companies. They were able to do this because there was a trust deficit between advertisers and publishers. Perhaps this trust deficit could be solved by a commons-based solutions based on free software, open standards and collective action by all Indian new media companies.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/hindustan-times-sunil-abraham-september-24-2018-a-trust-deficit-between-advertisers-and-publishers-is-leading-to-fake-news

A Three-Way Race Draws Delhi’s Young, and Everyone Else, Out to Vote

praskrishna — 2013-12-26T07:03:54Z

The polling stations were supposed to close at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, just after sunset. But with thousands still waiting in the dark to cast their vote in the state assembly elections, the Delhi Election Commission decided to extend the voting until 6:30 p.m. Then to 7:30 p.m.

The article by Betwa Sharma was published in the New York Times on December 4, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Finally, the Election Commission said it would wait until 9:30 p.m. to close the polls. At the polling station in the New Delhi district, those waiting in line agreed that a relatively warm winter evening was helping to draw people out to vote.

Though no official data on voter turnout had been released by 9 p.m., it was clear that voters were coming out in unprecedented numbers for this year’s Delhi state elections. Analysts were predicting that this election would break the previous voter turnout record of 61.75 percent in 1993.

Unlike in the past, this year’s contest featured a potential spoiler in the Aam Aadmi, or Common Man, Party. Its leader, the firebrand anticorruption activist Arvind Kejriwal, was battling to dethrone the state’s longtime chief minister, Sheila Dikshit of the Congress Party, and siphon votes from the other establishment choice, the Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P. (Exit polls by the local media on Wednesday night were showing that the B.J.P. was likely to win the most seats in the state assembly.)

The prospect of upending the political status quo brought out young voters like 23-year-old Hina Kousar, although she had to put up a fight with her family to cast her vote for the Aam Aadmi Party. Her mother lectured her on how governments don’t care about people, but that didn’t deter Ms. Kousar.

“They have the wrong mentality, and young people should change it,” she said. “My granny is 70 years old and I told her to vote.”

Many of the youthful voters turned voting into a social activity, both in person and online. At one polling station, most people cast their votes quietly and left, but many of the young voters came with their friends. They talked animatedly about their choices while leaving the polling stations.

Others called their families to say they had voted. Some clicked photos of each other on their smartphones and posted the images on their Facebook pages.

In less than a year, Mr. Kejriwal, 45, and his party has pasted itself quite literally on city’s consciousness with aggressive campaigns and posters of brooms, symbolizing sweeping away the old order. And that’s why he got Ms. Kousar’s vote.

“The most important thing is that he has promised to remove corruption. The money that is going into Swiss banks is our money. The rising market prices are because of it,” she said.

Several voters between the ages of 20 to 25 who were interviewed by India Ink said they were backing Mr. Kejriwal, who represented a change from the three-term winner Ms. Dikshit. The B.J.P. had no star state candidate that appealed to them, even though its prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, engaged with students at Delhi University earlier this year and is extremely active on social media.

Besides corruption, several young voters, both male and female, said that ensuring women’s safety had to be a priority for any Delhi government.

Another Kejriwal voter, Kavita, a 27-year-old teacher who goes by one name, said that Ms. Dikshit’s government hadn’t effectively improved women’s safety after the gang rape of a physiotherapy student one year ago. “I don’t feel the difference,” she said. “I still feel unsafe on the streets, so let’s see what some new leaders can do to change this.”

Abhilash Sasidharan, 26, after he cast his vote at a polling booth in New Delhi on Wednesday.Betwa Sharma Abhilash Sasidharan, 26, after he cast his vote at a polling booth in New Delhi on Wednesday.

Another Kejriwal supporter, Abhilash Sasidharan, 27, said a safe environment for women is “absolutely” the most important thing to him, but the software engineer also was moved that Mr. Kejriwal had left his lucrative job as a revenue service officer to join politics.

Kavita, 27, after she cast her vote at a polling booth in New Delhi on Wednesday.

“I don’t have the courage to step into dirty politics, but he does and I want to support that,” he said. “Look, Congress has had 15 years, so why not see if someone can do better, and all these parties should feel a threat to do better.”

But not all young people are buying Mr. Kejriwal’s promises of sweeping change. Shiv Raj Syal, 20, called them “flowery and too good to believe,” as he cast his vote for Ms. Dikshit. “He is just very new at this and I don’t think it’s wise to hand over the running of a national capital to a party with no experience,” he said.

The chief minister had focused on development, the college student said, making Delhi a hub for foreign brands and corporates, and transforming it into an international city.

Abhilash Sasidharan, 26, after he cast his vote at a polling booth in New Delhi on Wednesday.

Despite the appearance of a robust youth presence at the polls on Wednesday, analysts are waiting on the Election Commission’s numbers before declaring this election cycle the year of the youth vote.

Sanjay Kumar, an election analyst from the Center for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi, said that as of July, only 68 percent of eligible voters between the ages of 18 and 21 had registered to vote, far lower than the 86 percent average of other demographics.

V.S. Sampath, the chief election commissioner in India, said that youth participation in the electoral process had been a priority in recent years, and several efforts including visiting universities and colleges had been made to register them, which had resulted in a “significant increase.”

In 2011, Mr. Sampath said, 119,000 voters between the ages of 18 and 19 were on the electoral rolls in Delhi, which accounted for 0.93 percent of total Delhi voters, but now the numbers had gone up to 405,000, or 3.4 percent.

Election observers have also pointed out that the hype about social media, especially Twitter, becoming a tool for political expression and organization for the youth has not necessarily translated into a surge in voting in that demographic of users.

The political debates on social media could translate into votes by the next elections, according to Sunil Abraham from the Centere of Internet and Society in Bangalore, who describes the Internet penetration as “limited,” and social media use even smaller and dominated by the economic elite.

Mr. Abraham, however, said social media is influencing the political discourse, not by motivating voters, but by influencing the coverage in mainstream media.

Relative to the country’s population, he added, social media users had a “disproportionate influence on discourse.”

But the young voters who spoke to India Ink said that at least for them, social media did play a role in drawing them into politics this year. Mr. Syal, the Congress voter, for instance, said that he had posted a message on his Facebook wall criticizing some of Mr. Kejriwal’s claims, which drew 50 comments.

And Mr. Sasidharan, the Aam Aadmi Party supporter, posted on Facebook a photo of him holding up his finger stained with ink, showing that he voted, immediately after coming out of the polling station. “I hope that it inspires more people to come and vote,” he said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/nytimes-december-4-2013-betwa-sharma-a-three-way-race-draws-delhis-young-and-everyone-else-out-to-vote

A Technological Solution to the Challenges of Online Defamation

Eduardo Bertoni — 2013-07-02T14:47:46Z

When people are insulted or humiliated on the Internet and decide to take legal action, their cases often follow a similar trajectory.

This blog post written by Eduardo Bertoni was published in GlobalVoices on May 28, 2013. CIS has cross-posted this under the Creative Commons Licence.

Consider this scenario:

A public figure, let’s call her Senator X, enters her name into a search engine. The results surprise her — some of them make her angry because they come from Internet sites that she finds offensive. She believes that her reputation has been damaged by certain content within the search results and, consequently, that someone should pay for the personal damages inflicted.

Her lawyer recommends appealing to the search engine – the lawyer believes that the search engine should be held liable for the personal injury caused by the offensive content, even though the search engine did not create the content. The Senator is somewhat doubtful about this approach, as the search engine will also likely serve as a useful tool for her own self-promotion. After all, not all sites that appear in the search results are bothersome or offensive. Her lawyer explains that while results including her name will likely be difficult to find, the author of the offensive content should also be held liable. At that point, one option is to request that the search engine block any offensive sites related to the individual’s name from its searches. Yet the lawyer knows that this cannot be done without an official petition, which will require a judge’s intervention.

“We must go against everyone – authors, search engines – everyone!” the Senator will likely say. “Come on!” says the lawyer, “let's move forward.” However, it does not occur to either the Senator or the lawyer that there may be an alternative approach to that of classic courtroom litigation. The proposal I make here suggests a change to the standard approach – a change that requires technology to play an active role in the solution.

Who is liable?

The “going against everyone” approach poses a critical question: Who is legally liable for content that is available online? Authors of offensive content are typically seen as primarily liable. But should intermediaries such as search engines also be held liable for content created by others?

This last question raises a very specific, procedural question: Which intermediaries will be the subjects of scrutiny and viewed as liable in these types of situations? To answer this question, we must distinguish between intermediaries that provide Internet access (e.g. Internet service providers) and intermediaries that host content or offer content search functions. But what exactly is an ‘intermediary’? And how do we evaluate where an intermediary’s responsibility lies? It is also important to distinguish those intermediaries which simply connect individuals to the Internet from those that offer different services.

What kind of liability might an intermediary carry?

This brings us to the second step in the legal analysis of these situations: How do we determine which model we use in defining the responsibility of an intermediary? Various models have been debated in the past. Leading concepts include:

strict liability, under which the intermediary must legally respond to all offensive content
subjective liability, under which the intermediary’s response depends on what it has done and what it was or is aware of
conditional liability – a variation on subjective liability – under which, if an intermediary was notified or advised that it was promoting or directing users to illegal content and did nothing in response, it is legally required to respond to the offensive content.

These three options for determining liability and responses to offensive online content have been included in certain legislation and have been used in judicial decisions by judges around the world. But not one of these three alternatives provides a perfect standard. As a result, experts continue to search for a definition of liability that will satisfy those who have a legitimate interest in preventing damages that result from offensive content online.

How are victims compensated?

Now let’s return to the example presented earlier. Consider the concept of Senator X’s “satisfaction.” In these types of situations, “satisfaction” is typically economic — the victim will sue for a certain amount of money in “damages”, and she can target anyone involved, including the intermediary.

Interestingly, in the offline world, alternatives have been found for victims of defamation: For example, the “right to reply” aims to aid anyone who feels that his or her reputation or honor has been damaged and allows individuals to explain their point of view.

We must also ask if the right to reply is or is not contradictory to freedom of expression. It is critical to recognize that freedom of expression is a human right recognized by international treaties; technology should be able to achieve a similar solution to issues of online defamation without putting freedom of expression at risk.

Solving the problem with technology

In an increasingly online world, we have unsuccessfully attempted to apply traditional judicial solutions to the problems faced by victims like Senator X. There have been many attempts to apply traditional standards because lawyers are accustomed to using in them in other situations. But why not change the approach and use technology to help “satisfy” the problem?

The idea of including technology as part of the solution, when it is also part of the problem, is not new. If we combine the possibilities that technology offers us today with the older idea of the right to reply, we could change the broader focus of the discussion.

My proposal is simple: some intermediaries (like search engines) should create a tool that allows anyone who feels that he or she is the victim of defamation and offensive online content to denounce and criticize the material on the sites where it appears. I believe that for victims, the ability to say something and to have their voices heard on the sites where others will come across the information in question will be much more satisfactory than a trial against the intermediaries, where the outcome is unknown.

This proposal would also help to limit regulations that impose liability on intermediaries such as search engines. This is important because many of the regulations that have been proposed are technologically impractical. Even when they can be implemented, they often result in censorship; requirements that force intermediaries to filter content regularly infringe on rights such as freedom of expression or access to information.

This proposal may not be easy to implement from a technical standpoint. But I hope it will encourage discussion about the issue, given that a tool like the one I have proposed, although with different characteristics, was once part of Google’s search engine (the tool, “Google Sidewiki” is now discontinued). It should be possible improve upon this tool, adapt it, or do something completely new with the technology it was based on in order to help victims of defamation clarify their opinions and speak their minds about these issues, instead of relying on courts to impose censorship requirements on search engines. This tool could provide much greater satisfaction for victims and could help prevent the violation of the rights of others online as well.

Critics may argue that people will not read the disclaimers or statements written by “defamed” individuals and that the impact and spread of the offensive content will continue unfettered. But this is a cultural problem that will not be fixed by placing liability on intermediaries. As I explained before, the consequences of doing so can be unpredictable.

If we continue to rely on traditional regulatory means to solve these problems, we’ll continue to struggle with the undesirable results they can produce, chiefly increased controls on information and expression online. We should instead look to a technological solution as a viable alternative that cannot and should not be ignored.

Eduardo Bertoni is the Director of the Center for Studies on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information at Palermo University School of Law in Buenos Aires. He served as the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression to the Organization of American States from 2002-2005.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/global-voices-may-28-2013-eduardo-bertoni-a-technological-solution-to-the-challenges-of-online-defamation

A Talk by Charlotte Lapsansky

praskrishna — 2011-04-22T07:41:20Z

Charlotte Lapsansky will give a lecture on the "Mobile Voices project" at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore on Thursday, 16 September 2010.

Mobile Voices is an academic-community partnership to research and design a platform for low-wage immigrants in LA to publish stories about their lives and their communities directly from their mobile phones. This low-cost, open source, customizable, and easy to deploy multimedia mobile storytelling platform will be designed in collaboration with its users, and will help recent immigrants who lack computer access gain greater participation in the digital public sphere.

In this talk, Charlotte will describe the Mobile Voices project and discuss key themes that have arisen for the Mobile Voices project team, including participatory technology design, community digital storytelling, and digital inclusion through mobile-phone based platforms. She will then describe the key technological and social issues that have arisen in the process of adapting Mobile Voices for India and the opportunities and challenges this presents.

About Charlotte Lapsansky

Charlotte Lapsansky is a PhD Candidate and American Association of University Women Dissertation Fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. Charlotte has a background in development communication and mass media campaigns addressing gender and health in India. At Annenberg, her research interests include communication for social change, participatory development communications, community mobilization and strategic campaign planning. For the past two years, she has been a team member for Mobile Voices, a participatory project which has created a Drupal-based digital storytelling platform for first-generation, low-wage migrant workers in Los Angeles, allowing them to create and publish stories about their communities directly from their mobile phones. Currently, Charlotte is collaborating with organizations in India to customize and adapt the mobile voices platform social endeavours in India.

VIDEOS

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/charlotte-lapsansky-talk