Centre for Internet and Society

Digital humanities: How social sciences may benefit from the digital revolution?

praskrishna — 2011-04-05T04:06:22Z

Centre for Contemporary Studies in collaboration with the Centre for Internet and Society presents a talk on Digital Humanities by Dominique Boullier, Professor at Sciences Po Paris on 9 July, 2010 at the Centre for Contemporary Studies.

This talk is in the context of the shift from traditional uses of digital power: databases, online questionnaires, and statistic analyses, to new uses of digital techniques for exploring digital data: producing datascapes from the huge amount of unstructured expressions on the Web and from the traces left by various kinds of behaviour. Starting with an example from the sociology of controversies redesigned by web crawling and visualization techniques, the speaker raises the following questions: How can we fill the gap between qualitative and quantitative analysis by using digital networks resources? How can we fill the gap between individual and structure when analyzing a phenomenon through digital lenses? In assessing the opportunities in the studies of social phenomena offered by using digital tools and web sources of data, the speaker seeks to demonstrate that it gives room for new social theory that can get rid of the concepts of “institutions”, “market” and “emergence” as unquestioned a priori.

All are cordially invited
Tea / Coffee will be served at 3.30 p.m.
Venue: Seminar Hall, Centre for Contemporary Studies (Formerly TIFR Mathematics Building), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/digital-humanities

UID Act may be released for debate, may be introduced in monsoon session

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T11:27:53Z

An article by Karen Leigh & Surabhi Agarwal in livemint on June 30, 2010.

The government has moved to create a legal basis for its ambitious project to provide all residents with numeric identity cards and guarantee the safety of demographic and biometric data being collected for it.

The draft National Identification Authority of India Act, 2010, was put up for public debate on Tuesday, and is likely to be introduced when Parliament convenes for its monsoon session.

The Act provides for the creation of the National Identity Authority of India to oversee the implementation of the Aadhaar project, but its jurisdiction will not extend to Jammu and Kashmir.

“This Bill will give the authority a legislative framework to function,” said R.S. Sharma, director general of the Unique Identification Authority ofIndia (UIDAI), the nodal agency currently overseeing Aadhaar.

Sharma said the Bill contains provisions that will make sure that sensitive data is protected and there are no hacking attempts. It lays down that “the authority shall ensure the security and confidentiality of identity information of individuals”.

UIDAI is collecting fingerprints and eye scans of all residents, along with other information, for Aadhaar.

The Bill “will also make sure that data related to a citizen’s caste or religion is not collected or chronicled”, Sharma added.

The Bill lays down that impersonation using Aadhaar data can lead to a three-year jail term and a fine of Rs10,000. Unauthorized collection or dissemination of identity information will also invite a three-year jail term, or a Rs1 lakh fine, or both.

The heftiest penalty of Rs1 crore along with three years’ imprisonment has been specified for unauthorized access to the central database, which will contain all individual details collected for Aadhaar.

Although the Bill lays down that no information stored in the database shall be revealed by UIDAI officials, it allows disclosure of personal information in a case of national security. Information can be disclosed on the direction of an officer of joint secretary level or above in the Union government, with the approval of the minister in charge.

But civil rights activists say the safety measures in the Bill are not enough.

“It doesn’t have any of the safeguards and provisions necessary to protect the rights of citizens. It’s only protecting the interests of the UIDAI,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society and a critic of the Aadhaar project.

“They have criminalized an imaginary crime—if the technology were infallible, which is what they claim biometrics is, then you can’t create ghost identities. They’re saying that ghost identities will still be there; that the technology is, in fact, not foolproof.”

Rahul Matthan, founding partner of law firm Trilegal, said the Bill will give a legal basis to UIDAI for collecting data and allotting identities.

“Provisions in the Act on data protection are limited as it can’t be a substitute for an over-arching data protection legislation in the country, which will deal with all kinds of citizen data,” he said.

The Union government is mulling over a separate privacy Bill to safeguard individual data privacy, as reported by Mint on 21 June. The move is aimed at deflecting worries over the safety of the immense amount of data it proposes to collect about its citizens for various programmes, including Aadhaar.

Read the original article in livemint.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/UID-in-monsoon-session

Activists welcome privacy Bill, but point out concerns

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T11:42:47Z

Experts have welcomed the government's move to bring in a law for protecting individual privacy, amid concerns about the potential misuse of personal data it is collecting to execute social welfare and security schemes.

But they warn that overlaps with existing laws, a limited consultation process and failure to keep up with technological advances could undercut the utility of the planned legislation.

The Union government has set up a panel of secretary-level officials to prepare a blueprint for a law to protect individual privacy and personal data from misuse, even by the government, Mint reported on Monday.

The government is collecting personal data to operate schemes such as Aadhaar--a project to provide numeric identity cards to all residents, and the National Intelligence Grid (Natgrid), which will track information obtained by 11 law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

These agencies can access details of phone calls, credit card transactions, visa, immigration and property records, and driving licences of all citizens, as well as their iris and thumb-prints.

Lawrence Liang, a lawyer who works with Bangalore-based Alternative Law Forum, said the planned law will check the manner in which private companies use the personal data of citizens.

"Currently, there are only private contracts between individuals and companies on how personal data is used. With this legislation, the individual is more empowered. The state can back him better in case of a dispute," he said.

Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, which has protested Aadhaar's project structure, also welcomed the move.

"The privacy Bill guidelines are fairly broad. It is early days yet. Their will be a large overlap between the privacy and Aadhaar Bills," he said.

Faking biometric data, for instance, isn't a violation of privacy in the proposed law but could be criminally cognizable under the Aadhaar Bill, Abraham said. "It will be interesting to see how these issues are tackled as there are several nuances and grey areas."

A scientist at the Institute for Genomics and Integrative Biology in New Delhi said new kinds of privacy issues will emerge because of the imminent rise of bioinformatics applications.

There are no products or applications today that rely solely on biometric information to breach individual privacy, he said, requesting anonymity.

"But within five years, it will be easier to collect biometric information and link it to other details such as credit card information and driving licence numbers on a large scale. There could then be issues of privacy that will emerge," he added.

Leo Saldanah, coordinator at the Bangalore-based Environment Support Group and another critic of Aadhaar, said the planned privacy Bill is a sham.

"Privacy is anyway enumerated in our constitutional rights under Article 21. But governments have anyway accessed information via phone taps unencumbered," he said. "I don't think the existence of legislation per se will change matters on the ground."

Link to the article on DailyMe

For the article in Livemint

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/privacy-bill

Peeping Toms In Your Inbox

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T11:42:11Z

Nothing’s safe any more—not your mobile number, nor your e-mail—as they’re put on offer for the benefit of telemarketers, writes Namrata Joshi and Neha Bhatt in an article published in the Outlook.

It was Saturday morning and Sneha Gupta wanted to book a table for dinner at a Delhi restaurant called Rodeo. So she called up a telephone directory service and procured the restaurant’s phone number, firmly nixing the operator’s seemingly casual offer to also provide numbers of similar restaurants. But that wasn’t the end of the story. The next day, Sunday brunch with her extended family was interrupted by calls from sundry restaurants enquiring if she’d be interested in hosting parties and events—at a discount.

“Instead of enjoying the food, the company and the conversation, I was busy ticking off these guys. Why were they assuming I wanted to organise a party? How did they get my mobile number to blatantly infringe on my private family time?” asks Sneha. She got no answers from them, but the sequence of events is clear: the telephone directory service sold Sneha’s contact details to marketers who broadly assumed, from her Rodeo outing, that she was a party animal, and decided to bombard her with similar offers.

Something similar happened to media professional Raghav Agarwal. He paid off his bank loan for a car in two-and-a-half years instead of the stipulated five, happy to stop living off credit. But from the next day, he was inundated with calls offering him bigger and better credit for everything—from house to car to education. “It was awfully distracting to deal with this while trying to meet deadlines,” he recounts. The fact that he had paid back the loan ahead of time had, by hook or by crook, reached financial outfits who used the information to serenade what they saw as an attractive catch.

For Kuhu Tanvir, these attentions come laced with a hint of menace. The film student was startled to find herself receiving unsolicited calls from unknown vendors offering to maintain the water purifier installed in the recesses of her kitchen. “It’s scary to think,” she says, “that there are people out there who even know which products you’ve bought for your house.” It was equally unnerving for film producer Gaurang Jalan to have his personal details passed on to data-miners by none other than a prominent Calcutta club (“strangers now call you on your birthday, offering schemes”). All those out there accosted by calls offering car insurance just at the time their policy is up for renewal will know exactly how they felt....

8 Ways In Which You’re Being Intruded Upon

Privacy is being redefined in India, with the lines between the public and the private blurring not just for celebrities but also for ordinary citizens...
Personal details like your phone number, date of birth, credit history, bank loans, insurance policies, white goods purchases, favourite restaurants and nightclubs are bought and sold among cellphone operators, banks, shops, telephone directory services, credit card companies, hospitals, hotels, elite clubs and even your locality’s residents’ welfare association.
Unsolicited telemarketing calls, spam SMSes and e-mails intrude incessantly on your private space, time
Your online purchases and searches, archived e-mails and documents are being tracked for marketing purposes. Social networking groups and search engines stand accused of sharing user information and contact details.
Personal pictures, information about relationships on social networking sites are being misused by online predators and molesters.
Identity theft is fast emerging as a threat.
Surveillance cameras and intrusive frisking have become a way of life, at airports, cinema halls, malls, hospitals, hotels, etc.
TV cameras and sting operations blur the line between individual privacy and public interest.
People encouraged and offered inducements to bare all about their lives on TV. Shows like Emotional Atyachar, Splitsvilla, Truth Love Cash play out individual dating rituals and infidelity games for the masses.

7 Steps You Can Take To Protect Yourself

Give out your mobile number cautiously, if at all; don’t print it on the visiting cards you hand out generously. Give only your landline number if you have to, to avoid being constantly disturbed.
Be wary of filling in random forms at retail stores and restaurants, or the gift voucher you’re offered in return for your friends’ names and phone numbers.
Be alert while shopping with your debit or credit card. The retailer may be also swiping the card on his computer to feed your contact information into it.
Even though the Do Not Call facility has not worked for a majority of users, you lose nothing by registering for it on www.donotcall.gov. You can’t complain about unsolicited calls unless you register.
Online, be cautious of the personal information you reveal, such as your date of birth and photographs, which make you especially vulnerable to identity theft. Use Google dashboard and the new Facebook privacy settings to protect yourself.
Get the latest browser that allows you to delete cookies-as-you-go, delete your browsing history regularly, learn to encrypt your e-mail.
Always read privacy clauses in bank and other forms, and on websites carefully, and remember to tick opt-out boxes if you don’t want to be besieged with new product information.

For celebrities, the lines between the private and the public have always been blurred. But in a transforming India, ordinary people like Sneha, Raghav, Kuhu and Gaurang are finding themselves intruded upon in newer ways—from the trivial to the serious—and across varied platforms, from the mobile phone to the internet, TV to the surveillance camera. And, with citizens like them mostly dimly aware of how to safeguard, renegotiate or fight for their right to privacy—enshrined in the Constitution, but vaguely defined—in a changing world, and no effective laws to rein in those who violate it, the infringements and threats are set to increase.

Take telemarketing, perhaps the most insistent manifestation today of this marauding culture. It started out as an irritant, became a nuisance and is now a virtually unchecked invasion. “In the West, telemarketing is an unobtrusive experience thanks to opt-in services by which users get calls only if they ask for them. Moreover, governments discourage telemarketers through strict regulations. In India, it’s a menace,” says Supreme Court advocate Harsh Pathak, who has litigated against telemarketing calls and the sale of personal data to companies.

Indeed, you can chart an entire day in your life with these intrusions as markers. You get woken up with the SMS: “Hare Krishna. Today is Ekadashi. Fasting from grains and beens (sic). Chant Hare Krishna mahamantra 25 rounds (sic) and be happy. Hari bol.” Through the day, they keep coming, both SMSes and human voices, trying to sell you everything from houses and farmland to hotel deals, sauna belts, equity tips and public speaking skills. And, if you happen to be even an occasional club-hopper, your phone could carry on beeping till two or three am, with SMSes announcing the next gig in town.

It’s clear from this virtually round-the-clock barrage that our personal lives are up for sale in an aggressive marketing-driven environment. Be it telecom companies, banks, shops, credit card firms, DVD rental libraries, insurance, auto dealers, clubs or hotels, they all profit from sharing personal information—phone numbers, credit history, spending patterns, shopping preferences and much else—about their customers. “The irony is that the corporate world has no accountability or transparency in India but the public has turned transparent for them,” says media analyst and columnist Sudheesh Pachauri.

Those often identified as the prime offenders in this game are quick to shrug off blame, or not respond, as Outlook found. ICICI Bank could not “participate in this story”, Airtel declined comment while Vodafone did not respond at all. Rajat Mukarji, chief corporate officer, Idea Cellular, who did respond, said phone companies were unfairly blamed for unsolicited calls. “Such data is available everywhere now, you can buy it off the Net for Rs 150,” he argued. HDFC Bank’s chief information security officer Vishal Salvi also stoutly denies that databases are sold, and when asked why existing customers are deluged with new product and service offers, says: “It only happens on a need-to-know, need-to-do-basis.” That’s the theory, but in practice, many customers find that the “need” seems to be defined by the banks, not their clients.

So where does that leave the consumer? Well, says Bangalore-based freelance writer and photographer Darshan Manakkal, “On a good day, I plead with the telemarketer to never call me again. With the more persistent ones, I try a different approach, like putting them on hold while I go for a bath. On really bad days, I just abuse them.” Others, like Chennai professional P.K. Pradeep, who shared with us pages upon pages of (extremely polite) e-mails to Airtel and Vodafone requesting them to halt unsolicited calls and SMSes, have been more persistent, but have achieved little beyond the robotic response, “We’re looking into it.”

Signing up, along with some 66 million souls, at the National Do Not Call (NDNC) Registry set up in October 2007, provided no protection to Pradeep, nor did changing phone numbers. “I got a new number from Vodafone recently, and would you believe it, the very next day I was bombarded with promotional messages. They had clearly passed on my number,” he says. The NDNC of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is now widely acknowledged as a failure. There was a brief dip in calls, but they resumed with renewed gusto. You could get lost in the maze of explanations for why NDNC doesn’t work; what’s clear, though, is that it has no capacity to deal with telemarketers who fail to register with it—like all those unknown real estate companies who bombard you with SMSes—and little teeth to deal with those who do. Fines are laughably minuscule—ranging from Rs 500 to Rs 1,000—and the threat of disconnecting a telemarketer’s line is an empty one when it can quickly sign up and assault consumers from another connection. In view of its failure, a Do Call registry has been mooted, on the more consumer-friendly principle that those who want to be called should opt in rather than opt out. Consultations are on but its future shape is still unclear, with telecom companies (no surprise there) opposed to it. “We have gone far with dnc. To now backtrack and try something new doesn’t seem feasible,” says Mukarji.

“The whole problem of unregistered telemarketers will continue and telecom companies will go on blaming them,” S. Saroja, legal coordinator for the Chennai-based Citizen Consumer and Civic Action Group, predicts pessimistically. The group has tried, to no avail, to get phone companies to trace bulk SMSes, which she maintains are easily traceable. “Telemarketing is a Rs 50,000-crore industry and growing at 20 per cent every year. Nobody wants to upset it as everybody is making money out of it, including the government,” says Supreme Court advocate Nivedita Sharma, who has fought her own battles against the sale of privacy.

Meanwhile, an expanding online world is throwing up its own challenges. By 2013, according to some estimates, India will have the third-largest internet user base in the world. Already, with 50 million-plus users and growing, it is a magnet for marketers, who as we know—without perhaps fully internalising the fact—avidly follow the telltale digital pugmarks and trails we leave on the Net as we e-mail, search, shop and obsessively communicate with each other on platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

These spaces on the Net, and their counterparts on other media, seem to be drawing us into an open, sharing, even confessional, culture, without our being fully aware of our vulnerability. We occasionally get intimations of it—like when our e-mail account is hacked into and bizarre mail sent out on our behalf; our Facebook pictures downloaded and their obscene versions floated on Orkut, as happened to two Delhi airhostesses recently; or vicious, revealing comments on our personal lives posted amid the banter on our favourite chat sites.

However, as media analysts point out, there is little push in the Indian environment to do what Western users of Facebook did recently: forcing it to change privacy policies and settings by protesting against its inadequate privacy controls. Here too, as with telemarketing, the regulatory environment is missing.

“In India, there are no regulatory bodies related to online privacy concerns like in the US and Canada where there are privacy commissions which force corporations to make changes in their privacy policy in the interest of citizens,” says Sunil Abraham, executive director, the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.

But individuals are to blame too. Saad Akhtar of naukri.com points out: “We don’t even read the fine print on privacy policies on websites, not realising that a lot of the data we upload even on Indian social networking websites becomes their property, which they can share with advertisers.”

Indeed, Akhila Sivadas of the Centre for Advocacy and Research, says that privacy issues are creating a cultural crisis of sorts, with no understanding of them, leave alone resolution. “Privacy is something that has been negotiated in a personal, intimate, micro universe. We have drawn our individual lakshman rekhas. But we have not debated on privacy norms as a society in a public space, which is very significant in the wake of how the mass media and social networking media is exploding in our country,” she says. It’s leading to an uneasy blend of the very closed and guarded, and the extremely open and no-holds-barred in our society. “There is no robust normative system in place, and corporate entities are exploiting that void,” she says. “The market is primed to take advantage and exploit existing conditions for profit. We are allowing the market to overreach itself,” agrees adman and social commentator Santosh Desai.

So what should be done? Obviously, the R-word—regulation—is critical, and hopefully, the cry for it from the ground will become stronger, as intrusions gather apace. But it would help for consumers to get smarter. Some of the questions to ask ourselves are: should I really be patronising a phone directory service, as Sneha did, that states that it shares information with third-party members and is not responsible for that information being misused by third parties? Should I hand out my visiting card, with my mobile number on it, to all and sundry? Should I reflexively press the “I agree to the terms & conditions” button while signing up for net services without reading the fine print? As Desai puts it, we need to be “mindful, suspicious and careful”. Without, of course, descending into paranoia. The irony, getting sharper and sharper in our lives, is that the very platforms that are used to invade our privacy also enrich our lives in manifold ways.

Read the original article in Outlook

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/peeping-toms-in-inbox

I don't want my fingerprints taken

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T11:41:46Z

Through this article published in Down to Earth, Nishant Shah looks at the role of the state as arbiter of our privacy.

The census, or the collection of citizen data, has been a fundamental aspect of governance for most modern nations. It reminds us that modern governance has been wedded to information, even before it became fashionable to talk of the information age after the digital explosion. Different governments have sought mechanisms to gather and centralize citizen data to effectively administer public services, equity and justice. We have appointed the state as a repository of this data and also the trustee of privacy of this data.

However, lately, in India as well as other countries, there has been a growing anxiety about the role of the state as the arbiter of our privacy.

As public-private-partnerships become a desirable norm for many governments, the citizen data is available to private players who can exploit it for vested interest. In everyday life, this proliferation of citizen data can manifest itself from spam calls by product bearing companies that all of us experience on a regular basis to shattering violence inflicted on selective communities as was seen in Gujarat in the aftermath of the communal conflict in Godhra. While we have, reluctantly, invested our faith in the government in offering our personal data, it comes as a shock that the data has been compromised in the government’s partnerships with the market.

We have always known that even in its physical form, the citizen data often travels through insurance companies, private healthcare systems, financial databases and opens us to invasive surveillance by their operators. But the data is not immediately linked to our bodies. It is possible to deny the data related to our name, sex, occupation and class, or escape it, if necessary. The data resides in large databases, so huge that they fail to make sense to anybody who has to browse through the records.

With the digital data gathering—the kinds that the Unique Identity Project (now known as Aadhar) uses—these safety nets were already weakened. In its digital form, the data suddenly became vulnerable to algorithmic searches and queries that allow for extremely customized and selective data to be made available to operators who are not accountable to us.

Moreover, the digital data can now travel easily across fault lines and previously accepted boundaries to mark citizens in ways that make survival precarious. The anxieties that have surrounded the Aadhar project have been fuelled by the lack of transparent accountability about citizen data usage.

These anxieties around digital data collection get aggravated by the introduction of the biometric protocols into the system. Even with digital data, there was a certain amount of autonomy and agency available to the citizen, to either morph or escape the data production that the system required. Like in earlier times, the relationship of the data was not with the individual citizen’s body but with the citizen as a representative of the larger population. There was no undeniable link that would bind the data on the physiological presence of the citizen.

Biometric system makes the citizen data personal—they tie it up with our inalienable self and body. The data once gathered offers no escape from the information webs, and the possibilities of abuse and violence in such a link between citizen data and the individual citizen’s presence are mind-boggling. We are talking about a dystopian sci-fi vision where each individual has a unique relationship through his/her unique identity with systems of justice, regulation, consumption and production. Everything from what you wear to what you eat to who you are friends with and what you do in your spare time can be tied to your physical body and self. This posits a fundamental threat to the human rights, dignity and security offered by the Constitution.

The census promises the safety of the citizen through anonymity. The biometric data collection violates this safety and suddenly makes us vulnerable to being single, unique and alone in our identity which can be exploited by anybody. The biometric fixity of our identity identifies us, marks us and ties us down to the mass abuse that any information system is always susceptible to. There will be no escape.

Read the article in Down to Earth

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/fingerprints-taken

Facebook, privacy and India

sunil — 2013-09-26T11:40:00Z

Does Facebook's decision to open out user information and data to third party websites amount to an invasion of privacy and should users' seriously consider getting out of the site? Sunil Abraham doesn't think so.

Even if you aren’t a Facebook user (and most likely than not you are), chances are that you’ve at least heard that there are problems related to privacy settings on the site. The net has been abuzz with indignation over a decision by Facebook to open out user information and data to third party websites. A number of high profile Facebook users (and many more low profile ones) completely deactivated their accounts after the changes were announced by Founder and Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and critics immediately pointed out that users were losing control of their personal information.

There have been a slew of articles condemning the move, and highlighting “dramatic” changes to the sites privacy policy. Most alarming perhaps being this slideshow compiled by Matt McKeon.

All these are legitimate concerns, but how worried should we be really? Should you be seriously considering getting off the site? “As long as you are a little smart about what you upload on Facebook, there is no need to do anything as drastic as deleting your account”, says Sunil Abraham the executive director of the Centre for Internet & society, based out of Bangalore. Abraham said that the issue has shown people the risk of uploading certain types of photographs and content on to the net, but most importantly highlights the need for a privacy commission in India.

“The EU has a commission which makes certain directives to sites like Facebook from time to time, which are then adhered to. India should also seriously consider setting up a similar commission, he said.

Facebook has mantained that its privacy settings are prominently displayed and can be easily accessed by users. But critics say that it is much too long and convoluted. The BBC reports that the policy in its current form has 50 different settings, 170 options and runs to 5,830 words, making it longer than the US Constitution. And the sheer volume of outrage has prompted a rethink of the privacy policy by Facebook, which since held an internal meeting to discuss the affair.

Abraham agrees that the issue of privacy is a complex one, but noted that the definition of what constituted “privacy” varied from culture to culture. “In India, it is perfectly normal for someone to ask someone else how much they earn, while such a question would be completely outside the boundaries of propriety in most Western countries”, he said. The issue with Facebook, he says, is that its desicion to change its privacy settings was tantamount to a breach of contract. “People who joined Facebook did so because they were comfortable with the settings and regulations available on the site. For Facebook to suddenly change that violates the spirit of that contract”, he said.

Meanwhile the founder and chief executive of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg has written an article in the Washington Post today directly addressing issues relating to privacy controls on the popular social networking site.

“The biggest message we have heard recently is that people want easier control over their information. Simply put, many of you thought our controls were too complex. Our intention was to give you lots of granular controls; but that may not have been what many of you wanted. We just missed the mark,”said Zuckerberg.

Read the article in Livemint

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/facebook-privacy-india

The Internet, Culture, and Society - Looking at Past, Present, and Future Worldwide

praskrishna — 2011-10-21T10:13:23Z

It is now well known that with 4.5 billion mobile phone owners in the world and increased Internet penetration, global cultures and communities have experienced shifts in their economic, political, and social well-being due to the digital revolution. As a scholar and consultant who works worldwide, Prof Ramesh Srinivasan will illustrate how new media technologies have been used creatively to enable political movements in Kyrgyzstan, literacy and educational reform in India, and economic development across the developing world. In addition to this, he will discuss some of digital culture's biggest challenges, including considering how the Web can start to empower different types of cultural perspectives and knowledges. The talk will be live streamed.

Prof. Ramesh Srinivasan

Ramesh Srinivasan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Studies and Design|Media Arts at the University of California Los Angeles. He is a hybrid of an engineer, designer, social scientist, and ethnographer. His research and consultancy work focuses on the interaction between new media technologies and global cultures and communities. This involves studying the ways in which information technology shapes global education, health, economics, politics, governance, and social movements. He works in such diverse parts of the world as Kyrgyzstan, India, Native America, and more. Ramesh earned a doctorate in design from Harvard University, a Master of Science in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT Media Laboratory and a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University.

For more information on Dr. Ramesh Srinivasan

video

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/Internet-Culture-Society

May 2010 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-08-10T10:00:54Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet & Society. We bring you updates of our research, news and media coverage and information on our events in this bulletin of May 2010

News Updates

India slowly gets to grips with ecommerce
Growth in computer use and Internet penetration will help e-commerce.
http://cis-india.org/news/India-gets-to-grips-with-ecommerce
World Wide Web Consortium for All
Indian web designers have long ignored needs of people with different disabilities but a new dedicated wiki aspires to change that, writes Malvika Tegta
http://cis-india.org/news/www-for-all
Biometry Is Watching
In its first steps, the UID drive encounters practical problems, raises ethical questions, reports Sugata Srinivasaraju in Outlook.
http://cis-india.org/news/biometry-is-watching
What Women Want: The ability debates
In this article published in the Hindu, Deepa Alexander argues that the proposed amendments to the Copyright Act (1957) are restrictive and discriminatory.
http://cis-india.org/news/what-women-want
CIS – Internet is neither good nor bad
This post is also available in: French, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil)
http://cis-india.org/news/Internet-not-good-not-bad
Right to Read event in Brussels
A 'Right to Read' event is being held at the European Parliament, Brussels on 4 May 2010.
http://cis-india.org/news/right-to-read-brussels
Mapping the things that affect us
'Map for making change' is a project using geographical mapping techniques to support struggles for social justice in India
http://cis-india.org/news/mapping-the-things
'UID is being forced'
CIS feels that the UID project is forced on the citizens.
http://cis-india.org/news/UID-is-forced
ID programme faces first challenge over privacy, data
The government is looking to the ID programme to help ensure that various welfare programmes reach the poor
http://cis-india.org/news/id-programe-faces-challenge
Their India has no borders
Bangalore felt far for them, they would mark it outside the country. India, for migrant labourers, is different from the India we know
http://cis-india.org/news/their-india-has-no-borders
Scrap UID project, say people's organisations
The unique identification number project is executed without any legislative or parliamentary sanction.
http://cis-india.org/news/Scrap-UID-project
UID info can be misused
Public organisations, NGOs and concerned citizens feel UID may become an easy database for anti-social elements.
http://cis-india.org/news/uid-info-can-be-misused
UID project draws flak from civil rights activists
The unique identification project is drawing a flak from civil rights activists.
http://cis-india.org/news/UID-project-draws-flak
Citizens' forums want UID project scrapped
Citizens' forums and groups have stepped up their attack on the Unique Identification Project calling for the complete scrapping of the project.
http://cis-india.org/news/citizens-forums-want-UID-scrapped
Disability rights groups oppose changes to Copyright Act
Disability rights groups are up in arms against a Bill proposing an amendment to the Copyright Act, 1952, reports Aarti Dhar in an article published in the Hindu on April 23, 2010.
http://cis-india.org/news/disability-groups-oppose-copyright-amendments
Centre for Study of Culture and Society seeks Programme Associate
The Higher Education Cell, Centre for Study of Culture and Society is looking for a Programme Associate to help develop e-content and conduct training programmes for projects under its Social Justice and Networked Higher Education Initiatives.
http://cis-india.org/news/position-announcement

Research

Digital Natives at Republica 2010
Nishant Shah from the Centre for Internet and Society, made a presentation at the Re:Publica 2010, in Berlin, about its collaborative project (with Hivos, Netherlands) "Digital Natives with a Cause?" The video for the presentation, along with an extensive abstract is online.
http://cis-india.org/research/dn/dnrepub

Accessibility

Right to Read in the European Parliament: A Report
The European Blind Union and the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue supported an event sponsored by seven MEPs in the European Parliament to discuss the way forward for EU to support the Treaty for the Blind, Visually Impaired and Other Reading Disabled which has been proposed at the World Intellectual Property Organisation by Brazil, Mexico, Ecuador and Paraguay.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/accessibility/blog/right-to-read-europe

Intellectual Property

The 2010 Special 301 Report Is More of the Same, Slightly Less Shrill Pranesh Prakash examines the numerous flaws in the Special 301 from the Indian perspective, to come to the conclusion that the Indian government should openly refuse to acknowledge such a flawed report. He notes that the Consumers International survey, to which CIS contributed the India report, serves as an effective counter to the Special 301 report.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/blog/2010-special-301

Exceptions and Limitations in Indian Copyright Law for Education: An Assessment
This paper examines the nature of exceptions and limitations in copyright law for the purposes of the use of copyrighted materials for education. It looks at the existing national and international regime, and argues for why there is a need for greater exceptions and limitations to address the needs of developing countries. The paper contextualizes the debate by looking at the high costs of learning materials and the impediment caused to e-learning and distance education by strong copyright regimes.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/blog/exceptions-and-limitations

Technological Protection Measures in the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010
In this post Pranesh Prakash conducts a legal exegesis of section 65A of the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010, which deals with the stuff that enables 'Digital Rights/Restrictions Management', i.e., Technological Protection Measures. He notes that while the provision avoids some mistakes of the American law, it still poses grave problems to consumers, and that there are many uncertainties in it still.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/blog/tpm-copyright-amendment

Telecom

China Club instead of Bombay Club?
Emulate China's coordinated policies for strategic sectors, and we'll rely less on commodity exports, says Shyam Ponappa in his article in the Business Standard on May 13, 2010.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/telecom/blog/China-club-Bombay-club

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/may-2010-bulletin

India slowly gets to grips with ecommerce

praskrishna — 2011-04-04T06:46:27Z

Growth in computer use and Internet penetration will help e-commerce.

Vipul Modi is a busy high court lawyer in India's financial capital Mumbai. Like many people, he uses the Internet to buy rail and airline tickets as well as pay his utility bills. Yet when it comes to buying other products online, the 44-year-old has misgivings, particularly about the security of his bank account details and other personal data.

"Online shopping is not something that we feel comfortable with... because the responsibility of something being misused is on the consumer compared with the United States, where it's on the credit card companies," he told AFP.

"And I'd still not buy some things online because I still like to go and see what it is."

From books to groceries, Internet shopping has become popular in many Western countries for people with disposable income, busy lifestyles and unpredictable working hours.

As Indian society, particularly in big cities such as Mumbai and the capital New Delhi, changes along similar lines on the back of the country's economic expansion, retailers are now looking to follow suit.

Gift shop chain The Bombay Store last month became the latest outlet to launch an online facility, following in the footsteps of major retailers such as Big Bazaar, Pantaloons and shopping portals on websites like www.rediff.com.

"Online shopping in India is on the cusp of taking off," said Deepa Thomas, a senior manager at the online auction site www.ebay.in, which has 2.5 million registered users in nearly 2,500 locations across the country.

"But when it comes to things like product shopping there's still a fairly long way to go."

For a country with 1.1 billion people, India's use of computers and the Internet is still low, despite being a major player in global information technology and outsourcing.

At present only eight percent of Indian households have access to a personal computer, the country's IT and communications minister, Sachin Pilot, said on a visit to Washington in March.

Of India's estimated 60 million Internet users, about six million shop online, with the ecommerce market thought to be worth about 100 billion rupees (2.2 billion dollars) and expanding at about 30 percent a year, Thomas said.

At present, social networking, email and accessing news and sports sites remain the mainstay of computer use for most Indians.

Pilot has predicted an "exponential growth" in computer use and Internet penetration in the coming years, as the government works to extend broadband access into 250,000 out of India's more than 600,000 villages.

Industry analysts such as Nishant Shah, director of research at the Centre for Internet and Society in the southern city of Bangalore, India's IT hub, said that can only help develop ecommerce.

"The countries where Internet shopping has been on the upswing are countries with highly developed broadband infrastructure which allows for quick, easy and secure connections," Shah said in an email interview.

"The lack of strong digital infrastructure means that the Internet is still used by a large majority of people for 'functional' things - jobs, retrieving information, communication, social networking."

Unlike other countries, India's half-a-billion mobile phone subscribers could drive the sector's expansion, he added.

The government is currently auctioning 3G licences, which would enable more users to access data at high-speed, instead of having to rely on slow, dial-up connections at places such as public cyber cafes, making transactions easier.

Thomas said eBay was launching a mobile phone application for buying and selling by the end of June, predicting that "mobile web is going to become a big part of developing the market".

For Asim Dalal, managing director of The Bombay Store, going online makes business sense in the global economy as it expands the company's reach beyond India's borders.

"International visitors comprise approximately 25 percent of our sales," he said in a statement. "Since they mostly are on visit or tour to India, their repeat purchases for gifting or home were restricted."

But if and how quickly Indian consumers will change habits is hard to tell, with a preference for cash transactions and personal contact with suppliers, particularly for food and clothing at bustling markets.

Read the original article in the Independent

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/India-gets-to-grips-with-ecommerce

Biometry Is Watching

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T12:08:26Z

In its first steps, the UID drive encounters practical problems, raises ethical questions, reports Sugata Srinivasaraju in Outlook.

Three women are fighting to take one chair in a classroom of a government school in Chelur village, in Gubbi taluka of Tumkur district. One sits on the lap of another and the third tries to push them both off the chair. What all three want is to be the first to be profiled under the Centre’s ambitious Aadhaar or unique identity number (UID) project. Their squabbling holds up the documentation by nearly 20 minutes, and the crowd outside, standing in line in the afternoon sun, grows restless. To calm them, the village revenue secretary orders the distribution of another round of buttermilk.

Chelur is one of four villages in the district picked for field trials before the 12-digit UIDs are assigned to people later in the year. Besides Tumkur, the pilot project is simultaneously running in seven villages of Mysore district. Each village has been given a target of 2,400-2,500 profiles to be completed in 20 days. This involves photographing the face, imaging the iris and scanning all ten digits of each person profiled and assigned a UID.

Villagers are enthusiastic about this rigorous profiling process even though there’s little awareness about the true purpose of the exercise. This is because of some falsehoods that have somehow spread in these areas. Nagamma, an elderly woman coming out after being profiled, thinks her eyes had been tested and found to be in perfect condition. Another middle-aged woman thought the exercise would bring her a new ration card—one that would entitle her family to an extra four kilos of rice. Some others were in a tizzy that if they didn’t undergo this “photography” their BPL cards would be taken away. Most, however, had queued up because they didn’t want to be left out of a sarkari exercise their neighbours were submitting to. Of the dozen people Outlook spoke to, only Muniswamy could tell us that this process would ensure that no one had more than one voter ID card or ration card—the way it should be, unlike some in his village who had illegally acquired two of each.

The village authorities have been doing little to counter the misinformation because their attention is focused on other compelling matters, like meeting the assigned target. This is an important issue because gram panchayat elections have been declared in Karnataka and lots of youngsters set off for campaigning early in the morning and would be difficult to locate for profiling.

According to official figures, Chelur has a population of 5,000, with 3,640 people above the age of 18. A random selection of 2,400 has been made from this to meet the UID target. The number seems small, but handling it at the village level can be demanding for the local authorities—there’s no police for crowd control, refreshments have to be distributed and the computerised work has to be done despite the power outages. Using generators has become inevitable, for the villages get hardly four or five hours’ power supply.

Another problem lies in obtaining the fingerprints of rural folk: most of them are engaged in manual labour or farm work and arrive with dirty palms that defeat the biometric reading machines. Pails of water, detergent and towels are provided for cleaning up. Much time is lost in such rescanning and it goes against the official estimate of five minutes for the young, nine for the elderly.

Prasanna Kumar, the village secretary, admits to the problems. “We did not make an open announcement for the UID pilot because we didn’t want to attract large crowds. We quietly prepared a random list of 2,400 people from the ration card database and went door-to-door to invite them,” he says. “We have left out people above the age of 80 and under 18. We told people this identity number will help them access various government schemes. Fingerprinting is the toughest problem. Initially people were reluctant, but suddenly they have become curious.”

H. Gnanesh, the tehsildar, says the ongoing step is only “concept testing”; the next will be rechecking, in which those already profiled will verify their identity details against what has been stored. Only after that will the UID be issued. In Chelur village, the concept testing ended on May 4; rechecking began the very next day.

Some NGOs observing the process have noted the lack of awareness in villagers. “They are clueless about what they are taking part in,” say Mahadev Prasad and Murthy, of the Basava Seva Trust. Murthy says fingerprinting is a big problem. He speaks of Hommaragalli, in Mysore district, where some foreign experts had to be called in to take a look at the scanning machines.

Then there are larger issues. Away from the surging crowds in Chelur, civil society organisations like the Centre for Internet & Society, the Alternative Law Forum and PUCL have been demanding greater dialogue. In fact, they have even suggested a review of the scheme. They argue there is no clarity on how the government proposes to store and secure personal and biometric data, given the fact that various agencies such as banks, telecom companies and government departments would potentially access it. Security is a huge concern also because the software, hardware and expertise of foreign companies is being used. These NGOs say the UID data, the National Population Registry and the NATGRID, when connected, could prove a grave threat to civil liberties.

“First, a centralised database, like the UID will create, has never been safe,” says Sunil Abraham of CIS. “It needs to be decentralised like our various mail servers. Second, we feel the collection of biometric data is happening at the wrong end of the pyramid. Instead of putting the poor through the process first, why not start with those with financial dealings of Rs 1 crore and above. Third, one study says 48 per cent of our people cannot remember a 12-digit ID. Fourth, we need privacy laws in place before the UID regime sets in.”

Those problems apart, even raising the level of the current exercise—from small samples of a few thousand each to profiling the billion-plus population of India—could place severe demands on our shaky administration. There’s a mountain to be moved.

Read the original article in the Outlook

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/biometry-is-watching

‘UID is being forced’

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T12:20:18Z

CIS feels that the UID project is forced on the citizens.

The Centre for Internet and Society on Wednesday said the UID project — Aadhaar — is being forced on the citizens. Speaking to reporters, the centre’s executive director Sunil Abraham said: “The 16-digit UID number will be mentioned on the driver’s license, PAN card, ration card and voter’s identity card with other important data. It is not transparent. Since the UID database is available online, hackers can easily obtain vital information.’’

Read the article in the Times of India

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/UID-is-forced

ID programme faces first challenge over privacy, data

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T12:20:28Z

The government is looking to the ID programme to help ensure that various welfare programmes reach the poor

In the first significant challenge to the government’s ambitious programme to give more than one billion Indians a unique identification number, a group of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) are planning to take the government to court over a range of issues, including concerns over privacy and the safety of information.

About 100 NGOs, including Alternative Law Forum, Centre for Internet and Society, People’s Union for Civil Liberty and Slum Jagathu, have come together to oppose the implementation of the project in its current form, Mathew Thomas, general secretary of Citizens’ Action Forum, said in Bangalore on Wednesday.

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) “is not a statutory body, not having been created by any Act or under any law, but by executive fiat”, he said. “It is set up as an appendage to the Planning Commission. It cannot be scrutinized either by Parliament or the Comptroller and Auditor General.”

In what had been expected to become a hurdle to the project, those against it are citing data protection and privacy, factors that led to the failure of a similar initiative in the UK.

“The government could not prevent recent cyber attacks by Chinese hackers on its own websites. What guarantee is there that a centralized database would be safe?” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of Centre for Internet and Society, one of the groups opposed to the ID programme, which has been named Aadhaar. “Also, data collected might be misused to discriminate against minorities and other vulnerable sections of society.”

R.S. Sharma, UIDAI director general, declined to comment in detail.

“Everything is transparent. Whatever we have been doing, we have been putting it on our website,” he said. “As to their specific complaints, I will not be able to respond over the telephone.”

The NGOs are also questioning the cost of the project and why no feasibility study was conducted. UIDAI is headed by Nandan Nilekani, co-founder and former chief executive of Infosys Technologies Ltd, India’s second largest software firm.

“First, the government has to respond how the chairman was chosen and appointed,” Thomas said. “Would the same person in his earlier organization authorize a project involving thousands of crores without a preliminary project report on feasibility? Public money is being spent without accountability.”

Nilekani wasn’t reachable for comment.

The government is looking to the ID programme to help ensure that various welfare programmes reach the poor. This objective would be difficult to achieve, the NGOs said.

“In a country with 48% illiteracy, a 12-digit card might prove to be a handicap instead of help,” they said in a release. “The project in its present form must be scrapped.”

The NGOs also said that projected savings from the stemming of leakages owing to the ID programme were not authenticated or backed by independent data. “It’s surprising that the project is being implemented with no discussion in Parliament nor consultation with other political parties,” they said.

Follow the original story in Livemint

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/id-programe-faces-challenge

Scrap UID project, say people's organisations

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T12:26:57Z

The unique identification number project is executed without any legislative or parliamentary sanction.

Representatives of people's movements, mass organisations and institutions on Wednesday said the unique identification number (UID) project is being executed without any legislative or parliamentary sanction and demanded an end to it.

Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society told press persons here that neither the launch of the UID project nor the constitution of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) had any legislative sanction. Nothing is known of how the chairperson of the authority is selected, while the project proposes finger-printing of the entire population and storing of biometric and personal data of every person throughout his life and thereafter.

“Although the scheme is to only provide verification of identity, it is unclear what safeguards would prevent third parties from handling, sharing and utilising the data for any purpose,” he said. The UIDAI has agreed to use the services of foreign companies, their software and hardware. It appears that no thought has been give to the perils of placing in the hands of foreign companies data pertaining to the entire population of the country, Mr. Abraham felt. About the claims that the UID project will save crores of rupees by preventing misuse of various welfare schemes, Mr. Abraham questioned whether any feasibility study had been made in this regard.

The UID, the National Population Registry and the NATGRID, once combined and connected, pose grave concerns pertaining to civil liberties and fundamental rights.

Read the original article in the Hindu

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/Scrap-UID-project

UID info can be misused

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T12:26:27Z

Public organisations, NGOs and concerned citizens feel UID may become an easy database for anti-social elements.

The Unique Identification number (UID) could become an easy database for anti-social elements, according to public organisations, NGOs and concerned citizens. They felt that the UID should be discouraged till more transparency and accountability was introduced in the system.

They were speaking during a discussion on the UID here on Wednesday.

"Including so many details of individuals into a Central database could be dangerous," said Sunil Abraham, executive director, the centre for internet and society. He said various users of the data such as banks, telecom companies, government departments could potentially make it dangerous.

There are concerns that this will also lead to a police raj in the state. "As it is now there are so many anti-establishment movements, it will become very easy for the cops to arrest people and put them behind bars on the pretext of biometric mismatch. And nobody can question the technology," said Jagadish Chandra.

See the original article in the Deccan Chronicle

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/uid-info-can-be-misused

UID project draws flak from civil rights activists

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T12:26:20Z

The unique identification project is drawing a flak from civil rights activists.

The unique identification project drew flak from civil liberties activists in the city on Wednesday. "Unique identification is an encroachment of privacy. With the new technology, it will be easy to track people," members of Citizens Against UID / Aashar, a forum floated by those opposing the project, including PUCL and SICHREM, said. They said the project should not be implemented until people's participation was ensured.

Read the original article in DNA

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/UID-project-draws-flak