Centre for Internet and Society

JK Education 1

praskrishna — 2017-12-21T13:43:29Z

JK Education 1

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/home-images/JKEducation1.png

JK Education

praskrishna — 2017-12-19T15:32:26Z

JK Education

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/home-images/JKEducation.jpg

OA

praskrishna — 2017-11-27T15:11:10Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/home-images/OA.png

India Today Conclave Next 2017: Aadhaar was rushed, says MP Rajeev Chandrashekhar

praskrishna — 2017-11-26T06:41:07Z

Talking at the ongoing India Today Conclave Next 2017, MP Rajeev Chandrashekhar said that Aadhaar was rushed and foisted on the country by authorities that fail to first create a proper ecosystem. Chandrashekhar gave his comments at a keynote titled Privacy -- The Fundamental Right for the Digital Citizen.

The article by Priya Pathak was published by India Today on November 8, 2017.

Chandrashekhar, who has been vocal on the issues like data protection, privacy and net neutrality, said that the government should have created a proper ecosystem for Aadhaar by bringing norms and laws around data protection and privacy before asking people to sign up for the unique ID.

The MP talked about India's journey from being a largest unconnected world to becoming the largest connected world. But Chandrashekhar criticised the "flawed" Aadhaar and said that it was a classic example of how a government system would push for technology in governance without addressing key bits of the ecosystem around the citizen and the consumer.

"If that (Aadhaar) wasn't enough, the IT act and section 66A and its language and its vagueness and its potential for misuse was another example of the faults of a bureaucracy or a political system trying to legislate or create solutions in the digital world, " he said.

At the same time, he lauded the recent Supreme Court order that held all Indians had fundamental right to privacy. "The latest finding of Supreme Court of Privacy as fundamental right is a big deal and it will alter number of things going forward," he said. He added that there should be more debate and discussion on data privacy as there is an attempt to characterise data privacy as some of kind of elitist issue in India which it's not.

Privacy, especially for the digital world, currently is one of the most debated topics in India. The country in the past few years has seen a number of instances where a government or a private entity has knowingly or unknowingly compromised the data of its users. Recently a study published by Centre for Internet and Society, a Bengaluru-based organisation, revealed that private data of more 130 million Aadhaar card holders were leaked from four government websites.

The Supreme Court in August this year declared privacy as a fundamental right. A nine-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice J S Khehar has declared that "right to privacy is an intrinsic part of Right to Life and Personal Liberty under Article 21 and entire Part III of the Constitution".

The move has been praised by many including Rajeev Chadrashekhar who has said that it is a big welcome step. "It is clear that Aadhaar and all other legislations existing and proposed will have to meet the test of privacy being a fundamental right," he recently said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/india-today-priya-pathak-november-8-2017-india-today-conclave-next-2017-aadhaar-was-rushed-says-mp-rajeev-chandrashekhar

UNESCO Internet Universality Indicators consulted at the 8th Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum

praskrishna — 2017-08-23T02:05:44Z

“Internet Universality indicators should measure broad social implications of the Internet and serve as a powerful tool to foster sustainable development,” was a strong message delivered by Asia-Pacific stakeholders at UNESCO consultation to develop Internet Universality indicators during the 8th Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (APrIGF) in Bangkok (Thailand), 29 July 2017.

This was published by UNESCO on August 9, 2017.

The Bangkok consultation event, co-moderated by Ms. Xianhong Hu (UNESCO) and Ms. Chat Garcia Ramilo (Association for Progressive Communications, APC), brought multi-stakeholders and experts from the Asia Pacific region to contribute to prioritizing issues within the five categories indicators along the Internet Universality R.O.A.M principles, namely on human Rights, Openness, Accessibility, Multi-stakeholder participation, as well as concerning Crosscutting issues.

“Rights entail a number of digital rights including freedom of religious and political expression and right to assembly and association online. Privacy concerns on the Internet are extremely important as well”, stated Ms Gayatri Khandahi from APC on human Rights indicators. In addition, she noted the importance of social and economic rights exercised on the Internet, such as the right to work and the right to political participation, and the jurisdiction challenges of these rights in the pretext of Internet. She emphasized the need to consult also with vulnerable groups, such as women, trans-gender groups and migrants.

Dr. Anja Kovacs from Internet Democracy Project pointed out that rights have impact on other themes or indicators, for instance online abuse of women impacts access in India. She also noted that in the course of developing these indicators, it is crucial to take into account future trends because digital rights are evolving and these indicators might not be useful in 10 years.

“Open Internet is a top concern since it is being limited by many localized requirements. Thus openness requires open and transparent policy and decision making process which is at the core of multi-stakeholder approach”, commented by Prof. Xue Hong from Beijing Normal University on Openness indicators. She suggested “open access” needs to consider people’s various barriers to access Internet, including legal barriers. She suggested that “open source”, “open innovation” and “open market” are also important aspects to measure the level of openness.

On Accessibility indicators, Mr Winston Roberts from the International Federation of Library Associations & Institutions (IFLA) suggested that the definition of universal access needs to be updated and access in various forms can be used as an indicator, such access to broadband. He stressed the importance to include quality access and access in rural areas.

“Access and accessibility should be defined clearly. Access should include indicators to assess quality of service and openness should include assessment of the market”, stated Ms. Bishakha Datta. Mr. Naveed Haq from Internet Society suggested those accessibility indicators could check how many government websites are available to people with disabilities.

“Internet is a classic example where various communities are represented and thus multistakeholderism becomes important”, said Mr. Naveed Haq from Internet Society on Multistakeholder indicators. Mr. Sunil Abraham from Center for Internet Society raised challenges that the government needs to deregulate policies and laws and redo them with a multi-stakeholder process, but on the other hand, private sectors fail to mitigate harm through the self-regulatory model. Mr. Joyce Chen, ICANN representative, highlighted the importance to engage with governments, who need to facilitate more dialogue.

“The rights and interest of those vulnerable groups, such as transgender and women should be considered by the indicators, particularly to assess how rights, such as the right to privacy intersect with their agenda”, suggested by Ms. Bishakha Datta from Point of View on Crosscutting dimension indicators. Dr Anja Kovacs pointed out that it is crucial not miss out groups of people whose interests might not be directly aligned with their governments, for instance refugees or migrants.”

In addition to the ongoing on-site Multistakeholder consultation sessions, UNESCO is now also offering the possibility for interested actors, including Member States, to participate in the consultation online at https://en.unesco.org/internetuniversality.

As an ongoing project developed by UNESCO, Internet Universality Indicators aims to serve as a recognized and authoritative global research tool for national assessing Internet development along the lines of UNESCO’s Internet Universality concept as endorsed by UNESCO 38^th General Conference in 2015. The final indicators will be presented in 2018 and will be submitted to the UNESCO Member States in the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC) for endorsement.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/unesco-internet-universality-indicators-consulted-at-the-8th-asia-pacific-regional-internet-governance-forum

July 2017 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2017-08-23T02:03:19Z

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
In an article published in the Huffington Post on July 1, 2017, Nirmita Narasimhan stated that imposing taxes on assistive devices is unfair. It is unconscionable that disability aids and assistive technology are considered a luxury and taxed at a higher rate than rough semi-precious stones or cashew nuts. A research paper on patent working requirements and complex products in India authored by Prof Jorge L. Contreras, University of Utah, and Rohini Lakshané, CIS has been accepted for publication in the Jindal Global Law School Law Review 2017. Negotiators from 16 countries met in Hyderabad for discussing a free trade agreement titled Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. Anubha Sinha along with Arul George Scaria reported this in an article published by Live Law.in. Supreme Court of India while dismissing an appeal by the Indian Reprographic Rights Organization ruled that there was no copyright infringement and no licence was required since the activities fell under the education exception in Indian copyright law. In an article published by EIFL, Anubha Sinha discusses the judgment and what it means for access to educational materials in India. Odia Wikipedians, in conjunction with Indian Athletics Federation and Sports and Youth Services collaborated to document the 2017 Asian Athletics Championships. Hundreds of photos were uploaded and new Wikipedia content added to inform the event’s fans, wrote Sailesh Patnaik and Jnanaranjan Sahu in a blog post. As recently as May 27, 2016, the General Data Protection Regulation (REGULATION (EU) 2016/679 was adopted The Data Protection Directive (1995/46/EC) will be replaced by this Regulation. It is expected that under this Regulation data privacy will be strengthened. Aditi Chaturvedi analyses the developments in a report.

CIS in the news:

UIDAI declining multiple requests by police to share Indian citizens’ biometrics (Justin Lee; Biometrics; July 4, 2017).
Act now to protect yourself against future ransomware attacks (Sanjay Kumar Singh; Business Standard; July 5, 2017).
Reliance Jio data leaked on website : report (Livemint; July 10, 2017).
Supreme Court sets up constitution bench to hear Aadhaar privacy issues (Priyanka Mittal; Livemint; July 12, 2017).
Centre to form panel to 'encrypt' MGNREGA-DBT database and prevent leaks (Sanjeeb Mukherjee; Business Standard; July 14, 2017).
Calls for law change after Indians left in dark over data leaks (Rahul Bhatia and Sankalp Phartiyal; Reuters; July 14, 2017).
Indians Call For More Stringent Data Protection Laws (PYMTNS; July 17, 2017).
Social Activist Alleges Threat By Police Officer Over Possession of Aadhaar (Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar; Wire; July 16, 2017).

Aadhaar privacy: Key issues that all Aadhaar card holders should bear in mind (Business Today, July 19, 2017).
Data in the open makes it easy for cyber criminals (Kiran Parashar KM; New Indian Express; July 26, 2017).

CIS members wrote the following articles

Why GST Is A Step Backward For The Disabled (Nirmita Narasimhan; Huffington Post; July 1, 2017).
Course Packs for Education Ruled Legal in India (Anubha Sinha; EIFL; July 12, 2017).
Digital native: Not only words (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; July 16, 2017).
Aadhar: Privacy is not a unidimensional concept (Amber Sinha; Economic Times; July 23, 2017).
RCEP IP Chapter: A Serious Threat to Access to Knowledge/ Cultural Goods? (Arul George Scaria and Anubha Sinha; July 27, 2017).
Digital native: Ever on the go (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; July 30, 2017).

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Accessibility & Inclusion
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India has an estimated 70 million persons with disabilities who don't have access to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. As part of our endeavour to make available accessible content for persons with disabilities, we are developing a text-to-speech software in 15 languages with support from the Hans Foundation. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

Article

Why GST Is A Step Backward For The Disabled (Nirmita Narasimhan; Huffington Post; July 1, 2017).

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Access to Knowledge
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Our Access to Knowledge programme currently consists of two projects. The Pervasive Technologies project, conducted under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), aims to conduct research on the complex interplay between low-cost pervasive technologies and intellectual property, in order to encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The Wikipedia project, which is under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

►Pervasive Technologies and Copyright

Research Paper

Patent Working Requirements and Complex Products: An Empirical Assessment of India's Form 27 Practice and Compliance (Jorge L. Contreras and Rohini Lakshané; SSRN and Jindal Global Law School Review; July 17, 2017).

Participation in Event

19th RCEP Meeting (Organized by Ministry of Commerce, Government of India; July 17 - 28, 2017; Hyderabad). Anubha Sinha participated in the meeting.

►Wikipedia

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

Blog Entries

Note: The events were organized earlier but reports were published in July 2017:

Christ University Wikipedia Education Program Internship (Manasa Rao and Ananth Subray; July 5, 2017).
Christ University Wikipedia Education Program Faculty Orientation Report (Ananth Subray; July 7, 2017).
How It Came To Be: Wiki Loves Uniformed Services (Krishna Chaitanya Velaga; July 10, 2017).
Tallapaka Pada Sahityam is now on Wikisource (Pavan Santhosh; July 10, 2017).
Thematic Edit-a-thon at Yashawantrao Chavan Institute of Science, Satara (Subodh Kulkarni; July 11, 2017).
Asian Athletics Championships 2017 Edit-a-thon (Sailesh Patnaik and Jnanaranjan Sahu; July 31, 2017).

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

►Privacy

Blog Entry

Data Protection: Understanding the General Data Protection Regulation (Aditi Chaturvedi; July 4, 2017).

Participation in Event

IViR Summer Course on Privacy Law and Policy (Organized by the University of Amsterdam; July 3 - 7, 2017; Amsterdam). Amber Sinha attended the course.

►Free Speech and Expression and Cyber Security

Participation in Events

OHD on Consultation Paper on Net Neutrality (Organized by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India; July 25, 2017). Pranesh Prakash was a speaker.
UNESCO Multistakeholder consultation at 8th Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (APrIGF) (Organized by UNESCO; Bangkok; July 26 - 29, 2017). Sunil Abraham was a speaker. Vidhushi Marda also participated in the event.
Cybersecurity Workshop: Spotlight On GCCS 2017 (Organized by Global Partners Digital (GPD) and the Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University, Delhi, in collaboration with Digital Empowerment Foundation, Digital Asia Hub and Open Net Korea; Bangkok; July 25 - 27, 2017). Sunil Abraham was a speaker. Udbhav Tiwari and Vidushi Marda participated in the event.

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

Participation in Event

Workshop on Public Open Wi-Fi Pilot (Organized by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India; July 25, 2017). Pranesh Prakash was a speaker.

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

Event Organized

Dr. Prerna Prabhakar - Impact of Digitisation of Land Records in Rural India (CIS, New Delhi; July 7, 2017).

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

► Follow us elsewhere

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

► Support Us

Please help us defend consumer and citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of 'The Centre for Internet and Society' and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru - 5600 71.

► Request for Collaboration

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

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

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/july-2017-newsletter

Second Annual Roundtable on Innovation, Intellectual Property and Competition

praskrishna — 2017-08-08T00:33:51Z

Rohini Lakshane attended the round-table organized by CIIPC, National Law University, Delhi, in Bangalore on July 2, 2017.

The CIIPC conducts the Annual Roundtable on Innovation, Intellectual Property and Competition to offer a forum for members of the academia, policy makers, industry stakeholders and academically minded practitioners to engage on emerging issues at the interface of innovation, intellectual property & competition law and policy. The First Annual Roundtable on Innovation, Intellectual Property and Competition, held last year in New Delhi, was well attended. This time around, we look forward to continuing this dialogue through open and nuanced discussions on the most relevant and contentious issues concerning this area of law and economic policy, with special emphasis on recent developments in India.

Click to see the Agenda

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/second-annual-roundtable-on-innovation-intellectual-property-and-competition

Privacy Newsletter May - June 2017

praskrishna — 2017-07-20T14:11:11Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/privacy-newsletter-may-june-2017.pdf

Privacy Newsletter March 2017

praskrishna — 2017-07-20T14:08:00Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/privacy-newsletter-march-2017.pdf

Privacy Newsletter April 2017

praskrishna — 2017-07-20T14:03:37Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/privacy-newsletter-april-2017.pdf

Privacy Newsletter February 2017

praskrishna — 2017-07-20T14:00:13Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/privacy-newsletter-february-2017.pdf

Cyber Security Newsletter (September 2016 - June 2017)

praskrishna — 2017-07-20T13:45:18Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/cyber-security-newsletter-september-16.pdf

Indians Call For More Stringent Data Protection Laws

praskrishna — 2017-07-18T13:36:49Z

The government is India is facing calls to establish better cybersecurity laws to protect consumers’ data after fears have crept up that Reliance Jio, the telecom startup in India, suffered a major data leak.

This report was published by PYMNTS on July 17, 2017. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

According to a report in Reuters announcing the news, Jio denied the data leak took place, saying the names, telephone numbers and email addresses of Jio users that showed up on Magicpak, a website, were unauthentic. Its parent Reliance Industries said customers’ data was safe and protected.

But at the same time that it was issuing reassurances, Jio filed a complaint claiming unlawful access to its computer systems, reported Reuters. That discrepancy has led Indians to call for better laws for data protection for consumers.

“It raises questions of security and accountability,” said Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a research organization, in the report. “A rule to report breaches exists, but it is unenforceable. It says you’re not liable if you’re following reasonable security practices. What ‘reasonable’ means is not defined.”

Supporters of stronger data protection laws in India said that countries that have stronger cybersecurity laws on the books would have started an inquiry into what happened with Reliance Jio. They point to the data breach last week at Verizon. Verizon quickly responded with an explanation of what went down, how it occurred and how many customers’ data privacy it impacted.

“India is at a nascent stage. For good norms in Asia, look to Singapore. It’s been praised for not having cybersecurity issues by the UN,” Srinivas Kodali, an independent security researcher, said in the same Reuters report.

The report noted that in May there were two data privacy breaches of Indian companies with the records of 17 million Zomato customers being compromised. In another breach, as many as 135 million of India’s Aadhaar numbers had been stolen from government databases and placed online. Aadhaar numbers are similar to social security numbers.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/pymnts-july-17-2017-indians-call-for-more-stringent-data-protection-laws

WSIS Forum 2017

praskrishna — 2017-07-18T02:00:44Z

WSIS Forum 2017 was held 12-16 June in Geneva, and included the participation of more than 85 high-level government and civil society representatives, as well as 500 remote interventions and thousands following the webcast. The forum was chaired by Mr Jean Philbert Nsengimana, Minister of Youth and ICT, Government of Rwanda, and co-organized by ITU, UNESCO, UNCTAD and UNDP, in close collaboration with all UN agencies. Nirmita Narasimhan participated in the forum.

The moderator, Ms Andrea Saks (Chair, Telecommunication Standardisation Sector (ITU-T) Joint Coordination Activity on Accessibility and Human Factors (JCA-AHF)), welcomed the audience and introduced the five panellists, two of whom were remote participants.

The first speaker, participating remotely from India, was Ms Nirmita Narasimhan, Policy Director, Centre of Internet and Society (CIS). Narasimhan heads the CIS accessibility inclusion programme and specialises in policy research and advocacy related to technology access for persons with disabilities. Narasimhan focused on a report (link is external) jointly prepared by ITU and CIS, on how to leverage ICTs in an accessible manner to ensure that persons with disabilities and other vulnerable groups are included in planning and responding to disasters and situations involving emergency situations. She raised four stages of preparedness (link is external) for disaster management: (1) early warning planning including creating awareness, education, and training material as well as setting up technological infrastructure; (2) alerts as to when a disaster is happening and where to go for help; (3) recovery, what happens after the disaster; and (4) mitigation which leads back to planning and preparedness. Full report here. More information on the event here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/news/wsis-forum-2017

Centre to form panel to 'encrypt' MGNREGA-DBT database and prevent leaks

praskrishna — 2017-07-14T10:46:45Z

Around 5 crore bank accounts of active MGNREGA workers yet to be seeded with Aadhaar.

The article by Sanjeeb Mukherjee was published in the Business Standard on July 14, 2017.

Alarmed over reports of ‘public disclosure’ of sensitive Aadhaar data through various portals and payment gateways, the Centre is in the process of appointing a high-powered panel of almost 20 experts to suggest ways and means through which data, particularly one which can be accessed through the MGNREGA-DBT platform can be encrypted.

Encryption, officials believe, would prevent the Aadhaar data and other related information from falling into wrong hands.

The need for proper encryption of Aadhaar data rose after the government made it mandatory for availing almost all benefits - be it school scholarships, payments of MGNREGA wages, identification of beneficiaries under mid-day meal scheme and even public distribution system along with others.

Ensuring cyber security has become all the more necessary as the Central government, in a notification issued last month, has made it mandatory for all bank accounts to be seeded with Aadhaar numbers by December 31, 2017, or else they would cease to be operational until the time the account holder furnishes his Aadhaar number.

This could seriously hamper payment of wages to MGNREGA workers because as per available information almost 5 crore active workers don’t have their bank accounts seeded with Aadhaar.

To complete the process before December 2017, the ministry of rural development has planned special Aadhaar camps to be held in villages from July 20 to September 2017.

Recently, a website published all confidential details of customers of a private telecom company including Aadhaar numbers and other information.

The breach was another instance of secure confidential information falling into public domain.

Officials of the panel, which would be headed by former NASSCOM head Kiran Karnik are expected to submit their report on the same within the next few months.

Other members of the panel include Director General of National Institute of Smart Governance (NISG), officials from Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (ICERT) and others.

However, cyber security experts believe that encrypting Aadhaar-DBT details mainly for those schemes and programmes which have a direct linkage with the public at this later stage has its own challenges as the entire ecosystem around Aadhaar has grown manifold ever since it was made mandatory for a variety of programmes.

Also, in the absence of a national encryption policy, such a move will have its own legal and regulatory challenges.

“Ever since the government made Aadhaar mandatory for many things, the entire ecosystem around it including the Central Identities Data Repository (the agency which stores Aadhaar data is exposed to leaks,” noted cyber law expert Pawan Duggal told Business Standard.

He said that without a proper national encryption law, it would be extremely challenging to provide legal and regulatory backing to encrypt all Aadhaar- DBT data details for MGNREGA. “Also now that the ‘cat is out of the bag,’ encryption of Aadhaar details will be hugely challenging,” Duggal said.

Already, civil society activists said that after some concern, the central government has removed all Aadhaar numbers and bank details from MGNREGA website, which has made tracking payments difficult.

A recent study by Amber Sinha and Srinivas Kodali from the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) found that granular details about individuals including sensitive personally identifiable information such as Aadhaar number, caste, religion, address, photographs and financial information are only a few clicks away through government schemes dashboard and portals.

“While initiatives such as the government open data portals may be laudable for providing easy access to government data condensed for easy digestion, however in the absence of proper controls exercised by the government departments the results can be disastrous by divulging sensitive and adversely actionable information about the individuals who are responding units of such databases,” the report said.

It specifically studied two major schemes of the ministry of rural development; the National National Social Assistance Programme and MGNREGA along with some state schemes.

Pointers

a) Centre to form a panel to encrypt all MGNREGA-DBT database to prevent leaks.

b) The panel might also suggest ways and means in which such ‘encryption’ could be applied in other platforms.

c) The panel is expected to be headed by former NASSCOM head Kiran Karnik.

d) The encryption is essential as from January 2018 all non-Aadhaar seeded bank accounts will cease to be operational unless the holders seed them.

e) A recent study found that vivid details about individuals can be easily accessed from government platforms and databases.

f) The MGNREGA database was one such publicly available platform which formed part of the study.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-sanjeeb-mukherjee-july-14-2017-centre-to-form-panel-to-encrypt-mgnrega-dbt-database-and-prevent-leaks