May 2018 Newsletter
Dear readers,
Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.
Highlights |
---|
|
Articles:
- The Huawei pointer (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard and Organizing India Blogspot; May 3, 2018).
- India's Draft Telecom Policy Needs to Bridge the Gap Between Intent and Execution (Anubha Sinha; Wire; May 6, 2018).
- India's Data Protection Framework Will Need to Treat Privacy as a Social and Not Just an Individual Good (Amber Sinha; Economic & Political Weekly, Volume 53, Issue No. 18, 05 May, 2018).
- Digital Native: Web of Wander (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; May 20, 2018).
CIS in the News:
- India's National ID Project Brings Pain to Those it Aims to Help (Aayush Soni; Ozy.com; May 11, 2018).
- Aadhaar Remains an Unending Security Nightmare for a Billion Indians (Karan Saini; Wire; May 11, 2018).
- More errors in Aadhaar data in Andhra Pradesh than in voter database (U Sudhakar Reddy; Times of India; May 18, 2018).
- Putting women human rights activists on the world map (Sarumathi K.; Hindu; May 19, 2018).
- An open data ecosystem can boost India's GDP by $22 B and double farmer income (Sohini Mitter; Your Story; May 23, 2018).
- Complying with Europe’s GDPR will be a “matter of survival” for Indian IT firms (Ananya Bhattacharya; Quartz India; May 24, 2018).
- Don't blindly forward WhatsApp messages. You could be sued (Rajitha Menon and Surupasree Sarmmah; Deccan Herald; May 29, 2018).
- Alexa’s recording leak in US ‘echoes’ privacy issues here (Mugdha Variyar; Economic Times; May 29, 2018).
- Election Experiment Proves Facebook Just Doesn't Care About Fake News In India (Visvak; Huffington Post; May 30, 2018).
- India Proposes Law to Give Indians Complete Control of their Digital Health Data (Madhur Singh; India Spend; May 31, 2018).
- Patanjali's Kimbho swiftly retreats over security scare, ripped on Twitter (Alnoor Peermohamed and Manavi Kapur; Business Standard; May 31, 2018).
-----------------------------------
Access to Knowledge
-----------------------------------
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.
►Copyright and Patent
Blog Entries
CIS participated in the 36th SCCR held in Geneva from May 28 to June 1, 2018 and made the following statements:
- Statement on the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations (Anubha Sinha; May 28, 2018).
- NGOs circulate letter at WIPO SCCR/36 raising serious concerns about draft Broadcasting Treaty (Anubha Sinha; May 29, 2018).
- Draft Action Plan for Educational and Research Institutions and Persons with Other Disabilities (Anubha Sinha; May 31, 2018).
- Statement on the Draft Action Plan for Libraries, Archives and Museums (Anubha Sinha; May 31, 2018).
- Statement on Limitations and Exceptions Agenda (Anubha Sinha; May 31, 2018).
Participation in Event
- RightsCon Toronto 2018 (Organized by RightsCon; Beanfield Centre at Exhibition Place, Toronto; May 17, 2018). Maggie Huang, Amba Kak, Rohini Lakshané, Vidushi Marda, Elonnai Hickok and Anubha Sinha were among the speakers at the event. Amber Sinha remotely participated in a private meeting on 'Strategizing Civil Society Roles in the Artificial Intelligence Debate'. Anubha Sinha, Maggie Huang, Rohini Lakshané and Vidushi Marda presented their findings from the Pervasive Technologies project in a panel titled "Cheap and Chipper: IP in India's Affordable Smartphones". Prof Michael Geist moderated the session. Anubha Sinha and Vidushi Marda participated remotely. Elonnai Hickok participated in these sessions: IDRC cyber policy meeting; GNI board meeting; GNI learning session on MLATs; FOC-AN meeting; GNI session on Intermediary Liability.
Internet Governance
-----------------------------------
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
Reports
- Methods workshop on researching Future of Work in India (Natallia Khaniejo and Aayush Rathi; May 10, 2018).
- AI in the Banking and Finance Industry in India (Saman Goudarzi, Elonnai Hickok and Amber Sinha; May 14, 2018)
- Indian Intermediary Liability Regime: Compliance with the Manila Principles on Intermediary Liability (Divij Joshi; May 20, 2018). The report was edited by Elonnai Hickok and Swaraj Barooah.
- Jurisdictional Report India (Compendium on Regulation of Cross-Border Transfers of Personal Data in Asia; Amber Sinha and Elonnai Hickok; May 31, 2018).
Blog Entry
- Design Concerns in Creating Privacy Notices (Saumyaa Naidu; May 29, 2018). The blog post was edited by Elonnai Hickok.
Participation in Events
- Meeting of Coalition for an Inclusive Approach on the Trafficking Bill (Organized by Alternative Law Forum; Bengaluru; May 3, 2018).
- Fairness, Transparency and Accountable AI (Organized by DeepMind; London; May 10, 2018). Amber Sinha participated remotely in the inaugural meeting.
- Rootconf 2018 (Organized by HasGeek; Bengaluru; May 11 - 12, 2018). Gurshabad Grover, Natallia Khaniejo and Aayush Rathi attended the event.
- Inter Movements Open Forum: Trafficking Bill (Organized by Sangram, Naz Foundation, NNSW, Tarshi and VAMP; India International Centre, New Delhi; May 18, 2018).
- IETF Indian Community Meetup: RFCs We Love (IoT edition) (Organized by Indian IETF Community; Zoomcar's office; Bengaluru; May 19, 2018). Gurshabad Grover and Sandeep Kumar attended 'RFCs We Love Meetup'.
- Emerging Technologies: Issues & Way Forward (Organized by Technology Policy team at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy; Bengaluru; May 23 - 24, 2018).
- Privacy in the Digital Age: Addressing Common Challenges, Seizing Opportunities (Organized by DG Justice and Consumers and European Union; New Delhi; May 25, 2018).
►Free Speech and Expression
Report
- Internet Shutdown Stories (Edited by Debasmita Haldar, Ambika Tandon and Swaraj Barooah; Foreword by Sunil Abraham; May 17, 2018). Case studies from the states of Jammu & Kashmir, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Telangana, West Bengal, Tripura, Manipur, Nagaland, and Uttar Pradesh have been highlighted in this compilation.
Blog Entry
- DIDP Request #30 - Enquiry about the employee pay structure at ICANN (Paul Kurian and Akriti Bopanna; May 26, 2018).
-----------------------------------
Telecom
-----------------------------------
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:
Articles
- The Huawei pointer (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard and Organizing India Blogspot; May 3, 2018).
- India's Draft Telecom Policy Needs to Bridge the Gap Between Intent and Execution (Anubha Sinha; Wire; May 6, 2018).
-----------------------------------
Researchers at Work
-----------------------------------
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:
Draft Research Paper
- Infrastructure as Digital Politics: Media Practices and the Assam NRC Citizen Identification Project (Khetrimayum Monish Singh and Nafiza Ahmed; May 15, 2018).
About CIS
-----------------------------------
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: [email protected]
- E-Mail - Researchers at Work: [email protected]
- List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers
► Support Us
► 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 [email protected] (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at [email protected] (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 [email protected].