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The All India Privacy Symposium: Conference Report
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/all-india-privacy-delhi-report
<b>Privacy India, the Centre for Internet and Society and Society in Action Group, with support from the International Development Research Centre, Privacy International and Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative had organised the All India Privacy Symposium at the India International Centre in New Delhi, on February 4, 2012. Natasha Vaz reports about the event.</b>
<p>The symposium was organized around five thematic panel discussions:<br />
Panel 1: Privacy and Transparency<br />
Panel 2: Privacy and E-Governance Initiatives<br />
Panel 3: Privacy and National Security<br />
Panel 4: Privacy and Banking<br />
Panel 5: Privacy and Health</p>
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p>Elonnai Hickok (Policy Advocate, Privacy India) introduced the
objectives of Privacy India. The primary objectives were to raise
national awareness about privacy, do an in-depth study of privacy in
India and provide feedback on the proposed ‘Right to Privacy’ Bill.
Privacy India has reviewed case laws, legislations, including the
upcoming policy and conducted state-level privacy workshops and
consultations across India in Kolkata, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Guwahati,
Chennai, and Mumbai. India like the rest of the world is answering some
fundamental questions about the powers of the government and citizen’s
rights and complications that arise from emerging technologies. Through
our research we have come to understand that privacy varies across
cultures and contexts, and there is no one concept of privacy but
instead several distinct core notions that serve as complex duties,
claims and obligations. </p>
<h2>Privacy and Transparency</h2>
<p>Panelists: Ponnurangam K, (Assistant Professor, IIIT New Delhi), ),
Chitra Ahanthem (Journalist, Imphal), Nikhil Dey (Social & Political
Activist), Deepak Maheshwari (Director, Corporate Affairs, Microsoft),
Gus Hosein (Executive Director, Privacy International, UK), and Prashant
Bhushan, (Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India).<br />
Moderator: Sunil Abraham (Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore) <br />
Poster: Srishti Goyal (Law Student, NUJS)</p>
<p>Srishti Goyal provided the general contours, privacy protections,
limits to privacy and loopholes of policy relating to transparency and
privacy, specifically analyzing the Right to Information Act, Public
Interest Disclosures Act, and the Official Secrets Act.</p>
<p>Nikhil Dey commented on the interaction between the right to privacy
and the right to information (RTI). He referred to Gopal Gandhi, the
former Governor of West Bengal, “we must ensure that tools like the UID
must help the citizen watch every move of government; not allow the
government watch every move of the citizen.” Currently, the RTI and the
UID stand on contrary sides of the information debate. A privacy law
could allow for a backdoor to curb RTI. So, utmost care has to be taken
while drafting legislation with respect to right to privacy.</p>
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<td>Data and information has leaked furiously in India and it has leaked
to the powerful. A person who is in a position of power can access
private information irrespective of any laws in place to safeguard
privacy. It is necessary to look at the power dynamics, which exists in
the society before formulating legislation on right to privacy.
According to Nikhil Dey, there should be different standards of privacy
with respect to public servants. A citizen should be entitled to
information related to funds, functions and functionaries. The main
problem arises while defining the private space of a public servant or
functionaries.<br /><br />The RTI Act has failed to address the legal protection for the right
to privacy. Perhaps, rules regarding privacy can be added to the Act. It
can be defined by answering the questions: (i) what is ‘personal
information’? (ii) what is it’s relation to public activity or public
interest? (iii) what is the unwarranted invasion of the privacy of an
individual? and (iv) what is the larger public good? Expanding on these
four points can provide greater legal protection for the right to
privacy. <br /></td>
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<p>Gus Hosein described the intersection and interaction of the right to
information and the right to privacy. He referred to a petition filed by
Privacy International requesting information on the expenses of members
of parliament. Privacy and transparency of the government are
compatible in the public interest. Gross abuse of the public funds by
MPs was revealed by this particular petition such as pornography or
cleaning of moats of MPs homes. Privacy advocates are supporters of RTI,
however, it cannot be denied that there is no tension between
transparency and privacy. In order chalk out the differences, there is a
need of a legal framework. According to Gus Hosein, in many countries
the government office that deals with right to information also deals
with cases related to right to privacy.</p>
<p>Mumbai and New Delhi police have started using social media very
aggressively, encouraging citizens to take photographs of traffic
violations and upload them to Facebook or Twitter. In reference to this,
Ponnurangam described the perceptions of privacy and if it agreed or
conflicted with his research findings. Ponnurangam has empirically
explored the awareness and perspective of privacy in India with respect
to other countries. He conducted a privacy survey in Hyderabad, Chennai
and Mumbai. People are very comfortable in posting pictures of others
committing a traffic violation or running a red light. Ironically, many
people have posted pictures of police officers committing a traffic
violation such as not wearing a helmet or running a red light.<br />
<br />
Chitra Ahanthem described the barriers and challenges of using RTI in
Manipur. There are more than 40 armed militia groups, which are banned
by the central and state government. The central government provides
economic packages for the development of the north-east region. However,
the state government officials and armed groups pocket the economic
packages. These armed groups have imposed a ban on RTI. Furthermore,
Manipur is a very small community. If people try and access information
through RTI they risk getting threatened by the Panchayat members and
being ostracized from the community or their clan. <br />
<br />
People are apprehensive about filing RTI because they believe that these
procedures are costly and the police and government may also get
involved. Officials use the privacy plea to avoid giving out
information. Since certain information are private and not in the public
domain, government officials, use the defense of privacy to hide
information. In addition, the police brutality prevalent in the area
deters people to even have interactions with government officials. <br />
<br />
According to Deepak Maheshwari, the open data initiative is a subset
within the larger context of open information. There is an onus on the
government to publish information, which is in the public domain. As a
result, one does not necessarily have to go through the entire process
of filing an RTI to get information, which is already there in the
public domain. Moreover, if it is freely available in public domain,
then one can anonymously access such information; this further
strengthens the privacy aspects of requesting information and
facilitating anonymity with respect to access to such information in the
public domain. It has also to be noted that it is not sufficient to put
data out in the public domain but it should also disclose the basis of
the data for example, if there is representation of a data on a pie
chart, the data which was used to arrive at the pie chart should also be
available in the public domain. The main intention of releasing data to
the public domain or having open data standards should not only be to
provide access to such data but also should be in such a fashion so as
to enable people to use the data for multiple purposes.</p>
<p>Prashant Bhushan noted that one of the grounds for withholding
information in the RTI Act is privacy. An RTI officer can disclose
personal information if he feels that larger public interest warrants
the disclosure, even if it is personal information, which has no
relationship to public activity or interest. This raises the important
question, “what constitutes personal information?” He referred to the
Radia Tapes controversy. Ratan Tata has filed a petition in the Supreme
Court on the grounds that the Nira Radia tapes contained personal
information and that the release of these tapes into the public domain
violated his privacy. The Centre for Public Interest Litigation has
filed a counter petition on the grounds that the nature of the
conversations was not personal but in relation to public activity. They
were between a lobbyist and bureaucrats, journalists and ministers.
Prashant Bhushan stressed the importance of releasing these tapes into
the public domain to show glimpses of all kinds of fixing, deal-making
and show how the whole ruling establishment functions. It is absurd for
Ratan Tata to claim that this is an invasion of privacy. Lastly, he felt
when drafting a privacy law, clearly defining and distinguishing
personal information and public is extremely important.</p>
<p>One of the interesting comments made during the panel was on the
assumption that data is transparent. Transparency can be staged;
questions have to be asked around whether the word is itself
transparent.</p>
<h2>Privacy and E-Governance Initiatives</h2>
<p>Panelists: Anant Maringanti, (Independent Social Researcher), Usha
Ramanathan, (Advocate & Social Activist), Gus Hosein, (Executive
Director, Privacy International, UK), Apar Gupta, (Advocate, Supreme
Court of India), and Elida Kristine Undrum Jacobsen (Doctoral
Researcher, The Peace Research Institute Oslo).<br />
Moderator: Sudhir Krishnaswamy (Centre for Law and Policy Research)<br />
Poster: Adrija Das (Law Student, NUJS)</p>
<p>Adrija Das discussed the legal provision relating to identity
projects and e-governance initiatives in India. The objective of any
e-governance project is to increase efficiency and accessibility of
public services. However, a major problem that arises is the linkage of
the data results in the creation of a central database, accessible by
every department of the government. Furthermore, implementing data
protection and security standards are very expensive.</p>
<p>Sudhir Krishnaswamy highlighted the default assumptions surrounding
e-governance initiatives: e-governance initiatives solve governance
problems, increase efficiency, increase transparency and increase
accountability. It is important to analyze the problems that arise from
e-governance initiatives, such as privacy. </p>
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<td>Usha Ramanathan described the increased number and vastness of
e-governance initiatives such as UID, NPR, IT Rules and NATGRID. There
are also many burdens on privacy that emanate from the introduction and
existence of electronic data management systems. Electronic data
management systems have allowed state to collect, store and use personal
information of individual. Currently, the DNA Profiling Bill is pending
before the Parliament. It is important to question the purpose and need
for the government to collect such personal information. It is also to
be noted that, there are certain laws such as Collection of Statistics
Act, 2008 that penalize individuals if they do not comply with the
information requests of the government.</td>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Usha.JPG/image_preview" title="Usha" height="124" width="148" alt="Usha" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
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<p>Anant Maringanti discussed the limitations of data sharing that once
existed. Currently, data can move across space in a very short time. He
analyzed the state and market rationalities involved in e-governance
initiatives, which raise the question “who can access data and at what
price?”. Data may seem to be innocent or neutral, but data in the hands
of wrong people becomes very crucial due to abuse and misuse. For
example, Andhra Pradesh was praised as the model state for UID
implementation. However, during the process of collecting data for UID a
company bought personal information and sold the data to third parties.<br />
<br />
Apar Gupta discussed the dilemmas of e-governance. Generally information
in the form of an electronic record is presumed to be authentic. The
data which government collects is most often inaccurate and wrong. So
the digital identity of a person can be totally different from the real
identity of that particular person. The process for correcting such
information is also very inconvenient and sometimes impossible. <br />
Under the evidence law any electronic evidence is presumed to be
authentic and admissible as evidence. The Bombay High Court decided a
case involving the authenticity of a telephone bill generated by a
machine. The judgment said that since it is being generated by a
machine, through and automated process, there is no need to challenge
the authenticity of the document, it is presumed to true and authentic.
The main danger in such case is that one does away with the process of
law and attaches certain sanctity to the electronic record and evidence.
<br />
<br />
It should be also observed that how government maintains secrecy as to
the ways in which it collects data. For example, the Election Commission
has refused to disclose the functioning and design of electronic voting
machines. The reason given for such secrecy is that if such information
is put in the public domain then the electronic voting machines will be
vulnerable and can be tampered with. But we, who use the voting
machines, will never find out its vulnerabilities.</p>
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<td>According to Gus Hosein, politicians generally have this wrong notion
that technology can solve complex administrative problems. Furthermore,
the industry is complicit; they indulge in anti-competitive market
practice to sell these technologies as a solution to problems. However,
such technology does not solve any problems rather it gives rise to
problems.<br /><br />Huge amount of government funds is associated with collection of
personal data but such data is rendered useless or rather misused,
because the government does not have clue as to how to use the data for
development and security purposes. The UK National Health Records
project estimated to cost around twelve to twenty billion pounds.
However, a survey carried out by a professor in University College
London showed that the hospital and other health institutions do not use
the information collected by the National Health Records. Similarly,
the UK Identity Card scheme was estimated to cost 1.3 billion pounds and
finally it was estimated to cost five billion pounds. The identity
cards are rendered obsolete, the sole department interested in the
identity card was the Home Office Department, no other department
intended on using it.<br /></td>
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<p>Technology should be built in such a manner that it empowers the
individual. Technology should allow the individual to control his
identity and as well as access all kinds of information available to the
government and private bodies on that individual. <br />
<br />
According to Elida Kristine Undrum Jacobsen, technology is regarded in
this linear manner. It is increasingly being naturalized and as an
all-encompassing solution. The use of biometric systems in the UID
raises three areas of concern: power, value and social relationships. </p>
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<td>With regards to power, there is a difference between providing
documentation and information for identification. However, problems
arise when the mode of identification becomes one’s body. It also leads
to absolute reliance on technology, if the machine says that this is an
individual’s identity then it is considered to be the absolute truth and
it does not matter even if the individual is someone else. It becomes
furthermore problematic with biometric system because it is generally
used for forensic purposes. <br /><br />The other component of UID or any national identification scheme is
the question of consent and its relationship to privacy. In the case of
UID project, people are totally unaware about how their information will
be used and what purposes can it be used or misused for. Therefore,
there is no informed consent when it comes to collection of biometric
data under the UID project. <br />
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<p>On the issue of social value it is to be noted that the value of
efficiency becomes the most important value, which is valued. Many of
the UIDAI documents state that the UID will provide a transactional
identity. However, at the same time it takes away societal layers, which
is inherently part of one’s identity. In addition, it makes it possible
for the identity of a person to become a commodity to be sold. This
also means that the personal information has economic value and players
in the market such as insurance companies, banks can buy and sell the
information.<br />
<br />
When there is identification projects using biometrics it gives the
State a lot of power; the power to determine and dictate one’s identity
irrespective of the difference in real identity. Moreover, when such
identifications projects are carried out at a national level it also
gives rise to problem related to exclusion and inclusion of people or
various purposes. The classification of the society based on various
factors becomes easy and there is a huge risk involved with such
classification. </p>
<p>The issues, which came out from the Q&A session, were:</p>
<ul><li>The interplay between fairness and lawfulness in the context of
privacy and data collection. There has to be a question asked as to why
certain information is required by the State and how is it lawful. </li><li>In the neo-liberal era corporations are generally considered to be
private. This has to be questioned and furthermore the difference
between what is private and what is public. There are also concerns
about corporations increasingly collaborating with the State. Can it be
still considered as private?</li></ul>
<h2>Privacy and National Security</h2>
<p>Panelists: PK Hormis Tharakan (Former Chief of Research and Analysis
Wing, Government of India), Saikat Datta (Journalist), Menaka Guruswamy,
(Advocate, Supreme Court, New Delhi), Prasanth Sugathan, (Legal
Counsel, Software Freedom Law Center), and Oxblood Ruffin, (Cult of the
Dead Cow Security and Publishing Collective).<br />
Moderator: Danish Sheikh (Alternative Law Forum)<br />
Poster: Suchitra Menon (Law Student, NUJS) </p>
<p>Suchitra Menon discussed the legal provisions for national security
in relation to privacy. Specifically, she described the guidelines and
procedural safeguards with respect to phone tapping and interception of
communication decisional jurisprudence.</p>
<p>In the year 2000, the Information Technology Act (IT Act), 2000 was
enacted, this Act had under section 69 allowed the State to monitor and
intercept information through intermediaries. Prasanth Sugathan
described how the government has been trying to bypass the procedural
safeguard laid down by the Supreme Court in the PUCL case by using
Section 28 of the IT Act, 2000. The provision deals with certifying
authority for digital signatures. The certifying authority under the Act
also has the authority to investigate offences under the Act. The
provision mainly deals with digital signature but it is used by the
government to intercept communication without implementing the
procedural safeguards laid down for such interception. Furthermore, the
IT Rules which was notified by the government in April, 2007 allows the
government to intercept any communication with the help of the
intermediaries. The 2008 amendment to the IT Act was an after effect of
the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai. The legislation has become draconian since
then and privacy has been sacrificed to meet the ends of national
security.</p>
<p>Oxblood Ruffin read out his speech and the same is reproduced below.</p>
<p>“The online citizenry of any country is part of its national security
infrastructure. And the extent to which individual privacy rights are
protected will determine whether democracy continues to succeed, or
inches towards tyranny. The challenge then is to balance the legitimate
needs of the state to secure its sovereignty with protecting its most
valuable asset: The citizen.<br />
<br />
It has become trite to say that 9/11 changed everything. Yet it is as
true for the West as it is for the global South. 9/11 kick started the
downward spiral of individual privacy rights across the entire internet.
It also ushered in a false dichotomy of choice, that in choosing
between security and privacy, it was privacy that had adapted to the new
realities, or so we’ve been told.<br />
<br />
Let’s examine some of the fallacies of this argument.<br />
<br />
The false equation which many argue is that we must give up privacy to
ensure security. But no one argues the opposite. We needn’t balance the
costs of surveillance over privacy, because rarely banning a security
measure protects privacy. Rather, protecting privacy typically means
that government surveillance must be subjected to judicial oversight and
justification of the need to surveillance. In most cases privacy
protection will not diminish the state’s effectiveness to secure itself.<br />
<br />
The deference argument is that security advocates insist that the courts
should defer to elected officials when evaluating security measures.
But when the judiciary weighs privacy against surveillance, privacy
almost always loses. Unless the security measures are explored for
efficacy they will win every time, especially when the word terrorism is
invoked. The courts must take on a more active role to balance the
interests of the state and its citizens.<br />
<br />
For the war time argument security proponents argue that the war on
terror requires greater security and less privacy. But this argument is
backwards. During times of crisis the temptation is to make unnecessary
sacrifices in the name of security. In the United States, for example,
we saw that Japanese-American internment and the McCarthy-era witch-hunt
for communists was in vain. The greatest challenge for safeguarding
privacy comes during times when we are least inclined to protect it. We
must be willing to be coldly rational and not emotional during such
times.<br />
<br />
We are often told that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to
fear. This is the most pervasive argument the average person hears. But
isn’t privacy a little like being naked? We might not be ashamed of our
bodies but we don’t walk around naked. Being online isn’t so different.
Our virtual selves should be as covered as our real selves. It’s a form
of personal sovereignty. Being seen should require our consent, just as
in the real world. The state has no business taking up the role of
Peeping Tom.<br />
<br />
I firmly believe that the state has a right and a duty to secure itself.
And I equally believe that its citizens are entitled to those same
rights. Citizens are part of the national security infrastructure. They
conduct business; they share information; they are the benefactors of
democratic values. Privacy rights are what, amongst others, separate us
from the rule of tyrants. To protect them is to protect and preserve
democracy. It is a fight worth dying for, as so many have done before
us.</p>
<p>PK Hormis Tharakan discussed the importance of interception
communication in intelligence gathering. In the western liberal
democracies, restrictions of privacy were introduced for the
anti-terrorism campaigns and these measures are far restrictive than
what the Indian legislations contemplate. Preventive intelligence is a
major component in maintenance of national security and this
intelligence is generated and can be procured through interception. <br />
<br />
We do need laws to make sure that the power of interception is not
excessive or out of proportion. But the graver issue is that the
equipment used for interception of communication is freely available in
the market at a cheap price. This allows private citizens also to snoop
into others conversation. So, interception by civilians should be the
main concern.<br />
<br />
Menaka Guruswamy discussed the lack of regulation of Indian intelligence
agencies that creates burdens on privacy. When there is a conflict
between individual privacy and national security, the court will always
rule in favour of the national security. Public interest always takes
precedence over individual interest. <br />
<br />
When there is a claim right to privacy vis-à-vis national security,
generally these claims are characterized by dissent, chilling effects on
freedom of expression and government accountability. In India, privacy
is fragile and relatively a less justifiable right. Another challenge to
privacy is that, when communication is intercepted, which part of the
conversation can be considered to be private and which part cannot be
considered so.<br />
<br />
Saikat Datta described his experience of being under illegal
surveillance by an unauthorized intelligence agency. When a person is
under surveillance, he or she is already considered to be suspect. If
the State commits any mistake as to surveillance, carrying surveillance,
who is not at all a person of interest in such case upon discovery,
there is no penalty for such discrepancy.<br />
He warned of the dangers of excessive wiretapping, a practice that
currently generates such a “mountain” of information that anything with
real intelligence value tends to be ignored until it is too late, as
happened with the Mumbai bombings in 2008. It is clear that the Indian
government’s surveillance and interception programmes far exceed what is
necessary for legitimate law enforcement.<br />
<br />
The issues, which came during the Q&A session was:</p>
<ul><li>In case of national security vis-à-vis privacy in heavily
militarized zone, legislations such as Armed Forces Special Powers Act
actually give authority to the army to search and seizure on mere
suspicion? This amounts gross violation of privacy.</li></ul>
<h2>Privacy and Banking</h2>
<p>Panelists: M R Umarji, (Chief Legal Advisor, Indian Banks Associations), N A Vijayashankar, (Cyber Law Expert), Malavika Jayaram, (Advocate, Bangalore)<br />Moderator: Prashant Iyengar (Associate Professor, Jindal Law University)<br />Poster: Malavika Chandu (Law Student, NUJS)</p>
<p>Prashant Iyengar highlighted how privacy has been a central feature in banking and finance. Even before the notion of privacy came into existence, banks had developed an evolved notion of secrecy and confidentiality, which was fairly robust. Every legislation dealing with banking and finance generally have a clause related to privacy and confidentiality. It might seem that it would be easy to implement privacy in banking and finance given the long relationship between banking and secrecy and confidentiality. However, this is not the case in the contemporary times. Specifically, with the growth in issues related to national security, transparency and technology, the highly regarded notion of privacy seems to be slowly depleting.</p>
<p>Malavika Chandu described the data protection standards that govern the banking industry. As part of the know-you-customer guidelines, banks are required to provide the Reserve Bank with customer profiles and other identification information. Lastly, she described case laws in relation to privacy with respect to financial records.</p>
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<td>N A Vijayashankar noted that the confidentiality and secrecy practices
in the banking sector emanate from the banker-customer relationship. In
the present context, secrecy and privacy maintained by the banks should
be analyzed from the perspective of the right of the customer to
safeguard his or her information from any third party. Generally, banks
and other financial institutions protect personal information as a fraud
control measure and not as duty to protect the privacy of a customer.<br /><br />There has been a paradigm shift in banking practices from traditional
banking practices to more efficient but less secure banking practice.
Some of the terms and conditions of internet banking are illegal and do
not stand the test of law. In contemporary times, banking institutions
use confidentiality to cover up problems and data breach rather than
protecting the customer. But the banks are not ready to disclose data
breach as it apprehends that it will result in public losing faith in
the system. The Reserve Bank of India, has recently notified that
protection which is provided to the customers in banking services should
also be extended to e-banking services. However, the banks have not
properly implemented this. <br /></td>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Naavi.JPG/image_preview" alt="NA Vijayashankar" class="image-inline image-inline" title="NA Vijayashankar" /></td>
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</table>
<p>M R Umarji highlighted fourteen laws related to banking which carries confidentiality clauses. In India, public sector banks dominate the market. These banks are created under a statute and such statute governs them. Therefore, they are duty bound to maintain secrecy and confidentiality. Private banks and cooperative banks are not bound by any statute. They do not have any obligations to maintain secrecy, but they do strictly observe confidentiality as a form of banking practice. <br /><br />Banks are not allowed to reveal any personal information of an individual unless it is sought by some authority that has a legitimate right to claim such information. There has been a constant erosion of confidentiality due to various laws which empowers authorities to seek confidential information from the banks. Recently, in the light of the growing national security concerns, banks also have an obligation to report suspicious transactions. These have caused heavy burdens on right to privacy of an individual.<br /><br />Under the Right to Information Act, 2005 public sector banks are considered to be public authorities. By the virtue of the Statute, any person can access information from banks. For example, in a recent case an information officer directed Reserve Bank of India, to disclose Inspection Reports. These reports generally contain information regarding doubtful accounts, non-performing account, etc. There is a need that banks should be exempted from the Right to Information Act, 2005. Since they are not dealing with public funds there is no need to apply transparency law to the banks. <br /><br />Malavika Jayaram described the major conflicts and tensions with respect to privacy vis-à-vis banking and financial systems and financial data. Other privacy and transparency issues include: the publication of online tax information and income data. <br /><br />Surveillance is built in the design of banking system, so it is capable of tracking personal information and activity. There is a need to implement more privacy friendly and privacy by design systems in the banking sector. Customers are generally ignorant about privacy policies and this influences informed consent and furthermore marketing institution may influence customers to behave in a particular manner. In this context privacy by design becomes very important.<br /><br />Data minimization principles should be applied; since the more data collected the more there is a risk of data breach and misuse. In case of data retention it is necessary that person giving such data should know how much proportion of the data is being retained and for how long it is stored and also what is the scope of the data and for what purpose will it be used. <br /><br />Personal information and data, which was previously collected by the government, are gradually being outsourced to private bodies. On one hand it is a good thing that private sector get their technology and security measures right as compared to the government agencies but it comes with the risk that it can be sold out by private bodies as commodities in the market. Private bodies that are harvesting the data can also be forced by the government to disclose it under a particular law or statute without taking into consideration the consent of the individual whose personal information is sought for. <br /><br />There is multiplicity of documentation for identification, which makes transactions less efficient. This has attracted customers to more convenient systems such as one-access point systems, but people tend to forget the issues related to privacy, in using such a system. What is portrayed as efficient for the consumer is a tool for social control and who has access and authority to use such information. <br /><br />Often the reason given for collecting information is that it will help the service provider to combat fraud. However, studies have shown people more often fake situation rather than identity. The other concerns are that of sharing of information and lack of choice with respect to such sharing. There should be check as to sharing of personal information as the data belongs to the individual and not the bank or any other institution which requires furnishing personal information in lieu of services. This gives rise to a binary choice to the user; either the individual has to provide information to avail the service or else one cannot avail the services.</p>
<p>There is supposed to be market for privacy. The notion of personal information is subjective and varies from person to person. For example, one might be comfortable to share certain information. However, others might not be.<br /><br />The issues that came out of the Q&A sessions are:</p>
<ul><li>The default settings are generally put at the low protection settings. Unless the user is aware of the privacy protection setting, he or she is prone to breach of privacy. Should the default privacy setting be set to maximum security and option can be given to the user to change it according to his or her preference?</li><li>Is there any system in the banks, which allows the customers of bank to know about which all third parties the bank has shared his or her personal information with?</li></ul>
<h2>Health Privacy</h2>
<p>Panelists: K. K. Abraham, (President, Indian Network for People with HIV), Dr. B. S. Bedi, (Advisor, CDAC & Media Lab Asia), and Raman Chawla, (Senior Advocacy Officer, Lawyers Collective).<br />Moderator: Ashok Row Kavi (Journalist and LGBT Activist) <br />Poster: Danish Sheikh (Researcher, Alternative Law Forum)</p>
<p>Danish Sheikh outlined the possible health privacy violations. These included the disclosure of personal health information to third parties without consent, inadequate notification to a patient of a data breach, the purpose of collecting data is not specified and improper security standards, storage and disposal. The disclosure of personal health information has the potential to be embarrassing, stigmatizing or discriminatory. <br /><br />Subsequently, Danish Sheikh examined the status of sexual minorities’ vis-à-vis the privacy framework. Culling out some real life examples based on various studies, media reports and judgments from the Supreme Court and the High Courts of Delhi and Allahabad, he also described privacy violations committed by both individuals as well as state authorities. <br /><br />Ashok Row Kavi recounted how privacy was very contextual when debating section 377 in the LGBT community. The paradigm upon which they were going to fight the anti-sodomy law was that it was consenting sex between two adults in private space. However, this paradigm was not well received by women, as women did not see private space as safe space, due to domestic violence. Perceptions of privacy are very subjective and it differs from person to person.<br /><br />Raman Chawla recounted the history of the Draft HIV/AIDS Bill. In 2002, the need for law related to HIV/AIDS was realized in order to protect right to consent, right against discrimination and right to confidentiality of HIV patients. The bill was finalized in the year 2006. Alarmingly, it is yet to be tabled before the Parliament. <br /><br />The privacy provisions in the HIV bill clearly state that no person can be tested, treated or researched for HIV without the consent of the patient. It also casts that in a fiduciary relationship the health care provider must maintain confidentiality, however if the patient provides written consent then their status may be disclosed. The HIV condition of the patient can also revealed by the doctor if there is a court order demanding such disclosure. The doctor may disclose the status of the patient to his or her partner but he has to follow a particular protocol. The doctor should have sufficient belief that his or her partner is at risk of contracting HIV. The person who is infected will be asked for his/her views and counseled before his/her partner is informed. However, there are doubts as to the implementation and enforcement of this protocol.</p>
<p>Danish Sheikh outlined the possible health privacy violations. These included the disclosure of personal health information to third parties without consent, inadequate notification to a patient of a data breach, the purpose of collecting data is not specified and improper security standards, storage and disposal. The disclosure of personal health information has the potential to be embarrassing, stigmatizing or discriminatory. <br /><br />Subsequently, Danish Sheikh examined the status of sexual minorities’ vis-à-vis the privacy framework. Culling out some real life examples based on various studies, media reports and judgments from the Supreme Court and the High Courts of Delhi and Allahabad, he also described privacy violations committed by both individuals as well as state authorities. <br /><br />Ashok Row Kavi recounted how privacy was very contextual when debating section 377 in the LGBT community. The paradigm upon which they were going to fight the anti-sodomy law was that it was consenting sex between two adults in private space. However, this paradigm was not well received by women, as women did not see private space as safe space, due to domestic violence. Perceptions of privacy are very subjective and it differs from person to person.<br /><br />Raman Chawla recounted the history of the Draft HIV/AIDS Bill. In 2002, the need for law related to HIV/AIDS was realized in order to protect right to consent, right against discrimination and right to confidentiality of HIV patients. The bill was finalized in the year 2006. Alarmingly, it is yet to be tabled before the Parliament. <br /><br />The privacy provisions in the HIV bill clearly state that no person can be tested, treated or researched for HIV without the consent of the patient. It also casts that in a fiduciary relationship the health care provider must maintain confidentiality, however if the patient provides written consent then their status may be disclosed. The HIV condition of the patient can also revealed by the doctor if there is a court order demanding such disclosure. The doctor may disclose the status of the patient to his or her partner but he has to follow a particular protocol. The doctor should have sufficient belief that his or her partner is at risk of contracting HIV. The person who is infected will be asked for his/her views and counseled before his/her partner is informed. However, there are doubts as to the implementation and enforcement of this protocol.</p>
<p align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/AP.JPG/image_preview" alt="AI" class="image-inline image-inline" title="AI" /></p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>Natasha Vaz (Policy Advocate, Privacy India) brought the symposium to a close by thanking the partners, the panelists, the moderators and the participants for their sincere efforts in making the All India Privacy Symposium a grand success. In India, a public discussion regarding privacy has been long over due. The symposium provided a platform for dialogue and building greater awareness around privacy issues in health, banking, national security, transparency and e-governance. Using our research, expert opinions, personal experiences, questions and comments various facets of privacy were explored.</p>
<hr />
<h2>Press Coverage</h2>
<p>The event was featured in the media as well:</p>
<ol><li><a class="external-link" href="http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-02-02/news/31017368_1_privacy-law-privacy-international-cis">India needs an independent privacy law, says NGO Privacy India</a>, Economic Times, February 2, 2012</li><li><a class="external-link" href="http://www.tehelka.com/story_main51.asp?filename=Ws060212Privacy.asp">New Bill to decide on individual’s right to privacy</a>, Tehelka, February 6, 2012 </li><li><a class="external-link" href="http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column_lack-of-strong-privacy-law-in-healthcare-a-big-worry_1649366">Lack of strong privacy law in healthcare a big worry</a>, Daily News & Analysis, February 13, 2012</li><li><a class="external-link" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/privacy-concerns-grow-in-india/2012/01/26/gIQAyM0UmQ_story.html">Privacy concerns grow in India</a>, Washington Post, February 3, 2012</li></ol>
<hr />
<ul><li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/privacy-symposium-agenda.pdf" class="internal-link" title="All India Privacy Symposium - Profiles & Speakers">Click </a>to download the Agenda and Profile of Speakers (PDF, 1642 Kb)</li></ul>
<ul><li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/all-privacy-symposium.pdf" class="internal-link" title="All India Privacy Symposium (File)">Download the PDF</a> (555 Kb)</li><li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/all-india-privacy-symposium-webcast" class="external-link">Follow the webcast of the event</a><br /></li></ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/all-india-privacy-delhi-report'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/all-india-privacy-delhi-report</a>
</p>
No publishernatashaFeaturedInternet GovernancePrivacy2012-04-30T05:16:41ZBlog EntryFraming the Digital AlterNatives
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/framing-the-digital-alternatives
<b>They effect social change through social media, place their communities on the global map, and share spiritual connections with the digital world - meet the everyday digital native. </b>
<p>The Everyday Digital Native video contest has got its pulse on what makes youths from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds connect with one another in the global community – it’s an affinity for digital technologies and Web 2.0-mediated platforms coupled with a drive to spearhead social change. The contest invited people from around the world to make a video that would answer the question, ‘Who is the Everyday Digital Native’? The final videos received more than <del>20,000</del> 3,000 votes from the public and our top five winners emerged from across three continents!</p>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/framing-digital-alternatives" class="internal-link" title="Framing the Digital Alternatives">The Digital AlterNatives Featurette </a>(PDF, 2847 KB) is a peek into the minds of digital natives as citizen activists. The 10 featured interviews of the Digital Natives video contest finalists don't fit the stereotype of the Globalized Digital Native: Young Geeks apathetic to 'Saving the Planet'. Rather, these are affirmative citizens, young, middle aged and senior, who consider digital technology as second nature for use in personal, professional or socio-political capacities.</p>
<p>The 'Digital Natives with a Cause?' is a collaborative research-inquiry between The Centre for Internet & Society, India and HIVOS Knowledge Programme, the Netherlands into the field of youth, change and technology in the context of the Global South. The three-year research project has resulted in the four-book collective, 'Digital AlterNatives with a Cause?' published in 2011. Read more about the project <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/dnbook" class="external-link">here</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/framing-the-digital-alternatives'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/framing-the-digital-alternatives</a>
</p>
No publisherNilofar AnsherFeaturedWeb PoliticsResearchers at WorkDigital Natives2015-05-08T12:28:03ZBlog EntryVote for the Everyday Digital Native Video Contest!
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/vote-for-digital-natives
<b>The Centre for Internet & Society and Hivos are super excited to present the final videos in the Everyday Digital Native Video Contest. We invite readers to vote for the TOP 5 Videos. The finalists will each win EUR500! Voting closes March 31, 2012</b>
<h2>Who’s the Everyday Digital Native? This global video contest has the answer</h2>
<p><em>They effect social change through social media, place their
communities on the global map, and share a spiritual connection with the
digital world - Meet the Everyday Digital Native</em></p>
<p>The Everyday Digital Native video contest has got its pulse on what
makes youths from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds connect with one
another in the global community – it’s an affinity for digital
technologies and Web 2.0-mediated platforms coupled with a drive to
spearhead social change. The contest invited people from around the
world to make a video that would answer the question, ‘Who is the
Everyday Digital Native?’. Following a jury-based selection process, the
final videos are now online and open for public voting.</p>
<p>Run by the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet & Society (CIS)
with the support of Dutch NGO HIVOS, the contest will see the top five
videos with the most votes declared winners on April 1, 2012. The 12
finalists in the video, who come from different parts of the globe, are
each vying for the top prize of USD 500 and a chance to have their
shorts screened in a film screening and panel discussion hosted by CIS. <br /><br />Referring
to the theme of the contest, Dr Nishant Shah, Director of Research and
Co-founder of the Centre, says that the contest aims at highlighting the
alternative users of digital technologies. These are people who are
often not accounted for either in mainstream discourses of changemakers
or in academic biopics on digital natives. “The 12 video proposals show
that the everyday digital native does not wake up in the morning and
think, ‘hmmm today I will change the world’. And yet, in their everyday
lives, when they see the possibility of producing a change in their
immediate environments, they turn to the digital to find networks that
can start a change”, says Shah. <br /><br />Apart from the top five public
selections, the jury members will be instrumental in picking their two
favorites among the finalists. Talking about the range of ideas that
participants sent in jury member Leon Tan, a media-art historian,
cultural theorist and psychoanalyst based in Gothenburg, Sweden, says,
“The contest is an exciting project as it has the potential to portray
the lives of digital natives from different corners of the world. The
generosity of the contestants in creating video proposals is commendable
as is the range of ideas suggested. The ideas address both the
opportunities and risks of what we might call digital life.” <br /><br />Adds
Shashwati Talukdar, a filmmaker and jury member from India, “It was
really interesting to see how different all the proposals were. Some of
them were taking the notion of digital native as a personal one and some
were very clearly political and sought an intervention in the real
world. Dutch digital media artist and jury member Jeroen van Loon refers
to a proposal from the USA where the participant wanted to explore the
possibility of unplugging from his digital life. “It’s very interesting
how digital natives question their own world. The proposals are good
examples of how technology and culture constantly change each other. We
can learn a lot from the global digital natives.” </p>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest" class="external-link">Profiles of the finalists and their videos can be viewed here</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/vote-for-digital-natives'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/vote-for-digital-natives</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaVideoFeaturedResearchers at WorkDigital Natives2015-05-08T12:32:00ZBlog EntryWeb Accessibility Policy Making: An International Perspective
http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/web-accessibility-policy-making-an-international-perspective
<b>G3ict and CIS are pleased to announce the publication of a new, improved edition of the Web Accessibility Policy Making: An International Perspective. The report published in cooperation with the Hans Foundation provides an updated synopsis of the many policies that governments have implemented around the world to ensure that the Internet and websites are accessible to persons with disabilities. </b>
<p>The report contains a Foreword by Axel Leblois, Founder and Executive Director of G3ict, an introduction and studies from countries like Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Philippines, Portugal, Sweden, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, and the European Union. The report contains contributions from Prashanth Ramadas, Asma Tajuddin, G Aravind, Katie Reisner, Sucharita Narasimhan, Bama Balakrishnan and Nirmita Narasimhan. Axel Leblois, Donal Rice, Immaculada Placienca Porrero, Kevin Carey, Licia Sbattella and Sunil Abraham are the expert reviewers.</p>
<h2>Foreword by Axel Leblois</h2>
<p>This third edition of our joint report with CIS “WEB ACCESSIBILITY POLICY MAKING: AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE” provides an updated synopsis of the many policies that governments have implemented around the world to ensure that the Internet and web sites are accessible to persons with disabilities. With 153 countries parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as of December 2011, an increasing number of governments are now in the midst of developing policies and programs to ensure that web sites and services under their jurisdictions are accessible.</p>
<p>Indeed, the Preamble of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities recognizes “the importance of accessibility to the physical, social, economic and cultural environment, to health and education and to information and communication, in enabling persons with disabilities to fully enjoy all human rights and fundamental freedoms”. Its article 9 stipulates that: “To enable persons with disabilities to live independently and participate fully in all aspects of life, States Parties shall take appropriate measures to ensure to persons with disabilities access, on an equal basis with others, to the physical environment, to transportation, to information and communications, including information and communications technologies and systems” (1). It further specifies that “State Parties shall also take appropriate measures to … Promote access for persons with disabilities to new information and communications technologies and systems, including the Internet” (2.g).</p>
<p>There is therefore no doubt that all State Parties have an obligation to act upon those commitments. However, as this report demonstrates it clearly, web accessibility policies and their levels of enforcement vary considerably among countries with some common denominators such as the compliance with the W3C – WAI guidelines on web accessibility.</p>
<p>G3ict and CIS hope that this new, improved edition, which will now be available in print as well as in electronic format, will help accelerate the development of web accessibility policies and programs around the world. We want to express our sincere appreciation to Nirmita Narasimhan, programme manager at CIS and editor of the G3ict Publications and Reports for her dedication to this report which would not have been made possible without her incredible work and motivation as Disability Advocate.</p>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/web-accessibility.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Web Accessibility Policy Making">Download a PDF of the Web Accessibility Policy Making here</a> [335 KB]</p>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/daisy-file" class="internal-link" title="Web Accessibility (Daisy) File">Download the Daisy File</a> [23412 KB]</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/web-accessibility-policy-making-an-international-perspective'>http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/web-accessibility-policy-making-an-international-perspective</a>
</p>
No publishernirmitaFeaturedAccessibilityAccess to Knowledge2012-09-25T05:33:25ZBlog EntryDigital Natives Video Contest
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/digital-natives-contest
<b>The Everyday Digital Native Video Contest has its top five winners through public voting.</b>
<p>
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<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>A Day in the Life of a Digital Native: </strong>Story scripted, shot and edited by Leandra (Cole) Flor. The video is an extension of Cole's photo essay "Mirror Exercises" conceptualized for 'Digital AlterNatives with a Cause' Book 1 <em>To Be</em>. <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/dnbook1/at_download/file">Download the book.</a></p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/winners-pictures/MarieJudeBendiolaWinner.jpg" alt="null" title="" width="103" height="142" /></th>
<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/winners-pictures/TJKMwinner.jpg" alt="null" title="" width="103" height="142" /></th>
<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/winners-pictures/TJBurkswinner.jpg" alt="null" title="" width="103" height="142" /></th>
<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/winners-pictures/JohnMusilaKiberawinner.jpg" alt="null" title="" width="103" height="142" /></th>
<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/mj.png/@@images/f52feb88-f69d-4482-b019-881fdf8af7c3.png" title="mj" height="138" width="102" alt="null" class="image-inline" /><br /></th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Top 5 winners of the Digital Native video contest selected through public votes. From left to right: Marie Jude Bendiola, T.J. KM, Thomas Burks, John Musila and MJ.</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>The Jury Prize for Two Best Videos goes to John Musila (Kenya) and Marie Jude Bendiola (Singapore)! Congratulations to all winners. The Top 5 winners win the grand prize of EUR 500 each!</strong></p>
<h3><strong>Our Top 10 contestants: Click on their profile to watch their videos<br /></strong></h3>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/winners-pictures/MarieJudeBendiolaWinner.jpg" alt="null" title="" width="103" height="142" /><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Marie Jude Bendiola</strong><br />I come from a third world country where technology seemed to be hard to reach back in the 90s; especially by the not-so-privileged. As we progressed, technology has not only become ubiquitous (in malls, various institutions and technological hubs) but also, it has come to be used by the common man. My video will answer how technology bridges the gap between dreams and reality. It will be a fusion of documentary and re-enactment of real life events and dramas.<br /><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/connecting-souls-bridging-dreams" class="external-link">Read More</a><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/cijoaj2003.jpg/image_preview" title="Cijo" height="142" width="103" alt="Cijo" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
<td style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Cijo Abraham Mani</strong><br />The power of digital media will be presented to audience with the help of showing tweet-a-thon panel discussions, blood aid tweets getting spread, etc. <br /><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/digital-media-dance" class="external-link">Read More</a><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/winners-pictures/TJKMwinner.jpg" title="" height="142" width="103" alt="null" class="image-inline" /><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: justify;"><strong>TJ K.M.</strong><br />My video explores the spiritual aspect of digital technology and how rather than getting in the way of our spiritual expression, it is actually bringing us face to face with it, if only we choose to look. The video will be a mixture of live action and stop motion animation/puppetry where digital devices take on a transcendent character similar to nature spirits in various cultures. I plan to investigate the tendency to exclude digital devices and technology from being categorized alongside nature as if it is somehow exempt from or superior to this category. Using symbolism and motifs from various cultures such as the Native American Hopi, Balinese Hinduism and Japanese Shintoism, my video will create a world where the technology we use daily is viewed not just as a means for socio-cultural exchange and communication but is available for the nurturing of our souls if we so choose.<br /><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/with-no-distinction" class="external-link">Read More</a><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/winners-pictures/TJBurkswinner.jpg" title="" height="142" width="103" alt="null" class="image-inline" /><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Thomas Burks<br /></strong>We have a small production company in Birmingham, Alabama. I was hired on a year ago to do film and commercials for them as they expand into advertising and video coverage of events. We only have about 3 employees including myself, working out of our homes. We recently acquired a space to open a studio and retail location downtown where we live. We use Facebook, blogs, and viral marketing all the time to get our name out there. Our account executive is constantly monitoring our Facebook for client orders and bookings. We are beginning to use twitter to provide information more fluidly to people. We believe this might be a year of growth for our small company, as we are becoming able to provide much higher quality content. We're fully digital; constantly updating our websites and blogs, and I believe we would be able to tell a great digital story. We submit numerous small films and skits; we cover awesome concerts, and rely so heavily on the digital world to show our content. That will be the gist of our video.<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/alternate-visions-accessing-leisure-through-interfaces" class="external-link"></a><br /><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/digital-natives-video-contest/entries/digital-coverage-in-a-digital-world" class="external-link">Read More</a><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/winners-pictures/JohnMusilaKiberawinner.jpg" title="" height="142" width="103" alt="null" class="image-inline" /><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: justify;"><strong>John Musila<br /></strong>Map Kibera Trust is an organization based in Kenya’s Kibera slums. Using digital gadgets and technology, they have transformed the community by placing it on the map as it was only seen as forest when viewed on a map. They also film stories around the community and share them with the world on their YouTube channel and other social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Through this they have been able to highlight and raise awareness about the challenges the community faces. Our video would show Kibera’s role in bringing about change.<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/author/kiberanewsnetwork" class="external-link"></a><br /><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/from-the-wild-into-the-digital-world" class="external-link">Read More</a><br /></td>
</tr>
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<td align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Andres.jpg/image_preview" title="Andres" height="142" width="103" alt="Andres" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
<td style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Andrés Felipe Arias Palma<br /></strong>I think many people are digital natives unknowingly. Being a digital native is a relationship with activism and society, not as they initially thought. It was a condition of being born in specific times and external factors. In the video, I will interview people about who and what is a digital native? How to use the Internet? What are the advantages and disadvantages for society where everything is run with the power of the Internet?<br /><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/who-is-a-digital-native" class="external-link">Read More</a><br /></td>
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<td align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/martingpotter.jpg/image_preview" title="Martin" height="142" width="103" alt="Martin" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
<td style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Martin Potter<br /></strong>Over a period of nearly four years, moving across small towns in Australia and South East Asia, I have seen the most extraordinary innovations at a local community level. My video will focus on these local stories with global impact. I am pursuing a PhD in participatory media and this will lend a uniquely academic perspective on the concept of collaboration, community life and innovation.<br /><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/big-stories-small-towns" class="external-link">Read More</a><br /></td>
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<td align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/rajasekaran.jpg/image_preview" title="Rajasekaran" height="142" width="103" alt="Rajasekaran" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
<td style="text-align: justify;"><strong>E. James Rajasekaran</strong><br />I live in the temple town of Madurai in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. I am a social worker and the plight of people living in slims is something that my NGO is closely associated with. My video will bring out the efforts of the people who live in the slums of Madurai.<br /><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/life-in-the-city-slums" class="external-link">Read More</a><br /></td>
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<td align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/anan.jpg/image_preview" title="Anand" height="142" width="103" alt="Anand" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
<td style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Anand Jha<br /></strong>Bangalore is home to a lot of technology start-ups. A lot of geeks, who find it limiting to work for corporations, are driving a very open source-oriented, frugally-built and extremely demanding culture. While their products are standing at the bleeding edge of technology, their personal lives too are constantly driven on the edge, every launch being a make or break day for them. The project would aim at capturing their stories, their frustration and motivation, looking at the possibilities of Indian software scene moving beyond the services and back-end office culture into a more risk prone but more passionate business of technology.<br /><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/deployed" class="external-link">Read More</a><br /></td>
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<td align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/mj.png/@@images/f52feb88-f69d-4482-b019-881fdf8af7c3.png" title="mj" height="138" width="102" alt="null" class="image-inline" /></td>
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<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>MJ</strong><br />As a digital native living in a developing country, I have carried out a series of both online and offline projects, which have always striven to benefit Zimbabweans in a number of ways since 2000. These projects have greatly increased my interactions with computers. I might say, I got married to a computer in 2000 when I bought my first PC; in a way, my relationship with my computer is intimate. Even though this computer I bought is an old 386 machine made obsolete by the faster Pentium III models, this did not change my love for the computer. My video will focus on a dream-like moment of my digital life.</p>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/i-am-a-ghetto-digital-native" class="internal-link">Read more</a></p>
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<h3>Jury Members</h3>
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<td style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Shashwati Talukdar</strong><br /> Shashwati Talukdar grew up in India where her engagement with theatre and sculpture led to filmmaking, and a Masters degree from the AJ Kidwai Mass Communication Research Center in Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. She developed an interest in American Avant-Garde film and eventually got an MFA in Film and Media Arts from Temple University, Philadelphia (1999). Her work covers a wide range of forms, including documentary, narrative and experimental. Her work has shown at venues including the Margaret Mead Festival, Berlin, Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Kiasma Museum of Art and the Whitney Biennial. She has been supported by entities including the Asian Cine Fund in Busan, the Jerome Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts among others.</td>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/ShashwatiTalukdar.jpg/image_preview" style="float: right;" title="Shashwati" height="115" width="98" alt="Shashwati" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
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<td style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Leon Tan</strong><br /> Leon Tan, PhD, is a media-art historian, cultural theorist and psychoanalyst based in Gothenburg, Sweden. He has written on art, media, globalization and copyright in journals such as CTheory and Ephemera, and curated media-art projects and art symposia in international sites such as KHOJ International Artists’ Association (New Delhi, 2011), ISEA (Singapore, 2008) and Digital Arts Week (Zurich, 2007). He is currently researching media-art practices in India, and networked museums as an expanded field of cultural memory making.</td>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/LeonTan.jpg/image_preview" style="float: right;" title="Leon Tan" height="142" width="103" alt="Leon Tan" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
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<td style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Jeroen van Loon</strong><br /> Jeroen, digital media artist, investigates the (non-) impact of digital technology on our lives. For two months he went analogue, refrained from connecting to the World Wide Web, and communicated through his Analogue Blog. He is currently working on Life Needs Internet in which he travels around the world and collects people's personal handwritten internet stories.</td>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/JeroenvanLoon.jpg/image_preview" style="float: right;" title="Jeroen" height="128" width="106" alt="Jeroen" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
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<td style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Becky Band Jain</strong><br /> Becky Band Jain is a non-profit communications specialist and blogs on everything from technology to psychology and culture. She spent the last five years living in India and she’s now based in New York. She’s a dedicated yoga and meditation practitioner and is passionate about ICTD and new media.</td>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/BeckyBandJain.jpg/image_preview" style="float: right;" title="Becky" height="134" width="107" alt="Becky" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
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<td style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Namita A. Malhotra</strong><br /> Namita A. Malhotra is a legal researcher and media practitioner and a core member of Alternative Law Forum in Bangalore, India. Her areas of interest are image, technology, media and law, and her work takes the form of interdisciplinary research, video and film making and exploring possibilities of recombining material, practice and discipline. She is also a founder member of Pad.ma (Public Access Digital Media Archive) which is a densely annotated online video archive.</td>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/NamitaMalhotra.jpg/image_preview" style="float: right;" title="Namita" height="156" width="104" alt="null" /></td>
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<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/digital-natives-contest'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/digital-natives-contest</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaVideoFeaturedResearchers at WorkDigital Natives2015-05-08T12:35:27ZBlog EntryWorld Narrow Web
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/world-narrow-web
<b>Censorship and how govt reacts to it may push us to country-specific networks, writes Pranesh Prakash in an article published in the Indian Express on 4 February 2012. </b>
<p>Twitter, a popular micro-blogging service, recently announced that “[today] we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world”. In a move a few weeks ago, Blogger, Google’s blogging service, in effect announced something similar, by saying that default they would redirect Blogger users trying to get to Blogspot.com addresses (like <a class="external-link" href="http://example.blogspot.com">http://example.blogspot.com</a>) to their respective country sites (like <a class="external-link" href="http://example.blogspot.in">http://example.blogspot.in</a>). Twitter’s announcement was greeted with much disapproval by many Twitter users, as a move towards censorship, with some talking (on Twitter) about a boycott. Blogger’s move was hidden away, deep within a help page, and is being noticed now, and is causing quite a stir as caving in to censorship. Are these concerns justified? Before answering that question, let’s look at what the platforms’ announcements really say.</p>
<p>Twitter has given itself the ability to withhold specific tweets and users in particular countries where that content is legally required to be removed (generally with a court order). Their earlier option, they inform us, was to block the offending tweets and users in all countries. Apart from this, they will publish a notice for each tweet/ user that is blocked in a country. They will also be proactively publishing every removal request they receive at ChillingEffects.org, which allows us to hold them to account and question their decision to remove tweets.</p>
<p>Google, by redirecting you to the country-specific Blogger, is allowing for country-level removal of both blogs and individual blog posts. However, they also note that you can circumvent this by using a special “no redirect” address. Google currently forwards all search-related removals, but does not do so for Blogger-related requests, and all copyright-related complaints to ChillingEffects.org. Google does publish aggregate data relating to censorship of Blogger, on which free-speech advocates have been asking them to provide more granular information.</p>
<p>There are three problems. First, while Twitter was just as open to repressive governments’ requests last week, by making this change, they are advertising this fact to such governments. Thailand has noted it, and has congratulated Twitter.</p>
<p>Second, as Rob Beschizza, managing editor of the website Boing Boing, pointed out, there have been no instances of political content having been removed by Twitter. Even British courts’ super-injunctions (injunctions on speech, that prevent you from mentioning the fact that there is an injunction) were defeated by Twitter users, which only showed that attempts to censor material results in even more attention being drawn to it (which is popularly known as the “Streisand Effect”). So, does this now mean that Twitter will start applying local laws to judge “valid and applicable legal requests”, instead of American laws? What if the law is as bad as that which exists in India, where they are required to remove content within 36 hours based on any affected person’s complaint — without a court order? Will they still act on it? If they don’t, will the government or courts order Twitter.com to be blocked in India, finding it liable for illegal omissions?</p>
<p>Third, this trend points increasingly to the fact that we are witnessing a Balkanisation of the Web as more countries start asserting their sovereignty online. As Chinese dissident journalist Michael Anti pointed out recently, it seems we now need visas (read “circumvention techniques”) to visit the international Web. But even then, there is no longer a singular “international” Web, but an Indian Web and a Guatemalan Web, and an Angolan Web. And the government’s recent proposal of requiring companies to locate their servers in India is a move towards this (apart from being a move towards killing cloud computing).<br /><br />That having been said, the reality is that the CEOs of Google, Google India, and Microsoft have been summoned to appear in Indian courts for allowing their users to publish material which they don’t know about, which is in a sealed envelope (and most of the accused companies haven’t been shown yet), and which they weren’t even asked once to remove.<br /><br />The Intermediary Guidelines Rules passed by the Department of Information Technology in April 2011 do not require the user, whose content it is, to be told that there is a complaint, nor to be given a chance to defend themselves. It does not even require public notice that the content has been removed.</p>
<p>The truth is, the transparency around censorship that Google and Twitter are providing is far better than what most other companies are providing. For instance, Big Rock, an Indian DNS provider, suspended the CartoonsAgainstCorruption.com web address on the basis of a seemingly not legal request by the Cyber Cell of the Mumbai Crime Branch, and did so without any public notice and without even informing the cartoonist whose web address it was. At least Google and Twitter are pushing back against non-legal requests, and refusing to remove content that doesn’t violate local laws. Single-mindedly criticising them will only put off other companies from following in their footsteps.<br /><br />Instead of criticising those who are actually working towards transparency in censorship, we should encourage them and others, push intermediaries not to cave in to unreasonable censorship requests, prevent them from over-censoring on their own, and push hard for the government to incorporate their best practices as part of the Intermediary Guidelines Rules.</p>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://www.indianexpress.com/news/world-narrow-web/907579/1">The original article was published in the Indian Express</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/world-narrow-web'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/world-narrow-web</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshGoogleFreedom of Speech and ExpressionTwitterInternet GovernanceFeaturedCensorship2012-03-27T16:00:24ZBlog EntryDigital Futures: Internet Freedom and Millennials
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/digital-futures-internet-freedom-and-millennials-2
<b>Last year was a turbulent year for freedom of speech and online expression in India. Early in 2011 we saw the introduction of an Intermediaries Liability amendment to the existing Information Technologies Law in the country, which allowed intermediaries like internet service providers (ISPs), digital content platforms (like Facebook and Twitter) and other actors managing online content, to remove material that is deemed objectionable without routing it through a court of law. Effectively, this was an attempt at crowdsourcing censorship, where at the whim or fancy of any person who flags information as offensive, it could be removed from digital platforms, writes Nishant Shah in DMLcentral on 3 February 2012.</b>
<p>While we were still reeling from the potential abuse this could lead
to – from weekend drunken games where people send take-down notices on
an ad hoc basis to regressive fundamentalists using this to silence
voices of protests – we encountered another shock. The Information and
Technologies minister of India called some of the biggest social
networking platforms that support user generated content to exercise a
regime of self-regulation and censorship. Citing content that was
considered slanderous to political leaders in the country and
potentially offensive to the religious sentiments of certain groups, he
called for a ‘pre-screening’ of online content – invoking visions of
thought police, where an army of thousands will be trained to read your
personal and private information, sift it for offensive content, and
disallow it to be published online.</p>
<p>And while we deal with the aftermath of what this might mean to the
future of openness and our constitutionally enshrined rights of freedom
of speech and expression, there was another shock that awaited us in
2012. Even as I write this, Facebook and Google – two of the largest
social media platforms in India – have been 'implicated' in a gamut of
civil and criminal charges. It has been alleged that these companies
knowingly allowed obscene and immoral material capable of inciting
prurience, communal tension, hatred and violence, to proliferate in
their systems because it helps generate revenue. Because the people who
uploaded the information are outside the jurisdiction of the court, they
cannot be punished but these intermediaries that have allowed this
content that is deemed ‘obscene, lascivious, indecent and shocking’, are
now being held responsible.</p>
<p>There has been a lot of debate in and outside the country about the
implications this has for the form and nature of information online.
Freedom of speech and expression, information regulation regimes in
emerging information societies, resurgence of authoritative
governmentality in the face of quickly eradicating sovereignty, and the
diminishing openness of the web, have all been variously discussed, much
like the debates around SOPA/PIPA discussions in the US. In all of
these conversations, there has been talk about the future but not about
the people whose futures are the most at stake – digital natives.
Pulling from my research, here are some summarized reflections of
members of a younger generation pondering their digital futures:</p>
<p><strong>Innovation</strong>: One of the tropes that allows digital natives
intimate relationships with their technology gadgets, platforms and
environments is to innovate. Especially in the global south where we
cannot take ubiquitous and affordable access to the internet for
granted, innovation is not merely about creativity in producing new
content. Innovation is in mobilizing meager resources in order to
achieve large tasks. Innovation is in cutting through existing
boundaries of inequity and building communities of learning and
information. Innovation is in finding ways by which access can be
facilitated for large user bases. Free and open information is the
reward that follows innovation. There is consensus that restricting
access to information is a negative incentive for those approaching the
information superhighway. And for some it is also “a challenge to find
ways of accessing that information. They can ban it, but by the time
they will ban it, our way of accessing it will have changed!”</p>
<p><strong>Information Read/Write</strong>: Sometimes the promise of digital
networks providing abundant information and knowledge, which is free to
access and consume, overrides the actual allure of speech and
expression. As one interlocutor explained in Wikipedia terms, “more
people access Wikipedia to consume information others have produced
rather than contribute to it...and it is the same everywhere. It is fun
to write, but it is fun to write only because there is somebody reading
it. Sometimes I go online to read rather than write.” The censorship
debates often restrict themselves to freedom of speech and expression,
but what they overlook is that this also interferes with the freedom to
read. Reading is a form of engagement, interaction, formation of trust
and affection online. And when information can no longer be easily read,
it will have drastic effects on how young people connect and form
communities.</p>
<p><strong>Mapping Learning</strong>: For many digital natives in my work, the
digital domain is not only a playground but also a space of learning.
Not learning in its didactic forms, replacing universities and offering
abundance of knowledge. For some, the digital space is a new process of
learning. It helps them negotiate and cope with their formal curricula
and offers alternative sources to understand and analyze reality. As
many in our research group mentioned, “we already have access to enough
academic material through our libraries. What we find on the internet
are things that help us understand ideas through things that are
familiar to us.” When pressed for an example, I was shown a wide range
of popular and academic, cultural and social spaces – blogs, videos,
movies, music, commentaries, tweets, mashups, etc., which the students
often map back to their existing curriculum. “Sometimes the textbooks
talk about things that happened before we were born. Or belonging to
countries we don’t know much about,” explained a 19-year-old. So as a
group they try and pull different and more familiar objects back into
their discussions, using the web, its search potential, and social
networking sites as filters to gain access to relevant knowledge.</p>
<p>It is in the nature of information to be filtered or censored. Even
at a personal level we constantly filter out information that is not
desirable or useful to us. It is understandable that certain kinds of
information that are produced with malicious intent needs to be
controlled. However, the recent attempts attack the very structures that
define the social web as we understand it now -- openness,
distribution, sharing, collaboration, co-creation and interactivity. For
digital natives, being digital is not just about infrastructure and
access. It is an integral part of how they embed themselves and
negotiate with our information society. Regulation of information is not
just about resolving the crisis of the present but also about shaping
the digital futures for a generation that is growing up digital.</p>
<p>Banner image credit: zebble <a class="external-link" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zebble/6080622/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/zebble/6080622/</a></p>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://dmlcentral.net/blog/nishant-shah/digital-futures-internet-freedom-and-millennials">Read the original published in DML Central</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/digital-futures-internet-freedom-and-millennials-2'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/digital-futures-internet-freedom-and-millennials-2</a>
</p>
No publishernishantFeatured2012-02-15T04:25:50ZBlog EntryPrivacy Matters — Analyzing the Right to "Privacy Bill"
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/privacy-matters-analyzing-the-right-to-privacy-bill
<b>On January 21, 2012 a public conference “Privacy Matters” was held at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai. It was the sixth conference organised in the series of regional consultations held as “Privacy Matters”. The present conference analyzed the Draft Privacy Bill and the participants discussed the challenges and concerns of privacy in India.</b>
<p>The conference was organized by Privacy India in partnership with the Centre for Internet & Society, International Development Research Centre, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, the Godrej Culture Lab and Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Participants included a wide range of stakeholders that included the civil society, NGO representatives, consumer activists, students, educators, local press, and advocates.</p>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/high-level-summary-and-critique-to-the-leaked-right-to-privacy-bill-2011" class="internal-link" title="High Level Summary and Critique to the Leaked Right to Privacy Bill 2011">Comments to the Right to Privacy Bill</a></p>
<h2>Welcome</h2>
<p><strong>Prashant Iyengar</strong> was the Lead Researcher with Privacy India, opened the conference with an explanation of Privacy India’s mandate to raise awareness, spark civil action and promote democratic dialogue around privacy challenges and violations in India. He summarized the five “Privacy Matters” series previously organised across India in <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy/privacy-nujsconference-summary" class="external-link">Kolkata</a> on January 23, 2011, in <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy/privacy-conferencebanglaore" class="external-link">Bangalore</a> on February 5, 2011, in <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy/privacy-matters-report-from-ahmedabad" class="external-link">Ahmedabad</a> on March 26, 2011, in <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy/privacy-guwahati-report" class="external-link">Guwahati</a> on June 23, 2011 and in<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/privacy-chennai-report.pdf/view" class="external-link"> Chennai </a>on August 6, 2011.</p>
<h2>Keynote Address</h2>
<p><strong>Na. Vijayashankar</strong> (popularly known as <strong>Naavi</strong>), a Bangalore based e-business consultant, delivered the key note address on the quest of a good privacy law in India. </p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
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<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Naavi.jpg/image_mini" title="Naavi" height="171" width="155" alt="Naavi" class="image-inline" /></td>
<td>
<p>He described the essential features of good privacy legislation. In
analyzing the Draft Privacy Bill’s definition of the right to privacy,
he suggested it should be defined through the “right to personal
liberty” rather than through what constitutes “infringements”. Mr.
Vijayashankar went on to explain that the “privacy right” should be
taken beyond “information protection” and defined as a “personal privacy
or a sense of personal liberty without constraints by the society”. He
explained the various classifications and levels of protection
associated with the availability and disclosure of data. He expressed
concerns regarding monitoring of data processors and suggested that data
controllers have contractual agreements between data processors, so as
to ensure an obligation of data security practices. He also called for
the simplification and division of offences and suggested numerous
reasons as to why the Cyber Appellate Tribunal would not be an ideal
monitoring mechanism or authority. See Naavi's presenation <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/proposed-privacy-bill" class="internal-link" title="Proposed Privacy Bill">here</a></p>
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<h2>Session I: Privacy and the Legal System</h2>
<p> <strong>Dr. Sudhir Krishnaswamy</strong>, Assistant Professor at the National Law School of India</p>
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<tbody>
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<td>Dr. Krishnaswamy started off the presentation by questioning the
normative assumptions the Draft Privacy Bill makes. He referred to the
controversy of Newt Gingrich's second marriage, to question the range of
moral interests that were involved. The Bill falls short in accounting
for dignity in relation to privacy.<br /><br />He described the Draft Privacy Bill as a reasonable advance, given where
privacy laws were before. Although, he feels that it does fall short,
in terms of a narrow position, on what privacy law should do. He also
questioned if it satisfies constitutional standards. He stressed the
importance of philosophical work around the Draft Privacy Bill
considering that the nature of privacy is not neat and over-arching.<br /></td>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/sudhir.jpg/image_mini" title="Sudhir Krishnaswamy" height="144" width="152" alt="Sudhir Krishnaswamy" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
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<h3>Privacy and the Constitutional Law</h3>
<p><strong>N S Nappinai</strong>, Advocate, High Court, Mumbai,</p>
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<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/nappinai.jpg/image_preview" title="Nappinai" height="172" width="157" alt="Nappinai" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
<td>Nappinai spoke on the constitutional right to privacy. She explained the
substantial development of Article 21 of the Constitution of India to
include the ‘right to privacy’ with regards to its interpretation and
application. She described the different shift of the application of the
right to privacy in the West in comparison to India. The West has moved
from the right to privacy pertaining to property to the right to
privacy concerning personal rights, whereas India moved from personal
rights to property rights. She outlined three aspects of privacy:
dignity, liberty and property rights. <br /><br />Ms. Nappinai dissected the Bill in its major components: interception,
surveillance, method and manner of personal data, health information,
collection, processing and use of personal data. Using these components,
she questioned what precedence exists? What should be further protected
or reversed? What lessons should legislators draw from?<br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Shortcomings of the Draft Right to Privacy Bill falls include:</p>
<ol><li>The objects and reasons section in the Draft Privacy Bill declares the right to privacy to every citizen as well as delineates the collection and dissemination of data. Nappinai dismisses the need for this delineation on the grounds that data protection is an inherent part of the right to privacy, it is not exclusive.</li><li>Large focus on transmission of data. The provisions do not account for property rights pertaining to the right to privacy. Therefore, the ‘knock-and-enter’ rule, the ‘right to be left alone’ and the ‘right to happiness’ should be included.</li><li>Applicability of the Bill should extend to all persons as well as data residing within the territory. It would be self-defeating if it only includes citizens, considering that the Constitution extends to all persons within the territory.</li><li>The right to dignity is unaccounted for.<br /><br />See Nappinai's presentation <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/privacy-and-the-constitution" class="internal-link" title="Privacy and the Constitution">here</a><br /></li></ol>
<h2>Session II: Privacy and Freedom of Expression</h2>
<p><strong>Apar Gupta</strong>, Advocate, Delhi</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Apar Gupta is an advocate based in Delhi who specializes in IP and
electronic commerce law, spoke predominantly on the interplay between
privacy and freedom of expression. He used the example of an advocate
tweeting about his criticism of a judges’ ruling, to illustrate how
different realms of online anonymity enable freedom of speech. He went
beyond the traditional realm of journalistic architecture such as
television channels or newspapers and explained online community
disclosure.
<p>Mr. Gupta provided a practical example of Indian Kanoon, a popular
online database of Indian court decisions. Because Indian Kanoon is
linked to the Google search engine, many individuals involved in civil
and criminal matters have requested Indian Kanoon to remove the court
judgments, under privacy claims. This particularly occurs with
individuals involved in matrimonial cases. However, as court judgment
constitute public records India Kanoon only removes court judgments when
requested by a court order.</p>
<p>He described the several ways legislators can define privacy and
freedom of expression. Considering that the privacy of an individual may
border upon freedom of speech and expression, he questioned whether or
not privacy should override the right to freedom of speech and
expression. In addition, Mr. Gupta discussed the debate on whether or
not the Privacy Bill should override all existing provisions in other
laws.</p>
</td>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Gupta.jpg/image_preview" alt="Apar Gupta" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Apar Gupta" /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Additionally, he analyzed the provisions of the Draft Privacy Bill
using three judgments. In these judgments, different entities sought of
various forms of speech to be blocked under privacy claims. He spoke
about the dangers of a statutory right for privacy that does not
safeguard freedom of speech and expression. Considering that the privacy
statute may allow for a form of civil action permitting private parties
to approach courts to stop certain publications, he stressed the
importance for legislators to ensure balanced privacy legislation
inclusive of freedom of speech and expression.</p>
<h3>Sexual Minorities and Privacy<br /></h3>
<p><strong>Danish Sheikh</strong>, researcher at Alternative Law Forum</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/danish.jpg/image_preview" alt="Danish " class="image-inline image-inline" title="Danish " /></td>
<td>Danish examined the status of sexual minorities in the light of privacy
framework in India. The tag of decriminalization has served to greatly
alter the way institutions approach the question of privacy when it
comes to sexual minorities. He used the Naz Foundation judgment as a
chronological marker to map the developments in the right to privacy and
sexual minorities over the years.
<p>He outlined four key effects on the right to privacy due to the Naz Foundation judgment:</p>
<ul><li>Prepared the understanding of privacy as a positive right and placed obligations on the state,</li><li>Discussed privacy as dealing with persons and not just places, it took into account decisional privacy as well as zonal privacy,</li><li>Connected privacy with dignity and the valuable worth of individuals, and</li><li>Included privacy on one’s autonomous identity.</li></ul>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>He described various incidents that took place before the Naz Foundation judgment, pre-Naz, that altered the way we conceived of queer rights in general and privacy in particular, including the Lucknow incidents, transgender toilets, passport forms, the medical establishment and lesbian unions. Post-Naz, he described two incidents including the Allahabad Muslim University sting operation as well as the TV9 “Expose” that captured public imagination. </p>
<p>He concluded by asking: “What do these stories tell us about privacy?” The issues faced by the transgender community tell us that privacy doesn’t necessarily encompass a one-size-fits-all approach, and can raise as many questions as it answers. The issues faced by the Lucknow NGOs display the institutionalized disrespect for privacy and that has marginally more devastating consequences for the homosexual community by the spectre of outing. The issues faced by lesbian women evidence yet another need for breaching the public/private divide, demonstrating how the protection of the law might be welcome in the family sphere. Alternate sexual orientation and gender identity might bring the community under a common rubric, but distilling the components of that rubric is essential for engaging in any kind of useful understanding of the community and the kind of privacy violations it suffers – or engage with situations when the lack of privacy is empowering.</p>
<h2>Session III: Privacy and National Security</h2>
<p><strong>Menaka Guruswamy</strong>, Advocate, Supreme Court of India</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Menaka explored national security and its relationship to privacy. In
her presentation, she compared the similar manner in which the courts
approach national security and privacy issues. The courts feel national
security and privacy issues are too complex to define, therefore, they
take a case-by-case approach.<br />
<br />
<p>Ms. Guruswamy described three incidents that urged her to question
national security and privacy. First, she was interested in the lack of
regulation surrounding intelligence agencies and was involved in the
introduction of the Regulations of Intelligence Agencies Bill as a
private members bill. Second, national security litigation between the
Salwa Judum judgment and the State of Chhattisgarh is an example of how
national security triumphs constitutional rights and values. Third,
privacy in the context of the impending litigation of Naz Foundation in
the Supreme Court. She described the larger conversation of national security focus on
values of equality and privacy. She discussed the following questions
that serve in advancing certain conception of rights:</p>
<ul><li>How do we posit privacy which necessarily, philosophically as
well as judicially, is carved out as the right of an individual to be
left alone?</li><li>What are the consequences when national security,
which is posited as the rights of the nation, is in conflict with the
right of the individual to be left alone?</li><li>Considering that
constitutional rights are posited as a public facet of citizenship how
does a right to privacy play in that context?</li></ul>
</td>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_menaka.jpg/image_preview" alt="Menaka" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Menaka" /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3>Privacy and UID</h3>
<p><strong>R. Ramakumar</strong>, professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/ramkumar.jpg/image_preview" title="Ramakumar" height="171" width="202" alt="Ramakumar" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
<td>Prof. Ramakumar spoke on UID, its collection of information and the
threat to individual privacy. First, he provided a historical trajectory
of national security that has led to increased identity card schemes.
He described the concrete connection between UID and national security.
<p><br />He briefed the gathering on the objectives of the UID project. He
described several false claims as proposed by the UIDAI. He explicitly
disproved the UIDAI claim that Aadhaar is voluntary. He did this by
comparing various legislations associated with the National Population
Registrar that had provisions mandating the inclusion of the UID number.</p>
<p> </p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>He went on to explain that the misplaced emphasis of technology to
handle large populations remains unproven. He described two specific
violations of privacy inherent in the UID system: convergence of
information and consent. The UID database makes it possible for the
linking or convergence of information across silos. In addition, consent
is unaccounted for in the UID system. The UID enrollment form requires
consent from a person to share their information. However, the software
of the enrollment form automatically checks ‘yes’, therefore you are not
asked. Even if you disagree, it automatically checks ‘yes’. Default
consent raises the important question, “to what extent are we the owners
of our information?” and “what are the privacy implications?”</p>
<p>Mr. Ramakumar was once asked, by Yashwant Sinha in a Parliamentary Standing Committee meeting, “Is the Western concept of privacy important in developing country like India?”. Using this question posed to him, he stressed the importance of privacy to be understood as a globally valued right, entitlement and freedom. He also referred to Amartya Sen’s work on individual freedoms.</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>During the daylong consultation numerous questions and themes relating to privacy were discussed:</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<ul><li>How is the right to privacy defined?</li><li>How can the <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/draft-bill-on-right-to-privacy" class="internal-link" title="Draft Bill on Right to Privacy">Draft Privacy Bill</a> redefine the right to privacy?</li><li>How can reasonable deterrence mechanisms be included?</li><li>Does duplication of the right to privacy exists in different statutes?</li><li>Is the Cyber Appellate Tribunal an ideal monitoring mechanism or authority? <br /></li><li>What are the circumstances under which authorized persons can exercise the Right of privacy invasion?</li><li>How can the Draft Privacy Bill account for the right to dignity?</li><li>How much information should the State be allowed to collect?</li><li>How can citizens become more informed about the use of their information and the privacy implications involved?</li><li>What would be the appropriate balance or trade-off between security and civil liberties?</li><li>What are the dangers with permitting the needs of national security to trump competing values?</li><li>What are the consequences for the homosexual community, when faced with institutionalized disregard for privacy? </li></ul>
</td>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_usha.jpg/image_preview" alt="Usha " class="image-inline image-inline" title="Usha " /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p> <img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/contests.jpg/image_preview" alt="Participants" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Participants" /></p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/proposed-privacy-bill" class="internal-link" title="Proposed Privacy Bill"><br /></a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/privacy-matters-analyzing-the-right-to-privacy-bill'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/privacy-matters-analyzing-the-right-to-privacy-bill</a>
</p>
No publishernatashaPrivacyFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceFeatured2012-02-15T04:27:28ZBlog EntryHow India Makes E-books Easier to Ban than Books (And How We Can Change That)
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/india-ebooks-easier-to-ban-than-books
<b>Without getting into questions of what should and should not be unlawful speech, Pranesh Prakash chooses to take a look at how Indian law promotes arbitrary removal and blocking of websites, website content, and online services, and how it makes it much easier than getting offline printed speech removed.</b>
<h2>E-Books Are Easier To Ban Than Books, And Safer</h2>
<p>Contrary to what Mr. Sibal's recent hand-wringing at objectionable online material might suggest, under Indian laws currently in force it is far easier to remove material from the Web, by many degrees of magnitude, than it is to ever get them removed from a bookstore or an art gallery. To get something from a bookstore or an art gallery one needs to collect a mob, organize collective outrage and threats of violence, and finally convince either the government or a magistrate that the material is illegal, thereby allowing the police to seize the books or stop the painting from being displayed. The fact of removal of the material will be noted in various records, whether in government records, court records, police records or in newspapers of record. By contrast, to remove something from the Web, one needs to send an e-mail complaining about it to any of the string of 'intermediaries' that handle the content: the site itself, the web host for the site, the telecom companies that deliver the site to your computer/mobile, the web address (domain name) provider, the service used to share the link, etc. Under the <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/resources/intermediary-guidelines-rules">'Intermediary Guidelines Rules'</a> that have been in operation since 11th April 2011, all such companies are required to 'disable access' to the complained-about content within thirty-six hours of the complaint. It is really that simple.</p>
<p>"That's ridiculous," you think, "surely he must be exaggerating." Think again. A researcher working with us at the Centre for Internet and Society tried it out, several times, with many different intermediaries and always with frivolous and flawed complaints, and was successful <a class="external-link" href="http://www.cis-india.org/news/chilling-impact-of-indias-april-internet-rules"> six out of seven times </a>. Thus it is easier to prevent Flipkart or Amazon from selling Rushdie's Midnight's Children than it is to prevent a physical bookstore from doing so: today Indira Gandhi wouldn't need to win a lawsuit in London against the publishers to remove a single line as she did then; she would merely have to send a complaint to online booksellers and get the book removed. It is easier to block Vinay Rai's Akbari.in (just as CartoonsAgainstCorruption.com was recently blocked) than it is to prevent its print publication. Best of all for complainants: there is no penalty for frivolous complaints such as those sent by us, nor are any records kept of who's removed what. Such great powers of censorship without any penalties for their abuse are a sure-fire way of ensuring a race towards greater intolerance, with the Internet — that republic of opinions and expressions — being a casualty.</p>
<h2>E-Book Bans Cannot Be Challenged</h2>
<p>In response to some of the objections raised, the Cyberlaw Division of the Department of Information Technology, ever the dutiful guardian of free speech, noted that if you have a problem with access to your content being 'disabled', you could always <a href="http://www.pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=72066">approach a court</a> and get that ban reversed. Unfortunately, the Cyberlaw Division of the Department of Information Technology forgot to take into account that you can't contest a ban/block/removal if you don't know about it. While they require all intermediaries to disable access to the content within thirty-six hours, they forgot to mandate the intermediary to tell you that the content is being removed. Whoops. They forgot to require the intermediary to give public notice that content has been removed following a complaint from person ABC or corporation XYZ on such-and-such grounds. Whoops, again.</p>
<p>So while records are kept, along with reasons, of book bans, there are no such records required to be kept of e-book bans.</p>
<h2>E-Book Censors Are Faceless</h2>
<p>Vinay Rai is a brave man. He is being attacked by fellow journalists who believe he's disgracing the professional upholders of free-speech, and being courted by television channels who believe that he should be encouraged to discuss matters that are sub judice. He is viewed by some as a man who's playing politics in courts on behalf of unnamed politicians and bureaucrats, while others view him as being bereft of common-sense for believing that companies should be legally liable for not having been clairvoyant and removing material he found objectionable, though he has never complained to them about it, and has only provided that material to the court in a sealed envelope. I choose, instead, to view him as a scrupulous and brave man. He has a face, and a name, and is willing to openly fight for what he believes in. However, there are possibly thousands of unscrupulous Vinay Rais out there, who know the law better than he does, and who make use not of the court system but of the Intermediary Guidelines Rules, firmly assured by those Rules that their censorship activities will never be known, will never be challenged by Facebook and Google lawyers, and will never be traced back to them.</p>
<h2>Challenging Invisible Censorship</h2>
<p>Dear reader, you may have noticed that this is a bit like a trial involving Free Speech in which Free Speech is presumed guilty upon complaint, is not even told what the charges against it are, has not been given a chance to prove its innocence, and has no right to meet its accusers nor to question them. Yet, the Cyberlaw Division of the Department of Information Technology continues to issue press releases defending these Rules as fair and just, instead of being simultaneously Orwellian and Kafkaesque. These Rules are delegated legislation passed by the Department of Information Technology under <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/resources/section-79-information-technology-act">s.79 of the Information Technology Act</a>. The Rules were laid before Parliament during the 2011 Monsoon session. We at CIS believe that these Rules are *ultra vires* the IT Act as well as the Constitution of India, not only with respect to what is now (newly) proscribed online (which in itself is enough to make it unconstitutional), but how that which is purportedly unlawful is to be removed. We have prepared an alternative that we believe is far more just and in accordance with our constitutional principles, taking on best practices from Canada, the EU, Chile, and Brazil, while still allowing for expeditious removal of unlawful material. We hope that the DIT will consider adopting some of the ideas embodied in our draft proposal.</p>
<p>As Parliament passed the IT Act in the midst of din, without any debate, it is easy to be skeptical and wonder whether Rules made under the IT Act will be debated. However, I remain hopeful that Parliament will not only exercise its power wisely, but will perform its solemn duty — borne out of each MP's oath to uphold our Constitution — by rejecting these Rules.</p>
<p>Photo credit: <a href="https://secure.flickr.com/photos/grandgrrl/5240360344/">Lynn Gardner</a>, under CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0 licence*</p>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?279712">This was reproduced in Outlook Magazine</a> on 27 January 2012</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/india-ebooks-easier-to-ban-than-books'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/india-ebooks-easier-to-ban-than-books</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshObscenityFreedom of Speech and ExpressionInternet GovernanceFeaturedIntermediary LiabilityCensorship2012-02-21T11:50:56ZBlog EntryUniversal Service for Persons with Disabilities: A Global Survey of Policy Interventions and Good Practices
http://editors.cis-india.org/universal-service-for-persons-with-disabilities
<b>The Global Initiative for Inclusive Information and Communication Technologies and the Centre for Internet and Societies in cooperation with the Hans Foundation have published the Universal Service for Persons with Disabilities: A Global Survey of Policy Interventions and Good Practices. The book consists of a Foreword by Axel Leblois, an Introduction and four chapters. Deepti Bharthur, Axel Leblois and Nirmita Narasimhan have contributed to the chapters.</b>
<h3>Foreword</h3>
<p>Universal Service definitions have been developed by 125 countries and are the foundation for policies and programs ensuring that telecommunications are available to all categories of population. Universal service funds are the main vehicle used to fund those programs, primarily addressing imbalances such as lack of availability of services in rural areas. While geographic coverage has vastly improved over the past decade with wireless infrastructure, the scope of Universal Service has expanded to include other categories of underserved populations.</p>
<p>Among those, persons with disabilities and senior citizens, who represent 15% of the world population<a href="#fn1" name="fr1">[1]</a> are an increasing concern for legislators and regulators. Basic accessibility features for public telephone booths, fixed line or wireless handsets, customer services in alternate formats such as Braille, or assistive services such as relay services for hard of hearing or deaf persons are in fact not implemented in a majority countries.<a href="#fn2" name="fr2">[2]</a></p>
<p>To address those issues, several countries have expanded the scope of their national definition of Universal Service Obligation to include persons with disabilities allowing programs promoting the accessibility of information and communication technologies to be covered by Universal Service Funds.</p>
<p>The adoption of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities by over 150 countries since March 31st, 2007 will likely accelerate this trend: States Parties have an obligation to ensure that Information and Communication Technologies and Services are made accessible to persons with disabilities. This can be done by aligning the definition of Universal Service Obligation with article 9 of the Convention and expanding the charter of Universal Service Funds to cover programs promoting accessibility for persons with disabilities. This report is the first attempt to document how Universal Service definitions and related policies and programs have been implemented by various countries to ensure that persons with disabilities have full access, on an equal basis with others,to telecommunication services.G3ict would like to express its sincere appreciation to the Center for Internet and Society for its support of this project, to Nirmita Narasimhan for researching and editing this report;to the International Telecommunication Union for providing references and helping identify countries to be surveyed, and to the Hans Foundation for funding the print version of the report. Promoting universal service for persons with disabilities can affect positively the lives of millions of users around the world. We hope that this report may serve as a useful reference for policy makers, operators, organizations of persons with disabilities, and as a framework for good practice sharing among countries currently implementing the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.</p>
<p>Axel Leblois<br />Executive Director<br />G3ict – Global Initiative for Inclusive ICTs</p>
<hr />
<h3>Introduction</h3>
<p>The advent of the Internet and accessible information and communication technologies (ICT) has opened up exciting possibilities and opportunities for persons with disabilities.The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (the ‘UNCRPD’)3 has explicitly recognized the right of persons with disabilities to seek, receive and impart information on an equal basis with others4 and has placed specific obligations on member states to ensure that all ICT based facilities and services (which include telecommunications services) must be made available and accessible to all. To this end, member states are required to formulate and implement appropriate laws and policies at national, regional and global levels. In an age where almost all spheres of life are inextricably woven with and dependent on ICT, Article 9 of the UNCRPD on Accessibility is possibly one of the most powerful and critical tools in the hands of policy makers to ensure that persons with disabilities are assured of basic human rights such as education, health, employment and access to information and participation.While the lack of awareness amongst governments is undeniably a serious impediment to implementing accessible ICT in any country, an equally serious and perhaps more realistic problem is the lack of resources which is plaguing many countries, especially developing nations. The fact that governments are already struggling to ensure basic human rights for all citizens by judiciously dividing their limited resources for the whole gamut of needs makes it difficult for them to outlay separate and substantial budgets which may be required for implementing ICT accessibility. In such a scenario it becomes very important to look around and identify sources of funding, new or existing, which can be leveraged by governments to fulfill their obligation towards making all ICT based applications and services accessible and promoting assistive technologies for persons with disabilities.</p>
<p>This report aims to highlight the extreme suitability of leveraging the Universal Service Fund (USF) to implement accessibility and assistive technologies in telecommunications. It examines the evolution of the concept of USF, its minimum mandate and scope, funding sources, as well as project implementation mechanisms and showcases countries which are using the USF to fund accessibility projects through policies and programmes.</p>
<hr />
<p>[<a href="#fr1" name="fn1">1</a>].WHO Global Report on Disability, June 2011 - <a class="external-link" href="http://www.who.int/disabilities/world_report/2011/en/index.html">http://www.who.int/disabilities/world_report/2011/en/index.html </a></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr2" name="fn2">2</a>].CRPD Progress Report on ICT Accessibility – 2010 by G3ict - <a class="external-link" href="http://g3ict.org/resource_center/publications_and_reports">http://g3ict.org/resource_center/publications_and_reports</a></p>
<hr />
<ol>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/universal-service-braille/view" class="external-link">Click here</a> for the Braille format</li>
<li>Download the Daisy version <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/universal-service-daisy" class="internal-link" title="Universal Service for Persons with Disabilities - Daisy File">here</a></li>
<li>Download the book <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/universal-service-disabilities.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Universal Service for Persons with Disabilities">here </a>PDF [302 KB] </li>
</ol>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/universal-service-for-persons-with-disabilities'>http://editors.cis-india.org/universal-service-for-persons-with-disabilities</a>
</p>
No publishernirmitaFeaturedAccessibilityPublications2012-10-08T05:43:46ZBlog EntryThe Digital Classroom: Social Justice and Pedagogy
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/pathways/facultyworkshop
<b>What happens when we look at the classroom as a space of social justice? What are the ways in which students can be engaged in learning beyond rote memorisation? What innovative methods can be evolved to make students stakeholders in their learning process? These were some of the questions that were thrown up and discussed at the 2 day Faculty Training workshop for participant from colleges included in the Pathways to Higher Education programme, supported by Ford Foundation and collaboratively executed by the Higher Education Innovation and Research Application and the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.</b>
<p></p>
<p>The workshop focused on 3 chief challenges in contemporary
pedagogy and teaching in higher education in India as identified by <a class="external-link" href="http://heira.in/">HEIRA</a>: The need for innovative
curricula, challenges to social justice in education, and possibilities offered
by the intersection of digital and internet technologies with classroom
teaching and evaluation. In the open discussions, the participating faculty
members used their multidisciplinary skills and teaching experience to look at possibilities that we might implement in our classrooms to create a more
inclusive and participatory environment. The conversations were varied, and
through 3 blog entries I want to capture the focus points of the workshop. In
this first post, I focus specifically on the changing nature of student
engagement with education and innovative ways by which we can learn from the
digital platforms of learning and knowledge production and implement certain
innovations in pedagogy that might better help create inclusive and just learning
environments in the undergraduate classroom in India.</p>
<p><strong>Peer 2 Peer:</strong> One of the observations that was made
unanimously by all the faculty members was that students respond better, learn
faster, engage more deeply with their syllabus when the instructor has a
personal rapport with them. Traditionally, the teachers who have established
human contact which goes beyond the call of duty are also the teachers that
have become catalysts and inspirations for the students. Especially with the
digital aesthetics of non-hierarchical information interaction, this has become
the call of the day.</p>
<p>Establishing the teacher as a peer within the classroom,
rather than the fountainhead of information flow, is an experiment worth
conducting. Like on other digital platforms, can we think of the classroom as a
space where the interlocutors each bring their life experience and learning to
start an information exchange and dialogue that would make them stakeholders in
the process of learning? This would mean that the teacher would be a <em>facilitator</em> who builds conditions of
knowledge production and dissemination, thus also changing his/her relationship
with the idea of curriculum and teaching.</p>
<p><strong>Reciprocal evaluation</strong>: It was pointed out that the grade
oriented academic system often leads to students disengaging with innovative
and meaningful learning practices. With the pressure of completing the
curriculum, the students’ instrumental relationship with their classroom
learning and the highly conservative structures of higher education that do not
offer enough space to experiment with the teaching methods, it often becomes
difficult to initiate innovative pedagogic practices. Learning from the
differently hierarchised digital spaces, it was suggested that one of the ways
by which this could be countered is by introducing reciprocal evaluation
patterns which might not directly be associated with the grades but would
recognise and appreciate the skills that students bring to their learning.</p>
<p>Inspired by the Badges contest at <a class="external-link" href="http://hastac.org/tag/badges">HASTAC</a>,
it was suggested that evaluation has to take into account, more than grades.
Different students bring different skills, experiences, personalities and
behaviours to bear upon the syllabus. They work individually and in clusters to
understand and analyse the curriculum. Recognising these skills and the roles
that they play in their learning environments is essential. Getting students to
offer different badges to each other as well as to the teachers involved, helps
them understand their own learning process and engages them in new ways of
learning.</p>
<p><strong>Role based learning: </strong>Within the Web 2.0 there is a peculiar
condition where individuals are recognised simultaneously as experts and
novices. They bring certain knowledges and experiences to the table which make
them credible sources of information and analysis in those areas. At the same
time, they are often beginner learners in certain other areas and they harness
the power of the web to learn. Such a distributed imagination of a student as
not equally proficient in all areas, but diversely equipped to deal with
different disciplines is missing from our understanding of the higher education
classroom.</p>
<p>We discussed the possibility of making the student responsible not
only for his/her own learning but also the learning of the peers in the
classroom. Making the student aware of what s/he is good at and where s/he is
lacking allows them to gain confidence and also realise that everybody has
differential strengths and aptitudes. Such a classroom might look different
because the students don’t have to be pitched in stressful competition with
each other but instead work collaboratively to learn, research and produce
knowledge in a nurturing and supportive learning environment.</p>
<p>These initial discussions look at the possibility of
innovative classroom teaching that can accommodate for the skills and
differences of the students in higher education in India. The conversations
opened up the idea that the classroom can be reshaped so that it becomes a more
inclusive space where the quality of students’ access to education can be
improved. It also ties in with the larger imagination of classrooms as spaces
where principles of social justice can be invoked so that students who are
disadvantaged in language, learning skills, socio-economic backgrounds, are not
just looked at as either ‘beyond help’ or ‘victims of a system’. Instead, it
encourages to look at the students as differential learners who need to be made
stakeholders in their own processes of learning and education.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/pathways/facultyworkshop'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/pathways/facultyworkshop</a>
</p>
No publishernishantHigher EducationAccess to KnowledgeDigital NativesFeaturedNew PedagogiesResearchers at WorkDigital Pluralism2015-05-08T12:36:29ZBlog EntryInvisible Censorship: How the Government Censors Without Being Seen
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/invisible-censorship
<b>The Indian government wants to censor the Internet without being seen to be censoring the Internet. This article by Pranesh Prakash shows how the government has been able to achieve this through the Information Technology Act and the Intermediary Guidelines Rules it passed in April 2011. It now wants methods of censorship that leave even fewer traces, which is why Mr. Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology talks of Internet 'self-regulation', and has brought about an amendment of the Copyright Act that requires instant removal of content.</b>
<h2>Power of the Internet and Freedom of Expression</h2>
<p>The Internet, as anyone who has ever experienced the wonder of going online would know, is a very different communications platform from any that has existed before. It is the one medium where anybody can directly share their thoughts with billions of other people in an instant. People who would never have any chance of being published in a newspaper now have the opportunity to have a blog and provide their thoughts to the world. This also means that thoughts that many newspapers would decide not to publish can be published online since the Web does not, and more importantly cannot, have any editors to filter content. For many dictatorships, the right of people to freely express their thoughts is something that must be heavily regulated. Unfortunately, we are now faced with the situation where some democratic countries are also trying to do so by censoring the Internet.</p>
<h2>Intermediary Guidelines Rules</h2>
<p>In India, the new <a class="external-link" href="http://www.mit.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/GSR314E_10511%281%29.pdf">'Intermediary Guidelines' Rules</a> and the <a class="external-link" href="http://mit.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/GSR315E_10511%281%29.pdf">Cyber Cafe Rules</a> that have been in effect since April 2011 give not only the government, but all citizens of India, great powers to censor the Internet. These rules, which were made by the Department of Information Technology and not by the Parliament, require that all intermediaries remove content that is 'disparaging', 'relating to... gambling', 'harm minors in any way', to which the user 'does not have rights'. When was the last time you checked wither you had 'rights' to a joke before forwarding it? Did you share a Twitter message containing the term "#IdiotKapilSibal", as thousands of people did a few days ago? Well, that is 'disparaging', and Twitter is required by the new law to block all such content. The government of Sikkim can run advertisements for its PlayWin lottery in newspapers, but under the new law it cannot do so online. As you can see, through these ridiculous examples, the Intermediary Guidelines are very badly thought-out and their drafting is even worse. Worst of all, they are unconstitutional, as they put limits on freedom of speech that contravene <a class="external-link" href="http://lawmin.nic.in/coi/coiason29july08.pdf">Article 19(1)(a) and 19(2) of the Constitution</a>, and do so in a manner that lacks any semblance of due process and fairness.</p>
<h2>Excessive Censoring by Internet Companies</h2>
<p>We, at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, decided to test the censorship powers of the new rules by sending frivolous complaints to a number of intermediaries. Six out of seven intermediaries removed content, including search results listings, on the basis of the most ridiculous complaints. The people whose content was removed were not told, nor was the general public informed that the content was removed. If we hadn't kept track, it would be as though that content never existed. Such censorship existed during Stalin's rule in the Soviet Union. Not even during the Emergency has such censorship ever existed in India. Yet, not only was what the Internet companies did legal under the Intermediary Guideline Rules, but if they had not, they could have been punished for content put up by someone else. That is like punishing the post office for the harmful letters that people may send over post.</p>
<h2>Government Has Powers to Censor and Already Censors<br /></h2>
<p>Currently, the government can either block content by using section 69A of the Information Technology Act (which can be revealed using RTI), or it has to send requests to the Internet companies to get content removed. Google has released statistics of government request for content removal as part of its Transparency Report. While Mr. Sibal uses the examples of communally sensitive material as a reason to force censorship of the Internet, out of the 358 items requested to be removed from January 2011 to June 2011 from Google service by the Indian government (including state governments), only 8 were for hate speech and only 1 was for national security. Instead, 255 items (71 per cent of all requests) were asked to be removed for 'government criticism'. Google, despite the government in India not having the powers to ban government criticism due to the Constitution, complied in 51 per cent of all requests. That means they removed many instances of government criticism as well.</p>
<h2>'Self-Regulation': Undetectable Censorship</h2>
<p>Mr. Sibal's more recent efforts at forcing major Internet companies such as Indiatimes, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, to 'self-regulate' reveals a desire to gain ever greater powers to bypass the IT Act when censoring Internet content that is 'objectionable' (to the government). Mr. Sibal also wants to avoid embarrassing statistics such as that revealed by Google's Transparency Report. He wants Internet companies to 'self-regulate' user-uploaded content, so that the government would never have to send these requests for removal in the first place, nor block sites officially using the IT Act. If the government was indeed sincere about its motives, it would not be talking about 'transparency' and 'dialogue' only after it was exposed in the press that the Department of Information Technology was holding secret talks with Internet companies. Given the clandestine manner in which it sought to bring about these new censorship measures, the motives of the government are suspect. Yet, both Mr. Sibal and Mr. Sachin Pilot have been insisting that the government has no plans of Internet censorship, and Mr. Pilot has made that statement officially in the Lok Sabha. This, thus seems to be an instance of censoring without censorship.</p>
<h2>Backdoor Censorship through Copyright Act</h2>
<p>Further, since the government cannot bring about censorship laws in a straightforward manner, they are trying to do so surreptitiously, through the back door. Mr. Sibal's latest proposed amendment to the Copyright Act, which is before the Rajya Sabha right now, has a provision called section 52(1)(c) by which anyone can send a notice complaining about infringement of his copyright. The Internet company will have to remove the content immediately without question, even if the notice is false or malicious. The sender of false or malicious notices is not penalized. But the Internet company will be penalized if it doesn't remove the content that has been complained about. The complaint need not even be shown to be true before the content is removed. Indeed, anyone can complain about any content, without even having to show that they own the rights to that content. The government seems to be keen to have the power to remove content from the Internet without following any 'due process' or fair procedure. Indeed, it not only wants to give itself this power, but it is keen on giving all individuals this power. <br /><br />It's ultimate effect will be the death of the Internet as we know it. Bid adieu to it while there is still time.</p>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/invisible-censorship.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Invisible Censorship (Marathi version)">The article was translated to Marathi and featured in Lokmat</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/invisible-censorship'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/invisible-censorship</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshIT ActGoogleAccess to KnowledgeSocial mediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionIntellectual Property RightsIntermediary LiabilityFeaturedInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-01-04T08:59:14ZBlog EntryOnline Pre-Censorship is Harmful and Impractical
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/online-pre-censorship-harmful-impractical
<b>The Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Mr. Kapil Sibal wants Internet intermediaries to pre-censor content uploaded by their users. Pranesh Prakash takes issue with this and explains why this is a problem, even if the government's heart is in the right place. Further, he points out that now is the time to take action on the draconian IT Rules which are before the Parliament.</b>
<p>Mr. Sibal is a knowledgeable lawyer, and according to a senior lawyer friend of his with whom I spoke yesterday, greatly committed to ideals of freedom of speech. He would not lightly propose regulations that contravene Article 19(1)(a) [freedom of speech and expression] of our Constitution. Yet his recent proposals regarding controlling online speech seem unreasonable. My conclusion is that the minister has not properly grasped the way the Web works, is frustrated because of the arrogance of companies like Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. And while he has his heart in the right place, his lack of knowledge of the Internet is leading him astray. The more important concern is the<a class="external-link" href="http://www.mit.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/RNUS_CyberLaw_15411.pdf"> IT Rules</a> that have been in force since April 2011.</p>
<h3>Background <br /></h3>
<p>The New York Times scooped a story on Monday revealing that Mr. Sibal and the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.mit.gov.in/">MCIT</a> had been <a class="external-link" href="http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/05/india-asks-google-facebook-others-to-screen-user-content/?scp=2&sq=kapil%20sibal&st=cse">in touch with Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft</a>, asking them to set up a system whereby they would manually filter user-generated content before it is published, to ensure that objectionable speech does not get published. Specifically, he mentioned content that hurt people's religious sentiments and content that Member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor described as <a class="external-link" href="http://zeenews.india.com/news/nation/i-am-against-web-censorship-shashi-tharoor_745587.html">'vile' and capable of inciting riots as being problems</a>. Lastly, Mr. Sibal defended this as not being "censorship" by the government, but "supervision" of user-generated content by the companies themselves.</p>
<h3>Concerns <br /></h3>
<p>One need not give lectures on the benefits of free speech, and Mr. Sibal is clear that he does not wish to impinge upon it. So one need not point out that freedom of speech means nothing if not the freedom to offend (as long as no harm is caused). There can, of course, be reasonable limitations on freedom of speech as provided in Article 19 of the <a class="external-link" href="http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/ccpr.htm">ICCPR</a> and in Article 19(2) of our Constitution. My problem lies elsewhere.</p>
<h3>Secrecy <br /></h3>
<p>It is unfortunate that the New York Times has to be given credit for Mr. Sibal addressing a press conference on this issue (and he admitted as much). What he is proposing is not enforcement of existing rules and regulations, but of a new restriction on online speech. This should have, in a democracy, been put out for wide-ranging public consultations first.</p>
<h3>Making intermediaries responsible <br /></h3>
<p>The more fundamental disagreement is that over how the question of what should not be published should be decided, and how that decision should be and how that should be carried out, and who can be held liable for unlawful speech. I believe that "to make the intermediary liable for the user violating that code would, I think, not serve the larger interests of the market." Mr. Sibal said that in May this year <a class="external-link" href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304563104576355223687825048.html">in an interview with the Wall Street Journal</a>. The intermediaries (that is, all persons and companies who transmit or host content on behalf of a third party), are but messengers just like a post office and do not exercise editorial control, unlike a newspaper. (By all means prosecute Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft whenever they have created unlawful content, have exercised editorial control over unlawful content, have incited and encouraged unlawful activities, or know after a court order or the like that they are hosting illegal content and still do not remove it.)
Newspapers have editors who can take responsibility for content published in the newspaper. They can afford to, because the number of articles in a newspaper is limited. YouTube, which has 48 hours of videos uploaded every minutes, cannot. One wag suggested that Mr. Sibal was not suggesting a means of censorship, but of employment generation and social welfare for censors and editors. To try and extend editorial duties to these 'intermediaries' by executive order or through 'forceful suggestions' to these companies cannot happen without amending s.79 of the Information Technology Act which ensures they are not to be held liable for their user's content: the users are.
Internet speech has, to my knowledge, and to date, has never caused a riot in India. It is when it is translated into inflammatory speeches on the ground with megaphones that offensive speech, whether in books or on the Internet, actually become harmful, and those should be targeted instead. And the same laws that apply to offline speech already apply online. If such speech is inciting violence then the police can be contacted and a magistrate can take action. Indeed, Internet companies like Facebook, Google, etc., exercise self-regulation already (excessively and wrongly, I feel sometimes). Any person can flag any content on YouTube or Facebook as violating the site's terms of use. Indeed, even images of breast-feeding mothers have been removed from Facebook on the basis of such complaints. So it is mistaken to think that there is no self-regulation. In two recent cases, the High Courts of Bombay (<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/janhit-manch-v-union-of-india" class="internal-link" title="Janhit Manch & Ors. v. The Union of India"><em>Janhit Manch v. Union of India</em></a>) and Madras (<em>R. Karthikeyan v. Union of India</em>) refused to direct the government and intermediaries to police online content, saying that places an excessive burden on freedom of speech.</p>
<h3>IT Rules, 2011 <br /></h3>
<p>In this regard, the IT Rules published in April 2011 are great offenders. While speech that is 'disparaging' (while not being defamatory) is not prohibited by any statute, yet intermediaries are required not to carry 'disparaging' speech, or speech to which the user has no right (how is this to be judged? do you have rights to the last joke that you forwarded?), or speech that promotes gambling (as the government of Sikkim does through the PlayWin lottery), and a myriad other kinds of speech that are not prohibited in print or on TV. Who is to judge whether something is 'disparaging'? The intermediary itself, on pain of being liable for prosecution if it is found have made the wrong decision. And any person may send a notice to an intermediary to 'disable' content, which has to be done within 36 hours if the intermediary doesn't want to be held liable. Worst of all, there is no requirement to inform the user whose content it is, nor to inform the public that the content is being removed. It just disappears, into a memory hole. It does not require a paranoid conspiracy theorist to see this as a grave threat to freedom of speech.
Many human rights activists and lawyers have made a very strong case that the IT Rules on Intermediary Due Diligence are unconstitutional. Parliament still has an opportunity to reject these rules until the end of the 2012 budget session. Parliamentarians must act now to uphold their oaths to the Constitution.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/online-pre-censorship-harmful-impractical'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/online-pre-censorship-harmful-impractical</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshIT ActObscenityFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityYouTubeSocial mediaInternet GovernanceFeaturedIntermediary LiabilityCensorshipSocial Networking2011-12-12T17:00:50ZBlog EntryTechnology, Social Justice and Higher Education
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/pathways/blog/higher-education
<b>Since the last two years, we at the Centre for Internet and Society, have been working with the Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, on a project called Pathways to Higher Education, supported by the Ford Foundation. </b>
<p>The main aim of the project is to research the state of social diversity and justice in undergraduate colleges in India and encourage students to articulate the axes of discrimination and exclusion which might keep them from interacting and engaging with educational resources and systems in their college environments.</p>
<h3>Peer-to-Peer Technologies<br /></h3>
<p>The entry point into these debates was digital technologies, where
through an introduction to peer-to-peer technologies, digital story
telling through various web based platforms, and a collaborative thought
environment mediated by internet and digital technologies, we
facilitated the students to identify, articulate and address questions
of discrimination, change and the possibility of engaging with these
critically in order to build a better learning environment for
themselves (and their peers) in their own colleges.</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr class="even">
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/sies.jpg/image_preview" title="sies " height="266" width="400" alt="sies " class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
<td>
<div align="left">Each workshop was designed not only to be sensitive to
the specificities of the locations of the colleges, but also to
accommodate for the needs, desires and aspirations of the students
involved. The participants looked at their own personal, family and
community histories, their everyday experiences, their affective modes
of aspiration and desire, and their own circumstances which often
circumscribe them, in order to come up with certain themes that they
thought were relevant and crucial in their own contexts.</div>
<br />
<div align="left"> </div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>As a follow-up on the workshops, the students developed specific
projects and activities that will help them strengthen their hypotheses
by looking beyond the personal and finding ways by which they can engage
with the larger communities, spreading awareness, building histories
and acquiring skills to successfully bolster their classroom interaction
and learning.</p>
<p><em>The following is a bird’s eye view of the key themes that have emerged in the workshops:</em></p>
<h3>The Costs of Belonging</h3>
<p>Almost unanimously, though articulating it in different ways, the
students looked at different costs of belonging to a space. Sometimes it
was the space of the web, sometimes of the larger educational
institution, sometimes to distinct language groups which do not treat
English as the lingua franca, and sometimes to communities and friend
circles within the college environment.</p>
<p> </p>
<p align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/problem.jpg/image_preview" title="problems" height="365" width="548" alt="problems" class="image-inline image-inline" /></p>
<div align="left">It was particularly insightful for us to understand
that granting access, providing infrastructure or equipping
‘underprivileged’ students with skills is not enough. In fact, it became
apparent that there is a certain policy driven, post-Mandal affirmative
action that has already bridged the infrastructural and access gap in
the educational institutions. The easy availability of computers,
internet access, the ubiquitous cell phone, were all indicators that for
most of the students, it wasn’t a question of affording access. Even
when we were dealing with economically disadvantaged students, there
were a plethora of technology devices they had access to and familiarity
with. Shared resources, public access to digital technologies, and
institutional support towards promoting digital familiarity all played a
significant role in demystifying the digital for them. In many ways,
these students were digital natives if defined through access, because
they had Facebook accounts and browsed Google to find everything they
wanted. Their phone was an extension of their selves and they used it in
creative ways to communicate and connect with their peers.<br /><br />Based
on this, the students are now prepared to work on documenting,
exploring and raising awareness about these questions, to see what the
gating factors are that disallow people with access to still feel
excluded from the power of the digital.<br /><br /></div>
<h3>The Need for Diversity<br /></h3>
<div align="left"><br />
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/others.jpg/image_preview" alt="others" class="image-inline image-inline" title="others" /></td>
<td>It is a telling sign about the state of the Internet in India that every
student presumed that the only way to be really fluent with the digital
web is to be fluent in English. The equation of English being
synonymous with being online was both fascinating and troubling to us.
Of course, a lot of it has to do with India’s own preoccupations, marked
by a postcolonial subjectivity, with English as the language of
modernity and privilege. But it also has to do with the fact that almost
all things digital in India, lack localisation. The digital
technologies and platforms remain almost exclusively in English,
fostered by the fact that input devices (keyboards, for example) and
display interfaces favour English as the language of computing.<br /><br /><br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
<p>Such an idea might also help in
reducing the distance between those who can fluently navigate the web
through its own language, and those who, through various reasons, find
themselves tentative and intimidated online.</p>
<p>The breakthrough that the
participants had, when they realised that they don’t have to be ‘proper
in English’ while being online – the ability to find local language
resources, fonts, translation machines, and the possibility of
transliterating their local language in the Roman script was a learning
lesson for us.</p>
<h3>Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Learning</h3>
<div align="left">As a part of their orientation to the world of the
digital, especially with the methodologies of the workshops, the
students literally had an overnight epiphany where they could see the
possibilities and potentials of P2P learning. The recognition that they
are not merely recipients of knowledge but also bearers of experience
and contexts which are rich and replete with knowledge, gave them new
insights on how to approach learning and education. Through digital
storytelling, the workshops demonstrated how, in our own stories and
accounts of life, there are many indicators and factors which can help
us engage with the realities of exclusion and injustice.<br /><br />Working
together in groups, not only to excavate knowledge from the outside, as
it were, but also to unearth the knowledge, experience, stories,
emotions that we all carry with ourselves and can serve as valuable
tools to bring to the classroom, is a lesson that all the groups
learned. The idea of a peer also led them to question the established
hierarchies within formal education. What was particularly interesting
was that they did not – as is often the case – translate P2P into DIY
education. They recognised that there are certain knowledge and skill
gaps that they would like experts to address and have incorporated
special trainings with different experts in areas of language,
communication, ethnography, interviews, film making, etc. However, the
methods for these trainings are going to emphasise a more P2P structure
that is different from the regular classroom learning.<br /><br />What would
happen if a teacher is looked at as a peer rather than a superior? How
would they navigate curricula if the scope of their learning was greater
than the curricula? How could they work together to learn from each
other, different ways of learning and understanding? These are some of
the questions that get reflected in their proposed campus activities,
where they are trying to now produce knowledge about their communities,
cities, families, groups and experiences, by conducting surveys,
ethnographies, historical archive work, etc. The digital helps them in
not only disseminating the information they are collecting but also in
re-establishing their relationship with learning and knowledge.<br /><br /><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/workshop.jpg/image_preview" title="classroom" height="337" width="509" alt="classroom" class="image-inline image-inline" /><br />
<div align="center"><br />
<div align="left">Ideas like open space dialogues, collaborative
story-telling, mobilising resources for knowledge production, creating
awareness campaigns and interacting with a larger audience through the
digital platforms are now a part of their proposals and promise to show
some creative, innovative and interesting uses of these technologies.
How the teachers would react to such an imagination of the students as
peers within the formal education system, remains to be seen as we
organise a faculty training workshop later in December. <br /><br />These
three large themes find different articulations, interpretations and
executions in different locations. However, they seem to be emerging as
the new forms of social exclusion that we need to take into account. It
is apparent that the role of technologies – both at the level of usage
and of imagination – is crucial in shaping these forms of social
inequities. But the technologies can also facilitate negotiations and
engagements with these concerns by providing new forms of knowledge
production and pedagogy, which can help the students in developing
better learning environments and processes. The Pathways to Higher
Education remains committed to not only documenting these learnings but
also to see how they might be upscaled and integrated into mainstream
learning within higher education in India.</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/pathways/blog/higher-education'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/pathways/blog/higher-education</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaFeaturedHigher EducationResearchers at WorkDigital Knowledge2015-03-30T14:54:21ZBlog EntryKnow your Users, Match their Needs!
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/know-your-users
<b>As Free Access to Law initiatives in the Global South enter into a new stage of maturity, they must be certain not to lose sight of their users’ needs. The following post gives a summary of the “Good Practices Handbook”, a research output of the collaborative project Free Access to Law — Is it Here to Stay? undertaken by LexUM (Canada) and the South African Legal Institute in partnership with the Centre for Internet and Society.</b>
<p></p>
<p>Almost ten years have passed since the Montreal Declaration on
Free Access to Law (FAL) was signed by eight legal information institutes and other
FAL initiatives. Today, the Free Access to Law Movement (FALM) is growing with over 30 initiatives having signed onto the Declaration and providing free, online
access to legal information. While the movement continues to gain momentum, the
big question no longer remains <em>why</em> we need
free access to law, but instead <em>how</em> FAL initiatives can continue to do so sustainably in the long-term. The principles of access
and justice underpinning the FALM have been well-argued and few would dispute the
notion that citizens ought to have access to the laws under which they are
governed. As the Montreal Declaration states: "Public legal information from
all countries and international institutions is part of the common heritage of
humanity…Maximizing access to his information promotes justice and the rule of
law" (2002).</p>
<p>Regardless of legal system or political context, the
importance of securing free online access to the law has been recognized from a
variety of perspectives. Whether FAL is considered a critical democratic
function or simply an essential efficiency within any legal system, it is
difficult to contest that the internet has increased the accessibility of and
ease with which legal information is being published and shared online. Setting
the ideological and practical foundations of the movement aside, effectively
demonstrating the impact of FAL initiatives and to secure their sustainability in
the long-term remains the next big challenge for the FALM. Today, there is a
growing necessity for grounded and realistic indicators that can validate some
of the long-held assumptions around the impacts and outcomes of FAL initiatives.
Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, there is also a need for a more
nuanced understanding of the factors that influence the sustainability of FAL
initiatives— particularly in resource-scarce and often nebulous legal systems of
the Global South.</p>
<p>This blog post provides some insight into the questions
above through a brief summary of the results of the study <a class="external-link" href="http://crdi.org/ar/ev-139395-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html">Free Access to Law—Is
it Here to Stay?</a> This global comparative study was carried out by LexUM (Canada)
and the South African Legal Institute in partnership with the Centre for
Internet and Society. The project set out to begin providing answers to some of
these critical questions around the impacts and sustainability of the FALM. It
was initially hypothesized in the study that the sustainability of a FAL
initiative rests upon a particular string of contingent factors. To begin, a particular
condition would incentivize the creation of the FAL initiative — more often than
not meeting the unmet needs of those requiring access to legal information. Next, if the FAL initiative is able to provide
the service within a favourable context, it was suspected that it would produce
favourable outcomes for both users and society at large. In turn, if the FAL
initiative was able to provide benefits to users, it was theorized that these benefits
would then stimulate reinvestment into the FAL initiative — forming a positive
and sustainable feedback loop. </p>
<p>As the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.informationjuridique.ca/docs/a2k/Best%20Practices%20Hand%20Book_03sept11.pdf">Good Practices Handbook</a> highlights, the research
hypothesis provided an accurate reading of what the sustainability chain of a
FAL initiative might look like in<em> practice</em>.
If unable to keep up with the evolving information requirements of their users,
this study suggests that FAL initiatives run the risk of FAL becoming outdated
and even outperformed by either government-based or private sector
initiatives. This is why FAL initiatives
must continue to be innovative and find new ways to meet users’ needs. Approaches take my include keeping their
collections up to date, fine-tuning their services or even reinventing
themselves through the provision of value-added services. Gathered from the
experiences of the eleven countries across Africa and Asia examined in this
study, the following is a brief summary of the nine “Good Practices” that emerging
FAL initiatives can consider:</p>
<ol><li><strong>The FAL initiative
should establish clear objectives</strong>: Before doing anything, the FAL initiative
should decide what exactly it’s setting out to do…critical components such as
content selection, targeted audience, expected reach, search functionalities
and other website features help determine priorities and evaluate capacity to
achieve these objectives.</li><li><strong>How to be small and
do big things</strong>: Most of the FAL initiatives studied as part of this project
were formed of small teams (often less than five individuals). Initially, this may
appear to pose a risk for sustainability. However, we saw a number of ways in
which small teams have proven to be innovative, flexible, and able to thrive in
environments of scarcity. However, as much as small teams can be seen as a
source of innovation, they may also pose a risk in the medium to long-term. </li><li><strong>FAL initiatives
require expertise in both IT and legal information</strong>: Legal information management
experts understand how the law is applied, how different texts and parts of
texts speak to one another, and how these documents are used. IT experts can
imagine a variety of ways to address these needs. If both forms of expertise is
not available within the team of a FAL initiative, institutional partnerships
provide promising sites for collaborative support. For example, the FALM
constitutes a rich source of expertise and has proven to be a site of
collaboration between established and emerging FAL initiatives. Further,
universities have proven to be a significant source of human and financial
resources for several FAL initiatives.</li><li><strong>FAL initiatives
should look to where they are headed (but not too far ahead)</strong>: Because the
purpose of a FAL initiative is to provide free online access to the law, it
must secure access to this data for regular publication. How will legal
information be received and organized by the initiative? In what format will it
be published in? Early on, FAL initiatives need to develop both internal and
external workflow processes to ensure that the initiative is able to provide regular
access to updated information. Furthermore, an important finding of the study
suggests that context plays a much larger role in a project’s sustainability. Consideration
should be given to a country’s ICT infrastructure, the transparency of a
government and their access to information regimes, and the nature of the legal
information market when designing the workflows of an FAL initiative.</li><li><strong>FAL initiatives
should work with the ICT infrastructure in place</strong>: The quality and
consistency of internet access varies across countries in the Global South. FAL
initiatives should remain aware of how stakeholders and users are accessing the
internet and develop their service accordingly. Considering the often
intermittent nature of internet connectivity in the Global South, providing
users with offline access to databases is a practical alternative.</li><li><strong>FAL initiatives
should use Free and Open Source Software</strong>: FAL initiatives should maximise
their use of FLOSS. All FAL initiatives use FLOSS to some extent and without
these flexible and cost-effective alternatives, it would be safe to infer that
the FALM would have grown as quickly as it has.</li><li><strong>FAL initiatives
should be sensitive to culture</strong>: FAL initiatives rely on stakeholders and
communities of users. Staying mindful of the professional and organizational
cultures within a country may provide the initiative with a source of community
support which may become a sustainability strategy. Further, integrated or parallel social
networking platforms can play an essential role in community-building around
the FAL initiatives and can also serve as another source of content in
resource-scarce environments.</li><li><strong>Find your users,
match their needs</strong>: Project goals and appropriate strategies should be based
on an in-depth understanding of the needs of those using the FAL initiative. As
the sustainability chain suggests, when FAL initiatives produce positive
outputs and outcomes, stakeholders will reinvest in the initiative to ensure
its sustainability. If a user’s needs are effectively met by an FAL initiative,
this group can provide either the resources or impetus for its continued
success. Identifying who your users are and staying aware of their needs is a
good way to secure reinvestment into the project.</li><li><strong>FAL initiatives
should diversify funding sources</strong>: This may be easier said than
done — reinvestment can be the most challenging aspect of sustaining a FAL
initiative. Early on, initiatives that receive donor-based funding benefit
substantially upon investment. However, these initiatives are put at
significant risk once initial seed funding has been depleted. Similarly, FAL
initiatives that partnerships with other during their start up phase face
similar fates as securing long-term service delivery can become a challenge.
Possible funding sources included throughout the study include, among others:
government, international development agencies or NGOs, the judiciary, law
societies and the sale of value-added services.</li></ol>
<p> </p>
<p>In addition to these good practices, this study has emphasized
the role the that the FALM has played in helping redefine online legal information as a public good. Each
of the case studies demonstrates in a unique way the value openness plays in a
legal information ecosystem, and how a robust digital legal information commons can be of
benefit to users. Traditionally, the legal information market has been dominated by a select
number of commercial players. In response, the FALM has created an important
transnational space within which conversations around the provision of and
access to legal information as a political right <em>rather</em> than a commodity to be bought and sold
can take place. Encouragingly, governments in the Global South are catching and FAL initiatives from the South have proven to be immense sources of innovation in their own right. In Indonesia, for example, FAL initiatives have laid the
groundwork for emerging government initiatives that are now prioritizing the provision of free, online access to legal and other government information. Today, I believe that we are witnessing an important paradigm
shift as governments are beginning to recognize that “access” to legal information is a
right to be held by the public.</p>
<p>Despite such headway, it is needless to say that FAL initiatives in the Global South
continue to face immense sustainability challenges. However, it is hoped that this
study can provide some practical insights for emerging initiatives
and partnerships. However, as more FAL initiatives begin entering into the next
stage of maturity and growth, it is more important than ever that they are
able to adapt to adverse environmental changes and form
long-lasting partnerships with information sources within government. Most
importantly, FAL initiatives must remain dynamic and responsive to users’
needs. To do so, they must be able to tailor and expand their services, offerings
and user-base. To secure their sustainability and relevance in the long term, they must also be continuously strengthening their ties and maintain open communication flows with
users. If FAL initiatives are able to successfully make the
transition from being supply side initiatives to becoming demand driven services,
the FALM will be well-positioned for another decade of sustainable growth. </p>
<p>Download the collection below:</p>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/publications/Links%20in%20the%20Chain%20-%20Volume%20I%20issue%20I.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Links in The Chain - Volume I"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/pdf.png" title="Know your Users, Match their Needs!" height="16" width="16" alt="" class="subMenuTitle" /></a><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/good-practices.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Good Practices Handbook">Good Practices
Handbook </a>(426 kb)<br /><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/publications/Links%20in%20the%20Chain%20-%20Volume%20I%20issue%20I.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Links in The Chain - Volume I"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/pdf.png" title="Know your Users, Match their Needs!" height="16" width="16" alt="" class="subMenuTitle" /></a><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/environmental-scan.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Environmental Scan Report">Environmental Scan Report</a> (860 kb)<br /><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/publications/Links%20in%20the%20Chain%20-%20Volume%20I%20issue%20I.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Links in The Chain - Volume I"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/pdf.png" title="Know your Users, Match their Needs!" height="16" width="16" alt="" class="subMenuTitle" /></a><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/local-researchers-methodology-guide.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Local Researcher's Methodology Guide">Local Researcher's Methodology Guide</a> (1225 kb)</p>
<p>The full collection of case studies and the Good Practices
Handbook was originally published on the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.informationjuridique.ca/cij/acces-libre-au-droit/resultats">Project Website</a>. The Centre for Internet and Society oversaw the following case studies: <a class="external-link" href="http://www.informationjuridique.ca/docs/a2k/resultats/indiafinaljul11.pdf">India</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.informationjuridique.ca/docs/a2k/resultats/hongkongfinaljul11.pdf">Hong Kong</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.informationjuridique.ca/docs/a2k/resultats/indonesiafinaljul11.pdf">Indonesia</a> and <a class="external-link" href="http://www.informationjuridique.ca/docs/a2k/resultats/Berne_Final_2011_July.pdf">Philippines</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/know-your-users'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/know-your-users</a>
</p>
No publisherrebeccaResearchFeaturedOpen AccessOpennessPublications2012-02-27T15:06:14ZBlog Entry