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What’s up with WhatsApp?
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/asia-times-april-20-2018-aayush-rathi-sunil-abraham-what-s-up-with-whatsapp
<b>In 2016, WhatsApp Inc announced it was rolling out end-to-end encryption, but is the company doing what it claims to be doing?</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Aayush Rathi and Sunil Abraham was published in <a class="external-link" href="http://www.atimes.com/article/whats-up-with-whatsapp/">Asia Times</a> on April 20, 2018.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Back in April 2016, when WhatsApp Inc announced it was rolling out end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for its billion-plus strong user base as a default setting, the messaging behemoth signaled to its users it was at the forefront of providing technological solutions to protect privacy.</p>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; ">Emphasized in the security white paper explaining the implementation of the technology is the encryption of both forms of communication – one-to-one and group and also of all types of messages shared within such communications – text as well as media.</p>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; ">Simply put, all communication taking place over WhatsApp would be decipherable only to the sender and recipient – it would be virtual gibberish even to WhatsApp.</p>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; ">This announcement came in the backdrop of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/17/apple-ordered-to-hack-iphone-of-san-bernardino-shooter-for-fbi">Apple locking horns with the FBI</a> after being asked to provide a backdoor to unlock the San Bernardino mass shooter’s iPhone. This further reinforced WhatsApp Inc’s stand on the ensuing debate between the interplay of privacy and security in the digital age.</p>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; ">Kudos to WhatsApp, for there is <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/FreedomOpinion/Pages/CallForSubmission.aspx">growing discussion</a> around how encryption and anonymity is central to enabling secure online communication which in turn is integral to essential human rights such as those of freedom of opinion and expression.</p>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; ">WhatsApp may have taken encryption to the masses, but here we outline why WhatsApp’s provisioning of privacy and security measures needs a more granular analysis – is the company doing what it claims to be doing? Security issues with WhatsApp’s messaging protocol certainly are not new.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Man-in-the-middle attacks</h3>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; ">A <a href="https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/713.pdf">study</a> published by a group of German researchers from Ruhr University highlighted issues with WhatsApp’s implementation of its E2EE protocol to group communications. Another <a href="https://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.857/2016/files/36.pdf">paper</a> points out how WhatsApp’s session establishment strategy itself could be problematic and potentially be targeted for what are called man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks.</p>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; ">An MITM attack takes the form of a malicious actor, as the term suggests, placing itself between the communicating parties to eavesdrop or impersonate. The Electronic Frontier Foundation also <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/10/where-whatsapp-went-wrong-effs-four-biggest-security-concerns">highlighted</a> other security vulnerabilities, or trade-offs, depending upon ideological inclinations, with respect to WhatsApp allowing for storage of unencrypted backups, issues with WhatsApp’s web client and also with its approach to cryptographic key change notifications.</p>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; ">Much has been written questioning WhatsApp’s shifting approach to ensuring privacy too. Quoting straight from <a href="https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/#privacy-policy-affiliated-companies">WhatsApp’s Privacy Policy:</a> “We joined the Facebook family of companies in 2014. As part of the Facebook family of companies, WhatsApp receives information from, and shares information with, this family of companies.” Speaking of Facebook …</p>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; ">Culling out larger issues with WhatsApp’s privacy policies is not the intention here. What we specifically seek to explore is right at the nexus of WhatsApp’s security and privacy provisioning clashing with its marketing strategy: the storage of data on WhatsApp’s servers, or ‘blobs,’ as they are referred to in the technical paper. Facebook’s rather. In WhatsApp’s words: “Once your messages (including your chats, photos, videos, voice messages, files and share location information) are delivered, they are deleted from our servers. Your messages are stored on your own device.”</p>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; ">In fact, this non-storage of data on their ‘blobs’ is emphasizes at several other points on the official website. Let us call this the deletion-upon-delivery model.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">A simple experiment</h3>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; ">While drawing up a rigorous proof of concept, made near-impossible thanks to WhatsApp being a closed source messaging protocol, a simple experiment is enough to raise some very pertinent questions about WhatsApp’s outlined deletion-upon-delivery model. It should, however, be mentioned that the Signal Protocol developed by Open Whisper Systems and pivotal in WhatsApp’s rolling out of E2EE is <a href="https://github.com/signalapp">open source</a>. Here is how the experiment proceeds:</p>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; "><i>Rick sends Morty an attachment.</i></p>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; "><i>Morty then switches off the data on her mobile device.</i></p>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; "><i>Rick downloads the attachment, an image.</i></p>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; "><i>Subsequently, Rick deletes the image from his mobile device’s internal storage.</i></p>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; "><i>Rick then logs into a WhatsApp’s web client on his browser. (Prior to this experiment, both Rick and Morty had logged out from all instances of the web client)</i></p>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; "><i>Upon a fresh log-in to the web client and opening the chat with Morty, the option to download the image is available to Rick.</i></p>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; ">The experiment concludes with bewilderment at WhatsApp’s claim of deletion-upon-delivery as outlined earlier. The only place from which Morty could have downloaded the image would be from Facebook’s ‘blobs.’ The attachment could not have been retrieved from Morty’s mobile device as it had no way of sending data and neither from Rick’s mobile device as it no longer existed in the device’s storage.</p>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; ">As per the Privacy Policy, the data is stored on the ‘blobs’ for a period of 30 days after transmission of a message only when it can’t be delivered to the recipient. Upon delivery, the deletion-upon-delivery model is supposed to kick in.</p>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; ">Another straightforward experiment that leads to a similar conclusion is seeing the difference in time taken for a large attachment to be forwarded as opposed to when the same large attachment is uploaded. Forwarding is palpably quicker than uploading afresh: non-storage of attachments on the ‘blob’ would entail that the same amount should be taken for both.</p>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; ">The plot thickens. WhatsApp’s Privacy Policy goes on to state: “To improve performance and deliver media messages more efficiently, such as when many people are sharing a popular photo or video, we may retain that content on our servers for a longer period of time.” The technical paper offers no help in understanding how WhatsApp systems assess frequently shared encrypted media messages without decrypting it at its end.</p>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; ">A possible explanation could be the usage of metadata by WhatsApp, which it discloses in its Privacy Policy while simultaneously being sufficiently vague about the specifics of it. That WhatsApp may be capable of reading encrypted communication through the inclusion of a backdoor bodes well for law enforcement, but not so much for unsuspecting users.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">The weakest link in the chain</h3>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; ">Concerns about backdoors in WhatsApp’s product have led the French government to start developing their <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-privacy/france-builds-whatsapp-rival-due-to-surveillance-risk-idUSKBN1HN258">own encrypted messaging service</a>. This will be built using Matrix – an open protocol designed for real-time communication. Indeed, the Privacy Policy lays out that the company “may collect, use, preserve, and share your information if we have a good-faith belief that it is reasonably necessary to respond pursuant to applicable law or regulations, to legal process, or to government requests.”</p>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; ">The Signal Protocol is the undisputed gold standard of E2EE implementations. It is the integration with the surrounding functionality that WhatsApp offers which leads to vulnerabilities. After all, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Assuming that the attachments stored on the ‘blobs’ are in encrypted form, indecipherable to all but the intended recipients, this does not pose a privacy risk for the users from a technological point of view.</p>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; ">However, it is easy lose sight of the fact that the Privacy Policy is a legally binding document and it specifically states that messages are not stored on the ‘blobs’ as a matter of routine. As a side note, WhatsApp’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service are refreshing in their readability and lack of legalese.</p>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; ">As we were putting the final touches to this piece, <a href="https://wabetainfo.com/whatsapp-allows-to-redownload-deleted-media/#more-2781">news from <i>WABetaInfo</i></a>, a well-reputed source of information on WhatsApp features, has broken that newer updates of WhatsApp for Android are permitting users to re-download media deleted up to three months back. WhatsApp cannot possibly achieve this without storing the media in the ‘blobs,’ or in other words, in violation of its Privacy Policy.</p>
<p class="p4" style="text-align: justify; ">As the aphorism goes: “When the service is free, you are the product.”</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/asia-times-april-20-2018-aayush-rathi-sunil-abraham-what-s-up-with-whatsapp'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/asia-times-april-20-2018-aayush-rathi-sunil-abraham-what-s-up-with-whatsapp</a>
</p>
No publisherAayush Rathi and Sunil AbrahamSocial MediaPrivacyInternet GovernanceFeaturedWhatsAppHomepage2018-04-23T16:45:51ZBlog EntryWelcome to r@w blog!
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/welcome-to-raw-blog
<b>We from the researchers@work programme at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) are delighted to announce the launch of our new blog, hosted on Medium. It will feature works by researchers and practitioners working in India and elsewhere at the intersections of internet, digital media, and society; and highlights and materials from ongoing research and events at the researchers@work programme.</b>
<p> </p>
<h4>r@w blog: <a href="https://medium.com/rawblog" target="_blank">Visit</a> (Medium)</h4>
<hr />
<h3>A space for reflections on internet and society, r@w blog is also an attempt to facilitate conversations around contemporary debates and foster creative engagement with research and practice through text, images, sounds, videos, code, and other media forms offered by the internet.<br /><br /></h3>
<h3>r@w blog opens with an essay on ‘<a href="https://medium.com/rawblog/information-offline-labour-surveillance-and-activism-in-the-indian-it-ites-industry-903c71567d1a" target="_blank">Information Offline: Labour, Surveillance, and Activism in the Indian IT & ITES Industry</a>’ by Rianka Roy - as part of an <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/call-for-essays-offline" target="_blank">essay series</a> exploring social, economic, cultural, political, infrastructural, and aesthetic dimensions of the "offline" - and audio recording from a session titled <a href="https://medium.com/rawblog/iloveyou-167665a5145a" target="_blank">#ILoveYou</a> by Dhiren Borisa and Dhrubo Jyoti, which was part of the <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc18" target="_blank">Internet Researchers’ Conference 2018 - #Offline</a>.<br /><br /></h3>
<h3>We will publish our (including commissioned/supported) writings and works on this blog, as well as submitted and compiled materials. Please write to raw[at]cis-india[dot]org to submit your works to be considered for publication. Copyright to all material published on this blog are owned by CIS and author(s) concerned, and they are shared under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.</h3>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/welcome-to-raw-blog'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/welcome-to-raw-blog</a>
</p>
No publishersneha-ppHomepageRAW BlogResearchers at WorkFeaturedInternet Studies2019-01-02T11:48:04ZBlog 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>
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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 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 EntryUser Experiences of Digital Financial Risks and Harms
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/user-experiences-of-digital-financial-risks-and-harms
<b>The reach and use of digital financial services has risen in recent years without a commensurate increase in digital literacy and access. Through this project, supported by a grant from Google(.)org, we will examine the landscape of potential risks and harms posed by digital financial services, and the disproportionate risk that information asymmetry and barriers to access pose for users, especially certain marginalised communities. </b>
<h3>Project Background</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong> </strong>There is a big evidence gap in the understanding of the financial risks and harms experienced by users of digital financial services. Consequently, adequate consumer protection frameworks and processes to address these harms have been lagging. A survey of 32,000 Indian consumers found <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/42-indians-experienced-financial-fraud-in-last-3-years-report/articleshow/93341725.cms">only 17%</a> who lost money through banking frauds were able to recoup their funds. Filling this gap is crucial to inform responsive policy making, platform design and data governance.</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">While a lot more attention is paid to financial frauds and scams, through this study, we aim to situate these alongside experiences of harms that are understudied and sometimes overlooked. Users may also experience financial harm, when negatively impacted by:</p>
<ol>
<li>Financial misinformation</li>
<li>Loss of control over their assets</li>
<li>Loss of potential income</li>
<li>Difficulty accessing social protection</li>
<li>Financial abuse perpetrated alongside other forms of domestic and family abuse </li>
<li>Unsustainable levels of debt, i.e. over-indebtedness, and </li>
<li>Exclusion from financial services</li></ol>
<ol dir="ltr"></ol>
<p dir="ltr">The Centre for Internet and Society is undertaking a mixed methods study to better understand user awareness, perceptions and experiences of digital financial risks and harms.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">For this study, we will survey nearly 4000 users, with differing levels of access to digital devices, digital services and the internet, and undertake semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with specific target groups and stakeholders. We aim to highlight the experiences of persons with disabilities, gender and sexual minorities, the elderly, women, and regional language first users; to better understand how discrimination and exclusion may increase their burden of risk when using digital financial services.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Key research questions guiding our project are:</strong></p>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify;">How are digital financial risks understood and experienced by users of digital financial services? Which socioeconomic factors amplify risks for different user groups?</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">What concerns have emerged relating to data privacy, misinformation, identity theft and other forms of social engineering and mobile app based fraud?</li>
<li>How accessible are providers’ and government’s platform based reporting and grievance redressal systems?</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">What role can fintech platforms, social media platforms, banking institutions, and regulatory bodies play in reducing digital financial risks across the ecosystem?</li></ol>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Project Aims</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Through this study, we aim to:</p>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Assess the financial risks and harms users are exposed to when using social media, digital banking, and fintech platforms. While looking at general users, we will also specifically explore this experience for the elderly, gender and sexual minorities, regional language users and persons with visual disabilities.</li>
<li>Develop a framework to categorise the nature of vulnerabilities, risks and harms faced by the concerned user groups</li>
<li>Create a credible evidence base for key stakeholders with regards to experiences of digital financial risks and harm.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Provide recommendations for better policy and platform design to address harms, specifically those arising from lack of accessibility and information asymmetry.</li>
<li>Identify best practices to respond to digital risks and foster safety and equity in digital financial services</li></ol>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Come Talk to Us:</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">If you have experiences or insights to share, or if you're interested in learning more about our study, please reach out.<br /><br />We also invite researchers, financial service providers, developers and designers of fintech platforms, and civil society organisations working on digital safety, to speak to us and help inform the study. You may contact <a class="mail-link" href="mailto:garima@cis-india.org">garima@cis-india.org</a></p>
<hr />
<p><strong>Research Team</strong>: Amrita Sengupta, Chiara Furtado, Garima Agrawal, Nishkala Sekhar, Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and Yesha Tshering Paul</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/user-experiences-of-digital-financial-risks-and-harms'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/user-experiences-of-digital-financial-risks-and-harms</a>
</p>
No publisherAmrita Sengupta, Chiara Furtado, Garima Agrawal, Nishkala Sekhar, Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and Yesha Tshering PaulFinancial TechnologyFinancial PlatformsDigital Financial HarmsResearchers at WorkFeaturedRAW BlogAccessibilityDigital LendingRAW ResearchResearchHomepage2023-12-22T16:05:26ZBlog EntryUnpacking video-based surveillance in New Delhi
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/unpacking-video-based-surveillance-in-new-delhi-urban-data-justice
<b>Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon presented at an international workshop on 'Urban Data, Inequality and Justice in the Global South', on 14 June 2019, at the University of Manchester. The agenda for the workshop and the slides from the presentation by Aayush and Ambika are available below.</b>
<p> </p>
<h4>Agenda of the workshop: <a href="https://github.com/cis-india/website/raw/master/docs/UDJWorkshop2019_Timetable.docx">Download</a> (DOCX)</h4>
<h4>Slides from the presentation: <a href="https://github.com/cis-india/website/raw/master/docs/CIS_AayushAmbika_UDJWorkshop2019_Slides.pdf">Download</a> (PDF)</h4>
<hr />
<p>The aim of the workshop was to present findings from case studies on urban data justice commissioned by the Sustainable Consumption Institute and Centre for Development Informatics at the University of Manchester, on aspects of justice in data systems in cities across the world. Aayush and Ambika presented their study on video-based surveillance in New Delhi, which was conducted across a period of 3 months earlier this year. The study aimed to assess the extent to which CCTV surveillance systems in Delhi support the needs of women in the city, including lower class women and those from informal settlements. The study will be published as a working paper by the University of Manchester in the coming months.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/unpacking-video-based-surveillance-in-new-delhi-urban-data-justice'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/unpacking-video-based-surveillance-in-new-delhi-urban-data-justice</a>
</p>
No publisherAayush Rathi and Ambika TandonBig DataData JusticeSurveillanceFeaturedUrban Data JusticeResearchResearchers at Work2019-06-20T05:13:25ZBlog EntryUniversity of Mysore Re-releases Kannada Vishwakosha (Encyclopaedia) under Creative Commons Free License
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/university-of-mysore-releases-kannada-vishwakosha-under-cc-license
<b>The University of Mysore and the Centre for Internet and Society co-organized the Open Knowledge Day in Mysore on July 15, 2014. On this occasion Mysore University released six volumes of Kannada Vishwakosha under the Creative Commons (CC) license. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Kannada Vishwakosha brought out by the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.uni-mysore.ac.in/">University of Mysore</a> can easily be termed as the best encyclopaedia in Kannada. It has been modelled after the famous Britannica encyclopaedia. Mysore University Vishwakosha has 14 volumes having a total of 13802 pages. The very first volume was brought out in the year 1969 and the final volume was released in 2004. Many famous Kannada authors, scientists, academicians and stalwarts from other fields have worked on creating this encyclopaedia. The print volumes of the first version of the encyclopaedia are out of stock now. Recently UoM has started revising and reprinting the encyclopaedia. So far 4 volumes have been revised, enhanced and published.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">UoM believes in Open Access to Knowledge. It has put up the research outputs from its departments online for <a class="external-link" href="http://eprints.uni-mysore.ac.in/">free access to the public</a>. UoM has done these as a subscriber to the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read">idea of Budapest Open Access Initiative</a>. The Open Access Institutional Repository, of UoM, covers scholarly publications covering journal articles, conference papers, books, book reviews, presentations, reports and patents ever since UoM was established in 1916. Extending the philosophy of open knowledge to the Kannada encyclopaedia published by UoM becomes a natural extension. UoM is in the verge of celebrating its centenary soon and has taken many initiatives in that direction.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS-A2K has been in negotiations with UoM towards releasing of its high quality Kannada Vishwakosha (Kannada Encyclopaedia) under Creative Commons license. CIS and UoM signed a MoU on February 22, 2014. Here is the relevant extract from the MoU: "They will work together to digitize all encyclopaedic publications for which the copyright is owned by UoM, and re-release them under the Creative Common license (CC-BY-SA 3.0). The digitized content will be made available for everyone through free content distribution platforms like Wikipedia and Wikisource. The digitization will be done employing the global standard Unicode so that the content has longevity, is universally portable and is easily searchable. Both parties have joined hands to undertake the above in order to enhance digital literacy in the Kannada language and facilitate collaborative production and free dissemination of knowledge in Kannada to the students, academics, researchers and the wider public. The parties also believe that by reintroducing the knowledge in digital and openly accessible formats could significantly enhance the production of knowledge in Kannada and give a new lease of life to Kannada language in the digital era. The parties will co-design and jointly implement relevant programmes to achieve this objective." As part of this MoU, UoM agreed to release the first six volumes of Kannada Vishwakosha under CC.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Volume numbers 1, 2, 4 and 6 of Kannada Vishwakosha of UoM have been revised and published recently. A project page has been created in Kannada Wikipedia <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/mysoreunivwp">for this project</a>. Kannada Wikipedians joined hands in the project. The project involved extracting the text from the soft copies of the files, converting them into Unicode, extracting articles from these files and uploading them to Kannada Wikisource.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A team of interns from Christ University had a major role to play in this development. These were students from the Wikipedia in Education Program that was conducted in Christ University during the academic period of 2013-14. These students took active part in the current project and uploaded about 1200 articles so far (till July 21, 2014).</p>
<hr />
<h3>Media Coverage</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The event attracted very good media coverage. Leading English and Kannada dailies like Andolana Kannada, City Today, Deccan Herald, Hosa Diganta, Kannada Jana Mana, Kannada Prabha, Rajya Dharma, Samyukta Karnataka, The Hindu, The New Indian Express, Udayavani, Vijaya Karnataka, and Vijaya Vani published about this. Scanned versions of the published articles can be <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-knowledge-day-mysore-media-coverage-zip" class="external-link">downloaded here</a>.</p>
<p><b>Other Links:</b></p>
<ul>
<li>UoM Kannada Vishwakosha conversion project page in Kannada Wikipedia - <a href="http://bit.ly/mysoreunivwp">http://bit.ly/mysoreunivwp</a></li>
<li>Articles from UoM Kannada Vishwakosha in Kannada Wikisource - <a href="http://bit.ly/mysoreuniv">http://bit.ly/mysoreuniv</a></li>
<li>Category UoM Kannada Vishwakosha in Kannada Wikisource - <a href="http://bit.ly/mysoreunivws">http://bit.ly/mysoreunivws</a></li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">For pictures from the Open Knowledge Day event in Mysore - <a class="external-link" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Mysore_University_Open_Knowledge_Day">https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Mysore_University_Open_Knowledge_Day</a></li>
</ul>
<div style="text-align: justify; "></div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/university-of-mysore-releases-kannada-vishwakosha-under-cc-license'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/university-of-mysore-releases-kannada-vishwakosha-under-cc-license</a>
</p>
No publisherpavanajaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaHomepageWikipediaFeaturedOpennessKannada Wikipedia2014-07-24T07:03:45ZBlog 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 EntryTrain the Trainer Program
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/train-the-trainer-program
<b>Wikipedians, about 20 of them, from 10 different cities, speaking 8 different languages, joined together for the first ever four days "Train the Trainer Program" organised by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team in Bangalore from October 3 to 6, 2013. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Events/TTT">Read the original published on the Wikipedia meta page</a></p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Programme_Plan">CIS-A2K</a> organised the residency training program to build capacities amongst different language Wikimedia communities. A good diversity of Wikipedians from various language communities such as Bengali, Gujarati, Sanskrit, Malayalam, Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, Odia, came over for the event.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS-A2K identified two prominent reasons for organizing the event: (1) Limitations of a virtual sphere, and (2) Limited number of Wikipedians leading outreach activities.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><b>Limitations of a virtual sphere</b></span><br />Most open source communities face problem of a lack of time and space for sharing ideas in a non-virtual sphere. Similary Wikipedians, who are voluntary contributors and authors of the articles posted on Wikipedia merely get time and opportunity to meet fellow editors because of the limitations of a virtual platform on which Wikipedia is built. There are twelve active Indian language Wikimedia communities that are spread across the world and moving the bandwagon of collaborating with each other and carving their historic mark of compiling the world's largest encyclopaedia and its other sister projects. To keep this movement alive there is a need of cross-sharing ideas of working together for a common goal and strengthening the leaders of these communities.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><b>Limited number of Wikipedians leading outreach activities<br /> </b></span>Only a handful of Wikipedians devote their time in leading outreach activities and bringing new blood to the community. Indian language Wikimedia communities are in need of empowering Wikipedians who would lead outreach sessions in order to expand their editor community and strengthen their language projects.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The inception of this program began with the discussion of organizing a training program for the Wikipedians who are willing to conduct more activities in their home cities. Finally on October 3, 2013, Bangalore heard the voices of prominent Wikipedians from Punjab, West Bengal, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala. The Wikipedians delivered presentations on various topics such as — why Wikipedia is needed for the society, why Wikipedia in Indian languages, importance of starting new Wiki projects and so on.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Their presentation delivery skills were judged by <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Visdaviva">Vishnu Vardhan</a> and <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Nitika.t">Nitika Tandon</a> and all other community members present. They gave individual assessments and feedback for improvement towards the end of the day. Personal trainer Sachin Nagarajappa spent time with Wikipedians discussing mistakes that trainers do while conducting workshops and gradual improvement techniques for impactful outreach. Wikipedia is built on the concept of crowdsourcing and Malayalam Wikimedian <a href="https://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Viswaprabha">Viswanathan Prabhakaran</a> carried out a session about “Crowd Sourcing from the Future” explaining the various layers of crowdsourced projects.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The first day ended with a task where different language Wikipedians formed groups to prepare presentations for the following day.</p>
<hr />
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_TraintheTrainer.png" alt="Train the Trainer 1" class="image-inline" title="Train the Trainer 1" /></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Above: Wikipedians Satdeep Gill, Shyamal Lakshminarayan and Shubha during at the CIS-A2K Train-the-Trainer Program (by Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-SA 3.0)</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Groups were given a challenge of imagining the audience as new wikipedians. Five groups presented on the second day. Sachin conducted an advanced presentation skill improvement workshop based on the inputs from the participants and the assessment of the group presentations. Veteran Wikipedian <a href="https://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/ಸದಸ್ಯ:HPNadig">Hari Prasad Nadig</a> shared learnings from Challenges & Opportunities in building an Indian Language Community online. Open source activist and CIS's Executive Director <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/about/people/our-team">Sunil Abraham</a> conducted two sessions — a spectrogram based activity to simplify the "Criticality of Neutral Point of View" and an interactive session called “Speed Geeking” on offline and online outreach followed by a one-on-one discussion on the presentation skill improvement.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Typing in Indian languages is not easy especially when it comes to multiple typing layout standards followed in the public and private sectors in India. <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pavanaja">Dr. U.B.Pavanaja</a> conducted a session on Unicode standard for Indian languages and its usefulness with a brief context on the fonts and their different operating systems. Social media expert and Wikimedian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tinucherian">Tinu Cherian</a> shared the secrets of popularizing Indian language Wikipedias and bringing outstanding contributors to the limelight, how media played an important role in showcasing initiatives for free encyclopaedic content contribution in India and tips of social media. With fun activities <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Visdaviva">Vishnu Vardhan</a> shared case studies of making Wikipedia workshops interesting. Wikimedia Foundation board member and writer <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Aprabhala">Achal Prabhala</a> shared stories of documenting Oral traditions in Kerala and South Africa for Wikipedia referencing and how copyright laws evolved in the context of copyright issues that Wikipedia contributors face. Achal also threw light on content donation on WikiSource and other platforms that would be useful for people to consume for knowledge production on diverse platforms where Wikipedia could play a central role. Viswanathan and <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Psubhashish">Subhashish Panigrahi</a> demonstrated how to set up a handheld digital camera based prop to easily digitize books without using any scanner and then create electronic books.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The most vital part of Wikipedia articles is referencing. Wikimedian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shyamal">Shyamal Lakshminarayan</a> demonstrated how finding sources of references and citing them for the facts on Wikipedia could be made easier through detailed research and by using several tools available. <a href="https://wiki.wikimedia.in/">Wikimedia India</a>'s founding member and veteran Telugu Wikipedian <a href="https://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/వాడుకరి:Arjunaraoc">Arjuna Rao Chavala</a> gave a talk about the history and future plans of Wikimedia India. Wikipedians then went to M.G. Road boulevard to see the weaving work by Gandhians, Philately exhibition on Gandhi and spent some time with Namma Metro's staff to know about the metro operation. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja and Kannada Wikipedian <a href="https://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/ಸದಸ್ಯ:Omshivaprakash">Om Shivaprakash</a> guided Wikipedians to the office of Deccan Herald Prajavani where they got to see the entire newspaper production and spent time with the technical staff to learn about the use of Kannada Unicode fonts for newspaper printing. Editors and staff at Prajavani got to know about the use of WikiCommons as a free image repository.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The four action filled days involved learning new concepts, training on presentation skills, collaborating to create outreach documents, sharing stories from different language communities, understanding new mediums of outreach, meeting Wikipedians from different cities and also having lots of fun. Wikipedians left Bangalore city with happy faces and we hope to cultivate new editors in their communities.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><b>List of Participants</b></span></p>
<ul>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:AbhiSuryawanshi" title="en:user:AbhiSuryawanshi">Abhishek Suryawanshi</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:AnkitaS" title="en:user:AnkitaS">Ankita Sinha</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Charan_Gill" title="en:user:Charan Gill">Charan Gill</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:jayantanth" title="en:user:jayantanth">Jayanta Nath</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Kasyap" title="en:user:Kasyap">Kasyap</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Niraj_Suryawanshi" title="en:user:Niraj Suryawanshi">Niraj Suryawanshi</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:pranayraj1985" title="te:user:pranayraj1985">pranayraj vangari</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Satdeep_gill" title="en:user:Satdeep gill">Satdeep Gill</a></li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="https://sa.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:shubha">Shubha</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Rangilo_Gujarati" title="en:user:Rangilo Gujarati">Rangilo Gujarati</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Manojk" title="ml:User:Manojk">Manoj K</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MKar" title="en:User:MKar">Mrutyunjaya Kar</a> (<a class="extiw" href="https://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MKar" title="or:User:MKar">Odia Wiki</a>)</li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Subas_Chandra_Rout" title="or:User:Subas Chandra Rout">Subas Chandra Rout</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Nikhil.kawale" title="en:user:Nikhil.kawale">Nikhil Kawale</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B0%B5%E0%B0%BE%E0%B0%A1%E0%B1%81%E0%B0%95%E0%B0%B0%E0%B0%BF:%E0%B0%B5%E0%B0%BF%E0%B0%B6%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%B5%E0%B0%A8%E0%B0%BE%E0%B0%A7%E0%B1%8D.%E0%B0%AC%E0%B0%BF.%E0%B0%95%E0%B1%86." title="te:వాడుకరి:విశ్వనాధ్.బి.కె.">Viswanadh.b.k</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Hindustanilanguage" title="hi:user:Hindustanilanguage">Muzammil</a></li>
<li><a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:John_Noronha" title="en:user:John Noronha">John Noronha</a></li>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/train-the-trainer-program'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/train-the-trainer-program</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaFeaturedOpennessHomepage2013-11-18T07:52:26ZBlog EntryTowards Algorithmic Transparency
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/towards-algorithmic-transparency
<b>This policy brief examines the issue of transparency as a key ethical component in the development, deployment, and use of Artificial Intelligence.</b>
<p> </p>
<p>This brief proposes a framework that seeks to overcome the challenges in preserving transparency when dealing with machine learning algorithms, and suggests solutions such as the incorporation of audits, and ex ante approaches to building interpretable models right from the design stage. Read the full report <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/algorithmic-transparency-pdf" class="internal-link" title="Algorithmic Transparency PDF">here</a>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>The Regulatory Practices Lab at CIS aims to produce regulatory policy
suggestions focused on India, but with global application, in an agile
and targeted manner and to promote transparency around practices
affecting digital rights. <br />The Regulatory Practices Lab is supported by Google and Facebook.<br /><br /></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/towards-algorithmic-transparency'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/towards-algorithmic-transparency</a>
</p>
No publisherRadhika Radhakrishnan, and Amber SinhaRegulatory Practices LabInternet GovernanceFeaturedAlgorithmsinternet governanceTransparencyArtificial Intelligence2020-07-15T13:16:44ZBlog EntryThe Technology behind Big Data
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/technology-behind-big-data
<b>The authors undertakes a high-level literature review of the most commonly used technological tools and processes in the big data life cycle. The big data life cycle is a conceptual construct that can be used to study the various stages that typically occur in collecting, storing and analysing big data, along with the principles that can govern these processes.</b>
<p> </p>
<h4><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/technology-behind-big-data.pdf/view">Download the Paper</a> (PDF, 277 kb)</h4>
<hr />
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Introduction</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Defining big data is a disputed area in the field of computer science<a name="_ftnref1" href="#_ftn1"><sup><sup>[1]</sup></sup></a>, there is some consensus on a basic structure to its definition<a name="_ftnref2" href="#_ftn2"><sup><sup>[2]</sup></sup></a>. Big data is data that is collected in the form of datasets that has three main criteria: size, variety & velocity, all of which operate at an immense scale<a name="_ftnref3" href="#_ftn3"><sup><sup>[3]</sup></sup></a>. It is ‘big’ in size, often running into petabytes of information, has vast variety within its components, and is created, captured and analysed at an incredibly rapid velocity. All of this also makes big data difficult to handle using traditional technological tools and techniques.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This paper will attempt to perform a high-level literature review of the most commonly used technological tools and processes in the big data life cycle. The big data life cycle is a conceptual construct that can be used to study the various stages that typically occur in collecting, storing and analysing big data, along with the principles that can govern these processes. The big data life cycle consists of four components, which will also be the key structural points of the paper, namely: Data Acquisition, Data Awareness, Data Analytics & Data Governance.<strong><sup>4</sup> </strong>The paper will focus on the aspects that the author believes are relevant for analysing the technological impact of big data on both technology itself and society at large.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Scope: </strong>The scope of the paper is to study the technology used in big data using the "Life Cycle of Big Data" as model structure to categorise & study the vast range of technologies that are involved in big data. However, the paper will be limited to the study of technology related directly to the big data life cycle. It shall specifically exclude the use/utilisation of big data from its scope since big data is most often being fed into other, unrelated technologies for consumption leading to rather limitless possibilities.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Goal:</strong> Goal of the paper is twofold: a.) to use the available literature on the technological aspects of big data, to perform a brief overview of the technology in the field and b.) to frame the relevant research questions for studying the technology of big data and its possible impact on society.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Data Acquisition</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Acquiring big data has two main sub components to it, the first being sensing the existence of the data’ itself and the second, the stage of collecting and storing this data. Both of these subcomponents are incredibly diverse fields, with lots of rapid change occurring in the technology utilised to carry out these tasks. The section will provide a brief overview of the subcomponents and then discuss the technology used to fulfil the tasks.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Data Sensing</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Data does not exist in a vacuum and is always created as a part of a larger process, especially in the aspect of modern technology. Therefore, the source of the data itself plays a vital role in determining how it can be captured and analysed in the larger scheme of things. Entities constantly emit information into the environment that can be utilised for the purposes of big data, leading to two main kinds of data: data that is “born digital” or “born analogue.”<a name="_ftnref4" href="#_ftn4"><sup><sup>[4]</sup></sup></a></p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Born Digital Data</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Information that is “born digital,” is created, by a user or by a digital system, specifically for use by a computer or data‐processing system. This is a vast range of information and newer fields are being added to this category on a daily basis. It includes, as a short, indicative list: email and text messaging, any form of digital input, including keyboards, mouse interactions and touch screens, GPS location data, data from daily home appliances (Internet of Things), etc. All of this data can be tracked and tagged to users as well as be aggregated to form a larger picture, massively increasing the scope of what may constitute the ‘data’ in big data.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Some indicative uses of how such born digital data is catalogued by technological solutions on the user side, prior to being sent for collection/storage are:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">a.) Cookies - There are small, often just text, files that are left on user devices by websites in order to that visit, task or action (for example, logging into an email account) with a subsequent event.<a name="_ftnref5" href="#_ftn5"><sup><sup>[5]</sup></sup></a> (for example, revisiting the website)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">b.) Website Analytics<a name="_ftnref6" href="#_ftn6"><sup><sup>[6]</sup></sup></a> - Various services, such as Google Analytics, Piwik, etc., can use JavaScript and other web development languages to record a very detailed, intimate track of a user's actions on a website, including how long a user hovers above a link, the time spent on the website/application and in some cases, even the time spent specific aspects of the page.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">c.) GPS<a name="_ftnref7" href="#_ftn7"><sup><sup>[7]</sup></sup></a> - With the almost pervasive usage of smartphones with basic location capabilities, GPS sensors on these devices are used to provide regular, minute driven updates to applications, operating systems and even third parties about the user's location. Modern variations such as A-GPS can be used to provide basic positioning information even without satellite coverage, vastly expanding the indoor capabilities of location collection.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">All of these instances of sensing born digital data are common terms, used in daily parlance by billions of people from all over the world, which is a symbolic of just how deeply they have pervaded into our daily lifestyle. Apart from privacy & security concerns this in turn also leads to an exponential increase in the data available to collect for any interested party.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Sensor Data</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Information is said to be “analogue” when it contains characteristics of the physical world, such as images, video, heartbeats, etc. Such information becomes electronic when processed by a “sensor,” a device that can record physical phenomena and convert it into digital information. Some examples to better illustrate information that is born analogue but collected via digital means are:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">a.) Voice and/or video content on devices - Apart from phone calls and other forms communication, video and voice based interactions have started to regularly be captured to provide enhanced services. These include Google Now<a name="_ftnref8" href="#_ftn8"><sup><sup>[8]</sup></sup></a>, Cortana<a name="_ftnref9" href="#_ftn9"><sup><sup>[9]</sup></sup></a> and other digital assistants as well as voice guided navigation systems in cars, etc.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">b.) Personal health data such as heartbeats, blood pressure, respiration, velocity, etc. - This personal, potentially very powerful information is collected by dedicated sensors on devices such as Fitbit<a name="_ftnref10" href="#_ftn10"><sup><sup>[10]</sup></sup></a>, Mi Band<a name="_ftnref11" href="#_ftn11"><sup><sup>[11]</sup></sup></a>, etc. as well as by increasingly sophisticated smartphone applications such as Google Fit that can do so without any special device.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">c.) Camera on Home Appliances - Cameras and sensors on devices such as video game consoles (Kinect<a name="_ftnref12" href="#_ftn12"><sup><sup>[12]</sup></sup></a> being a relevant example) can record detailed human interactions, which can be mined for vast amounts of information apart from carrying out the basic interactions with the devices itself.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">While not as vast a category as born digital data, the increasingly lower costs of technology and ubiquitous usage of digital, networked devices is leading to information that was traditionally analogue in nature to be captured for use at a rapidly increasing rate.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Data Collection & Storage</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Traditional data was normally processed using the Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) methodology, which was used to collect the data from outside sources, modify the data to fit needs, and then upload the data into the data storage system for future use.<a name="_ftnref13" href="#_ftn13"><sup><sup>[13]</sup></sup></a> Technology such as spreadsheets, RDBMS databases, Structured Query Languages (SQL), etc. were all initially used to carry out these tasks, more often than not manually. <a name="_ftnref14" href="#_ftn14"><sup><sup>[14]</sup></sup></a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">However, for big data, the methodology traditionally followed is both inefficient and insufficient to meet the demands of modern use. Therefore, the Magnetic, Agile, Deep (MAD) process is used to collect and store data<a name="_ftnref15" href="#_ftn15"><sup><sup>[15]</sup></sup></a><a name="_ftnref16" href="#_ftn16"><sup><sup>[16]</sup></sup></a>. The needs and benefits of such a system are: attracting all the data sources regardless of their quality (magnetic), logical and physical contents of storage systems adapting to the rapid data evolution in big data (agile) and complex algorithmic statistical analysis required of big data on a very short notice<a name="_ftnref17" href="#_ftn17"><sup><sup>[17]</sup></sup></a>. (deep)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The technology used to perform data storage using the MAD process requires vast amount of processing power, which is very difficult to create in a single, physical space/unit for nonstate or research entities, who cannot afford supercomputers. Therefore, most solutions used in big data rely on two major components to store data: distributed systems and Massive Parallel Processing<a name="_ftnref18" href="#_ftn18"><sup><sup>[18]</sup></sup></a> (MPP) that run on non-relational (in-memory) database systems. Database performance and reliability is traditionally gauged using pure performance metrics (FLOPS per second, etc.) as well as the Atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability (ACID) criteria.<a name="_ftnref19" href="#_ftn19"><sup><sup>[19]</sup></sup></a> The most commonly used database systems for big data applications are given below. The specific operational qualities and performance of each of these databases is beyond the scope of this review but the common criteria that makes them well suited for big data storage have been delineated below.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Non-relational databases</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Databases traditionally used to be structured entities that operated solely on the ability to correlate information stored in them using explicitly defined relationships. Even prior to the advent of big data, this outlook was turning out to be a limiting factor in how large amounts of stored information could be leveraged, this led to the evolution of non relational database systems. Before going into them in detail, a basic primer on their data transfer protocols will be helpful in understanding their operation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">A protocol is a model that structures instructions in a particular manner so that it can be reproduced from one system to another<a name="_ftnref20" href="#_ftn20"><sup><sup>[20]</sup></sup></a><a name="_ftnref21" href="#_ftn21"><sup><sup>[21]</sup></sup></a>. The protocols which govern technology in the case of big data have gone through many stages of evolution, starting off with simple HTML based systems<a name="_ftnref22" href="#_ftn22"><sup><sup>[22]</sup></sup></a>, which then evolved to XML driven SOAP systems<a name="_ftnref23" href="#_ftn23"><sup><sup>[23]</sup></sup></a>, which led to JavaScript Object Notation, or JSON<a name="_ftnref24" href="#_ftn24"><sup><sup>[24]</sup></sup></a>, the currently used form for in most big database systems. JSON is an open format used to transfer data objects, using human-readable text and is the basis for most of the commonly used non-relational database management systems. Examples of Non-relational databases also known as NoSQL databases, include MongoDB<a name="_ftnref25" href="#_ftn25"><sup><sup>[25]</sup></sup></a>, Couchbase<a name="_ftnref26" href="#_ftn26"><sup><sup>[26]</sup></sup></a>, etc. They were developed for both managing as well as storing unstructured data. They aim for scaling, flexibility, and simplified development. Such databases rather focus on the high-performance scalable data storage, and allow tasks to be written in the application layer instead of databases specific languages, allowing for greater interoperability.<a name="_ftnref27" href="#_ftn27"><sup><sup>[27]</sup></sup></a></p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">In-Memory Databases</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In order to overcome performance limitation of traditional database systems, some modern databases now use in-memory databases. These systems manage the data in the RAM memory of the server, thus eliminating storage disk input/output. This allows for almost realtime responses from the database, in comparisons to minutes or hours required on traditional database systems. This improvement in the performance is so massive that, entirely new applications are being developed for using IMDB systems.<a name="_ftnref28" href="#_ftn28"><sup><sup>[28]</sup></sup></a> These IMDB systems are also being used for advanced analytics on big data, especially to increase the access speed to data and increase the scoring rate of analytic models for analysis.<a name="_ftnref29" href="#_ftn29"><sup><sup>[29]</sup></sup></a> Examples of IMDB include VoltDB<a name="_ftnref30" href="#_ftn30"><sup><sup>[30]</sup></sup></a>, NuoDB<a name="_ftnref31" href="#_ftn31"><sup><sup>[31]</sup></sup></a>, SolidDB<a name="_ftnref32" href="#_ftn32"><sup><sup>[32]</sup></sup></a> and Apache Spark<a name="_ftnref33" href="#_ftn33"><sup><sup>[33]</sup></sup></a>.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Hybrid Systems</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">These are the two major systems used to store data prior to it being processed or analysed in a big data application. However, the divide between data storage and data management is a slim one and most database systems also contain various unique attributes that cater them to specific kinds of analysis. (as can be seen from the IMDB example above) One example of a very commonly used Hybrid system that deals with storage as well as awareness of the data is Apache Hadoop<sup>33</sup>, which is detailed below.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Apache Hadoop</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Hadoop consists of two main components: the HDFS for the big data storage, and MapReduce for big data analytics, each of which will be detailed in their respective section.</p>
<ol style="text-align: justify;">
<li>The HDFS<a name="_ftnref34" href="#_ftn34"><sup><sup>[34]</sup></sup></a><a name="_ftnref35" href="#_ftn35"><sup><sup>[35]</sup></sup></a> storage function in Hadoop provides a reliable distributed file system, stored across multiple systems for processing & redundancy reasons. The file system is optimized for large files, as single files are split into blocks and spread across systems known as cluster nodes.<a name="_ftnref36" href="#_ftn36"><sup><sup>[36]</sup></sup></a> Additionally, the data is protected among the nodes by a replication mechanism, which ensures availability even if any node fails. Further, there are two types of nodes: Data Nodes and Name Nodes.<a name="_ftnref37" href="#_ftn37"><sup><sup>[37]</sup></sup></a> Data is stored in the form of file blocks across the multiple Data Nodes while the Name Node acts as an intermediary between the client and the Data Node, where it directs the requesting client to the particular Data Node which contains the requested data.</li></ol>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This operating structure for storing data also has various variations within Hadoop such as HBase for key/value pair type queries (a NoSQL based system), Hive for relational type queries, etc. Hadoop’s redundancy, speed, ability to run on commodity hardware, industry support and rapid pace of development have led to it being almost co-equivalently associated with big data.<a name="_ftnref38" href="#_ftn38"><sup><sup>[38]</sup></sup></a></p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Data Awareness</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Data Awareness, in the context of big data, is the task of creating a scheme of relationships within a set of data, to allow different users of the data to determine a fluid yet valid context and utilise it for their desired tasks.<a name="_ftnref39" href="#_ftn39"><sup><sup>[39]</sup></sup></a> It is a relatively new field, in which most of the work is currently being done on semantic structures to allow data to gain context in an interoperable format, in contrast to the current system where data is given context using unique, model specific constructs.<a name="_ftnref40" href="#_ftn40"><sup><sup>[40]</sup></sup></a> (such as XML Schemes, etc.)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Some of the original work on this field was carried out in the form of utilising the Resource Description Framework (RDF), which was built primarily to allow describing of data in a portable manner, especially being agnostic towards platforms and systems for Semantic Web at the W3C. SPARQL is the language used to implement RDF based designs but both largely remain underutilised in both the public domain as well as big data. Authors such as Kurt</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Cagle<a name="_ftnref41" href="#_ftn41"><sup><sup>[41]</sup></sup></a> and Bob DuCharme<a name="_ftnref42" href="#_ftn42"><sup><sup>[42]</sup></sup></a> predict its explosion in the next couple of years. Companies have also started realising the value of interoperable context, with Oracle Spatial<a name="_ftnref43" href="#_ftn43"><sup><sup>[43]</sup></sup></a> and IBM’s DB2<a name="_ftnref44" href="#_ftn44"><sup><sup>[44]</sup></sup></a> already including RDF and SPARQL support in the past 3 years.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">While underutilised, the rapid developments taking place in the field will make the impact that data awareness may have on big data as big as Hadoop and maybe even SQL. Some aspects of it are already beginning to be used in Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, etc. with tremendous scope for development.<a name="_ftnref45" href="#_ftn45"><sup><sup>[45]</sup></sup></a></p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Data Processing & Analytics</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Data Processing largely has three primary goals: a. determines if the data collected is internally consistent; b. make the data meaningful to other systems or users using either metaphors or analogy they can understand; and (what many consider most importantly) provide predictions about future events and behaviours based upon past data and trends.<a name="_ftnref46" href="#_ftn46"><sup><sup>[46]</sup></sup></a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Being a very vast field with rapidly changing technologies governing its operation, this section will largely concentrate on the most commonly used technologies in data analytics.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Data analytics requires four primary conditions to be met in order to carry out effective processing: fast, data loading, fast query processing, efficient utilisation of storage and adaptivity to dynamic workload patterns. The analytical model most commonly associated with meeting this criteria and with big data in general is MapReduce, detailed below. There are other, more niche models and algorithms (such as Project Voldemort<a name="_ftnref47" href="#_ftn47"><sup><sup>[47]</sup></sup></a> used by LinkedIn), which are used in big data but they are beyond the scope of the review, and more information about them can be read at article linked in the previous citation. (Reference architecture and classification of technologies, products and services for big data system)</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">MapReduce</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">MapReduce is a generic parallel programming concept, derived from the “Map” and “Reduce” of functional programming languages, which makes it particularly suited for big data operations. It is at the core of Hadoop<a name="_ftnref48" href="#_ftn48"><sup><sup>[48]</sup></sup></a>, and performs the data processing and analytics functions in other big data systems as well.<a name="_ftnref49" href="#_ftn49"><sup><sup>[49]</sup></sup></a> The fundamental premise of MapReduce is scaling out rather than scaling up, i.e., (adding more numerical resources, rather than increasing the power of a single system)<a name="_ftnref50" href="#_ftn50"><sup><sup>[50]</sup></sup></a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">MapReduce operates by breaking a task down into steps and executing the steps in parallel, across many systems. This comes with two advantages, a reduction in the time needed to finish the task and also a decrease in the amount of resources one has to expend to perform the task, in both power and energy. This model makes it ideally suited for the large data sets and quick response times required of big data operations generally.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The first step of a MapReduce job is to correlate the input values to a set of keys/value pairs as output. The “Map” function then partitions the processing tasks into smaller tasks, and assigns them to the appropriate key/value pairs.<a name="_ftnref51" href="#_ftn51"><sup><sup>[51]</sup></sup></a> This allows unstructured data, such as plain text, to be mapped to a structured key/value pair. As an example, the key could be the punctuation in a sentence and the value of the pair could be the number of occurrences of the punctuation overall. This output of the Map function is then passed on “Reduce” function.<a name="_ftnref52" href="#_ftn52"><sup><sup>[52]</sup></sup></a> Reduce then collects and combines this output, using identical key/value pairs, to provide the final result of the task.<a name="_ftnref53" href="#_ftn53"><sup><sup>[53]</sup></sup></a> These steps are carried using the Job Tracker & Task Tracker in Hadoop but different systems have different methodologies to carry out similar tasks.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Data Governance</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Data Governance is the act of managing raw big data as well as the processed information that arises from big data in order to meet legal, regulatory and business imposed requirements. While there is no standardized format for data governance, there have been increasing call with various sectors (especially healthcare) to create such a format to ensure reliable, secure and consistent big data utilisation across the board. The following tactics and techniques have been utilised or suggested for data governance, with varying degrees of success:</p>
<ol style="text-align: justify;">
<li><strong>Zero-knowledge systems</strong>: This technological proposal maintains secrecy with respect to the low-level data while allowing encrypted data to be examined for certain higherlevel abstractions.<a name="_ftnref54" href="#_ftn54"><sup><sup>[54]</sup></sup></a> For the system to be zero-knowledge, the client’s system will have to encrypt the data and send it to the storage provider. Due to this, the provider stores the data in the encrypted format and cannot decipher the same unless he/she is in possession of the key which will decrypt the data into plaintext. This allows the individual to store his data with a storage provider while also maintaining anonymity of the details contained in such information. However, these are currently just beginning to be used in simple situations. As of now, they are not expandable to unstructured and complex cases and have to be developed marginally before they can be used for research and data mining purposes.</li>
<li><strong>Homomorphic encryption</strong>: Homomorphic encryption is a privacy preserving technique which performs searches and other computations over data that is encrypted while also protecting the individual’s privacy.<a name="_ftnref55" href="#_ftn55"><sup><sup>[55]</sup></sup></a> This technique has however been considered to be impractical and is deemed to be an unlikely policy alternative for near future purposes in the context of preserving privacy in the age of big data.<a name="_ftnref56" href="#_ftn56"><sup><sup>[56]</sup></sup></a></li>
<li><strong>Multi-party computation</strong>: In this technique, computation is done on encrypted distributed data stores.<a name="_ftnref57" href="#_ftn57"><sup><sup>[57]</sup></sup></a> This mechanism is closely related to homomorphic encryption where individual data is kept private using encryption algorithms called “collusion-robust” while the same is used to calculate statistics.<a name="_ftnref58" href="#_ftn58"><sup><sup>[58]</sup></sup></a> The parties involved are aware of some private data and each of them use a protocol which produces results based on the information they are aware of and the information they are not aware of, without revealing the data they are not already aware of.<a name="_ftnref59" href="#_ftn59"><sup><sup>[59]</sup></sup></a> Multi-party computations thus help in generating useful data for statistical and research purposes without compromising the privacy of the individuals.</li></ol>
<ol style="text-align: justify;">
<li><strong>Differential Privacy</strong>: Although this technological development is related to encryption, it follows a different technique. Differential privacy aims at maximizing the precision of computations and database queries while reducing the identifiability of the data owners who have records in the database, usually through obfuscation of query results.<a name="_ftnref60" href="#_ftn60"><sup><sup>[60]</sup></sup></a> This is widely applied today in the existence of big data in order to ensure preservation of privacy while trying to reap the benefits of large scale data collection.<a name="_ftnref61" href="#_ftn61"><sup><sup>[61]</sup></sup></a></li>
<li><strong>Searchable encryption</strong>: Through this mechanism, the data subject can make certain data searchable while minimizing exposure and maximizing privacy.<a name="_ftnref62" href="#_ftn62"><sup><sup>[62]</sup></sup></a> The data owner can make his information available through search engines by providing the data in an encrypted format but by adding tags consisting of certain keywords which can be deciphered by the search engine. This encrypted data shows up in the search results when searched with these particular keywords but can only be read when the person is in possession of the key which is required for decrypting the information.</li></ol>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This technique of encryption provides maximum security to the individual’s data and preserves privacy to the greatest possible extent.</p>
<ol style="text-align: justify;">
<li><strong>K-anonymity</strong>: The property of k-anonymity is being applied in the present day in order to preserve privacy and avoid re-identification.<a name="_ftnref63" href="#_ftn63"><sup><sup>[63]</sup></sup></a> A certain data set is said to possess the property of k-anonymity if individual specific data can be released and used for various purposes without re-identification. The analysis of the data should be carried out without attributing the data to the individual to whom it belongs and should give scientific guarantees for the same.</li>
<li><strong>Identity Management Systems</strong>: These systems enable the individuals to establish and safeguard their identities, explain those identities with the help of attributes, follow the activity of their identities and also delete their identities if they wish to.<a name="_ftnref64" href="#_ftn64"><sup><sup>[64]</sup></sup></a> It uses cryptographic schemes and protocols to make anonymous or pseudonymous the identities and credentials of the individuals before analysing the data.</li>
<li><strong>Privacy Preserving Data Publishing</strong>: This is a method in which the analysts are provided with the individual’s personal information with the ability to decipher particular information from the database while preventing the inference of certain other information which might lead to a breach of privacy.<a name="_ftnref65" href="#_ftn65"><sup><sup>[65]</sup></sup></a> Data which is essential for the analysis will be provided for processing while sensitive data will not be disclosed. This tool primarily focuses on microdata.</li>
<li><strong>Privacy Preserving Data Mining</strong>: This mechanism uses perturbation methods and randomization along with cryptography in order to permit data mining on a filtered version of the data which does not contain any form of sensitive information. PPDM focuses on data mining results unlike PPDP.<a name="_ftnref66" href="#_ftn66"><sup><sup>[66]</sup></sup></a> </li></ol>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Conclusion</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Studying the technology surrounding big data has led to two major observations: the rapid pace of development in the industry and the stark lack of industry standards or government regulations directed towards big data technologies. These observations have been the primary motivating factor for framing further research in the field. Understanding how to deal with big data technologically, rather than just the potential regulation of possible harms after the technological processes have been performed might be critical for the human rights dialogue as these processes become even more extensive, opaque and technologically complicated.</p>
<hr style="text-align: justify;" />
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn1" href="#_ftnref1">[1]</a> EMC: Data Science and Big Data Analytics. In: EMC Education Services, pp. 1–508 (2012)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn2" href="#_ftnref2">[2]</a> Bakshi, K.: Considerations for Big Data: Architecture and Approaches. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Aerospace Conference, pp. 1–7 (2012)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn3" href="#_ftnref3">[3]</a> Adams, M.N.: Perspectives on Data Mining. International Journal of Market Research 52(1), 11–19 (2010) <sup>4</sup> Elgendy, N.: Big Data Analytics in Support of the Decision Making Process. MSc Thesis, German University in Cairo, p. 164 (2013)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn4" href="#_ftnref4">[4]</a> Big Data and Privacy: A Technological Perspective - President’s Council of Advisors on Science and</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Technology (May 2014)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn5" href="#_ftnref5">[5]</a> Chen, Hsinchun, Roger HL Chiang, and Veda C. Storey. "Business Intelligence and Analytics: From Big Data to Big Impact." MIS quarterly 36.4 (2012): 1165-1188.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn6" href="#_ftnref6">[6]</a> Chandramouli, Badrish, Jonathan Goldstein, and Songyun Duan. "Temporal analytics on big data for web advertising." 2012 IEEE 28th international conference on data engineering. IEEE, 2012.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn7" href="#_ftnref7">[7]</a> Laurila, Juha K., et al. "The mobile data challenge: Big data for mobile computing research." Pervasive Computing. No. EPFL-CONF-192489. 2012.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn8" href="#_ftnref8">[8]</a> Lazer, David, et al. "The parable of Google flu: traps in big data analysis." <em>Science</em> 343.6176 (2014): 12031205.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn9" href="#_ftnref9">[9]</a> <em>ibid</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn10" href="#_ftnref10">[10]</a> Banaee, Hadi, Mobyen Uddin Ahmed, and Amy Loutfi. "Data mining for wearable sensors in health monitoring systems: a review of recent trends and challenges." <em>Sensors</em> 13.12 (2013): 17472-17500.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn11" href="#_ftnref11">[11]</a> <em>ibid</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn12" href="#_ftnref12">[12]</a> Chung, Eric S., John D. Davis, and Jaewon Lee. "Linqits: Big data on little clients." <em>ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News</em>. Vol. 41. No. 3. ACM, 2013.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn13" href="#_ftnref13">[13]</a> Kornelson, Kevin Paul, et al. "Method and system for developing extract transform load systems for data warehouses." U.S. Patent No. 7,139,779. 21 Nov. 2006.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn14" href="#_ftnref14">[14]</a> Henry, Scott, et al. "Engineering trade study: extract, transform, load tools for data migration." <em>2005 IEEE Design Symposium, Systems and Information Engineering</em>. IEEE, 2005.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn15" href="#_ftnref15">[15]</a> Cohen, Jeffrey, et al. "MAD skills: new analysis practices for big data." <em>Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn16" href="#_ftnref16">[16]</a> .2 (2009): 1481-1492.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn17" href="#_ftnref17">[17]</a> Elgendy, Nada, and Ahmed Elragal. "Big data analytics: a literature review paper." <em>Industrial Conference on Data Mining</em>. Springer International Publishing, 2014.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn18" href="#_ftnref18">[18]</a> Wu, Xindong, et al. "Data mining with big data." <em>IEEE transactions on knowledge and data engineering</em> 26.1 (2014): 97-107.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn19" href="#_ftnref19">[19]</a> Supra Note 17</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn20" href="#_ftnref20">[20]</a> Hu, Han, et al. "Toward scalable systems for big data analytics: A technology tutorial." <em>IEEE Access</em> 2 (2014):</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn21" href="#_ftnref21">[21]</a> -687.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn22" href="#_ftnref22">[22]</a> Kurt Cagle, Understanding the Big Data Lifecycle - LinkedIn Pulse (2015)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn23" href="#_ftnref23">[23]</a> Coyle, Frank P. <em>XML, Web services, and the data revolution</em>. Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., 2002.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn24" href="#_ftnref24">[24]</a> Pautasso, Cesare, Olaf Zimmermann, and Frank Leymann. "Restful web services vs. big'web services: making the right architectural decision." <em>Proceedings of the 17th international conference on World Wide Web</em>. ACM, 2008.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn25" href="#_ftnref25">[25]</a> Banker, Kyle. <em>MongoDB in action</em>. Manning Publications Co., 2011</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn26" href="#_ftnref26">[26]</a> McCreary, Dan, and Ann Kelly. "Making sense of NoSQL." <em>Shelter Island: Manning</em> (2014): 19-20.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn27" href="#_ftnref27">[27]</a> <em>ibid</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn28" href="#_ftnref28">[28]</a> Zhang, Hao, et al. "In-memory big data management and processing: A survey." <em>IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering</em> 27.7 (2015): 1920-1948.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn29" href="#_ftnref29">[29]</a> <em>ibid</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn30" href="#_ftnref30">[30]</a> <em>ibid</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn31" href="#_ftnref31">[31]</a> Supra Note 20</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn32" href="#_ftnref32">[32]</a> Ballard, Chuck, et al. <em>IBM solidDB: Delivering Data with Extreme Speed</em>. IBM Redbooks, 2011.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn33" href="#_ftnref33">[33]</a> Shanahan, James G., and Laing Dai. "Large scale distributed data science using apache spark." <em>Proceedings of the 21th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining</em>. ACM, 2015. <sup>33</sup> Shvachko, Konstantin, et al. "The hadoop distributed file system." <em>2010 IEEE 26th symposium on mass storage systems and technologies (MSST)</em>. IEEE, 2010.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn34" href="#_ftnref34">[34]</a> Borthakur, Dhruba. "The hadoop distributed file system: Architecture and design." <em>Hadoop Project Website</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn35" href="#_ftnref35">[35]</a> .2007 (2007): 21.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn36" href="#_ftnref36">[36]</a> <em>ibid</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn37" href="#_ftnref37">[37]</a> <em>ibid</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn38" href="#_ftnref38">[38]</a> Zikopoulos, Paul, and Chris Eaton. <em>Understanding big data: Analytics for enterprise class hadoop and streaming data</em>. McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, 2011.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn39" href="#_ftnref39">[39]</a> Bizer, Christian, et al. "The meaningful use of big data: four perspectives--four challenges." <em>ACM SIGMOD Record</em> 40.4 (2012): 56-60.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn40" href="#_ftnref40">[40]</a> Kaisler, Stephen, et al. "Big data: issues and challenges moving forward." <em>System Sciences (HICSS), 2013 46th Hawaii International Conference on</em>. IEEE, 2013.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn41" href="#_ftnref41">[41]</a> Supra Note 21</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn42" href="#_ftnref42">[42]</a> DuCharme, Bob. "What Do RDF and SPARQL bring to Big Data Projects?." <em>Big Data</em> 1.1 (2013): 38-41.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn43" href="#_ftnref43">[43]</a> Zhong, Yunqin, et al. "Towards parallel spatial query processing for big spatial data." <em>Parallel and </em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><em>Distributed Processing Symposium Workshops & PhD Forum (IPDPSW), 2012 IEEE 26th International</em>. IEEE, 2012.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn44" href="#_ftnref44">[44]</a> Ma, Li, et al. "Effective and efficient semantic web data management over DB2." <em>Proceedings of the 2008 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data</em>. ACM, 2008.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn45" href="#_ftnref45">[45]</a> Lohr, Steve. "The age of big data." <em>New York Times</em> 11 (2012).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn46" href="#_ftnref46">[46]</a> Pääkkönen, Pekka, and Daniel Pakkala. "Reference architecture and classification of technologies, products and services for big data systems." <em>Big Data Research</em> 2.4 (2015): 166-186.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn47" href="#_ftnref47">[47]</a> Sumbaly, Roshan, et al. "Serving large-scale batch computed data with project voldemort." <em>Proceedings of the 10th USENIX conference on File and Storage Technologies</em>. USENIX Association, 2012.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn48" href="#_ftnref48">[48]</a> Bar-Sinai, Michael. "Big Data Technology Literature Review." <em>arXiv preprint arXiv:1506.08978</em> (2015).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn49" href="#_ftnref49">[49]</a> ibid</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn50" href="#_ftnref50">[50]</a> Condie, Tyson, et al. "MapReduce Online." <em>Nsdi</em>. Vol. 10. No. 4. 2010.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn51" href="#_ftnref51">[51]</a> Supra Note 47</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn52" href="#_ftnref52">[52]</a> Dean, Jeffrey, and Sanjay Ghemawat. "MapReduce: a flexible data processing tool." <em>Communications of the ACM</em> 53.1 (2010): 72-77.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn53" href="#_ftnref53">[53]</a> ibid</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn54" href="#_ftnref54">[54]</a> Big Data and Privacy: A Technological Perspective, White House,</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/PCAST/pcast_big_data_and_privacy__may_2014</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn55" href="#_ftnref55">[55]</a> Tene, Omer, and Jules Polonetsky. "Big data for all: Privacy and user control in the age of analytics." <em>Nw. J. Tech. & Intell. Prop.</em> 11 (2012): xxvii.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn56" href="#_ftnref56">[56]</a> Big Data and Privacy: A Technological Perspective, White House,</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/PCAST/pcast_big_data_and_privacy__may_2014</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn57" href="#_ftnref57">[57]</a> Privacy by design in big data, ENISA</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn58" href="#_ftnref58">[58]</a> Big Data and Privacy: A Technological Perspective, White House,</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/PCAST/pcast_big_data_and_privacy__may_2014</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn59" href="#_ftnref59">[59]</a> Id</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn60" href="#_ftnref60">[60]</a> Id</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn61" href="#_ftnref61">[61]</a> Tene, Omer, and Jules Polonetsky. "Privacy in the age of big data: a time for big decisions." <em>Stanford Law Review Online</em> 64 (2012): 63.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn62" href="#_ftnref62">[62]</a> Lane, Julia, et al., eds. <em>Privacy, big data, and the public good: Frameworks for engagement</em>. Cambridge University Press, 2014.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn63" href="#_ftnref63">[63]</a> Crawford, Kate, and Jason Schultz. "Big data and due process: Toward a framework to redress predictive privacy harms." <em>BCL Rev.</em> 55 (2014): 93.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn64" href="#_ftnref64">[64]</a> http://homes.esat.kuleuven.be/~sguerses/papers/DanezisGuersesSurveillancePets2010.pdf</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn65" href="#_ftnref65">[65]</a> Seda Gurses and George Danezis, A critical review of 10 years of privacy technology, August 12th 2010, http://homes.esat.kuleuven.be/~sguerses/papers/DanezisGuersesSurveillancePets2010.pdf</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn66" href="#_ftnref66">[66]</a> Id</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/technology-behind-big-data'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/technology-behind-big-data</a>
</p>
No publisherGeethanjali Jujjavarapu and Udbhav TiwariBig DataPrivacyInternet GovernanceFeaturedHomepage2016-12-04T09:53:43ZBlog EntryThe Supreme Court Delivers
http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/organizing-india-blogspot-october-11-2012-shyam-ponappa-the-supreme-court-delivers
<b>Now, the spectrum and licence issues need resolution. On September 27, 2012, the Supreme Court of India delivered the opinion of a bench comprising five Judges on the Presidential Reference regarding the auction of 2G spectrum.</b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Published in <a class="external-link" href="http://organizing-india.blogspot.in/2012/10/the-supreme-court-delivers.html">Organizing India Blogspot</a> on October 11, 2012 and in <a class="external-link" href="http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/shyam-ponappasupreme-court-delivers/488420/">Business Standard</a> on October 4, 2012.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Supreme Court’s opinion on the Presidential reference<a href="#fn*" name="fr*">[*]</a>dismissed two preposterous claims. One is that it is beyond the ambit of Parliament and the government to formulate economic policies. The second is that the government must allocate resources only through auctions. It’s like the end of a self-destructive nightmare. True, our heedless kleptocracy as a society of rogue politicians, bureaucrats, defence personnel, and complicit citizens, led to this pass. Even so, the anarchic “destructionism” of these claims is as reprehensible as the kleptocracy they seek to tear down. Fortunately, the Supreme Court opinion rose above the populist clamour.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There’s still a mess to clear. The big picture is that the Supreme Court left its decision on spectrum auctions unaddressed. In matters of detail, some points need resolution based on facts. These are discussed below to dispel prevalent myths.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Myth 1: Auctions maximise govt revenues</h3>
<p>"Auctions may be the best way of maximising revenue…": paragraph 116 of the opinion. This contravenes the evidence after the National Telecom Policy -99, that revenue-sharing maximises government revenues as well as public benefits. It also ignores the many auction failures.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Consider the evidence: auction revenues foregone were estimated at under Rs 20,000 crore for 1999-2007, because the sector was mired in losses and was unable to provide services effectively or pay those dues. By comparison, actual collections from revenue-sharing by March 2007 were more than double, at Rs 40,000 crore. Collections by March 2010 were Rs 80,000 crore. Current annual contributions to government revenues may be about Rs 18,000 crore on Adjusted Gross Revenues estimated at Rs 1,40,000 crore, plus taxes, amounting to perhaps Rs 36,000 crore.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Re public benefits, access to telephony grew from a few million users in 1999 to about 700 million today (excluding around 250 million shadow subscriptions).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">An ameliorating caveat in paragraph 12 states: "…if the State arrives at the conclusion … that maximum revenue would be earned by auction of the natural resource in question, then that alone would be the process", and this is expanded in paragraph 119:<br /><br />"Where revenue maximisation is not the object of a policy of distribution, the question of auction would not arise. Revenue considerations may assume secondary consideration to developmental considerations."<br /><br />This has not prevented erroneous conclusions in the press that auctions are the only valid process, notwithstanding that the conditions stipulated in the order, eg, that government’s actions be “fair, reasonable, non-discriminatory”, were always operative, if not adhered to in instances of abuse, as in the 2G scam.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Myth 2: Maximum govt collections are in the public interest</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Government collections as the public interest criterion may work for colonial powers extorting revenues from subject states, or possibly for utopias whose political economy is so balanced that such cross-subsidisation works. Developing economies like India presumably can and should seek the welfare of their people. The same populists crusading for maximum government collections accuse governments of corruption and waste. This doesn’t provide a coherent approach to infrastructure, where each capital-intensive sector is configured to deliver a specific service. For instance, the energy sector has to deliver power, while telecommunications must deliver communications services. Neither can be expected to deliver toilets or water. Yet, many well-intentioned people seem to nurture such irrational expectations.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">The spectrum and broadband link</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The first prerequisite for broadband is high-speed connectivity. The second is reasonably priced services. Our objectives are, therefore: (a) a broadband network, (b) available anywhere (c) at reasonable prices. Our networks are deficient, however, particularly in rural and semi-urban areas. A host of factors are responsible, ranging from limited public sector network rollout, combined with a private sector focus on the most lucrative urban centres, with incentives skewed to voice telephony. Applications need connectivity based on networks that require spectrum.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Problems and solutions</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Consider an application like distance education. The need is for networks and services of high quality (followed by the additional requirement of content). What is apparent is that such applications cannot be effective without the connectivity. So we’re back to the need for networks, of fibre where feasible, and wireless elsewhere. This brings us back to the need for spectrum.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Reviewing facts</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As regards the facts relating to the 2G judgment deserving review:<br />The solution the Supreme Court has not considered is that operators need only to use spectrum, for which they can be charged a fee. The evidence of widely available Wi-fi shows that innovation and usage thrive if spectrum is available. The Supreme Court, the government, and the public need to recognise that allocating spectrum to operators is only one way to use spectrum.<br /><br />There need be no alienation of spectrum at all, if policies allow open access and charge fees. Then, spectrum could be used like any infrastructure network, eg, airports, highways, or rail, on payment of usage charges. The sharing could be in at least two ways. Operators could pool spectrum for collective use. For this, (i) regulations must allow pooling/active facilities sharing, and (ii) operators must agree on terms and procedures. Another way is for mandatory spectrum sharing using the database-driven systems being implemented in the US by Spectrum Bridge and Telcordia. Similar deployments are planned in the UK, the European Union, and in Singapore. The TV white space is shared because this range is available for sharing, and not because other bands cannot be shared.<br /><br />There are immense societal costs of duplication in capital investments in multiple networks, including the last-mile spectrum access, of operators using dedicated networks with limited passive facilities sharing (such as towers), compared with the benefits of open-access to common networks, if policies changed. These would employ active facilities sharing (equipment, and not just construction) to reduce capital equipment, construction costs, energy for towers, carbon emissions from a more limited physical network, possibly reduced radiation from a rationalised network with small cells with lower-powered equipment, and the multiplier effect on the finite available spectrum.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Enormous productivity benefits could accrue through ICT applications in infrastructure such as smart grids for energy, transportation, education, healthcare, and government services, as well as many commercial applications.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Supreme Court could also uphold contractual obligations, by discriminating against actual transgressors in the 2G spectrum allocation, while rehabilitating those who operated within the law.</p>
<hr />
<p>[<a href="#fr*" name="fn*">*</a>].<a class="external-link" href="http://supremecourtofindia.nic.in/outtoday/op27092012.pdf">http://supremecourtofindia.nic.in/outtoday/op27092012.pdf</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/organizing-india-blogspot-october-11-2012-shyam-ponappa-the-supreme-court-delivers'>http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/organizing-india-blogspot-october-11-2012-shyam-ponappa-the-supreme-court-delivers</a>
</p>
No publisherShyam PonappaTelecomFeatured2012-12-21T09:57:57ZBlog EntryThe State of the Internet's Languages Report
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/state-of-the-internet-languages-report-2022
<b>The first-ever State of the Internet’s Languages Report was launched by Whose Knowledge? on February 23, 2022 (just after the International Mother Language day), along with research partners Oxford Internet Institute and the Centre for Internet and Society. This extraordinarily community-sourced effort, with over 100 people involved is now available online, with translations in multiple languages. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify;">There are over 7000 (spoken and signed) languages in the world, but only a few can be fully experienced online. Challenges in accessing the internet and digital technologies in our preferred languages also means that a vast body of knowledge, especially from and by marginalised communities, is not represented and remains inaccessible to the world, thereby reiterating existing social inequalities. The State of the Internet's Languages report explores these and many other aspects related to ongoing efforts in creating a multilingual and multi-modal internet. Comprising both numbers and stories, the report features contributions in 13 languages, representing 22 language communities from 12 countries, and explores how communities across the world experience the internet.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;">Read the full report <strong><a class="external-link" href="https://internetlanguages.org/en/">here</a>. </strong>See more details of the project<strong> <a class="external-link" href="https://whoseknowledge.org/initiatives/state-of-the-internets-languages/">here</a></strong></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/state-of-the-internet-languages-report-2022'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/state-of-the-internet-languages-report-2022</a>
</p>
No publisherPuthiya Purayil SnehaRAW ResearchFeaturedResearchers at WorkRAW Blog2022-03-07T15:01:11ZBlog EntryThe Right to Read Campaign, now in Delhi
http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/right-to-read-campaign
<b>The Right to Read campaign, this time in Delhi, the national capital of the country has been announced. This is the third in the series. The previous two held in Calcutta and Chennai were highly successful and Delhi too promises quite a lot. </b>
<p>About 70 million Indians are unable to read printed material owing to various forms of disabilities. According to industry estimates, around 80,000-100,000 books get published every year in India of which only about 700 are made available for these persons. Technologies like screen readers make it possible for persons with disabilities to access knowledge in alternate formats like Braille, e-text, audio, large print, et cetera. Yet people are unable to convert books into accessible formats thanks to the provisions of the Indian Copyright Act, 1957.</p>
<p>India needs to change the situation quickly and put an end to the shortage of books and enable these 70 million persons to participate in social life. For this we need to make use of the developments in technology which makes it possible for all persons to access knowledge and enable them to live a life of social inclusion and participation on par with the rest of society. People with disabilities too have a right to access information like other persons- let copyright laws recognize the diverse needs of persons with disabilities and open up the gates of knowledge to all.</p>
<h3>Objectives of the Right to Read Campaign</h3>
<ul><li>To expedite copyright law reform by informing policy makers on the necessity and nature of amendment. This has to be made to the Indian Copyright Act 1957 to give effect to the rights of persons with disabilities. </li><li>To raise awareness on the issue amongst the parliamentarians, members of the judiciary, educationalists, publishers and the public. </li></ul>
<h3>The Campaign</h3>
<p>The Indian campaign is a part of the global Right to Read campaign which was started by the World Blind Union in 2008. It is a nationwide campaign and seeks to:</p>
<ul><li>Accelerate change in the copyright law;</li><li>Raise public awareness on the issue of access to reading for the print-impaired; and</li><li>Gather Indian support for the Treaty for the Blind proposed by the World Blind Union at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).<br /></li></ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/right-to-read-campaign'>http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/right-to-read-campaign</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaFeaturedAccessibility2011-08-17T08:45:56ZBlog EntryThe Right of Persons with Disabilities Bill 2013 and the Lack of Access to Accessibility Rights
http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/rights-of-persons-with-disabilities-bill-2013-and-lack-of-access-to-accessibility-rights
<b>The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill, 2013 (The RPD Bill) went through three avatars since its commissioning in 2009 under the Sudha Kaul Committee. This blog post brings you a summary of the three stages since it was initially commissioned.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The first was the one the Committee proposed in 2011, after consultations with persons with disabilities and Disabled People's Organizations across the country; the second was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.socialjustice.nic.in/pdf/draftpwd12.pdf">notified by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment in 2012</a>, which was in parts opposed to by several stakeholders; and the third, the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/cabinet-okays-disabilities-bill/article5456834.ece">RPD BIll of 2013</a>, has actually brought the entire disability lobby, as it were, together, in being entirely appalled at the turn of events. The Bill, which is being furiously evaluated in the short time available between its being made available to the public and its impending introduction (and possible passing in the House), is full of flaws. Not only does it not adhere to the standards of the UNCRPD, but it also violates the spirit of the Indian Constitution, as well as contradicting existing case law, and most importantly it betrays the consensus and recommendations of persons with disabilities who were initially part of these recommendations. <br /><br />Doubtlessly, while access to government establishments and entities like courts, collectorates, municipal offices, is important for persons with disabilities, there are other establishments which are equally important for persons with disabilities, for purposes of recreation, access to culture, and private services. I've made the point elsewhere that the law proposed is less of an empowering statute and more on the lines of the charity model – and in line with that, the indication is that persons with disabilities will only ever have to come in contact with the government and other entities, so they can enforce rights, take grants, petition government servants, etc. But if the statute itself is rights based, why so much focus on access to forums for rights enforcement, and not on others beyond this?<br /><br />While they did have their flaws, the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.socialjustice.nic.in/pwd2011.php">2011 and 2012 versions of the Bill</a>, which had rather comprehensive provisions with regard to ensuring accessibility. To start with, the right of persons with disabilities, on an equal basis with others to the physical environment, transportation, information and communications, including appropriate technologies and systems, and other facilities and services open or provided to the public, both in urban and in rural areas, was recognized. The RPD Bill recognizes the obligation of the government to provide accessibility measures, but by now wording it in terms of a right, it does not do complete justice. The 2011 and 2012 drafts were replete with separate sections on the right to transport, personal mobility, communications, services, the built environment, etc. On the other hand, the RPD Bill clumsily lops all of these into a few sections, with repeated emphasis on infrastructure and services run by "establishments", which is, in effect, the government. There is no mention of website accessibility, though a cursory mention is made to the appropriate government ensuring that all contents available in audio, print and electronic media are in accessible format; and that persons with disabilities have access to electronic media by providing audio description, sign language interpretation and close captioning. Again, the ambiguity as to whether this extends to websites which are not run by the government, is not clear. <br /><br />There is another aspect to accessibility which is lost under the Act by its failure to recognize it as a right. A senior person in the sector, who is blind, told me of an instance where he was barred from entering a bar with some friends. "You won't be able to tell what the bill is or how many drinks you've had", said the manager. He was therefore, being discriminated against entering a place, solely on the grounds of his disability. Persons who have been cured of leprosy are denied access to transport and other public facilities on the basis of outdated statutes. Persons who use crutches and calllipers are denied entry to religious places. The understanding of the Bill on accessibility is extremely limited, and limited to the built environment of government establishments, and this does nothing to extend the rights of persons with disabilities. Groups which are forwarding non negotiables for amendments to the Bill do not consider, at present, the right to accessibility to be a non negotiable. I do wonder, however, whether any of the other rights make sense when express and implied bars to access exist and are effectively encouraged, under this proposed law.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/rights-of-persons-with-disabilities-bill-2013-and-lack-of-access-to-accessibility-rights'>http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/rights-of-persons-with-disabilities-bill-2013-and-lack-of-access-to-accessibility-rights</a>
</p>
No publishersalelkarFeaturedAccessibility2014-02-03T02:21:45ZBlog Entry