The Centre for Internet and Society
http://editors.cis-india.org
These are the search results for the query, showing results 2581 to 2595.
Why your Facebook Stalker is Not the Real Problem
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/facebook-stalker-is-not-real-problem
<b>We live in networked conditions. This is a statement that can now be taken at face-value, and immediately explains our highly connected, inter-meshed environments finds Nishant Shah in this article published in FirstPost on March 20, 2012.</b>
<p>Especially within the digital world, the World Wide Web has become synonymous with social networking systems, where increasingly all our access, communication and interaction is located within a series of interconnected networks.</p>
<p>From the imagination of the web as a complex network, we have evolved to looking at the web as facilitating networks where different relationships, transactions and connections can be mapped and managed. This is why we often have romantic imaginations of networks as free, open, collaborative, shared spaces of interaction and expression.</p>
<p>However, we have reached a stage where this idea of a network as a liberatory space is under threat. Even as I write this, Internet Service Providers are now planning to set up sophisticated, automated systems that will do a deep-spy on your data transfer to see if you are sharing files (sometimes also called piracy) using the Internet.</p>
<p>These systems will now keep track of all your digital transactions and will monitor what you consume, who you talk to and determine whether you are a good ethical subject who is only using the Internet in ways that the powers to be want you to.<br /><br />For me, this particular networked condition of being constantly monitored and watched is scary. And it surprises me that this invasive process is less in public attention than Google’s recently changed privacy policies or the TOS-in-progress nature of privacy on Facebook.<br /><br />This is because the ubiquitous presences of networks in our lives have made them transparent to us – we do not think of the networks themselves as entities but as spaces where interactions with other objects is possible. Hence, if I ask you, right now, to name the top 5 entities that you interact with the most on Facebook, I am sure you will be able to name them. More probably than not, these top 5 entities with people that you have formed strong Facebook Friendships with.<br /><br />In fact there are platforms designed to let you know who you are talking with most on your networks. Network influence measurement indices by services like Klout are able to tell you not only who you talk to but also what are your key areas of influence. This is a way by which the network becomes invisible to us. It hides the fact that the thing that talks to you the most on Facebook is Facebook itself.<br /><br />The marketing of Facebook might tell you that you are talking to other human beings, but reality is that the network is more than the sum total of all human beings on the system. Just look at the amount of information Facebook produces on your behalf and to you. Notifications for adding friends, for liking people, for people writing to you, for people commenting on your walls and posts, form more than 50% of the information traffic on Facebook or social networking systems.<br /><br />This information is produces and shared by scripts, coded bots, algorithmic applications, and non-human entities that not only support and sustain the network but are also significant members of the networks.<br /><br />This is the actual networked condition – where the processes and entities that make the networks possible, produce an illusion of seamless communication and interaction, while performing and extraordinary amount of information and for you.</p>
<p>This blindness to our own ‘networkedness’ has crucial ramifications for our online activities because it makes us oblivious to questions of privacy, control, safety and trust. We have privacy settings to protect us from human entities on Facebook. There is very little concern about the non-human entities who store, distribute and use the data that we produce. If we don’t even know what these watchers are, how do we protect ourselves from being watched? What happens when between you and your ‘friend’, is a series of silent interceptors who are recording and using your data without your knowledge?<br /><br />Being in a network is like being in a glass-house. We cannot see the walls and hence, we presume that we need our privacy from the other inhabitants of the same house. However, in that, we forget that the walls are watching, and that there are invisible watchers beyond the walls, who are in control.<br /><br />It is time to make our networks visible again. It is time to realise that what we really need to be afraid of, on social networking systems, is the social network itself, and not the mythical stranger who wants to stalk us or that unwanted friend you want to exclude from your information sharing.<br /><br />Privacy and safety are not merely compromised at the interface, where information might leak and travel into zones outside of your knowledge and control. The real questions of being safe are actually in the protocols and designs of the network itself.<br /><br />We need to start looking at larger invasive policies exercises by the different invisible actors like the ISP, ICT ministries, corporate policies, design choices and architecture of interception that sustain the networks we so gladly embrace.</p>
<p><em>Nishant Shah is Director-Research at the Bangalore based Centre for Internet and Society and recently edited a 4 volume book on youth, technology and change, titled ‘Digital AlterNatives with a Cause?’</em></p>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://www.firstpost.com/tech/why-your-facebook-stalker-is-not-the-real-problem-249872.html">Read this in FirstPost</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/facebook-stalker-is-not-real-problem'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/facebook-stalker-is-not-real-problem</a>
</p>
No publishernishantInternet GovernancePrivacy2012-03-21T05:02:16ZBlog EntryClick, Play, Watch
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/click-play-watch
<b>Filmmakers are casting the net for viewers and opting for online releases to reach out to a wider audience, finds Rinky Kumar in this article published in MidDay on March 18, 2012. Sunil Abraham is quoted in this.</b>
<p>Till some time ago, the movie-going experience was a means for people to spend quality time with their loved ones. An evening planned in detail (right from booking the tickets to buying snacks), followed by dinner was de rigueur. Today, however, that has been replaced by an evening indoors where you can watch a commercial film or a critically-acclaimed documentary within the confines of your home, thanks to online releases.</p>
<h3>A growing phenomenon</h3>
<p>Take the case of Marathi movie Jana Gana Mana, which released online as well as in theatres on January 26. It wasn't the only one. Oscar-nominated filmmaker Ashvin Kumar released his documentary Inshallah, Kashmir: Living Terror free of charge on YouTube on the same day. The very next month, debutant director Adeeb Rais released his film Kuch Spice To Make It Meetha, starring Purab Kohli, online on February 29.</p>
<p align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/janagana.jpg/image_preview" title="Janaganamana" height="154" width="209" alt="Janaganamana" class="image-inline image-inline" /></p>
<p align="center"><em>Jana Gana Mana was the first commercial Marathi film to see an online release</em></p>
<p>Director Amit Abhyankar's Jana Gana Mana, which revolved around a teacher's relationship with the kids of the Faasi Pardi tribe in rural Maharashtra, garnered as many as 2,000 views within four days of its online release. He says, "We tied up with geodesi.com, which owns filmorbit.com, and ensured that viewers could log on to the site, select Jana Gana Mana and watch the film. While Indian viewers were charged Rs 30, people abroad had to pay $2.99. Surprisingly, only 30 per cent of the audience comprised Indians, the remaining 70 per cent were expatriates from far-flung countries like Tanzania and Israel." </p>
<p align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/still.jpg/image_preview" title="still" height="241" width="334" alt="still" class="image-inline image-inline" /></p>
<p align="center"><em>A still from Inshallah, Kashmir: Living Terror, which was released online by director Ashvin Kumar to bypass censorship that his previous two films faced</em></p>
<p align="left">In fact, Abhyankar has been flooded with requests to screen his movie abroad. He claims that apart from the Maharashtra Mandal of Los Angeles, which approached him to screen the film, 28 shows of the movie have been lined up in various parts of the world till May 5. </p>
<p align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/KuchSpiceToMakeItMeeth.jpg/image_preview" title="Kuch-spice" height="278" width="364" alt="Kuch-spice" class="image-inline image-inline" /></p>
<p align="center"><em>Kuch Spice To Make It Meetha recently received the YouTube Bronze Award for Most Trending Video</em></p>
<p align="left">Likewise, Kumar's documentary, which sees Kashmiris open up about the brutality they suffer at the hands of militants and the Indian state alike, was supposed to become pay-per-view after the first 24 hours. "But when I saw the overwhelming response (over 50,000 views in three days), we kept it free for over a week. These figures are quite impressive since it's an 80-minute film and it's a known fact that India doesn't boast speedy Internet connections. But the fact that people had the patience to watch the film is heartwarming. Also, we didn't promote the film at all, I only posted about it on Facebook," enthuses Kumar. </p>
<p align="left">Rais's film got as many as 1 million hits within three days of its release. Recently it also received the YouTube Bronze Award for the Most Trending Video. This medal is given to videos that have gained huge attention over a certain span of time and are currently seeing exceptional growth in viewership.</p>
<h3>A new medium</h3>
<p align="left">Why are filmmakers choosing the online medium to release their movies? Some say it gives them an opportunity to showcase their work to the audience without shelling out a lot of money, while for others it is a way of making a statement. After his two earlier films, Inshallah Football and Dazed in Doon were banned, Kumar chose the Internet to screen Inshallah Kashmir to bypass the censor authorities, take a stand against them as well as give viewers the real picture of what is happening in the strife-torn valley. "There were several reasons why I uploaded the film online. Firstly, I wanted to make a statement that pre-censorship of any art form is unnecessary in this age of the Internet when everything can be accessed easily online. Secondly, viewers didn't have to pay for watching it, and that way more people saw what was actually happening in Kashmir," he explains.</p>
<p align="left">For Abhyankar, the primary motive was to reach out to a larger audience. "It's well-known that distribution of Marathi films isn't great. I was very clear that my movie should reach out to more people and shouldn't just be limited to a theatrical release." Twenty-something Rais realised that releasing Kuch Spice To Make It Meetha on the Internet was the only way for him to showcase his work as well as reach out to a large audience. "Since it is a 25-minute short film, I didn't have the option of releasing it commercially. Either I could release it online or screen it at film festivals. The movie is a quirky take on a young commitment-phobic man, so I didn't think it was a good fit for the festival circuit."</p>
<p align="left">According to Rais, he understood that it wasn't an easy task to make an impact in the online world, given the sea of videos that are uploaded every minute. So he decided to market his film well. He explains, "Because the movie was made on a limited budget, I had to seek sponsorship. I tied up with around 17 or 18 brands, including Tata Housing, Bharat Matrimony.com, Miss Malini.com and Upper Crust to market the film through online contests." </p>
<h3>Sociological change</h3>
<p align="left">What has led to this phenomenon? Sunil Abraham, Executive director of Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru, explains, "The times are changing. Earlier, creative artistes depended on intermediaries like studios, TV channels and theatres to screen their work and connect with viewers. Now, they are looking at the online medium to connect with the audience directly."</p>
<p align="left">Kumar couldn't agree more. He opines that he had uploaded Inshallah Kashmir with an open mind and accepted the bouquets and brickbats with equal aplomb. "The Internet is a fairly democratic medium. Your audience shares views, opinions and abuses. While some loved the movie, others called me an Islamic fundamentalist. But I didn't mind as it was their honest opinion."</p>
<p align="left">According to Abhyankar, the online medium is a boon for filmmakers as it is the only way for them to earn a considerable profit individually without sharing it with other entities. "When your movie is screened at theatres, apart from paying the satellite agencies for beaming the film, you have to incur expenses for screen prints and advertising. Later, you have to recover your money from exhibitors, which can be a long-winded process. In case of an online medium, the money is transferred directly to your account. Apart from converting the film into a format that can be viewed by everyone, you don't have to invest too much money."</p>
<p align="left">Filmmakers also love that there is no pre-screening process involved online. "Only after the movie is uploaded and a user comments against objectionable or defamatory content, can it be removed from the website," informs Abraham.</p>
<h3>Looking ahead</h3>
<p align="left">With the expanding reach of the Internet, filmmakers believe this trend will only grow. On their part, they are looking to explore it further. Enthused by the response to Jana Gana Mana, Abhyankar is now planning to make it available offline too. He shares, "Right now we are in talks with a company that has a unique technology whereby you don't have to visit the site and stream the movie. The technology enables viewers to get offline copies of the movie, which you can copy onto your pen drive. Once you connect your pen drive to the computer, the software will automatically connect you to the site and you have to just make the payment. In a few months time, we are also looking at releasing ad-supported versions of the film wherein viewers don't have to pay to watch the movie but will have to see it along with all the ads." As Rais, who is working on another project, Beyond Hatke, which will have an online release in October this year, says on a parting note, "Today people no longer have to go to theatres to watch a film, they can see movies on their laptops, mobile phones, while doing household chores and travelling to work. The Internet is definitely a boon for everyone." </p>
<p align="left"><strong>The history of online releases</strong></p>
<ul><li>Rajshri Films released its Shahid Kapoor-Amrita Rao-starrer Vivah simultaneously in cinema halls and on the production company's official site -- Rajshri.com in 2006. The site served one million streams within seven days of its release. Each stream was priced at $9.99 approximately and the company managed to earn Rs.4.5 crore in the first week itself.</li><li>Siddharth-starrer Striker had a theatrical release in India and premiered exclusively for its foreign audiences through YouTube in 2010. While the movie was available for rent on YouTube in the US, in other foreign countries, people could view it for free on Studio18's YouTube channel.</li><li>After selling the film's soundtrack exclusively through the digital medium, the makers of F.A.L.T.U, released their movie simultaneously in Indian theatres and on the online medium for foreign audiences in 2011. Viewers had to pay a booking fee of $2.89 in order to watch the stream on<a class="external-link" href="http://www.zeetv.com/faltu"> www.zeetv.com/faltu</a>.</li></ul>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://www.mid-day.com/lifestyle/2012/mar/180312-Click-Play-Watch.htm">Read the original published in MidDay</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/click-play-watch'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/click-play-watch</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaInternet Governance2012-03-20T12:52:44ZNews ItemSave Your Voice — A movement against Web censorship
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/save-your-voice-2014-a-movement-against-web-censorship
<b>‘Save Your Voice (SYV)’ is a movement against Web censorship and its main demand is the repealing of the Information Technology Act, said SYV founders, Aseem Trividi, a cartoonist, and Alok Dixit, a journalist, on Monday. </b>
<p>DNA Correspondent covered a press conference held on March 12, 2012 in Bangalore. Sunil Abraham was quoted in the story.</p>
<p>Trivedi’s website — www.cartoonistagainstcorruption.com — was banned during Anna Hazare’s movement. Trivedi said: “Mumbai police banned the website without any prior notice and cases of ‘treason’ were also filed. The website was banned without a judicial order and I haven’t received an explanation about the crime committed.”</p>
<p>Sunil Abraham, executive director, Centre for Internet and Society, said the private sector does not protect the freedom of expression.</p>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://www.dnaindia.com/bangalore/report_save-your-voice-a-movement-against-web-censorship_1661820">Read the original published by Daily News & Analysis on March 13, 2012</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/save-your-voice-2014-a-movement-against-web-censorship'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/save-your-voice-2014-a-movement-against-web-censorship</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-03-13T11:44:27ZNews ItemIndia’s Big Bet on Identity
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/big-bet-on-identity
<b>The world’s largest biometric authentication system reaches its first major milestone, but lots of challenges remain, writes Joshua J. Romero in ieeespectrum. Sunil Abraham was quoted in this story which was featured in March 2012 edition.</b>
<p><strong>Driving around Bangalore</strong>, it’s immediately clear that the infrastructure hasn’t kept up with the IT boom in this once-sleepy South Indian city. Auto rickshaws, scooters, and motorcycles squeeze into a tight phalanx at each red light and choke the air with exhaust. Construction, such as the concrete supports of the new metro rail line that looms overhead, causes detours everywhere, and in spots the entire road abruptly disintegrates into gravel.</p>
<p>But something miraculous happens as you make your way south, past the outer ring road. A ramp lifts a select few vehicles out of the weaving traffic and onto an elevated tollway, where you suddenly have a bird’s-eye view of the urban landscape. This is the road to Electronic City, an oasis of glass and steel high-rises overlooking pristine black asphalt paths that snake through the perfectly manicured lawns of tech companies like Wipro, IBM, and Infosys Technologies.</p>
<p>“If you can have such good roads in the Infosys campus, why are the roads outside so terrible?” That’s the common question foreign visitors would ask Nandan Nilekani, one of the company’s cofounders. “Politics” was his usual reply, according to Nilekani’s 2008 book, Imagining India. Now the man who has been called the Bill Gates of India has jumped into politics to try to use what he learned at the IT giant to transform the dysfunctional country that lies beyond the borders of Electronic City.</p>
<p>Since July 2009, Nilekani has been a cabinet minister, leading hundreds of engineers and entrepreneurs as chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). By the most conservative estimates, <a class="external-link" href="http://ibnlive.in.com/news/its-official-37-live-below-poverty-line/113522-3.html">at least a third of the country’s 1.2 billion citizens live below the poverty line</a> and outside the formal economy. The UIDAI is expected to connect those hundreds of millions of people to government programs, save public money, reduce fraud and corruption, and foster new business opportunities—all by creating an unprecedented biometric system and outside the formal economy. The UIDAI is expected to connect those hundreds of millions of people to government programs, save public money, reduce fraud and corruption, and foster new business opportunities—all by creating an unprecedented biometric system.</p>
<p>“On the one hand, within India and across the world, people of Indian descent have done some remarkable work,” says Nilekani. “And on the other hand, here is a country that needs to solve some very basic problems. This project marries these two worlds.” UIDAI plans to use fingerprints and iris scans to assign every person in the country a unique <a class="external-link" href="http://uidai.gov.in/what-is-aadhaar-number.html">12-digit ID number</a> that can be verified online. It’s one of the biggest IT projects in the world, and getting bigger: By early February, <a class="external-link" href="https://portal.uidai.gov.in/uidwebportal/dashboard.do">the UIDAI had issued 130 million ID numbers</a>, and it can issue up to a million more IDs every day. The agency has set up 36 000 enrollment stations staffed by 87 000 certified enrollment operators. In India the project is called Aadhaar, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.deccanherald.com/content/212980/how-does-govt-justify-aadhaar.html">which means “foundation” or “support</a>,” because it’s meant to be a fundamental technology platform that will enable dozens of new public and private services to be created.</p>
<p>That’s if it all works. It’s easy to list major challenges: How exactly do you collect biometrics from every single person in the world’s second most populous country, especially those living at the margins? How do you keep bad data from getting into the database in a country rife with corruption? And how can you build the entire system around online authentication in a country where<a class="external-link" href="http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=it_net_user_p2&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:IND&ifdim=region&tstart=-310503600000&tend=1298955600000"> fewer than one in 20 people have access to the Internet</a>?</p>
<p>The answers to these questions are getting more than the usual amount of scrutiny, because a lot of political fortunes are riding on the UIDAI.<br /><br />The program has been heavily supported by the ruling Indian National Congress party; Nilekani was appointed by the prime minister himself, Manmohan Singh. But Singh and his Congress party have had a difficult time enacting many of their biggest policy goals, and the UIDAI has increasingly become the target of criticism.<br /><br />Earlier this year, the whole scheme seemed in imminent danger of collapse, when a parliamentary committee killed the bill that would have given the program statutory authority, and a political turf war erupted between the UIDAI and the National Population Register, another government project collecting biometrics for the national census. But by late January the two sides <a class="external-link" href="http://www.livemint.com/2011/10/24002230/Govt-approves-Rs-8800-crore-f.html">had reached an agreement</a> to share biometric data collection, and Aadhaar is once again moving full steam ahead with a new mandate and <a class="external-link" href="http://uidai.gov.in/images/FrontPageUpdates/budget_estimates_2011_12.pdf">an estimated budget this year of 15 billion rupees [PDF]</a> (about US $300 million).</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/joshua.jpg/image_preview" alt="joshua" class="image-inline image-inline" title="joshua" /></p>
<div align="center" class="artBdyImgBy"> Photo: Joshua J. Romero</div>
<strong>EXISTING DOCUMENTS: </strong>A poster lists the variety of IDs a person can use to register for an Aadhaar number.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<div align="center" class="artBdyImgCptn">
<div align="left"><strong>To understand why the government</strong> has invested so heavily, it helps to know the current state of affairs in India. Aadhaar is meant to provide a form of identification that’s free, national, impossible to counterfeit—and available to everyone. “There’s an ID divide,” Nilekani explains, between people who have multiple official IDs and the hundreds of millions who have none. Only about 60 million people in India have passports, he says, and only about 100 million have photo ID bank cards. The most prevalent document is a voter ID card, which has been issued to about 700 million people, covering just over half of the country. But these and the rest of the official IDs created by the country’s vast bureaucracy all have shortcomings.<br /><br />The primary reason for creating a biometric ID system is to give India’s poorest citizens better access to an array of welfare programs. India spends about 2 percent of its gross domestic product on social programs like the Public Distribution System, which provides subsidized rice, wheat, and other staples, and a rural employment scheme that guarantees 100 days of work. But all such programs suffer from severe “leakage”: According to the World Bank, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.worldbank.org.in/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/SOUTHASIAEXT/INDIAEXTN/0,,contentMDK:22915689~pagePK:141137~piPK:141127~theSitePK:295584,00.html">corrupt officials and middlemen siphon away 59 percent of the money</a> before it reaches the intended recipients. Eventually, the government hopes to provide funds directly to each person who needs them.<br /><br />Most states issue ration cards, but they usually aren’t valid in other states. An official ID that can be used throughout the country is increasingly important as more and more people move away from their hometowns to follow employment, Nilekani says.<br /><br />Complicating the problem further, existing ID cards are easy to duplicate. Some states have more names on their food ration lists than there are people living in the state. To fight counterfeiting, the Aadhaar team decided to use biometrics instead of issuing just another ID card. From the beginning, they consulted biometric experts, used existing standards when they could, and studied similar systems like the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology program, run by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.<br /><br />One thing the team realized early on is that a single biometric measurement wasn’t enough to guarantee uniqueness. In proof-of-concept studies, researchers determined that only by using all 10 fingerprints and a scan of both irises could error rates be kept manageable. Adding iris scans also makes the program more inclusive for people whose fingerprints have been worn down by manual labor.<br />
<div align="center">
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<div align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/necessarygear.jpg/image_preview" alt="necessarygear" class="image-inline image-inline" title="necessarygear" /></div>
<br />
<div align="center">Photos, clockwise from left: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times/Redux; Joshua J. Romero (2)<br />NECESSARY
GEAR: Each enrollment station has the same basic set of equipment,
including an iris scanner [top], a fingerprint scanner [bottom right], a
webcam and light [bottom left], a laptop, a second monitor for the
resident to view, and a scanner and printer to handle documents.</div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<br />
<div align="left"><strong>Getting an Aadhaar number</strong> is not a quick process. One Friday after midnight, I watch dozens of families wait patiently in a municipal building where only half the lights are on and there’s always a baby crying. While Anurodh Kanchan waits, he explains that he came at this hour because he’d heard the lines were even longer during the day. He’d already been once before to schedule this appointment. Now his 7-year-old daughter dozes on his wife’s shoulder as the whole family waits another half an hour for the enrollment agent to return from a break.<br /><br />Hiring and training people to work as agents has been one of the project’s biggest logistical challenges. The UIDAI outsources enrollment to “registrars”—often state governments or banks—which in turn hire accredited agencies to actually set up and staff the centers. The agencies get paid a flat rate for each successful enrollment, as do the agents they hire. A coordinator for one of the largest agencies told me that his organization had significantly overestimated how many enrollments an agent could complete in a day. UIDAI says that an average station (see photos, “Necessary Gear”) can process each enrollment in under 10 minutes, but in the days I spent observing, it wasn’t uncommon for the process to take twice as long. And if you’re an agent looking at a line of people stretching out the door, it’s easy to see how you might begin to rush through your tasks.<br /><br />That’s why enforcing quality is left to a piece of software known as the enrollment client, installed on each agent’s laptop. The program manages every step of the process and was developed jointly by engineers at UIDAI and MindTree, an Indian IT company. Because enrollment often takes place in remote locations with no Internet access, the client must be fully independent and be able to run off a single laptop. The developers also had to make sure that the enrollment client could work seamlessly with any of the 11 biometric devices from various manufacturers that had been certified for use. And the initial version had to be built fast: MindTree won the contract at the end of April 2010, and the UIDAI wanted to enroll the first resident by that August.<br /><br />MindTree met the deadline, and the client it designed now manages to prevent and correct most errors an enrollment agent might make. In addition to a simple quality check, the software looks for self-consistency—for instance, verifying that each fingerprint isn’t coming from the operator or another recently enrolled resident and that all 10 fingerprints and two irises are distinct from each other. If something goes wrong in a biometric capture, the software tells the operator how to correct it—for instance, it can distinguish between a facial photo that’s too dark and one in which the person was photographed at the wrong angle.<br /><br />Still, over the last 21 months, the software engineers have had to continually improve the program to address new challenges encountered in the field. For example, when the UIDAI began enrolling people in the Punjab region of North India, where many men wear long beards and large turbans, enrollment agents had a hard time taking a photo that the software considered acceptable: The turban would be interpreted as an unacceptable background, or the automatic cropping feature would crop around the turban instead of the face. The software team was able to quickly tweak the parameters and release a new version of the client so that enrollment could continue.<br /><br />It isn’t just the biometric collection that’s tricky. A resident must also supply basic demographic data—name, age, gender, and address. Residents can fill out paper forms in any of the 16 official Indian languages, which agents must first transfer to the computer and then translate into an English version of the form. This is by far the most time-consuming part of the process, and MindTree has tried to speed it up by building transliteration into the client software. But Indic languages have many variations—some are written right to left, and many use unique character sets. Still, the agent is expected to check the results and clean up minor mistakes.<br /><br />There are obviously both privacy and security concerns when you’re collecting personal data from more than a billion people. “You can’t change your biometrics,” points out Sunil Abraham, the <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/about/people/staff/cis-staff" class="external-link">executive director at the Center for Internet and Society</a>, in Bangalore, so if they become compromised, it’s a difficult problem to fix.<br /><br />Among the precautions the UIDAI takes is to encrypt all data as soon as they’re collected. The data can be decrypted only by UIDAI servers, so the records aren’t even accessible to the operator or enrollment agency that collected them. At the end of each day, all the encrypted enrollment data are stored on USB flash drives, and the drives are transported to a place with Internet access so the data can be uploaded to UIDAI’s servers. It’s in the best interests of the enrollment agencies to safeguard the data, because otherwise they won’t get paid.<br /><br /><strong>From the enrollment centers </strong>the action moves to the racks of servers at the UIDAI Central Information Data Repository, which is also in Bangalore. Here is where deduplication—checking each new enrollment against every other record in the database—will arguably make this identity scheme rise above the rest. Ensuring that no person can get two numbers is key to making biometrics a worthwhile investment. A few years ago, one Indian state collected biometrics for everyone below the poverty line, but it didn’t have the technology or a plan to prevent duplicates. It ended up capturing 1.2 times the population, which resulted in a significant leakage of benefits.<br /><br />Many critics, including members of Parliament, have doubted that it’s even possible to deduplicate records from the entire Indian populace. It’s certainly a big task. In order to issue 1 million Aadhaar numbers in a single day, the current maximum rate, the data center must conduct 100 trillion person matches. To improve this process, the UIDAI came up with an unusual arrangement. Rather than hiring a single firm for the job, it awarded the project to three contractors, each responsible for processing a portion of the enrollments, with the overlapping records used to compare performance between the systems. This arrangement lets the UIDAI know if a system isn’t working correctly and also gives the companies a financial incentive to improve their software—they’ll get to process more records, and get paid more, if their products perform better. The vendors were even required to use the same kind of hardware to build their systems, so the agency isn’t tied to any one company.<br /><br />In late January, the UIDAI released <a class="external-link" href="http://uidai.gov.in/images/FrontPageUpdates/role_of_biometric_technology_in_aadhaar_jan21_2012.pdf">a report [PDF]</a> that for the first time detailed the results of this deduplication effort. There are two primary factors that determine the accuracy of a biometric system: the false-positive rate, which in this case is how often a newly registered person is incorrectly judged to be already enrolled, and the false-negative rate, which is how often true duplicates are not recognized as such. To measure the false-positive rate, the UIDAI tested 4 million unique records against a subset of the enrollment database containing 84 million records: Of the unique records, 2309 were falsely rejected, for a false-positive rate of 0.057 percent. The agency also tested 31 399 known duplicates. The system caught all but 11, for a false-negative rate of 0.035 percent.<br /><br />The false-positive rate applies to the total number of records in the database. As that number grows, the rate should increase in a linear fashion, because there are more opportunities for false matches. The false-negative rate, on the other hand, applies only to the small minority of enrollments that really are true duplicates (the UIDAI estimates that these make up only 0.5 percent of all incoming enrollments). Because the false-negative rate doesn’t depend on the total number of records, it should remain steady unless more people try to enroll multiple times.<br /><br />R.S. Sharma, the director general of UIDAI, says that preventing all duplicates with technology alone is impossible. There are some people who just can’t be uniquely identified through biometrics, because the data for them aren’t good enough—children under age 5, for instance, and people with multiple disabilities. That’s why the responsibility for accuracy and uniqueness isn’t all left up to the software. Several full-time employees manually review the roughly 0.2 percent of cases that the software can’t handle, resolving errors and looking for evidence of fraud.<br /><br />Even if the system isn’t perfect, it’s likely to be much better than any existing alternative, simply because it will eliminate “ghost identities,” says M.R. Madhavan, who works at the Centre for Policy Research, in New Delhi. “At least people who died in 1995 or 2005 will not get into the system,” he says.<br /><br />
<div align="center">
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<div align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/authentication.jpg/image_preview" alt="authentication" class="image-inline image-inline" title="authentication" /></div>
<br />
<div align="center" class="artBdyImgBy"> Photo: Joshua J. Romero</div>
<div align="center" class="artBdyImgCptn"> <strong>AUTHENTICATION TERMINAL: </strong>Widespread use of Aadhaar will rely on biometric terminals, like this prototype at MindTree.</div>
<br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<div align="left"><strong>Now that the UIDAI </strong>has shown it can collect biometric and demographic data and eliminate duplicate enrollments, much of the attention will shift to the authentication system, where people can prove their identity with just the swipe of a finger. Such systems are still under development, so most residents I met weren’t clear about the benefits of the program. When I asked people why they were enrolling, they often had vague reasons: “It might make it easier to get my benefits,” said one middle-aged woman in Bangalore. “I heard you’ll need it to buy heating gas,” said another woman. “I think it’s mandatory,” an elderly man told me. Nilekani thinks that getting authentication services up and running will be the best way to demonstrate the power of the entire project.<br /><br />Here’s how such a futuristic system might work: Walking up to a wirelessly connected terminal at a local shop, a person will type in his name and Aadhaar number, and then he’ll scan his fingerprints. The data will be sent to a central database, where the Aadhaar number will be used to locate his record. The submitted name and biometric data will be compared to those on file, and the software will determine whether they match.<br /><br />The UIDAI imagines that such biometric terminals will eventually be ubiquitous. The first devices deployed will likely be micro-ATMs in rural shops. These machines process transactions electronically, just like a full-size ATM, except they don’t store and dispense cash—that gets handled from the shopkeeper’s till. The hope is that such systems will deliver financial services to the 40 percent of the Indian population who have never had bank accounts. When people enroll for Aadhaar, they simply need to check a box and an Aadhaar-enabled bank account will be created for them.<br /><br />In January, the UIDAI began a pilot project in the state of Jharkhand, where workers in the rural employment program could collect cash payments by scanning their fingerprints at a micro-ATM. Another pilot program in Maharashtra transferred small amounts of money to individual Aadhaar numbers, showing that bank servers could be easily linked with the UIDAI system.<br /><br />The authentication system is already available as an application programming interface (API), which means it won’t be limited to just government programs and banks. Private service providers could use it to verify new customers as well. Take India’s vaunted mobile-phone culture: Phone companies are currently required to collect and retain significant documentation for every person they sell a SIM card to, as I found out in the two days I spent collecting the photos and local references I needed to get one myself. “If you look at any service provider, they’re not going to offer the mobile-phone service unless they verify who you are,” says Bala Parthasarathy, an entrepreneur who worked in Silicon Valley but came back to India to volunteer on the project for a year. Parthasarathy says that using Aadhaar for identity verification could provide the telephone companies with major savings.<br /><br />Still, setting up a nationwide network of biometric terminals has plenty of its own challenges. First, India will need better connectivity. Wireless voice networks now cover most of the country, but wireless data networks have trailed behind. Current penetration of 3G is mostly just in the cities, says Debabrata Das, an IEEE member and a professor of electrical engineering at the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore, who has been studying the network challenges of authentication as a technical advisor for the state of Karnataka.<br /><br />The API will also need to be flexible enough to handle variations in the demographic data that are submitted. The system can’t enforce strict matches: Many Indians use initials in their names, and there is no guarantee that they will always spell their names the same way in English. Further, sometimes a married woman will use her father’s family name instead of her husband’s. Because of the ambiguity in names and addresses, the database must be able to perform partial and fuzzy matches. Eventually, Sharma says, the UIDAI hopes to be able to do database matching for all the Indian languages as well, so the API will continue to undergo revisions.<br /><br />Now the UIDAI must wait for its partners to begin taking advantage of the system, and Nilekani admits that starting up such services is largely beyond his control. Cooperation with other agencies and industries is all part of Nilekani’s approach to how government initiatives should work. “The big thing to my mind has been, How do you create a model of change, and how do you carry a lot of people with it? How do you think this through in a way that everyone comes on board?” he says. In building the project to this point, he’s managed to bring, if not everyone, then certainly a pretty diverse crowd: technical experts; national, state, and local officials; banks and businesses; and all those millions who willingly wait in line for hours.<br /><br />“Everyone puts their own aspirations on it…like Obama,” he jokes. But the downside of being so inclusive is that as the project matures, it may be difficult to keep all the interested parties happy, and there’s bound to be disappointment if the project fails to achieve all its lofty ambitions.<br /><br />The project has made it this far by adapting quickly as problems arise. “Think of it as multigeneration, continuous improvement,” Nilekani says. “You launch and get feedback and you get criticism. You need to build a rapid feedback loop, which is what we’ve built.”<br /><br /><a class="external-link" href="http://m.spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/indias-big-bet-on-identity/0">Read the original here</a></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/big-bet-on-identity'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/big-bet-on-identity</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaInternet GovernancePrivacy2012-03-07T05:44:12ZNews ItemInternational Conference on Mobile Law
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/intl-conferernce-on-mobile-law
<b>Pranesh Prakash spoke in the panel on Mobiles - Privacy and Social Media on March 1, 2012.</b>
<h2>Draft Agenda</h2>
<h3>March 1, 2012<br /></h3>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td> 9:00am to 9:30am</td>
<td> Registration</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>9:30am to 10:45am <br /></td>
<td>Inauguration Session</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>10:45am to 11:15am <br /></td>
<td> Icml Tea</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>11:15am to 11:45am</td>
<td> Session I: Mobile law- An introduction</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>11:45am to 1:15pm</td>
<td>Session II: Mobile Revolution, Mcommerce and Crimes</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>1:15pm to 2:00pm</td>
<td> Icml Lunch</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2:00pm to 3:15pm</td>
<td>Session III: Mobiles - Privacy & Social Media</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>3:15pm to 3:30pm </td>
<td> Icml Tea </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>3:30pm to 4:45pm</td>
<td>Session IV: Mobiles & Security</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>4:45pm to 6:00pm</td>
<td>Session V: Safe Harbour Protection for Mobiles Service Providers In India</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3>March 2, 2012</h3>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>9:30am to 11:00am</td>
<td>Session VI-Mobile Banking & Payments</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>11:00am to 11:30am <br /></td>
<td>Icml Tea</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>11:30 am to 12:15pm</td>
<td>Session VII: Mobile Law Challenges in India</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>12:15pm to 1:30pm</td>
<td> Icml Lunch</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>1:30pm to 2:15pm</td>
<td> Session VIII: Mobile Governance </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2:15pm to 3:30pm</td>
<td>Icml Tea </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>3:30pm to 3:45pm</td>
<td>Session IX: Internet Governance In The Mobile Ecosystem</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>3:45pm to 5:00pm</td>
<td> Session X : 2G Spectrum Allocation: Post Supreme Court Judgment- Challenges & Opportunities</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>5:00pm</td>
<td> Valedictory Function</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<a class="external-link" href="http://mobilelawconf.wordpress.com/program/">Read the original here</a>
<p>Venue: ASSOCHAM House, 47, Prithvi Raj Road, New Delhi, India</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/intl-conferernce-on-mobile-law'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/intl-conferernce-on-mobile-law</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaInternet Governance2012-04-03T08:24:37ZNews ItemSecure IT 2012 — Securing Citizens through Technology
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/secure-it-2012
<b>The event is co-organised by DST and NSDI, Govt. of India in partnership with Elets Technomedia Pvt. Ltd. on March 1, 2012 at Claridges in New Delhi.</b>
<h2>Draft Agenda</h2>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>9.00 am – 9.30 am</td>
<td>Registration & Tea</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>9.30 am – 11.00 am</td>
<td>Inaugural Session</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3>Securing Citizens through Technology</h3>
<p>The SecureIT 2012 Inaugural Session would present an overview of the security scenario in the country, and place the use of ICT towards ensuring national security centrestage. The inaugural would also highlight the use that ICT is being put for in effective disaster management, minimising material as well as human loss.</p>
<p>The session would aim at identifying a policy roadmap towards making effective use of ICT for the purposes of national security, well-being of citizens and businesses in times of disaster and an uncertain external environment and identify the major policy objectives for the sector as a whole.</p>
<p>Introductory Remarks: Dr Ravi Gupta, CEO Elets Technomedia and Editor-in-Chief, egov<br />Welcome Address: Dr M P Narayanan, President, Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies<br />Inaugural Address: Anil K Sinha, Vice Chairman, Bihar State Disaster Management Authority, Government of Bihar – Chief Guest, SecureIT 2012</p>
<p><strong>Panel Discussion</strong>:</p>
<ul><li>S Regunathan, Former Chief Secretary, Government of NCT of Delhi</li><li>R S Sharma, Director General, UIDAI</li><li>Shankar Aggarwal, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Defence, Government of India</li><li>Shambhu Singh, Joint Secretary (North East), Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India</li><li>Ajay Sawhney, CEO, National e-Governance Division, Government of India</li><li>Major General (Dr) R Siva Kumar, Head, (NRDMS), Government of India</li></ul>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>11. 00 am – 11.30 am</td>
<td>Networking Tea</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>11.30 am – 1.30 pm</td>
<td>Technical Session 1</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3>Information Security – Securing Networks, Communications, Data and Applications</h3>
<p>In the modern Information Age, knowledge is power like never before. A robust, secure communications network is not only desired, it is an absolute imperative in order to allow efficient functioning of the state. The communications networks have to be secured from state and non-state actors inimical to India. This session would highlight some major threats to the national communications infrastructure and the policies being adopted to counter these threats.</p>
<p>Chair: Ravi S Saxena, Additional Chief Secretary, DST, Government of Gujarat<br />Key Note Speaker: Dr Gulshan Rai, Director General, CERT-In</p>
<p><strong>Distinguished Panellists</strong>:</p>
<ul><li>S K Basu, Vice President, NIIT Technologies</li><li>Manas Sarkar, Head Pre-Sales (India & SAARC), Trend Micro</li><li>Ruchin Kumar, Principal Solution Architect, India and SAARC, Safenet India Pvt Ltd</li><li>Dr Kamlesh Bajaj, CEO, Data Security Council of India</li><li>Rajan Raj Pant, Controller, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of Nepal</li><li>Prof. Anjali Kaushik, Management Development Institute, Gurgaon</li></ul>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>1.30 pm – 2.30 pm</td>
<td>Lunch</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2.30 pm – 5.00 pm</td>
<td>Technical Session 2</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3><strong>ICT in National Security and Policing</strong></h3>
<p>India faces a multiplicity of security challenges from within and without. Conventional responses to these challenges are no longer adequate and technology is being increasingly deployed to make the nation safer and more secure for residents, visitors and businesses. The legal framework has also been modified to incorporate modern technological advances.</p>
<p>The MHA has embarked upon a major project – Crime and Criminal Tracking System (CCTNS) that is expected to bring about a major overhaul of the policing system of the country. In this session, CCTNS and state adaptations of ICT in policing would be discussed along with an overview of technological advances in the field of security.</p>
<p>Chair: S Suresh Kumar, Joint Secretary (Centre-State), Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India</p>
<p><strong>Distinguished Panellists:</strong></p>
<ul><li>NSN Murty, General Manager, Smarter Planet Solutions - India/ South Asia, IBM</li><li>Col Vishu Sikka, (Retd) General Manager – Defence, Aerospace & Public Security, SAP India & Subcontinent</li><li>Joachim Murat, Director of Sagem Morpho Security Pvt Ltd.</li><li>Hemant Sharma, Vice- Chair, BSA India Committee</li><li>Raj Prem Khilnani, DGP (Homeguard and Civil Defence), Maharashtra</li><li>Rajvir P Sharma, Additional Director General of Police, Bangalore Metropolitan Task Force</li><li>Loknath Behra, IGP, National Investigation Agency</li><li>Purushottam Sharma, IGP, State Crime Records Bureau, Madhya Pradesh</li><li>Ranjan Dwivedi, IGP, UP Police</li><li>Sanjay Sahay, IGP, Karnataka State Police</li></ul>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>5.00 pm – 5. 30 pm</td>
<td>Networking Tea</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>5.30 pm – 7.00 pm</td>
<td>Technical Session 3</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3>Managing Information for Safety and Security</h3>
<p>In the modern age, ICT is deployed in a variety of ways for enhancing citizen safety and security. ICT is being widely used for disaster management, urban planning, census operations etc.</p>
<p>In this session, discussions would highlight some path-breaking uses of ICT for enhancing citizen safety in a number of diverse settings.</p>
<p>Chair: N Ravishanker, Additional Secretary, Universal Service Obligation Fund, DIT, Govt of India</p>
<p><strong>Distinguished Panellists</strong>:</p>
<ul><li>Sandeep Sehgal, IBM, VP, Public Sector, India and South Asia</li><li>Sanjeev Mital, CEO, National Institute of Smart Governance (NISG), Government of India</li><li>Dr R C Sethi, Additional Registrar General of India</li><li>Maj Gen R C Padhi, Assistant Surveyor General, Survey of India</li><li>Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Center For Internet Society</li><li>V S Prakash, Director, Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre, Karnataka</li><li>Rajiv P Saxena, Deputy Director General, National Informatics Centre, Government of India</li><li>Jay Kay Gupta, Fire Chief, Delhi Development Authority</li></ul>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>7.00 pm onwards</td>
<td>Valedictory Session: Way Ahead High Tea</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>
VIDEO</p>
<iframe src="http://blip.tv/play/AYLx1jEA.html?p=1" frameborder="0" height="250" width="250"></iframe><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://a.blip.tv/api.swf#AYLx1jEA" style="display:none"></embed>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/secure-it-2012'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/secure-it-2012</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaVideoInternet GovernanceInformation TechnologyICT2012-04-28T04:06:47ZNews ItemPrivacy in India — An Early Draft
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/privacy-in-india-draft-chapters
<b>Privacy India in partnership with Privacy International, UK, Society in Action Group, Gurgaon, and the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore is pleased to bring you the draft chapters of its book on privacy in India. These include the Country Report, Telecommunication and Internet Privacy, E-Governance Identity and Privacy, Finance and Privacy, Health and Privacy, Transparency and Privacy.</b>
<p><b>Note: The chapters are an early draft which is in the process of being reviewed and updated. We greatly appreciate your comments and feedback. <br /></b></p>
<hr />
<p><b>Download the chapters below:<br /></b></p>
<hr />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/country-report.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Privacy in India — Country Report">Country Report</a> [PDF Document, 925 Kb]</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/transparency-and-privacy.pdf" class="external-link">Transparency and Privacy</a> [PDF Document, 383 Kb]</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/freedom-of-expression-and-privacy.pdf" class="internal-link">Freedom of Expression and Privacy</a> [PDF Document, 365 Kb]</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/health-privacy.pdf" class="external-link">Health and Privacy</a> [PDF Document, 1146 Kb]</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/finance-and-privacy.pdf" class="external-link">Finance and Privacy</a> [PDF document 204 Kb]<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/finance-and-privacy#fn1" name="fr1"></a></li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/e-governance-identity-privacy.pdf" class="internal-link">E-Governance, Identity and Privacy</a> [PDF Document, 554 Kb]</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/telecommunications-internet-privacy.pdf" class="external-link">Telecommunications and Internet Privacy</a> [PDF Document, 471 Kb]</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/consumer-privacy.pdf" class="internal-link">Consumer Privacy</a> [PDF, 390 Kb]</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/law-enforcement-national-security-privacy.pdf" class="internal-link">Law Enforcement, National Security, and Privacy</a> [PDF, 422 Kb]</li>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/privacy-in-india-draft-chapters'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/privacy-in-india-draft-chapters</a>
</p>
No publisherNatasha VazInternet GovernancePrivacy2014-02-28T05:05:21ZBlog EntryUnique ID System: Pros and Cons
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/unique-id-system-pros-and-cons
<b>On September 16, 2011, the Citizen’s Voluntary Initiative for the City and Centre for Advocacy and Research organized a public consultation titled “Unique ID System: Pros and Cons” in Bangalore. The consultation was on the utility and impact of the UID system in India and featured a panel discussion with T. Prabhakar, public relations officer, e-governance, Ashok Dalwai, UIDAI regional deputy director, Somashekar V.K., managing trustee of Grahak Shakti and Col. Mathew Thomas, civic activist and retired army officer.</b>
<p>Col. Mathew Thomas began his presentation by a comparative analysis of the Indian and the British experience in providing a unique identity to its citizens. In Britain, this initiative was labelled as ‘intrusive bullying’ and ‘an assault on personal liberties’. Additionally, the government recognized that they must conduct their business as servants of the public and not as their masters. The project was terminated on the grounds that it could not achieve the claimed objectives, and it was dangerous costly.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the unique identification (UID) system in India is being perscribed as a prestigious project that will eliminate identity fraud, financial exclusion, enhance accessibility for the poor, enable the government to better manage welfare schemes and target corruption in social programs such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), the public distribution system (PDS), public health and financial inclusion.</p>
<p>Col. Mathew Thomas chronicled ID schemes. He explained that the advent and growth of information technology increased the availability of technology, which led to a commercial interest to exploit technology for profit. Technological solutions were heavily marketed, however, it is a mistaken belief that there is a technological fix to every problem (technology could solve any problem). Post 9/11 paranoia resulted in the notion that ID cards were the best possible counter measure to terrorism. “The inherent ridiculousness of this notion is that militants do not come with ID cards, but with AK-47s, and possession of ID cards or citizenship does not prevent one from becoming a terrorist”, says Mathew Thomas. National ID cards do not stop or deter terrorist actions.</p>
<p>India’s history with the UID project can be traced to the recommendations made by the Kargil Review Committee chaired by K. Subrahmanyam.The Committee recommended the issuing of ID cards to people in border areas to prevent infiltration and extend the system to the whole country to combat terrorism. Consequently, in 2003 the Citizenship Act of 1955 was amended by the NDA Government so as to compulsorily register all citizens into a “National Population Register” (NPR) and issue a Multi-purpose National Identity Card (MNIC). The NPR database will be inked to the UID. Subsequently, the UPA Government promoted the UID, as a pro-poor project.</p>
<p>Col. Mathew Thomas discussed the various questionable aspects of the UID project: its legality, financial prudence, ethics and its uses and abuses.</p>
<h3>UID and Legality</h3>
<p>Firstly, there is no law governing the functioning of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). The illegal implementation of the UID is a complete insult to the Parliament and citizens, considering that the National Identification Authority of India Bill 2010 was drafted long after the implementation of the UID commenced. </p>
<h3>UID and Financial Prudence</h3>
<p>The high-level of apprehension surrounding the UID project stems from the fact that a project of this magnitude, cost and impact on the entire population would be undertaken without a feasibility study and a cost-benefit analysis. There exist two studies: one by the London School of Economics, regarding the UK project, and another by the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, on UID in India. Both have concluded that such schemes are unworkable and too costly.</p>
<h3>UID and Ethics</h3>
<p>Ethical questions related to the UID are regarding its history, participation and ubiquity. Firstly, the UIDAI website is silent on the history prior to 2006. It fails to mention the significant historical roots of the UID, specifically, the Kargil War and the National Population Registry. Second, the UID has been promoted as a pro-poor project, whereas huge possibilities for commercial exploitation exist. Lastly, the UIDAI asserts that enrollment for the UID is ‘voluntary’. Although participation in the UID scheme is supposed to be voluntary, service providers can make it compulsory, thereby making it ubiquitous. A subtle campaign is being carried on, hinting at denial of benefits and services to those without UID.</p>
<h3>Uses and Abuses</h3>
<p>UID claims to transform governance, make ‘Bharath’ part of the growth process, plug ‘leakages’ & ‘slippages’ in welfare schemes, bring about all round prosperity and put India on a ‘fast-track’ growth by becoming the pivot around which all anti-poverty measures will rotate. One can conclude that UID is a panacea or a ‘one size fits all’ solution. Mathew Thomas questioned how these ambitions can be achieved by fingerprinting and scanning the irises of 1.2 billion people and storing the data for use by agencies responsible for the delivery of services.</p>
<p>These claims revolve around the assumptions that a lack of identity denies people welfare benefits; denies access to opportunities and services; and that a unique identification and de-duplication using biometrics would prevent “leakages”, “slippages” and in effect, all corruption. These assumptions need to be tested and verified so as to ensure validity.</p>
<h3>The Public Distribution System and UID</h3>
<p>Col. Mathew Thomas examined the PDS to analyze the use and claims of UID. He described the supply and demand of the PDS. The ‘supply’ side involves the fixing of minimum support prices, procurement by the centre and state governments, transport to FCI and state storages, distribution by centre to states and distribution by states to fair-price (ration) shops. All of the stages are affected by corruption and surprisingly UID beneficiaries have no role in any of the aforementioned stages.</p>
<p>‘Leakages’ in the supply process could potentially occur during the fixing of the minimum support prices (if deals exist with large farmers), during procurement (if they lift less quantity than what was paid for) and during accounting and storage (if they write off larger quantities than the actual damage; write off against bogus ration-cards; and show more quantity in storage and shops than is actually there).</p>
<p>The ‘demand’ process of the PDS system requires for state governments to decide on the eligibility of BPL people, issue ration cards, allocate ration-card holders to specific ration shops and requires the ration-card holders go to designated shops and collect entitlements. Corruption is possible, probable and happens in this discretionary decision-making. However, the only stage at which UID would find some use, if at all, is when ration-card holders collect rations.</p>
<p>Col. Mathew Thomas provided an excellent example of the government’s lopsided priorities. He describes the UID in PDS as the story of the ‘fence eating the corn’. The ‘fence’ then says, “let’s brand the cattle to find who is stealing the corn!”</p>
<p>The practicality of utilizing UID for authentication in the PDS system is a huge conundrum. Considering that the process to authenticate at ration shops requires all shops to have scanners (approximately six lakhs) which must be connected to a network and power at all the time.</p>
<p>Another problem surrounds the collection of ration. Ration-card holders do not always go to collect rations. There could be occasions where one family member goes for collection or one person collects rations for a number of families. The worst part of the UID application to the PDS system is that the procedure puts the BPL person at the mercy of the ration-shop keeper. He could simply deny rations, saying, “Authentication failed”.</p>
<p>The potential abuses of the UID could arise from the large collection of fingerprints that will be with various government officials and private agencies which could be used to foist false criminal cases against innocent people, forge title deeds, sale deeds, promissory notes wills, etc., and could target individuals and communities.</p>
<p>Col. Mathew Thomas concluded by explaining the main risks of any centralized database, it can be hacked and can crash. Professor Ian Angle, of the London School of Economics, has said that the UID will be "Olympic games of hacking", providing people with the biggest challenge to hack through.</p>
<p><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/uid.jpg/image_preview" alt="UID" class="image-inline image-inline" title="UID" /></p>
<p>Making a point: (From left) Public Relations Officer, e-governance, T. Prabhakar; UIDAI Regional Deputy Director Ashok Dalwai; Managing Trustee of Grahak Shakti Somashekar V.K.; and civic activist Mathew Thomas at a panel discussion in Bangalore on Friday. — photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy.</p>
<p>Photo Source: From the <strong>Hindu</strong>, September 17, 2011, <a class="external-link" href="http://goo.gl/gCnqK">http://goo.gl/gCnqK</a></p>
<hr />
<p>Note: Unfortunately, the other presentations were conducted in Kannada and could not be understood by the author of this blog. </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/unique-id-system-pros-and-cons'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/unique-id-system-pros-and-cons</a>
</p>
No publisherNatasha VazInternet GovernancePrivacy2012-02-29T11:28:58ZBlog EntryDigitisation is making e-learning simple
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/digitisation-is-making-e-learning-simple
<b>Though the computer literacy in India is low, some companies are effectively spreading education using digital contents riding on the Internet. </b>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://www.deccanherald.com/content/226629/digitisation-making-e-learning-simple.html">This article by Shayan Ghosh was published in the Deccan Herald on February 13, 2012</a>. Sunil Abraham was quoted in this.</p>
<p>The business of education is all set for a transformation in the country as the government, recently, announced that it will purchase some 100,000 low-cost Aakash tablets from Datawind, the Canadian company that has developed this equipment.</p>
<p>These tablets would then be distributed to schools and colleges in India, where students would get them for free. This move of going the e-way and the limitations the low cost tablet has revealed has seen a lot of criticism all over, however, the e-learning industry in India is going to be one of the biggest game changers in recent times.</p>
<p>E-learning service provider Tata Interactive Systems (TIS) CEO Sanjaya Sharma recalls his experiences when he began his company in 1990. “There was no e-learning then. It was computer-based training along with multimedia training that existed,” says Sharma. However, times changed slowly as TIS began getting clients. One of its first clients was the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) with whom it did a project involving VGA monitors. This product was later sold to 32 other organisations.<br /><br />Now, the company has many Fortune-500 customers to itself and is also conducting business with universities and publishers abroad. Sharma is very optimistic about the present Indian e-learning market, though he believes that it has just begun to take shape. “Adoption happened much earlier abroad, than in India,” Sharma added.<br />TIS is coming big on the e-learning in schools with their Tata ClassEdge, a solution for interactive teaching in schools.<br /><br />Tata ClassEdge is an innovative and comprehensive educational solution from TIS, designed to help teachers deliver quality instruction, with an effective blend of classroom activities and interactive multimedia demonstrations.<br /><br />For this purpose, the company would be providing its services to partially government-aided schools apart from private schools. Study estimates that there are around 80,000 government schools; 150,000 partially-funded schools and 105,000 government schools in the country. TIS is also going to reach out to government schools soon with a different pricing model within a couple of years.<br /><br />Through ClassEdge, teachers will have access to lesson plans that they can use to make their classes engaging and memorable. The plans are customised for students and it provides tips to elicit student participation, including reinforcement activities for struggling learners and challenging assignments for high achievers.<br /><br />Teachers can use animations to explain difficult topics. They can engage children through stories that teach. They could use interactive games to get students to interact with the medium and have fun while learning.</p>
<p>Sharma strongly believes that the education sector in India is going to take advantages of technology in the coming years and will improve in the process. “I definitely feel that technology should be available to every individual,” adds Sharma.<br />Meanwhile, another institute AVAGMAH (avagmah.com) is making good business with its online learning platform deemed for the higher education space. AVAGMAH offers UGC-recognised degrees for MBA (Global) in sales & marketing, HR management and banking & finance. The education platform is entirely online and the student must attend classes on the Internet.<br /><br />“The faculty conducts a class and students sit at home, taking lessons. That was my aim and that’s what AVAGMAH offers,” says AVAGMAH Online School CEO Karthik K S. The platform for this online school was developed in 2007 and it had also won an award for innovation from Nasscom, the same year. However, the content generation took another two years and only in 2009, was AVAGMAH ready to deliver education online and commence its first batch. The institute now has more than 6,000 students to its name and the number keeps growing with each passing day.<br /><br />The ease of access, they feel, is drawing people towards online education as they can log into their classes after their day’s work and have a quick session with the faculty. “Internet can reach places where prevalent education systems cannot. We have students logging in from places like Palanpur in Gujarat and also from places like Guwahati,” explained Karthik. He also says that the content can be delivered on low bandwidth Internet connections making it easier for narrowband users to access it. On the cost factor of such courses and how viable it would be for the not-so-rich sections of India, he pointed out that AVAGMAH offers two-year MBA courses for Rs 40,000 per year. </p>
<p>“Online education is going to drastically change the learning space in India as technology becomes more accessible,” added Karthik.<br /><br />Karnataka, the state with the most developments happening in the IT space, is no doubt heralding the e-learning spree in India with various initiatives to bring this form of education to all. In the year 2009, NIIT had announced a partnership with the Government of Karnataka (Department of Social Welfare - DSW), the Karnataka Vocational Training & Skill Development Corporation Ltd (KVSTDC) and the Department of Employment and Training (DET) to provide e-learning to young under-graduates residing in DSW hostels.<br /><br />The vision of this project is to enable the students in the government hostels to use their free time to enhance their skill sets by acquiring some of the soft skills and life skills that are required in most job areas, and in the process, providing the latest learning technologies at the student’s doorstep.<br /><br />IT major Intel India and the Karnataka Government’s Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, last year, launched ‘Computers on Wheels’, an e-learning pilot programme, in five districts of the state.<br /><br />The pilot programme includes digital instruction materials from ‘Educomp’, an education solutions provider. The programme enables teachers to utilise a variety of learning strategies and tools to cater to the diverse learning styles and abilities of students, making education more engaging and inclusive for all. Under the ‘Computers on Wheels’ approach, netbooks are housed in a cart and can be moved between classrooms as needed.</p>
<p>Not only has the Internet found a newer way in traditional courses, but it has also made advances in supplementary education. Atano, a Mumbai-based company, has come up with a unique idea of providing e-books for vocational courses on its website. Imagine living cities like Meerut, Shimla, Jaipur, Guwahati, Indore, Cochin or even in the metros, one can download a supplementary e-Book at a click of a button. Supplementary education books can be downloaded on the individual’s Windows PC, Android platform, or even Mac (iPads).</p>
<h3>Cost-effective option</h3>
<p>Industry experts are of the opinion that this sector has a huge potential and more so, in a country where education finds it tough to reach remote places.</p>
<p>“The country needs e-learning as it is the best way to reach out to millions and moreover this sector is very promising,” says head of IT & ITeS Practice at KPMG, Pradeep Udhas.</p>
<p>He adds that not only in traditional courses, but also in vocational courses, e-learning will be the trend-setter.</p>
<p>Another initiative by Manipal Global Education Services, EduNxt enables interactive learning environment which includes small group mentoring, virtual classrooms, simulation, self-study content, recorded presentations and shared browsing.<br />Launched by Sikkim Manipal University-Distance Education in 2009, it helps all the Distance Education students through their online platform.</p>
<p>The university believes that it develops a sense of togetherness among the members and different stakeholders of the huge community within the platform.</p>
<p>The platform has functionality which provides a student to interact with 65 core faculty and 6,500 supporting faculty counselors in order to utilise the varied expertise and vast experience of this community.</p>
<p>“We may have progressed from just computer-based learning to technology-enabled solutions in the classroom, but the objective has remained intact, improving the learning experience by making it more engaging,” said Pearson Education Services COO Srikanth B Iyer.<br /><br />Iyer adds that in their current avatar, e-learning solutions are not seen as replacements for teachers, but aids which will help teachers deliver lessons better, thereby increasing the quality of the learning experience.<br /><br />However, Centre for Internet & Society Executive Director Sunil Abraham feels that learning should not be restricted to the Internet and interactive classroom sessions but should be made available on mobile phones through audio files as mobile penetration is much higher compared to Internet reach.</p>
<p>“Audio files can also be productive and a learning experience for people who can’t afford the Internet,” explained Abraham.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/digitisation-is-making-e-learning-simple'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/digitisation-is-making-e-learning-simple</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaInternet Governance2012-02-28T10:05:20ZNews ItemIndia debates limits to freedom of expression
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/india-debates-limits-to-freedom-of-expression
<b>From Google to Facebook, from world-famous author Salman Rushdie to a little-known political cartoonist, it has become increasingly easy in recent months to offend the Indian government, and to incur the wrath of the censor or even the threat of legal action.</b>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/india-debates-limits-to-freedom-of-expression/2012/02/02/gIQAHkOY9Q_story.html">This article by Simon Denyer was published in the Washington Post on February 13, 2012</a>. Sunil Abraham has been quoted in this.</p>
<p>In the world’s largest democracy, many Indians say freedom of expression is under attack, and along with it the values of pluralism and tolerance that have bound this nation of 1.2 billion people together since independence from Britain more than 64 years ago.</p>
<p>India’s democracy is nothing if not raucous. The huge array of newspapers and 24-hour television news channels are often vociferous in their criticism of politicians. But the media’s determination to root out corruption in the past two years has prompted a backlash. Talk of more stringent regulation is mounting.</p>
<p>At the same time, artists say their creative freedom has been steadily eroded. Even <a class="external-link" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/mitt-romney-joke-on-jay-leno-angers-indian-sikhs/2012/01/23/gIQAYJX4KQ_blog.html">Jay Leno managed to offend Indian Sikhs</a> — and prompt an official government complaint — with a satirical reference to their holiest shrine, the Golden Temple, in a joke about Mitt Romney’s vacation homes.</p>
<p>At fault, many say, is a thin-skinned government that gives in to the demands of violent mobs, ostensibly to make political gains but in fact to suppress its critics.</p>
<p>“For a country that takes great pride in its democracy and history of free speech, the present situation is troubling,” said Nilanjana Roy, a columnist and literary critic. “Especially in the creative sphere, the last two decades have been progressively intolerant.”</p>
<p><strong>Targeting authors, artists </strong></p>
<p>Rushdie, whose novel “The Satanic Verses” was banned in India in 1988,<a class="external-link" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/salman-rushdie-video-interview-canceled-amid-muslim-protests/2012/01/24/gIQAtVRUNQ_blog.html"> was forced to cancel appearances at the Jaipur Literature Festival</a> last month after threats of violence from Muslim groups and a warning about a possible assassination attempt — information he said was probably fabricated by authorities to keep him away.</p>
<p>Wary of alienating Muslim voters in ongoing state elections, not a single Indian politician spoke out in favor of Rushdie’s right to be heard.</p>
<p>Last month, <a class="external-link" href="http://cpj.org/blog/2012/01/indias-challenge-intolerance-vs-intellectual-freed.php">the screening of a documentary on Kashmir was canceled</a> at a college in the city of Pune after right-wing Hindus objected, and an artist was beaten in his gallery in Delhi for showing nude paintings of actresses and models that his attackers claimed were an insult to the country.</p>
<p>The release of the <a class="external-link" href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Kolkata-Book-Fair-cancels-release-of-Taslima-Nasreens-book/articleshow/11715363.cms">latest book by Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen</a> was canceled in Kolkata after Muslims protested, and <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/news/cpj.org/blog/2012/01/can-an-indian-cartoonist-be-barred-from-mocking-th.php" class="external-link">Aseem Trivedi, a 25-year-old political cartoonist</a>, was charged with treason and insulting India’s national emblems in drawings inspired by activist Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement.</p>
<p>But perhaps the most shocking episode for advocates of freedom of expression has been <a class="external-link" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/facebook-google-tell-india-they-wont-screen-for-derogatory-content/2011/12/06/gIQAUo59YO_blog.html">the government’s attempt to muzzle Facebook and Google</a> — and prosecute the companies’ executives — for content posted on their sites deemed to be offensive. “Like China, we can block all such Web sites,” warned the judge hearing the case in the Delhi High Court.</p>
<p>The government cites images insulting to one or another of India’s religions, content it says could provoke unrest. It is up to social media sites, the government says, to manually screen and censor all potentially offensive content or face prosecution.</p>
<p>“No freedom can be absolute,” said the chairman of the Press Council of India, Justice Markandey Katju. “The hold of religion is very strong in India, and you have to respect that. You can’t go insulting people.”</p>
<p>Katju’s concerns are perhaps understandable in a country whose birth was scarred by the mass murder of Hindus and Muslims at the time of independence in 1947. But the effect, critics say, is to give the mob the power of veto and take away a fundamental right in a free society: the right to offend others.</p>
<p>Sunil Abraham at the Center for Internet and Society says the government’s proposals on Web censorship would kill the vibrancy of the Internet in India. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales warned that they would scare off investors and crush the country’s potential to become a true leader in the Internet industry.</p>
<p>The irony, according to critics, is that the concern over religiously offensive content was little more than an excuse: What appears to have really offended the ruling Congress party were defamatory images of their idolized leader, Sonia Gandhi.</p>
<p>“The myth that is spread is that the government is acting against hate speech and obscenity. But when the government acts to control information on the Internet, it is usually defamatory or potentially defamatory content against people and politicians,” Abraham said.</p>
<p>Almost a year ago, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/16/AR2011021602323.html">Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the media </a>were undermining the nation’s self-confidence by harping on official corruption. Since then, talk of tighter media regulation has grown louder.</p>
<p>And despite the vibrancy of India’s mainstream English-language media, the country’s ranking on the press freedom index of the journalism advocacy group <a class="external-link" href="http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2011-2012,1043.html">Reporters Without Borders</a> has dropped, from 105th in 2009 to 131st last year.</p>
<h3>An optimistic view</h3>
<p>Arnab Goswami, the editor and anchor of the Times Now television channel, points to television’s dramatic success in exposing official corruption in the past two years to argue that there is plenty to be optimistic about.<br /><br />Courts in India generally have a better record than do politicians of defending freedom of expression. And there are people in government, including Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni, determined to resist the temptation to take a harder line.<br /><br />“The pressure was enormous, to control the media, to clamp down on the media,” she said. “But I did withstand the pressure.”<br /><br />Soni said she sees self-regulation by the media rather than official regulation as the way forward. She maintains that, for example, the debate about Rushdie has not necessarily done India any harm.<br /><br />“That’s the strength of Indian society,” she said. “You have discussed it, everyone has had their say on the matter, the government has had its share of criticism, yet we’ve moved on.”</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/india-debates-limits-to-freedom-of-expression'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/india-debates-limits-to-freedom-of-expression</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionInternet Governance2012-02-28T09:50:37ZNews ItemDeveloping location-based services
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/developing-location-based-services
<b>For mapping enthusiasts, geeks and neogeographers in Bangalore, here's something to look forward to. Cartonama, a workshop that offers intensive hands-on training on tools to build and manage location data for location-based services, will be held in the city on March 2 and 3.</b>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/article2932531.ece">The article was published in the Hindu on February 26, 2012</a></p>
<p>This workshop, being organised by city-based tech event management firm HasGeek, is open to developers, neogeographers and entrepreneurs working on location-based services who want to understand how to use advanced tools to manage and represent their geographic data. <br /><br />The workshop will be conducted by Mikel Maron and Schuyler Erle, both from the OpenStreetMap project. The event is being held at the Centre for Internet and Society in Domlur. </p>
<p>For more on this, log on to <a class="external-link" href="http://workshop.cartonama.com/">workshop.cartonama.com</a> or contact <a class="external-link" href="mailto:sajjad@hasgeek.com">sajjad@hasgeek.com</a> </p>
<h3>Cloud 20/20: online technical paper contest <br /></h3>
<p>Unisys India announced the results of Cloud 20/20 Version 3.0, the third edition of one of India's largest technical paper contests, designed to encourage innovative ideas and recognise emerging technical talent from among the country's leading engineering colleges. <br /><br />Following several rigorous rounds of evaluation, the judges selected Dharmesh Kakadia from International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, as the first prize winner for his entry on ‘Network Virtualisation and Cloud Computing'. The runner-ups were Sridhar S. from Anna University, Chennai, and Poornima J.R. from M.S. Ramaiah Institute of Technology. </p>
<h3>A system to protect confidential data <br /></h3>
<p>Xerox and computer security firm McAfee have teamed up to design a security system to help companies protect against threats to confidential data, a release from McAfee stated.</p>
<p>This involves integrating embedded McAfee software into Xerox technology. The two companies plan to use a whitelisting method that allows only approved files to run, offering significantly more protection than traditional blacklisting tactics, where a user has to be aware of and proactively block viruses, spyware and other malicious software.</p>
<p>Additionally, the solution provides an audit trail to track and investigate the time and origin of security events, and take action on them, the release added. The companies claim that the decision to partner on this was a result of a survey commissioned by the two firms that found that 54 per cent employees in India do not follow their company's IT security policies, even fewer (33 per cent) are aware of these policies. </p>
<h3>Automating healthcare and insurance</h3>
<p><br />IT major Wipro Infotech announced that it has successfully implemented the digitisation of the Employees' State Insurance Corporation's (ESIC) Project, Panchdeep, the healthcare administration programme that automates healthcare services to over six crore beneficiaries across the country.</p>
<p>This is the largest e-governance programme in this sector, providing online facilities to employers and insured people for registration, payment of premium and disbursement of cash benefits.</p>
<p>It also automates medicare services to all insured people, and an estimated 75,000 people use this every day.</p>
<h3>HP launches new press</h3>
<p>Hewlett-Packard announced the launch of HP Indigo W7200 Digital Offset press for the Indian market. This has been installed at Bangalore-based printing press, the KolorKode digital press. With its robust productivity this new press offers the ability to address a wider range of long-run jobs. It will be able to deliver a broader range of jobs for a dynamic market place meeting the demands of monochrome to seven-color jobs, from spot to highlight color during a single run, without stopping or changing the settings, a press release from HP stated.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/developing-location-based-services'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/developing-location-based-services</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaInternet Governance2012-02-28T09:31:50ZNews ItemGrooming the geek
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/grooming-the-geek
<b>Generation 2.0, the iPad child, is enriched by technology, and many parents are embracing it wholeheartedly. But can technology transform the way a child’s abilities develop? </b>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.livemint.com/2012/02/24204457/Grooming-the-geek.html">The article by Gopal Sathe was published in Livemint on 24 February 2012</a>. Sunil Abraham is quoted in it.</p>
<p>Gauri Uttam, 11, loves reading books. Her room houses a huge number of books that her parents have collected for her over the years. But her favourite books are not in these piles. They are on her iPad. Ask her what her favourite book is, and pat comes the reply: <em>The Pedlar Lady</em>, downloaded on the family iPad 2.</p>
<p><em>The Pedlar Lady </em>app, by Moving Tales Inc., is a beautifully animated story for children. Background images move, the text flows in and out, and the app reads the text aloud as well. “The book looks beautiful, and whenever you turn the page, it reads the words,” says Gauri. “You can carry it around anywhere, it’s not like sitting on the computer, but it’s much more fun than reading a book. There are pictures and if you get bored and want to draw something, you can, right there.”</p>
<p>Gauri’s father Sachin Uttam, 44, a director (consulting) with the Gurgaon-based technology start-up Enabling Dimensions, has also introduced her to software such as FaceTime on their iMac to teleconference with her cousins for homework. “Computers are a part of everything now,” Sachin says. “When children grow up, we try and teach them to sing, paint, write stories... In the same way, we need to teach them to be able to use computers. I’m a techie, so is my wife. We both have iPads and iPhones, and so it wasn’t surprising that Gauri started to use them too.”</p>
<p>Technology is revolutionizing the way children grow up. Parents put the Internet and technology to a variety of uses. It is not uncommon to see toddlers gurgling to a touch screen that tiny fingers don’t find daunting. In December, the Podar International School in Mumbai announced that from its next term, lessons for classes VI to XII would be on iPads.</p>
<h3>The shake-up</h3>
<p>For some parents, it is a way to help their children hone their creativity. Bangalore-based Viswanath Poosala, 41, head of Bell Labs Research India, has two children, a daughter (9) and a son (7) (names withheld on request), and he has been teaching them programming for the last year and a half. Poosala wanted to show his children how computers can be fun. “The key is to find ways to relate your children’s interests to computers. If you make a computer a tool that helps them do what they want, then they will learn enthusiastically,” he says.</p>
<p>Poosala’s son uses a tool called Scratch, a free MIT software for children, to make simple games that he can share with friends; his daughter uses Scratch to make animated, interactive versions of the stories she writes.<br /><br />To teach his children programming, Poosala first introduced them to a free online game called <em>Light-Bot</em>. “In the game, you have to click on a set of commands, and once you are done, the robot will follow your choices to try and clear an obstacle course. It’s a fun game so children are keen to play it, and it shows them how a computer follows inputs.”<br /><br />But in <em>Light-Bot</em>, commands are limited, and it is not possible to add custom elements. So Poosala downloaded Scratch. “It’s a visual programming language. You can add images and sounds, but it’s still completely visual, with no actual programming. You just click and choose from different icons,” he adds.<br /><br />By engaging children with their own creations around their interests, they become more involved in what they are doing, and are keen to share their work with friends. They are more likely to finish projects and start new ones. Using such tools also helps them understand logic as a concept, which can then be applied to any field.<br /><br />Sachin believes the iPad, especially, is a powerful reading resource that can make books far more attractive to children. He says, “Ever since Gauri discovered iBooks, she’s reading so much more than before. When she gets stuck on a difficult word, she just needs to tap it with her finger to get a definition.”</p>
<p>One such book is the <em>Alice’s Adventures</em> in Wonderland app. The book is presented with big, interactive illustrations on every page. Give Alice different bottles when she falls down the rabbit hole, and she will become bigger or smaller, depending on the bottle. Tilt your iPad on another screen, she will fall down and stand up.</p>
<h3>New avenues</h3>
<p>Enhanced books, such as <em>Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland</em> and <em>The Pedlar Lady</em>, are more advanced, redefining our expectations of children’s books. Take, for instance, Khoya, an iPad app illustrated by Shilo Shiv Suleman and written by Avijit Michael. The app has been showcased at TEDGlobal 2011 in Scotland, the Wired conference in the UK in 2011, and launched at the INK conference in Jaipur in 2011. Khoya has artwork, animated pages, quests that have to be completed in the real world, that require children to help the two protagonists navigate various worlds.</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Agni.jpg/image_mini" title="Agni" height="137" width="91" alt="Agni" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
<td>Bangalore-based Suleman says, “People are so excited about how technology is functional and useable that they forget how technology is also magical. Sure, it’s useful to be able to fly to London in 10 hours, but the idea that we are actually floating in the clouds, flying around the world is forgotten.”<br /><br /><em>Khoya </em>uses technology to get children to explore the natural world along with a screen. While the protagonists of the story undertake their quests, readers are given their own quests such as collecting flower seeds and making photo collections of these seeds. “It’s a real problem that children in the last 10 years have been glued to computers, but now with mobile technology we can get them outside their houses. Photo quests, augmented reality in the garden, are just two examples of how we’re trying to find the links between the earth, magic and technology,” Suleman says.<br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Technology can also help children find their passions, and guide them through life. Aveek, the son of Bangalore-based media expert Arun Katiyar (56), found his passion through technology. Lego blocks helped Aveek, now 23, develop an interest in mechanical engineering.</p>
<p>Katiyar says Aveek, now studying industrial design at the National University of Singapore, was a fan of Legos since he was 6. When Aveek turned 15, he was gifted Lego Technic, a programmable Lego set. Katiyar says, “The Technic was exceedingly advanced for its time. You take a programmable microchip, and connect it to a computer. You can then program commands in the remote to control the chip. Then you remove the chip, and put it in your Lego creation that is a lot more advanced than the coloured bricks most will be familiar with, as a Technic set includes moving parts, pistons, engines and much more.”</p>
<p>The Technic is not available any more, but Lego now sells the more advanced Mindstorm. Legos are particularly useful as learning tools because of how versatile they are. Children can fit the pieces together to make almost anything they can imagine. By fitting joints and gears, they can create a small machine, entirely by themselves.</p>
<p>Rajesh S. (full name not given on request), runs an environmental NGO in Bangalore, and has worked in the US with several leading IT firms. His two sons, Parthiv, 14, and Tarang, 11, have picked up their parents’ interest in technology and gone with it in different ways. Parthiv learnt about film-making thanks to a discarded video camera, Tarang experiments with circuits around the house, and knows his way around capacitors and resistors.</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Rajesh says, “When my elder son was 8, I had an old video camera that no one was using any more. Instead of throwing it away, I gave it to my son. It was an expensive gift, but it didn’t matter even if he broke it.” <br /><br />Parthiv became fascinated by the camera, and would find new ways to keep using it. Rajesh says Parthiv would write short poems and then make small videos for them. Since he didn’t have a track or a dolly, he mounted the camera on an old toy truck and made his younger brother pull it to take panned shots.<br /><br />“As he experimented with it, we also encouraged him. He was quickly teaching himself how to make the best use of it. Using their computers, the boys learnt to edit their footage, and put it up themselves as well. Parthiv is interested in the media, and is determined to either direct, or write, or act, undoubtedly because he had access to the right technology in his childhood.”<br /></td>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/khoya.jpg/image_mini" title="Khoya" height="139" width="125" alt="Khoya" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Tarang used the Internet and a lot of trial and error to find his way
around a circuit board—a skill many adults lack. Rajesh says, “I don’t
know what got him started. He’s fascinated by circuits, always
experimenting and we are happy to buy circuits and capacitors too.”<br />
<br />
At the same time, as an environmentalist, Rajesh also wants the boys to
experience the outdoors. “My role has actually not been to support them
but to discourage them. I want them to spend more time outdoors, and
find more interests. Play sports and explore the world as well as their
hobbies,” he says.</p>
<h3>The points of debate</h3>
<p>Expert opinion on the use of technology is divided. Chennai-based child psychologist Lakshmi Rajaram says parents need to monitor how their children are using technology and moderate the amount of time they spend with it. “While it can look harmless, these Internet-connected devices can be a gateway to pornography, violence and all kinds of disturbing and harmful content,” she says.</p>
<p>Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, also feels that it’s important that younger children at least be given limited access to technology. He says children have to learn fine motor and social skills; tablets and other technology hinder the development of these skills. “For young children, this is counter-productive—if your two-year-old can scroll and zoom on an iPad, that’s nothing to be proud of. You’re underestimating your child, who should be capable of much greater dexterity. New technology is too simple, and doesn’t give the child enough feedback to develop their skills.”</p>
<p>Ramya Somashekhar and her husband, both doctors, live in the UK, but grew up in India. They have a two-year-old son, whom they have kept away from new technology. Somashekhar says, “There’s an information overload in the world today. We want our son to grow up at his own pace, and let him stay a kid for as long as we can. Just because he thinks an iPad is pretty doesn’t mean we want our two-year-old playing with something that expensive. He thinks that a teddy bear and a singing toy truck are equally fascinating. A gadget doesn’t begin to compare to the real world, and we want to keep it that way, so he grows up the way we did.”</p>
<p>At Podar International School in Mumbai, though, students have started using iPads, and Vandana Lulla, director of the school, says only around 10% of the parents have not opted for it. While the school is not providing the iPads, they are offering a financing scheme for them.</p>
<p>She says, “Moving to iPads was a natural step because they are easier for students to use than laptops. We had observed how tech-savvy and comfortable they were, and had gone through studies that show the use of computers makes the learning of science more effective. We can also block access to games on the iPads, so the devices would allow students to work more effectively.”</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/pedlar.jpg/image_preview" title="Pedlar" height="83" width="125" alt="Pedlar" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
<td>Mumbai-based writer and freelance journalist Manisha Lakhe almost bought an iPad last year, but her then 13-year-old son Agni Murthy was able to talk her out of it. She says, "Agni told me to buy the Acer Iconia instead, because it was better. I was sure I needed a 3G tablet. He convinced me to get the Wi-Fi one, then sat with it, entered its programming and was able to change it so that it worked using my old 3G dongle, saving me a lot of money."</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>By looking up a lot of different methods, Agni was able to find the best way to change the installed operating system on the Iconia, and instead run a routed version which would support the function his mother needed, without buying the more expensive 3G model. He says, “I use my laptop to study, to work with my friends on chat, to do homework and Photoshop. I used to draw but now I do a lot of that on Photoshop. I look up a lot of tech stories on the Net, because that’s really interesting. I read about how to make the Iconia work on 3G so I could give my mother advice.”<br /><br />This positive view is also supported by a study carried out by the US department of education. The 2010 study, Young Children, Apps and iPad, concluded that touch-screen technology allows younger children to play productively with a sophisticated media technology platform. The study found that “the use of touch-screen devices improved tacit and explicit learning, and was easy to pick up for children.”<br /><br />It continues, “Children are fascinated and engaged by touch-screen devices, and the engagement goes up over time. Using such devices, children learn ‘motor skills, exploration, game concepts and generalization of skills’, where the learning from one app can transfer to another app.” The study also says, “Well-designed apps give children the opportunity to play/learn independently, and to participate in activities that would be messy in the real world, for example, finger painting.”</p>
<p>As Gauri says, “You can do everything with the iPad. You don’t need to carry anything else. I have books, cartoons, and games and we can take them in the car, or outside, or in any room, all the time.”</p>
<h3>CHILD-FRIENDLY APPS</h3>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>The App Store has a lot of child-friendly apps available—some are meant to entertain, while others have an educational component. We hand-picked five of the best apps that have launched this year, for different age groups. We have focused only on iOS apps that offer something over and above real-world analogues.<br /><br /><br /></td>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Alphatots.jpg/image_mini" title="Alphatots" height="99" width="148" alt="Alphatots" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3>ALPHATOTS: $0.99(around Rs. 48)</h3>
<p>Learning the alphabet is a slow process that involves a lot of repetition and trial and error. The AlphaTots app uses funny sounds and cute animations to make this more fun, and also demonstrates things that a </p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Grimm.jpg/image_preview" title="Grimm" height="83" width="125" alt="Grimm" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
<td>standard “A is for Apple” style book can’t. For example, F is for Flower
is accompanied by a picture of a flower, and turning the page shows G
is for Grow, and the flower gets bigger.<br /><br /><strong>GRIMM’S RAPUNZEL POP-UP BOOK: $3.99</strong><br />This version of Rapunzel’s story is simple, beautifully animated, and from time to time, the angle changes from a 2D view to a 3D angle, where parts of the book pop out of the page and can be played with.<br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3>SPARKY THE SHARK: $3.99</h3>
<p>This funny e-book is meant</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/sparky.jpg/image_preview" title="Sparky" height="88" width="132" alt="Sparky" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
<td>for children above six years of age, and tries to impart lessons of self-confidence, and the importance of being yourself through the adventures of ‘Sparky the Shark’. There’s clever animation work mixed with text and read-aloud sections as well.<br /><strong>FREDDI FISH AND THE STOLEN SHELL: $2.99</strong><br />Somewhere between a game and an interactive book, ‘Freddi Fish and the Stolen Shell’ tasks children with solving a mystery. There are various touchable elements on each screen and by following the clues, it’s easy to go through the story. Unlike similar games, the app follows consistent logic, so it’s a fun way of teaching children critical thinking.<br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/grooming-the-geek'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/grooming-the-geek</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaInternet Governance2012-02-28T09:16:29ZNews ItemGeekUp with Erica Hagen
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/geek-up-with-erica
<b>HasGeek is organizing a GeekUp with Erica Hagen of the GroundTruth Initiative on 1 March 2012 at 5 p.m. Erica will speak on the theme: "From Information to Empowerment: Unpacking the Equation".</b>
<h3>From Information to Empowerment to Unpacking the Equation</h3>
<p>In 2010, Erica Hagen and Mikel Maron started GroundTruth Initiative to work towards empowering communities through open data, open information and participatory processes. Erica's and Mikel's work at <a class="external-link" href="http://groundtruth.in/">GroundTruth</a> is informed by their earlier experience of working with the <a class="external-link" href="http://mapkibera.org/">Map Kibera</a> project where they helped the youth and the communities in Kibera to map their geographies and represent information about themselves to the world through citizen media. In the process, Erica and Mikel uncovered several complex dynamics about self-representation by communities, what open data really means to communities and how they apply it to their circumstances, the dynamics between participatory development and participatory technologies, and the process of using community media tools and online methods for talking about issues that matter to them.</p>
<p>In this lecture, Erica Hagen will talk about her work with communities in Kenya, Jerusalem, Nigeria and other parts of the world through GroundTruth Initiative. Specifically, Erica will unpack the relationship between empowerment, information, and storytelling, and what both these elements mean to communities in different parts of the world. How are communities applying the information and data that they collect about their governments and themselves? What are the challenges involved in the process of working with open data, participatory processes and technologies? How can communities apply new media and data gathering tools to achieve local goals? What does empowerment mean in the face of the delicate lines and precariousness that communities and the interveners/practitioners have to tread in the process of data gathering, representation, communication and outputs?</p>
<p>Interested persons need to confirm attendance by registering at <a class="external-link" href="http://geekup.in/2012/erica-hagen">http://geekup.in/2012/erica-hagen <br /></a></p>
<hr />
<h3>Erica Hagen</h3>
<p>Erica Hagen is a journalist and international development practitioner working for democracy of information and citizen participation in both online and traditional media. She is the co-founder of Map Kibera and GroundTruth Initiative. Erica has worked in four countries on development communication and evaluation, and in the United States on refugee and immigrant issues, for organizations such as United Nations Population Fund, Concern Worldwide, and Unicef. She holds a Masters Degree in International Affairs from Columbia University, New York.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/geek-up-with-erica'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/geek-up-with-erica</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaLectureEvent TypeInternet Governance2012-02-29T03:00:14ZEventClimate Change and Controversy Mapping
http://editors.cis-india.org/events/climate-change-and-controversy-mapping
<b>A three-day workshop with Professor Bruno Latour, Dean for Research at Sciences Po, Paris. The workshop is being organised in collaboration with the Devechia Centre for Climate Change, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore from March 19 to March 21, 9.30 a.m. to 5.00 p.m.</b>
<p>The development of ecological crisis creates problems for political representation. Because of the scale of the phenomena to be considered, the esoteric character of the scientific knowledge necessary to apprehend them, the intensity of the conflicts of values that they generate, there is no assembly to handle those crises. The workshop will explore digital tools that might allow citizens to get a grasp of ecological crisis by drawing ''cartographies of scientific and technical controversies'' a necessary preliminary for political assemblies.</p>
<p>The workshop is opened to PhD students from all academic fields doing empirical work in various types of ecological crisis. The participants will experiment some of the digital tools and methods developed within the "mapping controversies" consortium (MACOSPOL, demoscience and other sources of "science studies"). It requires students to devote three full days to the study. A background in Science and Technology<br />Studies and some grasp of digital data analysis are preferable.</p>
<p><strong>Eligibility criteria:<br /></strong></p>
<ul><li>To be a doctoral student or at the post doctoral level</li><li>To have a general interest or research connexion with ecological/climate change issues</li><li>Familiarity with digital data analysis</li></ul>
<p>Candidates must send their CV and a short synopsis of their doctoral or postdoctoral research before Sunday March 4, 2012, to:<br /><a class="external-link" href="mailto:jayes@caos.iisc.ernet.in">jayes@caos.iisc.ernet.in</a> & <a class="external-link" href="mailto:gilles.verniers@sciences-‐po.fr">gilles.verniers@sciences-‐po.fr</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/events/climate-change-and-controversy-mapping'>http://editors.cis-india.org/events/climate-change-and-controversy-mapping</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaInternet Governance2012-02-27T04:10:30ZEventFUEL Kannada - Workshop on Kannada Computing Terminology
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/fuel-kannada-workshop-on-kannada-computing-terminology
<b>A two days workshop on the standardization of Kannada computing terminologies was organized on January 28th and 29th 2012 at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore under the FUEL project. This FUEL Kannada workshop aimed at the community review and standardization of frequently encountered computing terminologies in Kannada. FUEL Kannada Evaluation meet aimed at solving the problem of inconsistency and lack of standardization in computer software translations in Kannada language. This workshop was hosted by CIS, sponsored by Red Hat and organized by Sanchaya (sanchaya.net).</b>
<p>Along with well know television actress Jayalaxmi Patil. members from Banavasi Balaga, Translators, Kanaja Content writer, Linguistics, Journalists participated in this workshop. Shankar Prasad welcomed every one and explained the importance and need of standardization of Kannada Computing Terminologies. KaGaPa's Secretary Narasimha Murthy shed light on the past work on computing terminologies.<br /><br />This workshop discussed on 578 commonly appearing entries people use. FUEL Kannada Evaluation meet was a concrete move towards solving the problem and after the meet, FUEL Kannada came with the standard translation of entries in Kannada language for the first time that are frequently being used by a normal user. <br /><br />Localization is the process of transforming a product into different languages and adapting it for a specific locale. As the localization process becomes more complex and involves more players and tools, problems related to consistency of translations and terminology are faced. Henceforth, in this context the need of such type of meet is significant and important. Except few languages, this type effort is generally the first effort for most of Indic languages for computing terminologies.<br /><br />FUEL tries to provide a standardized and consistent computer interface for users. Before Kannada language, FUEL already completed evaluation phase for 9 other Indian languages.<br /><br /></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/fuel-kannada-workshop-on-kannada-computing-terminology'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/fuel-kannada-workshop-on-kannada-computing-terminology</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaInternet Governance2012-02-23T10:32:59ZNews Item