Internet Governance Blog
Request for Specifics: Rebuttal to UIDAI
— by Hans Varghese Mathews — last modified Oct 30, 2016 03:06 PMResponding to the Unique Identification Authority of India’s article that found “serious mathematical errors” in “Flaws in the UIDAI Process” (EPW 12 March 2016), the main mathematical argument used to arrive at the number of duplicates in the biometric database is explained.
IANA Transition: A Case of the Emperor’s New Clothes?
— by Vidushi Marda — last modified Nov 03, 2016 06:20 AMTransparency is key to engaging meaningfully with ICANN. CIS has filed the most number of Documentary Information Disclosure Policy (DIDP) requests with ICANN, covering a range of subjects including its relationships with contracted parties, financial disclosure, revenue statements, and harassment policies. Asvatha Babu, an intern at CIS, analysed all responses to our requests and found that only 14% of our requests were answered fully.
Internet Democratisation: IANA Transition Leaves Much to be Desired
— by Vidushi Marda — last modified Nov 03, 2016 07:52 AMAt best, the IANA transition is symbolic of Washington’s oversight over ICANN coming to an end. It is also symbolic of the empowerment of the global multistakeholder community. In reality, it fails to do either meaningfully.
Services like TwitterSeva aren’t the silver bullets they are made out to be
— by Sunil Abraham — last modified Oct 06, 2016 04:31 PMTwitterSeva is great, but it should not be considered a sufficient replacement for proper e-governance systems. This is because there are several serious shortcomings with the TwitterSeva approach, and it is no wonder that enthusiastic police officers and bureaucrats are somewhat upset with the slow deployment of e-governance applications. They are also right in being frustrated with the lack of usability and scalability of existing applications that hold out the promise of adopting private sector platforms to serve citizens better.

Right to Food Campaign, Ranchi Convention, 2016
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified Mar 16, 2019 04:40 AMThe Right to Food Campaign held its 2016 Convention in Ranchi during September 23-25, 2016. While three years have elapsed since the passage of the National Food Security Act, despite improvements in the Public Distribution System (PDS), large implementation gaps remain. This is what the Convention focused on, and gathered researchers and campaigners from across the country to share experiences and case studies on effectiveness and exclusions from the PDS. Sumandro Chattapadhyay took part in a session of the Convention to discuss how UID-linked welfare delivery is being rolled out across key programmes like provision of pension and rationed distribution of essential commodities, and their impact on people's right to welfare services.

Internet Rights and Wrongs
— by Pranesh Prakash — last modified Sep 22, 2016 11:36 PMWith a rise in PIL's for unwarranted censorship, do we need to step back and inspect if it's about time unreasonable trends are checked?
Glaring Errors in UIDAI's Rebuttal
— by Pranesh Prakash — last modified Sep 18, 2016 03:22 AMThis response note by Pranesh Prakash questions Unique Identification Authority of India’s reply to Hans Verghese Mathews' article titled “Flaws in the UIDAI Process” (EPW, March 12, 2016), which found “serious mathematical errors” in the article.
Indians Ask: Is Visiting a Torrent Site Really A Crime?
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Sep 06, 2016 02:09 PMIndia has banned various large-scale torrent sites for a long time — this is old news. But under a new federal policy in India, one can be jailed for three years and fined 300,000 Indian Rupees (~US $4464) for downloading content on any of these blocked websites.

Report on Understanding Aadhaar and its New Challenges
— by Japreet Grewal, Vanya Rakesh, Sumandro Chattapadhyay, and Elonnai Hickock — last modified Mar 16, 2019 04:42 AMThe Trans-disciplinary Research Cluster on Sustainability Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University collaborated with the Centre for Internet and Society, and other individuals and organisations to organise a two day workshop on “Understanding Aadhaar and its New Challenges” at the Centre for Studies in Science Policy, JNU on May 26 and 27, 2016. The objective of the workshop was to bring together experts from various fields, who have been rigorously following the developments in the Unique Identification (UID) Project and align their perspectives and develop a shared understanding of the status of the UID Project and its impact. Through this exercise, it was also sought to develop a plan of action to address the welfare exclusion issues that have arisen due to implementation of the UID Project.

We Truly are the Product being Sold
— by Vidushi Marda — last modified Sep 01, 2016 02:08 AMWhatsApp has announced it will begin sharing user data such as names, phone numbers, and other analytics with its parent company, Facebook, and with the Facebook family of companies. This change to its terms of service was effected in order to enable users to “communicate with businesses that matter” to them. How does this have anything to do with Facebook?
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