Centre for Internet and Society

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

praskrishna — 2012-06-27T06:52:50Z

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta is an independent journalist and an educator. His work experience, spanning nearly 35 years, cuts across different media: print, radio, television and documentary cinema. He is a writer, speaker, anchor, interviewer, teacher and a commentator. His main areas of interest are the working of India’s political economy and the media, on which he has authored/co-authored books and directed/produced documentary films. Some of the media organizations that he has worked with are Business India, BusinessWorld, The Telegraph, India Today, The Pioneer, and Television Eighteen.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/knowledge-repository-on-internet-access/paranjoy-guha-thakurta

Satya N Gupta

praskrishna — 2012-06-27T06:49:40Z

Satya N Gupta is a veteran in the field of telecommunications, drawing from his vast experience in telecom regulation as well as industry. Gupta joined the Planning and Coordination Wing of Ministry of Communication in 1981, holding the post of Officer-in-charge of Wireless Monitoring Station, Srinagar and Secretary, Regional Advisory Committee of SACFA for J&K and HP. Among other accomplishments, he was a member of the NGN Regulation review group of ITU and also worked as Pr. Advisor with Telecom Regulatory Authority of India at the level of Additional Secretary and is heading the Converged Network Division dealing with Regulatory, Technical and Economic aspects of Data Networks and Services.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/knowledge-repository-on-internet-access/satya-n-gupta

Dr. Surendra Pal

praskrishna — 2012-06-27T06:27:16Z

Dr.Surendra Pal is the associate director of the Indian Space Research Organization’s Satellite Centre and Programme Director of ISRO’s Satellite Navigation Program.

Pioneering the creation of India’s satellite navigation and communications systems, Dr. Pal was in charge of the design, development, and the fabrication of spacecraft-related telecommunication systems for all Indian scientific, remote-sensing and communication satellites. Further, he established essential satellite-based navigation schemes in India, such as developing the Indian Regional Navigational Satellite System (IRNSS) and GPS Aided and Geo Augmented Navigation (GAGAN).

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/knowledge-repository-on-internet-access/surendra-pal

Audit Report 2009-10

praskrishna — 2014-12-04T15:09:22Z

CIS audit report of 2009.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/audit-report-for-2009-10.pdf

Audit Report 2008-09

praskrishna — 2014-12-04T15:06:28Z

CIS audit report of 2008-09.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/audit-report-2008-09.pdf

No more blocking of entire websites?

praskrishna — 2012-06-26T09:47:02Z

The Madras HC has taken one step to ensure that entire websites are no longer blocked, but it doesn't mean that arbitrary takedowns will cease.

CIS research is quoted in this article by Danish Sheikh published in the Business Standard on June 24, 2012

Vimeo’s back. As is Pastebin, and Pirate Bay and IsoHunt. For your, you know, legitimate file-sharing practices.

Having been approached by a consortium of Internet Service Providers, the Madras High Court has issued a welcome clarification of its “John Doe order” issued in favour of RK Productions for the films 3 and Dammu. Designed to protect against potential offences by yet-unidentified persons, the sweeping scope of the order left a very wide, undefined scope to ISPs dealing with potentially infringing material. The ISPs over-complied, a host of file-sharing websites were barred from Indian servers overnight — oh, and “Anonymous” got more annoyed. Note here that the vagueness of the order extended to not specifying any infringing websites in particular.

Following the representation from the ISPs, the Court has provided them a specific directive. The new order states that the interim injunction was granted only with respect to the particular URL which featured the infringing movie, and not the entire website. No more blocking entire websites — the ISPs are now required to be informed about the particulars of where the infringing movie is kept within 48 hours.

The clarification couldn’t have come at a more vital time, and will hopefully serve as a precedent to curb an alarming practice that can be traced back to 2002. Back then, the Delhi High Court was approached in a matter concerning the unauthorised transmission of Ten Sports by unlicensed cable operators. The result was the Court’s first John Doe order with respect to media transmission: a commissioner was appointed to search premises of unnamed cable operators and seize evidence by taking photographs and video films. This particular order was then relied on by the Court almost a decade later in pre-emptively injuncting piracy of UTV Software Communication’s Saat Khoon Maaf and Thank You. The trend escalated from there, with similar orders being obtained for a number of films including Don 2, Bodyguard, Kahaani and Department, to name a few.

Where the last few years have seen a steadily rising output of orders largely from the Delhi and Madras High Court, just last week it was the Bombay High Court that joined the fray. Approached by Viacom 18 Motion Pictures, it passed a John Doe pre-emptively banning the piracy of Viacom’s Gangs of Wasseypur prior to its June 22 release. Considering the Bombay High Court’s noted apprehension in granting ex-parte orders, this decision looked set to add further momentum to the John Doe juggernaut.

Instead, we get the Madras High Court’s welcome restraint. That vague injunctions are an abuse of process is a principle that has been noted time and again, with the Delhi High Court even noting that “vague and general injunction of anticipatory nature can never be granted”. This is coupled with the larger access to information and free speech issue that has been raised more vocally following the ire with the mass block of file-sharing websites. The antecedents to this scenario may well be the media infrastructure cases of the ‘50s and ‘60s, where newspaper content was indirectly being regulated by way of regulation of newsprint, advertisement space, etc. Recognising these indirect control mechanisms in their ultimate speech-restricting form, the Supreme Court struck them down as unreasonable restrictions to the right to free expression under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution.

Prevention isn’t always better than cure. The Madras High Court has thankfully taken one step in the direction. What is left dangling is the other big question — that of the intermediary rules. There may now be a barrier to blocking of entire websites in this manner, but as so many internet users have found, one doesn’t have to necessarily approach the Courts if they want internet service providers to take down content: the ISPs are happy to do that for free. As a Centre for Internet and Society study found, takedown requests sent to ISPs, no matter how trivial or flimsy, will for the most part be met by acquiescence of the order. Without appropriate checks and balances, the intermediary will over-comply.

While the ISPs’ intervention before the Madras High Court is an encouraging sign, it doesn’t mean that the arbitrary takedowns under the intermediary rules will cease to happen. The digital media site Medianama quotes an ISP representative citing concern that ISPs were being wrongfully vilified on the Internet — and (significantly) that it would adversely impact their business if video streaming was disabled for users. The same commercial considerations wouldn’t likely stand when it comes to the bit-by-bit requests that come forward under the IT rules. Along with focusing attention on the High Court’s clarification, we need to sustain the movement to strike down the intermediary rules and push for a more transparent and fair mechanism.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/no-more-blocking-of-websites

UID: Are your biometric I-cards stacked against you?

praskrishna — 2012-06-26T09:33:51Z

Imagine a rural family of five. Mom. Dad. Two kids. And Grandma. Assume too that they are below the poverty line. The day is coming when this family will have to give its biometrics out to myriad agencies.

This article by M Rajshekhar was published in the Economic Times on June 24, 2012

You know that Nandan Nilekani's Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) or the Registrar General's National Population Register (NPR) has been collecting biometrics for a while now.

But a set of other departments have entered the fray. This ranges from the PDS department, ministry of rural development (MoRD), states' education departments, the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), banks, the department of social welfare, the post office...they are all collecting biometrics (see Agencies Collecting Biometrics Right Now).

This is the latest iteration in India's tryst with biometrics. From a beginning where only the NPR — and, a little later, the UIDAI — were to capture biometrics, we have now reached a point where myriad departments and ministries are camping in India's villages and towns, capturing fingerprints and iris images.

Identity Thieves

There was to be one large database. Now, we are moving to a system where multiple agencies capture and store biometrics data in myriad servers. This is amplifying the risk of biometric theft.

As Sunil Abraham, the head of Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society says, "If biometrics is used as authentication factor then it would be possible for a criminal to harvest your biometrics — such as using a glass to collect fingerprints — without your conscious cooperation. Or the registrar can cache your biometrics and duplicate transactions."

As the number of databases containing biometrics rises, the risk of this information leaking out increases. There have been complaints against an UIDAI enrolment agency called Madras Security Printers that it had sold data to private companies. There were also charges that enrolment agencies had outsourced the enrolment work to other companies, which they are not allowed to do.

What complicates matters further is there are not many safeguards. The country doesn't have a policy on how biometrics can be captured, used, stored and destroyed. But before we get deeper into that story, it is useful to understand why multiple departments have begun collecting biometrics.

Biometric Rush

According to a senior bureaucrat who recently retired from the ministry of planning, the answer lies in the 2014 elections. "For the government, cash transfers are the large reforms that they think UPA 2 can point towards in the next elections. For this reason, they need all this up and running before 2014."

However, over the past few months, parts of the government are increasingly unsure if UIDAI and NPR will meet their targets. "I do not think the 2014 target can be met at all," says a senior official in the National Informatics Centre (NIC). "We have to enroll another 800 million people. Then, we have to deduplicate them. Then, we have to make the cards and distribute them."

This is one reason why a set of government departments are configuring their own alternatives. Take the Department of Financial Services (DFS). It has been testing an online, biometric system for cash payments in Haryana's Mewat district for months now. Here, each bank will store its customers' biometric information in its own servers.

If a customer of bank A goes to a banking correspondent (BC) agent of bank B, his biometrics would be forwarded by bank B to bank A for authentication. Once authenticated, the transaction will be completed. "We should be rolling the new system out nationally from July or August," says the bureaucrat.

The rural development ministry is also testing its payment system. Once the local administration tells the ministry about who worked how many days, the ministry will be able to put money into their accounts automatically via a payment gateway. Right now, this is done manually with the block development officer and sarpanch making out the cheques.

This pilot, says DK Jain, joint secretary, MoRD, started 3-4 months ago in parts of Gujarat, Karnataka, Odisha and Rajasthan. In another six months, it will be available across the country. And then, there is the PDS.

Here, different states are putting different systems in place. Andhra, says a senior mandarin in the food ministry, is going with UID, Haryana is looking at smart cards, Jharkhand is going with Aadhaar, MP and Gujarat are testing food coupons, while Chhattisgarh has decided to use RSBY and Orissa has chosen NPR.

Apart from this, data is also being collected by the RSBY and BC companies on behalf of the banks handling welfare payments, or scrambling to meet their financial inclusion targets.

Sunil Abraham is quoted in this article.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/are-your-biometric-i-cards-stacked-against-you

Privacy Matters — Consumer Privacy

praskrishna — 2012-07-31T10:55:30Z

Privacy India, in partnership with the Centre for Internet & Society, International Development Research Centre, Society in Action Group and Privacy International, invites you to a public conference focused on discussing the challenges and concerns to consumer privacy in India. The event will be held at the Indian International Centre, New Delhi on Saturday, July 7, 2012, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

According to the Consumer Protection Act, 1986, a consumer is a broad label for any person who buys any goods or services for consideration with the intent of using them for a non-commercial purpose. Certain services that consumers use may, by their very nature, put an extraordinary amount of sensitive personal information into the hands of vendors.

Consumer privacy is concerned with accuracy of how a consumers information is collected and used. Because a consumers relationship with another entity is based on an exchange along consented terms, a breach in consumer privacy can be constituted as an action that was not agreed to. In the age of data collection – a breach in privacy occurs when information is used in different ways than was intended. Consumer privacy in India is determined at the sectoral level, and differs depending on the services that is provided for.

As corporations sell data banks, ISP's expose consumer habits, or ones personal information falls in the wrong hands – the consequences are far reaching, and can result in spamming, unwanted marketing, theft, or the violation can impact an individual's ability to buy a home, potential employment opportunities, or gain access to credit.

In India, the right to privacy has been a neglected area of study and engagement. Although sectoral legislation deals with privacy issues, India does not as yet have a horizontal legislation that deals comprehensively with privacy across all contexts. The absence of a minimum guarantee of privacy is felt most heavily by marginalized communities, including HIV patients, children, women, sexuality minorities, prisoners, etc. - people who most need to know that sensitive information is protected.

Since June 2010, Privacy India in collaboration with Privacy International, based in London, has been conducting workshops and engaging in public awareness. Participants include policy makers, researchers, sectoral experts, NGOs, and the public to discuss and deliberate different questions of privacy, its intersections and its implications with our everyday life. The discussions have ranged from topics of online privacy to minority rights and privacy and e-Governance initiatives privacy. The workshops have been organized in different cities - Bangalore, Guwahati, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Goa, etc.

Click here for the agenda

Please confirm your participation with natasha@cis-india.org

Download the invite here [PDF, 160 Kb]

Download our research here [PDF, 178 Kb]

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/consumer-privacy-delhi

Consumer Privacy Research

praskrishna — 2012-06-25T07:07:24Z

About our research on consumer privacy.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/consumer-research.pdf

Consumer Privacy Invite

praskrishna — 2012-06-25T07:03:16Z

Consumer privacy invite in New Delhi.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/consumer-privacy-invite

NET LOSS

praskrishna — 2012-06-25T06:15:06Z

Unless the IT Act is amended and the definition of ‘offensive’ online content clearly set out, attempts to gag the Internet will continue in our country, argues Abimanyu Nagarajan

The article was published in the Telegraph on June 20, 2012

Lately, the Indian government seems to be trying its best to control the Internet. In the past few weeks, dozens of file hosting or sharing sites have been blocked by court order. Earlier this year Union human resource development minister, Kapil Sibal, came down heavily on social networking sites and the Internet and waxed eloquent on the need to weed out “offensive” content there.

In fact, this week Google said that there was a 49 per cent increase in requests for content removal from India in the second half of 2011 compared to the first half. Of the 101 requests to take down 255 items, only five were made by the courts. The rest were by politicians and policemen.

In the now infamous cartoon case, a professor of Calcutta’s Jadavpur University was arrested for circulating a cartoon relating to chief minister Mamata Banerjee via email. One of the charges levelled against him was that he was culpable under Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000.

Indeed, experts feel that the IT Act and its vague and loose definition of what constitutes “offensive” content on the Net or on a social networking site can easily be abused by those who wish to control online content.

Everything related to the Internet comes under the purview of the IT Act. As cyber law expert Pavan Duggal says, “The IT Act, 2000, covers all aspects pertaining to the use of computers, computer systems, computer networks, computer resources, communication devices as also data and information in the electronic format.”

Social networking sites and what gets posted there also come under the act. Section 2(1)(w) of the act uses the term “intermediary” to mean any legal entity that receives, stores or transmits a message, or provides any service with respect to that message on behalf of another person. By this definition social networking sites are “intermediaries” and there are strict sets of rules and guidelines listed under Section 43(a) of the act that they have to follow if they want to operate in India.

But what infuriates IT experts most is Section 66A of the IT Act, which leaves the term “offensive” utterly vague and fluid. It states: “Any person who sends, by means of a computer resource or a communication device (a) any information that is grossly offensive or has menacing character; (b) any information which he knows to be false, but for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred, or ill will, persistently makes by making use of such computer resource or a communication device; (c) any electronic mail or electronic mail message for the purpose of causing annoyance or inconvenience or to deceive or to mislead the addressee or recipient about the origin of such messages shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years and with fine.”

In addition, Rule 3 of the IT Intermediaries Guidelines, 2011, lays down that all Internet service providers, telecom companies, email and blogging services must take down content that is “harmful, harassing, blasphemous, defamatory…”. In fact, this provision allows you to send a takedown notice for any content that may have offended you and the item has to be deleted within 36 hours.

This is draconian, say IT experts. As Prashant Mali, a cyber law expert and president of Cyber Law Consulting, puts it, “The problem is that the offences listed under Section 66A are non-bailable, cognisable offenses. Technically speaking, since nothing is specific, you can always be arrested.”

Adds advocate Apar Gupta, a partner at law firm Advani and Company, “Section 66A is vague and stringent at the same time.”

The extent to which these provisions in the IT Act can be abused was recently demonstrated by the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet Society (CIS). Sunil Abraham, executive director of CIS, talks about how the group flagged content as being offensive on a variety of sites, even though they weren’t so.

“We sent takedown notices to e-commerce, content hosting, and news media sites,” recalls Abraham. “And in most cases, we found the intermediaries were very risk averse. For example, there was one site that was talking about game theory — a mathematics model on decision making. As part of the article, they had linked out to a few gambling sites to support their research. We sent notices saying that the site promoted gambling and was therefore offensive. They didn’t just remove the links, they took the whole site down.”

Mahesh Murthy, CEO of Pinstorm, a digital advertising firm, points out that this means individuals are being allowed to do what should ideally be done by a court of law. “People who are not part of the judiciary, who are not elected officials, are taking decisions on censorship.”

Gupta reveals that the sites are not even required to inform a user that their content is being taken down. “The content vanishes into a black hole. All they have to do is remove the flagged content within 36 hours of it being reported,” he says.

IT experts have been crying themselves hoarse demanding that the government amends the IT Act and clearly sets out definitions for what constitutes “offensive” content. As Duggal says, “It will do immense service to the nation if the IT Act, 2000, is amended so as to provide more definitions, illustrations and parameters of what constitutes offensive content. Since the act is silent on what constitutes offensive material, the scope for abuse of Section 66A remains wide open.”

So will the government heed the demand of cyber law professionals and other experts and amend the IT Act? That remains to be seen. But unless the government changes its posture vis-à-vis the Internet, and shifts from its position that it’s something that needs to be controlled, few believe that an amendment in this regard will be forthcoming any time soon.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/net-loss

CENSORSHIP 2020: The Future of Free Speech Online

praskrishna — 2012-06-28T10:01:00Z

The DC Chapter of the Internet Society, in conjunction with the U.S. Department of State, invite you to an informal discussion on CENSORSHIP 2020: The Future of Free Speech Online on Monday, June 25, 2012.

Published in Communication, Culture & Technology. For more info, visit here.

The Arab Spring demonstrated how Internet technologies such as Twitter, blogs, and Facebook could be used to mobilize protesters, publicize corruption and human rights violations, and connect activists and emigres. But in Iran , Syria , and elsewhere, we have seen repressive governments use the Internet to identify and track dissidents, to spread disinformation, and defame political opponents. Will the technologies of anonymization win out over new digital monitoring tools? Will new wireless data technologies foster democracy--or lead to more effective tracking and surveillance? Join us for an informal discussion with six people fighting for free speech on the Internet in their country--and around the world:

Dlshad Othman (Syria), an activist and IT engineer providing Syrians with digital security tools
Pranesh Prakash (India), a blogger and cyberlaw expert who is promoting a free Internet and online freedom of speech.
Koundjoro Gabriel Kambou (Burkina Faso), a journalist at Lefaso.net, is promoting human rights, democracy particularly among young people.
Sopheap Chak (Cambodia), the Deputy Director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR) and one of Cambodia ’s leading bloggers.
Andres Azpurua (Venezuela) has trained 300 youth on using Web 2.0 tools to publicize human rights violations.
Emin Milli (Azerbaijan), a writer who is using YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to spread information about human rights violations.

Moderator: Ambassador (ret.) Richard Kauzarlich, Deputy Director, Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC), George Mason University, http://traccc.gmu.edu/

Hosted by the Communication, Culture and Technology Program of Georgetown University 2nd Floor, Car Barn, 3520 Prospect St., N.W. , Washington , DC (enter from Prospect St.)

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/censorship-2020

Unlicensed Spectrum Policy brief for Government of India

praskrishna — 2012-07-26T08:29:17Z

by Satya N Gupta, Sunil Abraham and Yelena Gyulkhandanyan.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/unlicensed-spectrum-brief.doc

Unlicensed Spectrum Policy for Government of India

praskrishna — 2012-07-26T08:29:16Z

This file is authored by Satya N Gupta, Sunil Abraham and Yelena Gyulkhandanyan.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/unlicensed-spectrum-brief.pdf

Publication

praskrishna — 2012-12-14T10:01:05Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/publication