Centre for Internet and Society

FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OF 2013-14.pdf

praskrishna — 2015-07-28T01:11:43Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/FINANCIAL%20STATEMENTS%20OF%202013-14.pdf

Decriminalising Defamation in India

praskrishna — 2015-07-27T14:14:40Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/decriminalising-defamation-in-india.pdf

Technology Business Incubators

praskrishna — 2015-07-25T15:41:53Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/technology-business-incubators.pdf

Five Nations, One Future

praskrishna — 2015-07-18T02:24:48Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/five-nations-one-future.pdf

7th Best Practices Meet 2015

praskrishna — 2015-07-17T13:11:20Z

Data Security Council of India (DSCI) organized the 7th edition of its Best Practices Meet (BPM) from July 9 - 10, 2015 at Hotel ITC Gardenia in Bengaluru. BPM2015 had “Architecting Security for Digital Transformation” as its theme. Sunil Abraham and Elonnai Hickok were speakers at this event.

The two-day deliberations, reflected on policy, endeavours at national and industry levels, proposed industry steps, market response, best practices, industry standards and technology designs and see how they play their roles in architecting of information systems and enterprise security within organizations. Sunil Abraham was a panelist in the session "Architecting Security for transformation to Digital India". Elonnai Hickok was a panelist in the session "Steering privacy in the age of extreme innovation technology & business models."

See the Agenda

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/best-practices-meet-2015

Best Practices Meet 2015

praskrishna — 2015-07-17T13:08:28Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/best-practices-meet-2015.pdf

CIS Note on DNA Bill

praskrishna — 2015-07-17T01:37:01Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-note-on-dna-bill.pdf

DNA List of Offences

praskrishna — 2015-07-17T01:34:05Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/dna-list-of-offences.pdf

DNA Bill Functions

praskrishna — 2015-07-17T01:30:43Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/dna-bill-functions.pdf

Criminal Defamation: The Urgent Cause That has United Rahul Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal and Subramanian Swamy

praskrishna — 2015-07-16T13:45:04Z

Three years ago when the then Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy accused Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and his mother of misappropriation of funds while trying to revive the National Herald newspaper, the Nehru-Gandhi scion threatened to sue him.

The article by Betwa Sharma was published in Huffington Post on July 15, 2015. Sunil Abraham gave his inputs.

Swamy's response was characteristic: "Grow up and file a defamation case".

In a strange turn of events, the matter of criminal defamation has brought together an unlikely cast of characters in an ongoing petition in the Supreme Court--Swamy, Gandhi and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, who knows a thing or two about making allegations.

They are petitioning the Apex Court to strike down penal provisions criminalising defamation, which they argue, has a "chilling effect" on the fundamental right to free speech. Opinion is divided around the world on whether or not defamation ought to be a criminal offence. Because some jurisdictions have stricter defamation laws, some indulge in a practise known as 'forum shopping', or suing in jurisdictions with harsher views on libel and slander.

The three leaders have filed separate petitions that are now being jointly heard by the court. They are challenging the constitutional validity of Sections 499 and 500 of the Indian Penal Code which make defamation a criminal offence punishable with up to two years in prison.

A verdict striking down the colonial-era S. 499, used by the British to suppress those opposing their rule, could prove to be a huge victory for free speech in India. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court struck down the draconian Section 66A of the Information Technology Act as "unconstitutional and void".

There is cause for optimism. The Supreme Court has already said that the validity of criminal defamation laws must be tested against the free speech guarantees of the constitution. The bench comprising of Justices Dipak Misra and Prafulla C Pant have observed that political debates maybe excluded as a criminal defamation offence.

While Gandhi, Subramanian and Kejriwal have been slapped with defamation suits by political rivals, there have been long-standing concerns over the threat posed by these provisions to the media and those who use social media to express their opinions against the rich and the powerful.

The government of the day is keen to maintain the status quo. In a recent submission, it has argued that S.499 is now the only provision to deal with defamation on social media and the only protection for reputation of citizens. But free speech activists say there is no evidence to show that a defamation law deters a person who is out to spread lies.

The questionable utility of S.499, the scope for its abuse and the culture of self-censorship, they argue, removes it from the ambit of "reasonable restrictions" which the state can impose on free speech under article 19 (2) of the constitution.

"Hardly a day goes by in India without some rich and powerful person initiating or threatening to initiate defamation suits against rivals or traditional media or ordinary citizens on social media," said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet & Society. "It is unclear how much self-censorship is going on because Indians fearing jail terms avoid speaking truth to power.

On the issue of protecting people's dignity, Abraham said there is no prima facie evidence in India that criminalising defamation in India has resulted in the protection of the reputations of citizens from falsehoods.

"On the the other hand every other national media house and quite of few investigative journalists have been and continue to be harassed by criminal suits filed by the powerful," he told HuffPost India. "The chilling effect on speech is a disproportionate price for citizenry to pay for what is only a personal harm."

Under the leadership of Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, the Tamil Nadu government filed 125 defamation cases against The Hindu and other publications between 2001 and 2004. On Tuesday, she filed a defamation suit against news portal Rediff.com for running two articles related to speculations about her health.

In the United States, defamation claims by public officials and public figures were severely curtailed after its Supreme Court ruled in 1964 that the complainant needs to prove actual malice with "clear and convincing" evidence. Further, truth is an absolute defence against defamation in the U.S.

On Tuesday, Swamy and Gandhi also argued that truth should be defence in defamation suits. “Truth is not a complete defence in criminal defamation. For a nation with a national motto of Satyameva Devata it is ironic," Swamy said.

BJP leader Swamy is of the view that defamation should only be subject to a civil suit which can be redressed by payment of monetary compensation. But the central government has argued that a defamer could be too poor to compensate the complainant.

"I am not saying there is no such thing as defamation. You can sue someone for defamation, but you cannot deprive someone of his liberty," he said in a recent interview with The Sunday Guardian.

Jayalalithaa filed a defamation suit against the senior BJP leader who alleged that most of the boats of Indian fishermen captured by Sri Lanka belong to the AIADMK chief, her close aide Sasikala and DMK leader TR Baalu.

The suit against the Congress Vice President was filed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh for allegedly blaming the Hindu right-wing organisation for the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.

BJP leader Nitin Gadkari sued Kejriwal after his name was included in AAP's list of "India's most corrupt."

"The accused is in the habit of making false and defamatory statements without any basis. The statements made by the accused and his party members have damaged and tarnished my image in the eyes of the people," Gadkari told the court, last year.

Legal analysts also find it hard to predict just how far the Supreme Court will go to protect free speech. Its judgment against S.66A of the IT Act is regarded as one of the biggest victories for free speech in India. Justice Misra was on the bench that struck down the provision for being “open-ended and unconstitutionally vague," and not fit to be covered under Article 19 (2).

But last month, in a judgment regarded as a blow to free speech, it was Justices Misra and Pant who ruled that freedom of speech is not an absolute right.

Senior Advocate Gopal Subramanium had argued, "Freedom to offend is also a part of freedom of speech.”

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/huffington-post-july-16-2015-betwa-sharma-criminal-defamation-the-urgent-cause-that-has-united-rahul-gandhi-arvind-kejriwal-and-subramanian-swamy

Corporate push to Modi’s Rs.4.5-billion digital dream

praskrishna — 2015-07-16T02:26:24Z

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Rs. 4.5-billion digital dream seems to find favour with the corporate world, which calls it a “very progressive step” and “massive tech push”.

The article by Rakesh Kumar was published in the Statesman on July 13, 2015. Sumandro Chattapadhyay was quoted.

Modi shared his dreams at the recent Digital India Week in the capital and the event saw big names from the business world—Reliance Industries Ltd chairman Mukesh Ambani, Tata group chairman Cyrus Mistry, Wipro Ltd chairman Azim Premji, among others—supporting the initiative.

Showing its faith in Modi’s dream, Reliance Industries is all set to invest over Rs.2.5 lakh crore in the initiative that would focus on cloud computing and mobile applications, empowering every citizen with access to digital services, knowledge and information.

The initiative could boost the IT sector, which according to NASSCOM witnesses a robust growth in 2015, with the calculated revenue for FY 2015 at $147 billion, and a growth of 13 per cent from the corresponding period 2014.

“From an IT perspective, this is a sincere approach to problem solving with growth, realism and long-term transformation at the core,” said Manish Sharma, president, Consumer Electronics and Appliances Manufacturers Association (CEAMA) and managing director, Panasonic India, in an exclusive interview to thestatesman.com.

“Empowering citizens with the use of IT, we believe Digital India is a massive tech push to provide electronic governance and universal phone connectivity across the country,” he added.

CEAMA and Panasonic are willing to contribute to Digital India through technological expertise and commitment.

The Indian information Technology (IT) industry is reportedly pegged at $118-billion and DS Rawat, secretary general, ASSOCHAM, feels the Digital India initiative could be a “game-changer”.

Commenting on PM’s pledge to bring Internet connectivity to all Indians, Rawat told thestatesman.com: “The initiative is possible, provided the implementation of the schemes is done in a mission mode.”

“The business and industry will be the major beneficiary in terms of quality of governance, which is possible through digital initiative. Besides, the industry itself has to prepare to deal with new emerging business models such as e-commerce,” he added.

Modi, at the Digital India launch, said that “e-governance will be quickly changed into m-governance, and ‘M’ does not mean Modi governance, it means mobile governance.”

Both, big corporate houses and small players hailed the PM’s remark.

“It is good initiative for the railway sector in terms of passenger amenities, online procurement and technological up gradation,” said Amit Goel of Aggarwal Engineers in an interview to thestatesman.com.

The company is active in the railway sector.

When asked how Digital India initiative would help small companies, Goel said: “It will help us in many ways. By adopting e-governance, small companies can check and bid for the online procurement and will be able to interact with the concerned department through digital technology.”

Anil Valluri of NetApp India said: “Digital India is one of the most significant transformations the country will witness by eventually connecting over a billion people of India, with technology as its focal point.”

When it comes to IT transformation, cyber security emerges as a vital issue.

Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), described the issue of digital security as the key to the “operationalisation and sustainability of the Digital India initiative”. “We expect the government not only to build administrative structures for ensuring cyber-security of the information systems, but also enable legal frameworks for protecting citizens from unlawful and unforeseen abuses of their digital identities as well as their digital assets.” Having said that, he praised the PM’s move, saying it will bring together various existing and new initiatives for building “network infrastructures for expanded public access, electronic governance systems for effective delivery of services, under the national policy umbrella of 'Digital India’”.

Rajiv Kapur, managing director, Broadcom India, pointed out another benefit of the ubiquitous broadband sector, which according to a report, faces certain challenges such as low rural penetration, stagnant data usage over the years and limited broadband services.

“It will help bring parity between the rural and urban India,” he said and added: “Today, we need solutions that allow the majority of rural Indian population to continue to stay at their homes, and not migrate to cities.”

In a knowledge economy, the biggest difference that will make an impact is education.

"Healthcare is another area where having connectivity can make big difference in quality of life," he said.

“E-delivery of governance and services is important for the efficient use of government resources, and allows for collaborative, transparent and more efficient governance," the Broadcom managing director added.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-statesman-rakesh-kumar-july-13-2015-corporate-push-modis-billion-digital-dream

NVDA E Speak June 2015 Report

praskrishna — 2015-07-15T01:53:36Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/nvda-e-speak-june-2015-report.pdf

National Resource Kit Team

praskrishna — 2015-07-13T01:30:02Z

The team that worked for the Compendium:

Centre for Law and Policy Research

Centre for Law and Policy Research (CLPR) is a non-profit organization based in Bangalore. CLPR aims to promote public policy research, litigation and legal education. As part of its policy work, the CLPR has initiated projects in the form of pre-legislative recommendations to proposed legislations. The Centre also undertakes intensive research tailored to author text books suitable for law students. CLPR is also involved in certain litigation work in the High Court of Karnataka, Supreme Court and the sub-ordinate courts. As part of its litigation work, the Centre has taken up matters, mainly by way of public interest, in the areas of disability law, environment, public health and urban infrastructure development law.

For more information on CLPR, see here.

Anandhi Viswanathan

Anandhi Viswanathan worked as a consultant for the National Resource Kit project and overall for the Accessibility programme.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/resources/national-resource-kit-team-members

Meeting Notes on FOSS Roundtable

praskrishna — 2015-07-09T01:01:25Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/meeting-notes-on-foss-roundtable.pdf

'IRCTC’s Aadhaar play can violate SC order and derail National Security'

praskrishna — 2015-07-07T15:10:08Z

Your online railway bookings are going to become a wee bit more difficult if they aren’t already so.

The blog entry by Shubhra Rishi was published by CIO.IN on July 1, 2015. Sunil Abraham gave his inputs.

That is, if the IRCTC makes Aadhaar card compulsory during the registration process for e-ticketing. The move, according to a recent announcement by IRCTC, will ensure that users registering on the IRCTC website are properly identified of their identity and address through the Aadhaar card number verification.

So in case, you already have an Aadhaar card, then you need not worry. For those who don't have it yet or are reluctant to apply for it, are in for a tough time.

According to Sandip Dutta, public relations officer at IRCTC, the plan, although still in the preliminary state, is to make Aadhaar compulsory which will prevent touts from further exploiting the e-ticketing platform.

IRCTC which already has around three crore registered users, adds 15,000 new registrations every day. Just to give you the scale of an IRCTC website, a 15-minute tatkal window has about 1,000,000 people trying to log on to the IRCTC website. This means a new user won't be able to book a railway ticket on the IRCTC site until he owns an Aadhaar card.

Also Read: Indian CISO don’t trust UID with their data

"This is a complete overkill and will only result in harassment of an ordinary citizen," says Sunil Abraham, executive director at The Centre for Internet & Society. "Aadhaar, he says, should be used to prevent politicians and bureaucrats from engaging in big-ticket fraud or whole-sale corruption. It should be used to make the state more accountable to citizens and not the other way around. It is unfortunate that techno-utopians are using biometric technology to fight retail corruption or small-ticket fraud.

If IRCTC makes Aadhaar mandatory for user registrations, they will be in direct violation of the Supreme Court's interim order of September 23, 2013 where it has ordered that no person should suffer for not getting the Aadhaar card in spite of the authority making it mandatory, since government says it is voluntary.

On March 24, 2014 again, the Supreme Court reiterated its earlier order of 2013 and directed all government authorities and departments to modify their forms/circulars, etc., so as to not compulsorily require an Aadhaar number. In the same order the Supreme Court also restrained the UIDAI from transferring any biometric data to any agency without the consent of the person in writing as an interim measure.

According to cyber law expert and Supreme Court Lawyer, Pavan Duggal, till the time Aadhaar has been brought to a legislative sanctity, no government agency must make it compulsory and if they do so, they will be in gross violation of the order and will be held for contempt of court. "The National Identification Authority of India Bill that intends to give statutory backing to UIDAI (introduced in Rajya Sabha in 2010) is yet to be passed by the Parliament. Aadhaar is also non-compliant with the Information Technology Act 2000," says Duggal. Aadhaar, he says, is the unwanted child that hasn't proven legitimacy yet.

The illegitimacy, which continues to prevail due to several anomalies in the UIDAI’s Aadhaar allotment process. In March this year, about 20 million people enrolled in Delhi for an Aadhaar identification number, according to Census. However, the UIDAI generated about 17.7 million unique numbers in Delhi, about a million more than the city population.

In another incident, Aadhaar numbers were assigned to adult residents in 13 of the country's 36 states, and union territories surpassed their respective population as per 2011 census figures. However, the UIDAI blames that ‘gaps’ in census evaluation may have resulted in inaccuracy of the population data.

There have also been bizarre instances in the past where some Aadhaar cards displayed pictures of an empty chair, a tree, and a dog instead of the actual applicant.

So how does it aid unscrupulous elements in misusing the flaws of the Aadhaar card system?

To start with, Aadhaar captures biometrics of a user, which is neither permanent nor immovable, says Dr. Anupam Saraph, innovator, professor and an advisor in governance, informatics and strategic planning.

"Biometrics change during the life of a person, sometimes even within a year, or without warning. Biometrics can be easily stolen, replicated or misused as has been demonstrated by instances of fingerprints and iris scans of high profile targets being hacked. The enrollment agencies that have captured the biometric have the entire demographic and biometric database in their possession and as such it can be misused or stolen. Once the biometric fails or is stolen, all the functions that have crept to link access to the biometric are denied with little or no recourse to the victim," says Saraph.

“Another benign scenario may be large scale fake bookings to make tickets pricier, the malignant scenario will be entire trains used to transfer armies of anti-nationals and terrorists. Therefore, the Railway Minister must rise to cancel any such plans," says Saraph, and the Home Minister and Defence Minister must immediately scrap the linkage of Aadhaar to any database, require that the entire UID is destroyed as was done in the UK. “This kind of compromise requires the initiation of a time-bound judicial probe by a retired CAG and Supreme Court Judge supported by the CBI to investigate the exposure of the country to serious threats to national security due to UID,” he says.

And therefore, the bigger question isn't whether Aadhaar should be made compulsory or not, but whether it is a foolproof method to validate someone's identity. If it isn’t, then why is IRCTC playing the Aadhaar card?

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/cio-july-1-2015-irctc-aadhaar-play-can-violate-sc-order-and-derail-national-security