Centre for Internet and Society

Social media sites refuse Indian censorship request

praskrishna — 2011-12-08T07:23:51Z

Audio broadcasted by Radio Australia.

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Social media sites refuse Indian censorship request

praskrishna — 2011-12-08T08:26:45Z

The Indian government's proposal to crack down on offensive internet content has sparked anger among the population.

Telecommunications minister Kapil Sibal asked providers of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to screen out content that might be considered defamatory to religious and political leaders. But the move has been decried as a gag on freedom of speech.

Presenter: Kanaha Sabapathy
Speakers: Kapil Sibal, India's Telecommunications Minister; Milind Deora, Minister of State for Communications and IT; Varun Gandhi, Member of Parliament for the Opposition, BJP; Sunil Abraham, Executive Director of the policy research group, the Centre for Internet and Society

Listen to the audio here (Microsoft ASF video, 591 bytes)

Sunil Abraham spoke to Radio Australia. Follow the original broadcast by ABC Australia Radio here

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Social media promotions can backfire, too

praskrishna — 2013-11-14T05:24:44Z

Social media is a highly effective marketing tool for companies but its very ubiquity and the speed with which messaging goes viral has meant that it can hurt them badly as well, especially since platforms are not always moderated and can be hacked or misused.

The article by Ratna Bhushan and Varuni Khosla was published in the Times of India on November 11, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

It's not just bad language and racially or socially insensitive messages seemingly originating from official Twitter handles, some companies are guilty of poorly judged promotions resulting in consumer backlash.

On the eve of the country's largest broadcaster Star India rebranding its sport channels last week, the Star Sports Twitter handle posted abusive language. Star India said the account had had been hacked, but by then the tweet had gone viral.

Just before that, the Board of Control for Cricket in India Twitter handle had cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar's digital autograph along with bad language on the eve of his retirement from the sports.

Two days before Diwali, beverage and snacks maker PepsiCo ran a contest on Twitter asking contestants to tweet their version of the Ramayana. That caused outrage on social media, led by writer Chetan Bhagat.

PepsiCo quickly apologised and removed the promotion but not before it got flooded by tweets from those who were upset by the move. While Star and BCCI blamed hackers and PepsiCo's scored an own goal, social media experts say companies need to be more responsible.

"Our intent was to involve young Indians in one of India's most loved festivals. We took immediate action and withdrew the contest," the beverage maker's spokesperson said.

AStar Sports spokesperson also said the firm had apologised for the offensive tweet. "We have investigated the issue. A thirdparty vendor had abused his privileged access to the account. We are in the process of taking necessary action and will ensure that no such event recurs."

But ensuring third-party quality control may be easier said than done. "Many companies are unable to handle their social media operations because they usually outsource these to companies that don't get paid well enough (say Rs 50,000 to Rs 60,000 per month).

Hence the people handling the accounts could be anyone from an untrained 22-year-old fresh out of college or someone who has no skill set in the social media space," said Gaba.

Sometimes humour can turn offensive too. In the middle of last year, when Sachin Tendulkar made his eagerly awaited 100th international century, a tweet from insurance services firm Bajaj Allianz went: Congrats to Sachin for his long awaited 100th ton. Now don't delay your retirement planning. #RetireRich #JiyoBefikar.

That caused much offence to Tendulkar's fans. Or take the case of Fortis, which sought to promote breast feeding week last year with the hashtag AgarMaKaDudhPia-HaiTo. Predictably, this one too ran into trouble.

"Social media by definition, unlike broadcast media, cannot be controlled. Therefore, even if you take all conceivable precautions there can be unintended consequences. But India is culturally as complicated as a continent — therefore, it requires a very sophisticated understanding and nuance to pull off humour that is universally appealing and does not offend anyone," said Abraham. Last week, the seven-year-old Twitter's stock rose 73% on its debut, with a market value of $31 billion, making it one of the most successful IPOs of the year and beating even its own expectations. Globally, examples abound of companies or institutions making on Twitter bloopers.

"Companies shouldn't always come up with the excuse that their account was hacked... they need to be accountable. A senior member of the team should always oversee tweets before they're sent out," said Ankita Gaba, co-founder of socialsamosa.com, an Indian social media knowledge storehouse.

Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, a non-profit research organisation that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression and privacy, said, "The BCCI disaster is because they have taken automation too far. Automation of social media interactions can be useful but without careful human oversight, it can very easily be gamed by rogue elements online."

A PepsiCo India spokesman said the firm's #Ramayana140 Twitter contest "unintentionally caused some concern to consumers".

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/economic-times-november-11-2013-ratna-bhushan-varuni-khosla-social-media-promotions-can-backfire-too

Social media may influence 160 LS seats in 2014

praskrishna — 2013-04-15T07:13:52Z

Social media is likely to influence politics and elections in 160 of India’s 543 Parliament constituencies, making Facebook and Twitter users the nation’s newest voting bloc, a new study suggests.

This article by Zia Haq was published in the Hindustan Times on April 12, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

In these mostly urbanizing constituencies, social-media usage is now “sufficiently widespread” to influence the outcome of a general election slated for 2014, the study by IRIS Knowledge Foundation and supported by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), indicates.

On April 4, Congress scion Rahul Gandhi’s high-profile address to the Confederation of Indian Industry, a leading business forum, was trending topmost on Twitter in India that day, some posts by rivals mocking him.

A series of lectures by Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, a presumptive PM, this week too garnered strong social-media attention, with his and Gandhi’s supporters competing online to run the other down.

A deeply polarizing figure still, Modi is often accused of watching over a carnage that killed nearly 2000 people in 2002, mostly Muslims. Yet, he has pulled off a stunning online strategy to showcase Gujarat as India’s Guandong, a south China province with top GDP rankings and investment.

Research shows that social media is more persuasive than television ads. Nearly 100 million Indians, or more than Germany’s population, use the Internet each day. Of this, 40 million have assured broadband, the ones most likely to have at least one social media account.

“Unlike Obama, who used social media directly for votes, Indian politicians have tended to use it more to mould public discourse,” says Sunil Abraham, the CEO of The Centre for Internet and Society.

That is likely to change in 2014. Not surprisingly, Modi became the third politician globally, a fter Obama and Australian PM Julia Gillard, to host a political conference on Google+ hangout.

Chief ministers in states are also leveraging social media. Bihar has unveiled a re-branded campaign called, “Bihar ka haq” or Bihar’s Rightful Cause, on Facebook.

Social-media-impacted constituencies, according to the study, are those where Facebook users are more than the victory margin of the winner in the last Lok Sabha election, or where such users account for over 10% of the voting population.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/hindustan-times-zia-haq-april-12-2013-social-media-may-influence-160-lok-sabha-seats-in-2014

Social Media Aids Rescue Efforts in Flood-Hit Kashmir

praskrishna — 2014-09-12T05:10:34Z

As flood-ravaged Indian Kashmir faces a communication blackout, social media posts on Facebook and Twitter are playing a huge role in tracing people stranded in the region.

The article by Anjana Pasricha was published in Voice of America on September 10, 2014. Sunil Abraham gave his inputs.

More than 400 people in India and Pakistan have been killed in the floods which have engulfed the mountainous region, and tens of thousands are waiting to be rescued.

Aijaz Qaisar, who works in Bangalore, is desperate for news of his ailing, elderly parents and his brother’s family. They had to scramble to the third floor of their home in Kashmir’s summer capital, Srinagar, after floodwaters inundated the lower two floors.

“It’s a kind of attic, they are in an attic. It was again through Facebook, my brother, youngest brother, he had posted pictures of water all around…and after that no communication at all," he said. "[I am] completely, completely helpless.”

Qaisar has posted an SOS plea on Facebook, “please rescue Mr. Qaisar-ud-Din’s family” and given their address. Until Wednesday afternoon, he was still waiting.

“I am hoping, I am hoping that somebody would respond," he said. "I am hoping one call back telling me that water has not gone beyond, and there is food being supplied or at least water being supplied.”

Like Qaisar, tens of thousands of distressed relatives have flooded Facebook and Twitter with cries for help, urging rescuers and army personnel working in Indian Kashmir to reach their loved ones.

With phone and power lines down, those stranded are unable to call for help. And so such posts are helping to point rescue teams in the right direction. At the moment rescuers have virtually no way of identifying victims most urgently in need of help - the sick, the elderly and children.

While Qaisar has not yet been lucky, many others have. A Facebook exchange between the army and the sister of a woman, who is nine months pregnant, shows that soldiers responded to her plea on social media and rescued the stranded woman.

Army officials say all messages for help being received on its website are being forwarded to a group that includes senior commanders in the region. Starting Monday, the army also began putting up a list of rescued people on one of its Facebook accounts to keep relatives informed.

Self-help groups have also sprung up on Facebook sharing information on missing people. Google has allied with the National Disaster Response Force to create a database of stranded and missing people. People wanting to donate are connecting on the hashtag #Kashmirfloods.

Sunil Abraham at the Center of Internet and Society says social media can be a powerful tool for collaboration in situations like the ones faced by Kashmir.

“Through features like hashtag, you can form dynamic, express community,' he said. "Here social media has a marked advantage because an express platform for collaboration can be set up instantaneously.”

About 50,000 people have been rescued so far - 40,000 of them by the armed forces. But tens of thousands are still trapped in their homes.

The army, posted in huge numbers in the Himalayan region that borders Pakistan, is at the forefront of the massive rescue effort.

Atul Bhatia, an army official in Jammu region who turned a generator on an army truck into a mobile recharge point, told an Indian television channel that lack of communication is the biggest problem.

“The connect with relatives of theirs outside this area was the most important thing for the relatives and them to be assured that everything is fine," he said.

"With no electricity for five days out here, it was important their mobiles start working.”

The floods engulfed the region a week ago, devastating villages and towns, and destroying roads and bridges in the scenic mountain region.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/voice-of-america-september-10-2014-anjana-pasricha-kashmir-flood-social-media-aids-rescue

Social Media 1, Indian Government 0

praskrishna — 2012-04-27T04:44:39Z

The futility of the Indian government’s attempts to control what is posted on Facebook, YouTube and other social media sites was thrown into high relief this week, after a video purportedly showing Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singvi having sex in his office resulted in his resignation.

The article by Heather Timmons was published in the New York Times on April 26, 2012

Mr. Singhvi, who also is a prominent lawyer, said the video was a fake, but resigned from his spokesman spot and from a parliamentary law committee he headed Monday evening, to “prevent even the slightest possible parliamentary disruption,” he said in a statement.

The video, which has now been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people on YouTube and other social media sites, is neither explicit, nor immediately incriminating – most of it appears to show little more than the top of Mr. Singhvi’s balding head, in profile, bobbing above the top of his desk. He might be waxing his office floor, or searching somewhat frantically for a dropped contact lens.

Still, a Delhi High Court injunction on April 13 banned television stations from broadcasting the video, which was originally distributed to media outlets on a CD. Perhaps frustrated by their inability to show the footage in question, India’s television news stations have been engaged in unusually highbrow debate about whether India actually needs stricter privacy laws for public figures.

There’s no such talk on social media sites, though.

The video was quickly posted on Facebook, Pirate’s Bay and other social media and video-sharing sites. While a Facebook page especially created for it has been taken down, there are now dozens of versions of the video on YouTube, in increasingly pixelated versions as users copy and post it again and again. (One YouTube user even helpfully posted a video of the Facebook page, and filmed the process of opening all the links on the page.)

Social media companies received requests from Indian law enforcement officials and court orders asking them to remove the video, which they did, executives in social media companies said on background. But it kept popping up again and again.

Tejinder Pal Singh Bagga of the Delhi-based Bhagat Singh Kranti Sena, a right-wing group, told wire service IANS that he posted the video on Twitvid, which allows users to distribute videos via Twitter. “I am not afraid of these people and they deserve this,” he said. “I am prepared for any consequences,” he said.

Facebook officials said they couldn’t comment on the situation. The page in question that featured the Singhvi video was created with by a “fake” user, which is against Facebook’s rules.

Google received a copy of a generic court order from Mr. Singhvi’s lawyers on April 24 asking it to remove the video, which it followed.

“Our policy prohibits inappropriate content, on YouTube and our community effectively polices the site for inappropriate material,” the company said in an e-mailed statement. Inappropriate material includes videos that “contain pornography, harassment, content that violates privacy, illegal acts or explicit violence violate the YouTube community guidelines,” it said. Users can flag content they feel is inappropriate, she said, and then the company’s staff reviews the content and removes it if it violates guidelines. “In addition, Google acts to promptly remove an offending video if a court order requires it,” the statement said.

But since Google has taken down the first offensive videos and copies of videos, others have sprung up. Per Google’s general policy, these will only be removed if YouTube users or others complain about them.

On Wednesday, the Delhi High Court dismissed a petition by the Bar Council of Delhi (of which Mr. Singhvi is a member) seeking to take action against Mr. Singhvi’s driver, who had allegedly originally distributed the CD.

Investigating who first introduced the video to social media sites and circulated it there is next to impossible, Internet experts say.

“No country, even though its law might say so, is able to exercise jurisdiction across the world” on the Internet, said Sunil Abraham, the executive director of Bangalore’s Center for Internet and Society, a research and advocacy group. Because India does not have a bilateral cyber-crime agreement with the United States (as the European Union does), getting American companies like Facebook and Google to take down or investigate the source of content that offends Indian government officials can be a slow and cumbersome process, he said.

The Indian government may never be able to track down who first posted the video, Mr. Abraham said. “Drawing a chain of causality and trying to arrive at the first person who introduced it onto the Internet is a bit of a complicated task,” he said. “Even if you find one version of the story, there might be another one,” he said. In addition, the Indian government might only be able to access records from Indian telecommunications providers, he said, and related to Indian ISP addresses.

A screenshot of the YouTube page displaying several video clips that show up with the search terms “Abhishek Manu Singhvi sex CD.”

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/social-media-indian-govt

Social Media

praskrishna — 2011-12-13T03:17:51Z

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Social Media

praskrishna — 2013-04-15T08:26:14Z

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Social Mashup!

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T08:15:01Z

Save the Date Join us to meet India’s most passionate, innovative, and curious start-up social entrepreneurs for two groundbreaking days of conversations, connections and inspiration. This event will be held on 2-3 December 2010 at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad.

Who’s invited? Start-up social entrepreneurs, senior social entrepreneurs, funders/investors and anyone else interested in early stage social entrepreneurship.

What will you get? You’ll have direct access to resources that meet your immediate and long-term needs. You might meet your mentor or mentee, your investor or investee, and your CEO or team member. And did we mention that we'll have a selection of artists and musicians in residence, all set to spark your creativity? Believe us, you're in for a dynamic, inspiring, affordable and fun two days that truly captures the spirit of a start-up!

What will you not get? Panels that seem to be designed for the panelists, talks that fail to inspire and networking that begins and ends with an exchange of business cards.

Speakers

The speakers represent a diverse range of perspective, experience and approach. With all of these people in the same place, sparks of social change are sure to fly.

Sachin Malhan, Inclusive Planet
Prema Gopalan, SSP
Gijs Spoor, Zameen Organics
Solomon Jayaprakash, Ashoka
Sunil Abraham, Mahiti Infotech Pvt Ltd
Ravi Agarwal, http://www.toxicslink.org/
Murali Mohan, Mukteshwari Bosco
Sunitha Krishnan, Muthu Velayutham
Dr Jayaprakash Narayan, Lok Satta Party
Vipin Thekkekalathil, Ashoka's Youth Venture India
Pankaj Jain, Acumen Fund
Payal Gupta, Flow Consulting
Rob Katz, Acumen Fund
Aarti Madhusudan, Governance Counts

Download the schedule

Contact

E-mail socialmashup@unltdindia.org or call + 91 22 3222 0475 or write to us at 4th floor Candelar Bldg, 26 St John Baptist Rd, Bandra W, Mumbai 400 050.

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Social Mashup

praskrishna — 2010-11-23T11:58:12Z

file

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Social

praskrishna — 2011-11-14T06:38:37Z

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Snooping technology: Will CMS work in India?

praskrishna — 2013-07-22T07:19:02Z

The Indian government plans to spend $132 million on setting up its brand new Central Monitoring System this year.

Pierre Fitter's article was published in FirstPost on July 17, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Several articles have raised valid questions about privacy violations, including this one by Danish Raza. Elsewhere, Pranesh Prakash has raised important points about how CMS may actually violate several laws and at least one Supreme Court verdict.

I ask a much more basic question: will CMS work? Can it really help security agencies eavesdrop on criminals and terrorists, despite several known technical hurdles?

	Encryption In 2008, a prominent Brazilian banker and investor named Daniel Dantas was arrested and charged with money laundering and tax evasion along with a former mayor of Sao Paulo. For five months, the Brazilian National Institute of Criminology tried to read the contents of his hard drive but failed to crack it. Dantas had encrypted his data using a free program called Truecrypt. The INC sent the hard drive to the FBI in the US, which spent a whole year trying to crack it; it too failed. Dantas’s use of encryption likely helped him escape the money laundering and tax evasion charges. He was ultimately convicted of attempting to bribe a police officer.

Encryption

In 2008, a prominent Brazilian banker and investor named Daniel Dantas was arrested and charged with money laundering and tax evasion along with a former mayor of Sao Paulo. For five months, the Brazilian National Institute of Criminology tried to read the contents of his hard drive but failed to crack it. Dantas had encrypted his data using a free program called Truecrypt. The INC sent the hard drive to the FBI in the US, which spent a whole year trying to crack it; it too failed. Dantas’s use of encryption likely helped him escape the money laundering and tax evasion charges. He was ultimately convicted of attempting to bribe a police officer.

This story illustrates a fundamental loophole at the heart of CMS. A criminal, using free and easy-to-use software, can protect his data from even the most advanced surveillance tools available in law enforcement. NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden himself used encrypted email to communicate with journalists at the Guardian. In an online chat where he took questions from the public, Snowden noted that encryption was “one of the few things that you can rely on” to protect you from the eavesdropping behemoth created of the NSA.

It should hardly be surprising then, that terror groups have been encrypting their emails and data for at least the last five years. In fact Al Qaeda developed its own encryption software called ‘Mujahideen Secrets’, to encrypt emails, chat sessions and files. Version two of Mujahideen Secrets even included a tool to delete files securely so that they could not be recovered using special software if the computer was captured. Al Qaeda’s links to several terror groups operating in India has been widely reported in the past. It is not inconceivable that they have shared their encryption software with their comrades-in-arms.

Over the years it has become easier to encrypt one’s communication. YouTube tutorials train even novice users to set up email encryption within minutes. Phone calls, text messages and online chats can also be encrypted with free, easy-to-install apps.

The biggest problem with encryption is that it is virtually impossible to break the code in a time frame that’s useful for law-enforcement purposes. Without getting too technical, modern encryption relies calculating the prime factors of very, very large integers. In 2009, a group of some of the world’s best-known mathematicians and cryptographers reported that it took them four years to factor a 768-bit integer. They estimated it would take 1,000 times longer to factorise a 1024-bit integer. GPG, which is the most widely-used email encryption software, allows users up to 4096-bit encryption. Unless you have the password to the encrypted files, it would take you a very long time to crack the encryption.

Here’s an example to help you understand why encryption makes CMS redundant. Let’s say the system intercepts an encrypted email sent by a LeT handler in Karachi to a sleeper cell in Mumbai. The email contains instructions to detonate a bomb in a specific market at a specific time four days from now. Even if India’s intelligence agencies managed to link up every computer they had available to process the encryption, they would still not be able to crack it in time to learn the details and stop the attack.

What about ‘Metadata’?

It should be noted that encryption only protects the body of the email. The metadata, including the sender’s and receiver’s email addresses remain unencrypted, else the service provider would be unable to send the email to its destination. Law enforcement agencies often partner with email providers to track down the exact computer on which tell-tale emails were read.

However, this method of tracing criminals has a limitation. Programs such as TOR and Hotspot Shield disguise the IP address of a user’s PC. For example, when I use TOR, Facebook will often ask me to confirm my identity as it sees me as logging in from an unfamiliar location. TOR has thousands of servers around the world through which it bounces your data before sending it to its destination.

There is another limitation to using metadata. Due to obvious legal hurdles, CMS will only be deployed to capture communication within India. If terrorists were planning an attack from elsewhere in India’s neighbourhood (as happened with 26/11), we would have to rely on that country’s intelligence services for an alert. Good luck with that!

To make untraceable phone calls, terrorists have been known to use “burner” phones. These are pre-paid phones that are easily available in the US and other countries that do not require an ID for such mobile connections. They can be topped up using cash, which makes their prolonged using even more untraceable.

Even if CMS allowed spooks to listen to these calls, it would not be able to tell who was talking to whom. From details that emerged following the Abbottabad operation that killed Osama bin Laden, we also know that terrorists have been trained to turn off their phones and remove the battery to prevent being tracked even while not on a call.

So what is CMS good for?

If terrorist communications can easily be hidden from CMS, you have to wonder why the government is going through all the effort and expense to set up such a system. What good can come off the mass hoovering of data of ordinary citizens’?

Imagine if CMS intercepted a ‘BBM chat’ between two businessmen, who were discussing a contract that could affect the business interests of a government MP.

Imagine the government getting access to emails exchanged between a journalist and a source in the IAS who wants to expose a major corruption scandal involving a cabinet minister.

Imagine if the government had access to phone calls between two opposition politicians discussing election strategies.

What if CMS tracks a PhD candidate who is researching Naxal terror and has downloaded Naxal pamphlets? What if this researcher has been able to establish contact with Naxals for an interview. Can the government use such data to charge him with participating in a Naxal conspiracy, even if his only intention was to research their motivations? In a country where chief ministers label their critics as “Naxals” for merely raising questions, are we certain we want such unmitigated power in the government’s hands?

These are all questions well worth asking, especially since the ostensible reason for setting up the CMS—monitoring terrorists and criminals—is a fool’s errand at best.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/firstpost-pierre-fitter-july-17-2013-snooping-technology

Snooping Can Lead to Data Abuse (PDF)

praskrishna — 2011-06-09T12:09:54Z

An article by Sunil Abraham in Mail Today on June 9, 2011.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/publications/snooping-data-abuse.pdf

Snoopgate

praskrishna — 2013-11-19T09:03:27Z

Snoopgate

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Snehashish Ghosh

praskrishna — 2012-10-04T09:12:05Z

Snehashish Ghosh

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