Centre for Internet and Society

Wikipedia Live Phone-in Programme on HMTV

praskrishna — 2013-06-18T05:54:01Z

Vishnu Vardhan took part in a one hour live phone-in programme on Wikipedia. This was telecasted in HMTV on June 1, 2013.

Dr. Rajasekar, Administrator on Telugu Wikipedia; Malladi Kameshwararao, Journalist and Telugu Wikipedian; Rahimanuddin Shaik, Telugu SIG, Wikimedia India Chapter; and T. Vishnu Vardhan Programme Director, CIS-A2K participated in a one-hour live phone-in programme on Telugu Wikipedia broadcast by HMTV (a Telugu News Channel) on June 1, 2013. This is probably for the first time a television news channel in India has done a live phone-in programme on Wikipedia. HMTV had also done a half-an-hour feature on Wikipedia which was broadcast on May 30 and May 31, 2013.

Videos

Part 1

Part 2

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/wikipedia-live-phone-in-programme

Govt mulls advisory on privacy issues related to Google, Facebook

praskrishna — 2013-07-02T14:31:48Z

The Government is set to harden its stand against foreign Internet firms in asking them to comply with Indian laws.

The article by Thomas K Thomas was published in the Hindu Business Line on June 10, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

According to a top Government source, an advisory may be issued in the interest of general public to make them aware of the privacy issued while using services offered by foreign Internet companies such as Google and Facebook.

This follows an international media expose on how US agencies were getting access to user data from Internet companies such as Google and Facebook.

Final Strategy Soon

Top official in the Ministry of Telecom and IT told Business Line that the National Security Advisor, under the Prime Minister’s Officer, is discussing the issue and will outline the final strategy on Wednesday.

The key concern is that the US security agencies may have collected data from key Indian accounts using services from any of the Internet companies. A number of Government officials also use email service from Google and MS Outlook, which may have been accessed by the US agencies.

The other major concern is that Indian security agencies have also been seeking access to data from these foreign companies but so far they have not obliged on grounds that they do not come under the purview of Indian laws.

“If the US Government can get access to data from these companies, why can’t the Indian Government be given access,” posed a top functionary of the telecom ministry.

While Google and other companies have denied knowledge to how the US agencies got access to their networks, industry experts said that it’s time India starts taking concrete steps to address the issue.

B.K. Syngal, Former Chairman, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd, said, “If we believed that our privacy is sacred then we would have taken effective domestic measures, years ago, to ensure that the information of our citizens remains private. To now say that multiple US companies have betrayed our trust is meaningless.”

Double Standards

Syngal said that there are double standards in the way organisations and Government is handling the issue. “As a start, lets stop giving too much time and space to the so called “Foreign Funded NGOs” teaching us on privacy. Our problem is that we are not China. We are so ill equipped that the third party interests aided and abetted by these NGOs would prevail,” said Syngal.

According to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society, companies such as Google and Facebook are foes when it comes to privacy issues and friends when it comes to freedom of speech. “An Indian consumer using any of these foreign websites has no privacy rights whatsoever. The Indian Government also cannot force these companies to follow Indian laws,” said Abraham.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/hindu-businessline-thomas-k-thomas-june-10-2013-govt-mulls-advisory-on-privacy-issues-related-to-google-facebook

Indien: Umfangreiche Überwachung von Onlineaktivitäten, Telefonanrufen und Textnachrichten

praskrishna — 2013-07-02T09:40:43Z

This blog post by Von Andrea Jonjic was published in a German website on June 10, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Click to read the original published by Netzpolitik.org

The Times of India berichtete diese Woche von der Errichtung eines Central Monitoring System (CMS), das es staatlichen Stellen ermöglichen soll, alle Onlineaktivitäten, Telefonanrufe und Textnachrichten inklusive Standort von Bürgerinnen und Bürgern zu überwachen. Nach Pranesh Prakash, Direktor am Centre for Internet and Society, könne man das Projekt nur schwer bewerten:

In the absence of a strong privacy law that promotes transparency about surveillance and thus allows us to judge the utility of the surveillance, this kind of development is very worrisome. Further, this has been done with neither public nor parliamentary dialogue, making the government unaccountable to its citizens.

Das Centre for Internet and Society hatte Anfang April eine Analyse über “India’s ‘Big Brother’” angefertigt. Zwei Jahre lang sei das System entwickelt worden und habe insgesamt 4 Milliarden Indische Rupien (ca. 56 Millionen Euro) gekostet. Es wird laut Indian Times direkt bei den Telekommunikationsanbietern installiert, staatliche Behörden haben somit einen direkten Zugang. Dazu gehören laut dem Centre for Internet and Society Bundespolizei, Anti-Terror-Behörde, Anti-Drogen-Behörde und die Steuerbehörde.

Laut Pavan Duggal, Anwalt am Obersten Gerichtshof und spezialisiert auf ‘Cyber Law’, gibt sich die Regierung mit dem CMS beispiellose Befugnisse zur Überwachung der Onlineaktivitäten von Bürgerinnen und Bürgern – und das könne zu enormem Missbrauch führen. Bisher habe sich die Regierung kaum dazu geäußert, was eigentlich in welchem Ausmaß überwacht werden soll. Im Dezember 2012 habe der IT-Minister Milind Deora lediglich geäußert, dass man sich an die Gesetze halten werde.

Wir wollen netzpolitik.org weiter ausbauen. Dafür brauchen wir finanzielle Unterstützung. Investiere in digitale Bürgerrechte.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/netzpolitik-june-10-2013-indien

Facebook, Google deny spying access

praskrishna — 2013-07-02T10:18:48Z

The CEOs of Facebook and Google on Saturday categorically denied that the US National Security Agency had "direct access" to their company servers for snooping on Gmail and Facebook users. But both acknowledged that the companies complied with the 'lawful' requests made by the US government and shared user data with sleuths.

The article by Javed Anwer was published in the Times of India on June 9, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

In a post titled "What the ...?" Google's official blog, CEO Larry Page wrote, "We have not joined any program that would give the US governmentâ€”or any other governmentâ€”direct access to our servers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday."

A few hours later, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded. "Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers... We hadn't even heard of PRISM before yesterday," he wrote on his page at the social media site.

According to a few PowerPoint slides allegedly leaked by an NSA official, nine technology companies - Google, AOL, Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, Skype, Facebook, YouTube and PalTalk - are providing the US government easy access to user data. While all companies have denied being part anything called PRISM, Facebook and Google have been most vocal about it.

A few hours after Facebook and Google statements, the New York Times said in a report that technology companies had "opened discussions with national security officials about developing technical methods to more efficiently and securely share the personal data of foreign users".

"In some cases, they (companies) changed their computer systems to do so," noted the NYT report.

The statements by the CEOs have done little to allay privacy fears. "The denials from the companies look highly coordinated, including similar phrases in all their responses. I don't think they are lying outright, though the NYT report suggests that they are telling a half-truth. They may not provide the US government 'direct access' to all their servers, but may be providing indirect access, or may just be responding to very broad FISA orders," said Pranesh Prakash, a policy director with Centre for Internet and Society in India.

On Friday US president Barack Obama had tacitly acknowledged NSA surveillance programmes aimed at non-US citizens. "You can't have a hundred per cent security and also then have a hundred per cent privacy and zero inconvenience. You know, we're going to have to make some choices as a society," he told reporters in the US.

Page and Zuckerberg also called on the governments to be more open about surveillance programmes. "The level of secrecy around the current legal procedures undermines the freedoms we all cherish," wrote Page.

Added Zuckerberg, "We strongly encourage all governments to be much more transparent about all programs aimed at keeping the public safe. It's the only way to protect everyone's civil liberties and create the safe and free society we all want over the long term."

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-javed-anwer-june-9-2013-facebook-google-deny-spying-access

Internet firms deny existence of PRISM

praskrishna — 2013-07-02T07:47:27Z

Nothing is private anymore. According to a leak in the US, which revealed the wide reach of a mass surveillance programme by intelligence agencies, messages, posts, chats on your computer or phone are all vulnerable to interception, thanks to direct access to servers of major tech companies.

The article by Javed Anwer and Ishan Srivastava was published in the Times of India on June 8, 2013. Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash are quoted.

The existence of the programme, called Prism, was first reported by the Washington Post and the Guardian newspaper after they received a tip-off from a whistleblower in National Security Agency in the US. The whistleblower claimed that NSA has direct access to all the data that flows through the servers of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Sykpe, Youtube, AOL and Paltalk.

Later, the NSA reportedly acknowledged the existence of the programme but said that it collected data only from foreign nationals. While it may come as a relief to the US citizens, it underscores the fact that people not residing in the US, including Indians, are fair game. What is even more alarming is the fact that US authorities are using the technology companies headquartered in the country to spy on the rest of the world.

All companies named in the leaks have denied the existence of Prism. A Yahoo spokesperson said on Friday, ""Yahoo! takes users' privacy very seriously. We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers, systems, or network."

Privacy International, a privacy watchdog organisation, said it is possible that companies would not be aware of the government tapping into their servers. "Until we know whether this information was obtained through filters, interception, or some another method, it is difficult to know how the breadth of access the NSA has."

However, Indian users would seem to have no way to defend themselves if the US government wants to access their data. Pavan Duggal, a specialist in cyber law, said, "Indian users don't have any protection against the US authorities seeking their data from the US companies."

Technology companies said they comply with local laws while dealing with issues related to personal data of a user. In response to queries from TOI, both Google and Facebook said that they used "mutual legal assistance treaty" to handle international requests for data.

Mutual legal assistance treaty is understood to have governed by actual treaties that two nations may have between them for sharing of user data. A Facebook official said that if a US agency wanted to access the data belonging to an Indian citizen, the sleuths would have to follow the diplomatic channels and get the data only when Indian authorities have approved it.

Google too talked "mutual legal assistance treaty" but it didn't clarify how it worked. Google officials pointed out the company guidelines which noted that any non-US government agency would have to use mutual legal assistance treaty to access user data. But the company public guidelines don't make any mention of the procedure followed in the cases where a US agency requests data on non-US users.

Microsoft directed TOI to its official statement denying the existence of Prism. It refused to discuss how it handled the requests from US authorities seeking data of foreigners.

Pranesh Prakash, a policy director with Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), said that it was high time the Indian government stood up for its citizens.

"Indian government needs to come with a strong and clear law to protect the privacy of Indian users. The law has to make it clear to companies operating in India that they need to respect the privacy of Indian users, even when they are dealing with the governments outside India," he said.

However, providing direct access to servers to an agency like NSA may not necessarily be a breach of agreement between the users of websites like Google and Facebook and its owners. Sunil Abraham, executive director at CIS said, "I have not studied end-user agreements carefully, but usually they have provisions for communication interception and data access in accordance with legal procedure."

"But more importantly, this is a violation of US data access and interception law. The US government has been going around the world preaching Internet freedom to authoritarian regimes. And now it turns out that their practices are worse that many of the regimes they have been criticizing. That is why it is a complete scandal," Abraham said.

Besides, the surveillance may run contrary to a whole range of international legal instruments. For example, the ICCPR, ratified by the USA, says that "no one shall be subject to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his private life, family, home or correspondence," said Joe McNamee, executive director of European Digital Rights, a privacy watchdog based in Europe.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-javed-anwer-ishan-srivastava-june-8-2013-internet-firms-deny-existence-of-prism

Indian Government Quietly Brings In Its 'Central Monitoring System': Total Surveillance Of All Telecommunications

praskrishna — 2013-07-02T09:12:49Z

There's a worrying trend around the world for governments to extend online surveillance capabilities to encompass all citizens -- often justified with the usual excuse of combatting terrorism and/or child pornography.

The blog post was published in tech dirt on June 8, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The latest to join this unhappy club is India, which has put in place what sounds like a massively intrusive system, as this article from The Times of India makes clear:

The government last month quietly began rolling out a project that gives it access to everything that happens over India's telecommunications network -- online activities, phone calls, text messages and even social media conversations. Called the Central Monitoring System, it will be the single window from where government arms such as the National Investigation Agency or the tax authorities will be able to monitor every byte of communication.

This project has been under development for two years, but in almost total secrecy:

"In the absence of a strong privacy law that promotes transparency about surveillance and thus allows us to judge the utility of the surveillance, this kind of development is very worrisome," warned Pranesh Prakash, director of policy at the Centre for Internet and Society. "Further, this has been done with neither public nor parliamentary dialogue, making the government unaccountable to its citizens."

That combination of total surveillance and zero transparency is a dangerous one, providing the perfect tool for monitoring and controlling political and social dissent. If India wishes to maintain its claim to be "the world's largest democracy", its government would do well to introduce some safeguards against abuse of the new system, such as strong privacy laws, as well as engaging the Indian public in an open debate about what exactly such extraordinary surveillance powers might be used for.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/tech-dirt-june-8-2013-indian-govt-quietly-brings-central-monitoring-system

Governance in the Age of the Internet and Free Trade Agreements

praskrishna — 2013-07-03T05:04:39Z

Sunil Abraham was a speaker at this event organized by Thai Netizen Network on June 8, 2013 at Queen Sirikit National Convention Center. The Ministry of Information and Communication and the National Science and Technology Development Agency were co-hosts for the event.

Click to read the details of the event published on Internet Society website

In the age of accelerated international trade and the promotion of free flowing cross-border data transactions, countries and regions are working towards forming a commonly agreed modus operandi and protocols. These protocols seek to facilitate the growth of e-trade, ensure a secure data flow(economic transactions) and protection of its data in the network. In the recent, there has been strong attention by consumers and businesses with the growing scope and content of these agreements addressing Intellectual Property (IP). Emerging trend studies show that there is a growing practices to incorporate mutually exclusive arrangements without involving other stakeholders which happens in closed door negotiations i.e. government to government.

For instance, the European’s Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) proposal and the U.S. Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP).

The bigger concern raised by other stakeholders has been the secrecy of these arrangements and the insufficient protection of consumers and citizens rights in its consideration. So far, the lack of legitimacy and proportionality of legal policy measures has created unintended consequences and collateral damages in far reaching manners whether socially, economically or technologically. Citing practices of filtering technology, deep packet inspection, and Internet cut-off, are introduced by internet service providers to meet legal requirements. Activities in question may vary from country to country, some focus on violations of intellectual property, some on the control of political voices.

Notably, list of concerns have been raised explicitly by UN Special Rapporteur to adhere to the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression were recommended.

This workshop is aim to create discussion on the related topics among stakeholders both in Thailand and in the region of the direct and indirect implications of various developments.

Target: Regulators, consumer rights, human rights activities, Lawyers

Expected Outcomes

Understanding the dynamics of free trade agreements (i.e. APEC, TPP, and ACTA) and its implications on Internet regulations, national sovereignty, and civil rights from various perspectives. (Big picture)
Basic understanding of how various policy and technology related measures or solutions (i.e. digital rights management technology and deep-packet inspection) are used to address Intellectual Property (IP) and how it directly impacts freedom of expression and individual privacy.
Looking Ahead: The developments and upcoming legislations/regulation challenges in both Thailand and the region i.e. new draft of Computer-related Crime Act, new draft of Copyright Act, and the Personal Data Protection Bill.

Panelists

Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore
Konstantinos Komaitis, Policy Advisor, Internet Society, Geneva
Nakorn Serirak, Policy Advisor, Thai Netizen Network, Bangkok
Sawatree Suksri, Lecturer, Faculty of Law, Thammasat University, Bangkok
Lokman Tsui, Policy Advisor, Google Asia Pacific, Hong Kong

Moderator

Mike Hayes, Chair, International MA Program in Human Rights, Mahidol University

Click the PDFs below to download the full details and the presentation:

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/inet-bangkok-june-8-2013-governance-in-the-age-of-internet-and-fta

Digital Humanities for Indian Higher Education

praskrishna — 2013-06-07T11:30:29Z

The Access to Knowledge team from the Centre for Internet and Society in collaboration with HEIRA-CSCS, Tumkur University, CILHE-TISS and CCS (IISc) is hosting a one day Digital Humanities consultation on July 13, 2013 at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.

Note: Following is a draft text which will be updated soon.

The digital age has had a huge impact on higher education in the last decade, transforming the modalities of both teaching and research. Consequently the very foundations of the systems of knowledge production and dissemination are being re-examined. This is due to the impact that the digital turn has had on already established systems, and to the exciting possibilities that it offers for radically transforming these systems. In tertiary education for instance, one of the ways in which the digital impact has made itself felt is to move the classroom online or to make resources freely available online, thereby providing access for new constituencies.

For researchers, digital archiving and digital publishing has made possible the same widening of access, while also enabling innovative ways of reading traditional objects of inquiry through the use of computational methods. While these developments are not confined to a specific domain of knowledge, the term most often used to reference them has been ‘Digital Humanities’. The term has gained currency worldwide perhaps because of the seeming incongruity of the relationship between the conventional humanities disciplines and what is deemed a technological development. This is a relationship that has not only produced new approaches to old material, but perhaps — even more significantly — reconfigured the objects and domains of inquiry themselves, and re-tooled the modes by which we conduct our research.

The five host institutions have engaged with each other in different collaborative initiatives over the years. Most significant among them have been (a) the exploration of integration, inter-disciplinarity and dialogue between the natural sciences and the social sciences/humanities; and (b) the production and deployment of critical resources in Indian languages in the higher education sector. We seek to bring these interests together in the proposed consultation aimed at setting agendas for digital humanities in India.

Exploring the possible connections between the human sciences and the digital domain could throw up many productive directions for the higher education system. One of the biggest challenges facing the system in India today is the issue of access and the quality of that access. In the coming decade, Indian higher education is estimated to achieve a Gross Enrolment Ratio of at least 20% (from the existing 12%). This immense new inflow into the education system poses significant institutional and pedagogic challenges. With English emerging as the global language for knowledge production, there is pressure on the Indian higher education system to move towards English-based teaching and learning. Simultaneously, here is a cognitive issue: of effective comprehension. Students who are first-generation learners are finding it increasingly difficult to negotiate with the English-only curriculum that presents itself to many as an insurmountable hurdle.

A new set of possibilities could open up if one were to examine this issue from the perspective of the Indian languages. For over 150 years these languages have been used in all modern institutions and practices (from banking to statecraft) and have developed their own concept ecologies and rich traditions of public intellectual discourse. Currently these languages and practices are being thrust into the background by the globalization of higher education. Re-inserting them into our classrooms and institutional arrangements would be crucial from two perspectives: a) providing newer avenues for students to re-negotiate curricular content which is predominantly in English and b) infusing new source materials into social, political, economic and cultural research on India, thereby increasing the relevance and dynamism of Indian social sciences and humanities. Needless to say, technology will play a major role in this context. Not only will technology figure prominently in addressing the question of access, equity and outreach, it will also help in bringing hitherto inaccessible intellectual resources into easily available and distributable forms. Also crucial to the question of access is the scalability that digital technology offers.

Through this interdisciplinary consultation, we hope to chart out the possible directions for digital humanities in India, which would include, among others, a strong engagement with Indian languages as well as a rethinking of how the sciences and the humanities could intersect. All of this is likely to hold paradigm-changing consequences for higher education: involving for example online learning, technologically enhanced learning, archival practices, new research methodologies, and the production of new and locally relevant knowledges.

We invite participants to make short presentations of 15 minutes each reflecting on the questions raised in this note, and bringing to the table issues raised by the initiatives in which they have taken part so far.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/events/digital-humanities-for-indian-higher-education

‘Hacking’ sparks row over exam evaluation

praskrishna — 2013-07-02T08:58:17Z

Over the past two days, Cornell University student Debarghya Das’ blog post on ‘Hacking the Indian Education System’ has kicked off a debate across the country over the security of data published online and the practice of moderation of marks obtained by school students in board examinations.

The article by Vasudha Venugopal and Karthik Subramanian was published in the Hindu on June 7, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The 20-year-old Cornell student extracted large amounts of class X and XII student results from a website that hosted the ICSE results using an automated program. Over 1,760 schools are affiliated to the ICSE and more than 1.2 lakh students took the board exams. Based on interpretation of the data sets, he raised allegations of large-scale “tampering” of marks by the authorities, ostensibly to maintain a healthy graph on the results.

Information Security experts said what the student did could not be viewed as a major security breach as much as it was exploiting a loophole. “Anyone with basic programming skills will be able to pull it off,” said Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Bangalore-based Center for Internet and Society. “There are add-ons available on popular internet browers that allow users to read the embedded codes on a website and run programs to mine data.”

Government websites are most susceptible to loopholes because too many people use them, says Nitesh Betala, Chennai coordinator of Null, a community of programmers that meets regularly to explore these loopholes in public domain websites. “We inform the system administrators directly hoping that they would plug loopholes before others exploit them.”

Debarghya too explained on his blog (deedy.quora.com) on Thursday that what he did was not illegal. “I did not illegally access any database system. All I did was access information that was available to any person who entered a number into the website could access. I simply mined the data.”

The ICSE council, on its part, said it does not publish the examination results in an online manner on its website. Instead, hard copies of results are despatched to schools. But the results are disseminated to third parties such as media organisations.

Krupakar Manukonda, who runs a blog on education for the not-for-profit organisation Takshashila, said: “The online results of all the boards have serious privacy problems. I think the respective boards should issue a passcode along with a hall ticket or entering Date of Birth, First name and Last name should be made mandatory to access marks.”

Das deduced after much data crunching and statistical analysis that the “marks had been tampered with”. His claim is supported by graphs purporting to show that nearly 33 scores, such as 91, 92, 86 and so on, were never awarded to any student.

However, teachers deny the allegation. “The word tampering is wrong. There is moderation that happens across education boards,” explained a teacher, who has worked with ICSE schools in Hyderabad and Chennai. “After the first round of corrections, raw data is given to officials and head examiners who analyse how students have performed. They try to ensure the bell curve of the results does not look awkward. If it does, the implication is that the checking has been either too liberal or very strict.”

After the first moderation, there is a final moderation which is often done by a different set of teachers. “There are some instructions given to us earlier, and some changes made later, depending on analysis by the board,” said a teacher. Teachers are not told about moderation methods in both CBSE and ICSE boards.

The ICSE council says that it does follow the practice of moderation. “In keeping with the practice followed by examination conducting bodies, a process of standardisation is applied to the results, so as to take into account the variations in difficulty level of questions over the years (which may occur despite applying various norms and yardsticks), as well as the marginal variations in evaluation of answer scripts by hundreds of examiners (inter-examiner variability), for each subject.”

Some teachers are however puzzled by the findings. “It is understandable that there are many 35s because a student on the verge of passing, is often pushed to the mark. But I don’t understand why there are no 85, 87, 89, 91 and 93. And, with cut throat competition for every single mark in colleges, teachers are very careful, especially with top scoring papers,” said another senior teacher.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-june-7-2013-vasudha-venugopal-karthik-subramanian-hacking-sparks-row-over-exam-evaluation

Indian student in Cornell University hacks into ICSE, ISC database

praskrishna — 2013-07-02T07:39:45Z

A 20-year-old Indian student from Cornell University hacked into the database of ICSE (Class X) and ISC (Class XII) school exam results, exposed glaring anomalies in the marking system and went on to merrily write about his exploits in an online post.

The article by Kim Arora was published in the Times of India on June 6, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Kolkata-born Debarghya Das, majoring in computer science, says that all he had to do was run a simple program that entered all roll numbers after defining a range to get access to all the results. "It is shocking they haven't implemented a more secure system," Das told TOI on phone from New York.

After the result's data was crunched, analysed and plotted in graphs, Das discovered an interesting incongruity in the marking system: there are 33 different scores unattained between the passing mark of 35 and the maximum of 100 by the nearly 1,50,000 who appeared for the ICSE (Class X) exam. According to Das' findings, not a single student got the following marks: 36, 37, 39, 41, 43, 45, 47, 49, 51, 53, 55, 56, 57, 59, 61, 63, 65, 67, 68, 70, 71, 73, 75, 77, 79, 81, 82, 84, 85, 87, 89, 91, 93. Similarly, in the case of ISC (Class XII exam) a set of 24 marks between 40 and 100 were found to be unattained.

When contacted, chairperson of the CI SCE (Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations) Gerry Arathoon, refused to comment on both data security and the unattained marks. "I can't say anything until I have had a look at things myself," he said.

Das says that the missing marks indicate that perhaps they were tampered with. He offers mathematical and statistical arguments to defend his position in his online post. He says that the ISC anomaly appears to be a case of awarding "grace marks" and writes -- "Everything from 35 onwards, and most things from 23 onward seem blindly promoted to a pass mark."

	Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Center for Internet and Society, says one needn't even be a techie to execute such a hack. "You don't need real technical skills to do this. You just need to figure out the ranges and feed them in. It is an interesting revelation that the website does nothing to obfuscate the javascript for security, but one can still retrieve data without that information. Once you have the data, it requires two minutes of programming to get it in a spreadsheet," says Prakash. In his post, titled "Hacking into the Indian Education System", Das wrote that he was doing this to "demonstrate how few measures our education board takes to hide such sensitive information".

Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Center for Internet and Society, says one needn't even be a techie to execute such a hack. "You don't need real technical skills to do this. You just need to figure out the ranges and feed them in. It is an interesting revelation that the website does nothing to obfuscate the javascript for security, but one can still retrieve data without that information. Once you have the data, it requires two minutes of programming to get it in a spreadsheet," says Prakash. In his post, titled "Hacking into the Indian Education System", Das wrote that he was doing this to "demonstrate how few measures our education board takes to hide such sensitive information".

The student also told the TOI that it wasn't possible to change any values in marks and upload fudged data again, and that he made any significant progress in this direction only about 3-4 days after the results were announced. His online post says he also has the data for CBSE class XII. Though he hasn't yet made it public, he does admit it was harder to crack than CISCE, though not altogether difficult.

Schooled in Kolkata, Das is curren tly interning at Google, working on YouTube's captioning system. He is also working on a tongue-controlled game and has earlier been active in game and applet design. The idea to hack the results came to him fo llowing a desire to help two close friends who had recently taken the exams.

Das, nicknamed Deedy, told ToI that he worked on the ICSE and ISC results off and on for a week, but it essentially took about 4-5 hours to get all the data."It took me more time to write the blog post," says Das, referring to his 19-page post with all the graphs, data and explanations that is currently online.

For Das, there was only one other takeaway from the whole exercise. "Regardless of any tampering, it would be nice to see a transparent exam scheme. SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) publishes everything related to the exam results every year. It is inconceivable that a national level exam board doesn't do that," he says.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/the-times-of-india-kim-arora-june-6-2013-indian-student-in-cornell-university-hacks-icse-isc-databas

The Geopolitics of Information Controls: A Presentation by Masashi Crete-Nishihata

praskrishna — 2013-06-26T09:56:01Z

Masashi Crete-Nishihata will give a talk on Citizen Lab's activities and present its approach to the study of information controls through recent research and case studies. The talk will be held on June 19, 2013 at TERI Auditorium in Bangalore, 5 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

The Citizen Lab

The Citizen Lab is an interdisciplinary research group based at the University of Toronto. It explores the intersection of
information technology, global security, and human rights through technical, policy, and legal research.

A central focus of Citizen Lab's research analyzes the prevalence, operation, and impact of information controls. Information controls can be conceptualized as actions conducted in and through the Internet and other information and communication technologies. Such controls seek to deny (as with Internet filtering), disrupt (as in denial-of-service
attacks), or monitor (such as passive or targeted surveillance) information for political ends.

Masashi Crete-Nishihata

Masashi is the research manager of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. He has published work on information controls during the 2008 Russia-Georgia conflict, cyber security research ethics, cyber attacks against Burmese media groups, and the psychosocial impacts of lifelogging technologies. His research interests include technology policy, information controls, and human computer interaction.

Relevant Links

http://citizenlab.org

http://citizenlab.org/publications/

https://citizenlab.org/2013/03/you-only-click-twice-finfishers-global-proliferation-2/

Please RSVP as seats are limited.
RSVP: Purba Sarkar (purba@cis-india.org)

Video

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/geo-politics-of-information-controls

CIS 5 Years Posters

praskrishna — 2013-06-06T05:46:13Z

All posters that were exhibited recently at CIS during the open days.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-5-years-all-posters.zip

Srividya's Presentation

praskrishna — 2013-06-05T10:30:14Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/gaad-presentation-1

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Hasan (Coverage in Vijaya Karnataka)

praskrishna — 2013-07-02T07:22:57Z

Dr. U.B. Pavanaja conducted a workshop in Hasan on June 4, 2013. Vijaya Karnataka published a report of the workshop on June 5, 2013.


Above is a report of the workshop in Vijaya Karnataka. The workshop was conducted by Dr. U.B.Pavanja on June 4, 2013.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/vijaya-karnataka-june-5-2013-report-of-kannada-wikipedia-workshop-in-hasan

Privacy Round Table, Mumbai

praskrishna — 2013-06-11T08:48:46Z

The Centre for Internet and Society cordially invites you to attend the "Privacy Round Table" in Mumbai on Saturday, June 15, 2013, 10.30 a.m. to 4.00 p.m., to discuss the "Report of the Group of Experts on Privacy" by the Justice A.P. Shah Committee, the text of the "Citizen's Privacy (Protection) Bill, 2013, drafted by the Centre for Internet and Society, and "Strengthening Privacy Protection through Co-Regulation" by DSCI.

Note: Billy Hawkes, Irish Data Protection Commissioner will be attending and presenting at the Roundtable.

The discussions and recommendations from the meeting will be published into a compilation, and presented at the Internet Governance meeting planned for October 2013.

Draft Agenda for the Round Table Discussion

Time	Detail
10.30	Overview, explanation, and discussion: The Report of the Group of Experts on Privacy
11.30	Overview, explanation, and discussion: Strengthening Privacy Protection through Co-regulation
12.15	Tea
12.30	Overview, explanation, and discussion: The Citizens Privacy (Protection) Bill, 2013
13.15	Lunch
14.15	In depth discussions: The Citizens Privacy (Protection) Bill, 2013
16.15	Tea

Please send your email confirmations for attending the Mumbai Privacy Round Table on Saturday, June 15, 2013, to Bernadette Langle.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/privacy-round-table-mumbai