Centre for Internet and Society

Is Facebook tracking your virtual footprints?

praskrishna — 2011-11-24T03:02:00Z

Social media experts claim number of cases of privacy violations against the site has increased in past few months; Facebook rubbishes the allegations. This article by Sheetal Sukhija was published in MidDay on 22 November 2011.

If you thought your online footprints would be erased by merely clicking on the 'delete web history' option and no one would ever know about your virtual movements, think again.

For, some popular social networking sites have been accused of tracking their users' movements on the Internet even when they log out from the sites.

According to reports in the international media, Facebook, the virtual face of around 80 crore people across the globe, is battling a series of legal cases for alleged violating users' privacy worldwide.

While the social media giant has categorically said that they have not misused any user data, internet experts have dubbed the website 'the big brother of new media'.

"Many users claim that when they log onto their accounts, Facebook automatically installs a cookie onto a user's browser, which keeps tracking their movement on the internet.

We believe that Facebook might be using this just to boost their marketing and not to sell this data to any third party," said Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre For Internet and Society.

Experts also believe that using such strategies have now made Facebook the world leader when it comes to credible demographic information.

"Facebook has achieved the status of possessing the most accurate demographic information. It is a credible source to understand consumer habits of a single unique user and even user groups. However, using such information is surely a violation of privacy," he added.

Former member of NASSCOM, Pratap Reddy, believes that often people ignore the 'fine print' or the agreement page while creating an account on a social networking site or elsewhere on the net. "When users sign up on these social networking websites, they often ignore the fine print.

When legal cases come up, companies often defend their stance by saying that their agreement page (or privacy policy page) mentioned all such things and make up a leeway for themselves," argued Reddy.

He added, "This is surely a violation, but there is also a positive side to this. Such websites are only trying to facilitate users better, based on their past web history. This helps them put you onto people/issues/topics that you have previously searched - like a mediator," added Reddy.

All about marketing?
Experts argued that this is not for the first time a website is being sued for such an act. In the past, Google, Adobe, Microsoft, Yahoo and other online advertising agencies too have been criticised for using such controversial tracking cookie technology.

According to reports, users from across the world have been taking legal recourse after pointing out that Facebook used cookie technology to track their virtual movements even after they have logged out of the social networking site.

Australian blogger Nik Cubrilovic is the latest user to join the growing list of people suing the website for violating federal wiretap laws, reported a UK-based tabloid.

The other side
Defending their stance, Facebook argued in its official statement that they are not tracking users across the web.

Facebook's official stance: Facebook does not track users across the web. Instead, we use cookies on social plugins to personalise content, to help maintain and improve what we do, or for safety and security.

No information we receive when you see a social plugins is used to target ads, we delete or anonymise this information within 90 days, and we never sell your information.

Specific to logged out cookies, they are used for safety and protection. They are used for identifying spammers and phishers, detecting when somebody unauthorised is trying to access your account, helping you get back into your account if you get hacked, disabling registration for a under-age users who try to re-register with a different birth date, powering account security features such as 2nd factor login approvals and notification and identifying shared computers to discourage the use of 'keep me logged in'.

Security tips
Internet security software experts suggest that installing strong anti-virus software would be the first step towards protecting your privacy.

Installing an anti-virus software
Every such software has a social network control option that prompts users when any unsolicited cookie is installed. By using this option, a user holds the right to refuse such installations.

Read the original article published in MidDay here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/facebook-tracking-footprints

Is CMS a Compromise of Your Security?

praskrishna — 2013-07-15T06:27:05Z

By secretly monitoring and recording all Indians through a Central Monitoring System, our government will end up making citizens and businesses less safe.

This article appeared in the Forbes India magazine of 12 July, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Are you reading this article on your PC or smartphone? No? Do you own a smartphone? Surely a phone then?

If you also happen to live in Delhi, Haryana or Karnataka, then from April this year nearly all your electronic communication—telephony, emails, VOIP, social networking—has been sucked up under an innocuous sounding programme called the Central Monitoring System, or CMS.

There’s no way to tell if you are being watched really, because telecom service providers aren’t part of the set-up. In most cases, they may not even be aware which of their users is being monitored. Neither can you approach a government agency or court to find out more, because there’s practically very little oversight or disclosure. What the government does with the data—how it is stored, secured, accessed or deleted—we don’t know.

Unlike the US and other Western democracies where even for a large scale programme like Prism (leaked recently by 29-year-old whistleblower and now fugitive Edward Snowden), surveillance orders need to be signed by a judge. But in India most orders are signed by either the Central or state home secretary, says Sunil Abraham, executive director for Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. This leads to a conflict of interest as the executive branch is both undertaking law enforcement and providing oversight on its own work.

In most cases, the officials are overwhelmed with other work, and don’t have the time to apply their minds to each request. “There is supposed to be an oversight committee that reviews the decisions of home secretaries, but we don’t have any idea about that committee either,” says Abraham.

Meanwhile, government bodies like the R&AW, Central Bureau of Investigation, National Investigation Agency, Central Board of Direct Taxes, Narcotics Control Bureau and the Enforcement Directorate will have the right to look up your data. Starting next year, all mobile telephony operators will also need to track and store the geographical location from which subscribers make or receive calls.

“I see it as the rise of techno-determinism in our security apparatus. Previously, our philosophy was to avoid infringing on individual privacy, and monitor a small set of individuals directly suspected of engaging in illegal activities. Now, thanks to the Utopianism being offered up by ‘Big Data’ infrastructure, putting everybody under blanket surveillance seems like a better way to serve our security and law enforcement agendas more effectively,” says Abraham.

There is a real risk that CMS and the numerous other monitoring programmes that will subsequently connect to it will end up harming more Indians than protecting them.

The biggest risk is that these programmes will turn into lucrative ‘honey pots’ for hackers, criminals and rival countries. Why bother hacking individuals and companies if you can attack the CMS? We’ve seen private corporations and government agencies in the US, Israel and the UK getting hacked. So let’s not have any illusions that India is going to fare much better.

Another consequence is that sooner or later innocent citizens will be wrongly accused of being criminals based on mistaken data patterns. While searching for matches in any database with hundreds of millions of records, the risk of a ‘false positive’ increases disproportionately because there are exponentially more innocents than there are guilty. And in the near-Dystopian construct of the CMS, it will take months or years for such errors to be rectified.

As more Indians become aware of these programmes, they will adopt encryption and masking tools to hide their digital selves. In the process, numerous ‘unintended consequences’ of failing to differentiate law-abiding citizens from criminals will be created. What answer will a normal citizen offer to a law enforcement official who wants to know why he or she has encrypted all communications and hosted a personal server in, say, Sweden?

But arguably the biggest threat of 24x7 surveillance is to businesses. Security and trust are the foundations atop which most modern businesses are built. From your purchase of a gadget on an ecommerce site to a large conglomerate’s secret bid in a government auction to discussions within a company on future business strategies to patent applications—everything requires secrecy and security. All an unscrupulous competitor, whether it be a company or a country, has to do to go one-up on you is to attack the CMS and other central databases.

“The reason why the USA historically decided not to impose blanket surveillance wasn’t because of human rights, but to protect its businesses and intellectual property. Because while we may be able to live in a society without human rights, we cannot be in one without functional markets,” says Abraham.

He goes on to say that the recent disclosures around the various spying programmes run by the US have made the private surveillance and security industry very happy. “Each incident becomes a case-study to pit one country against another, forcing each one to cherry-pick the worst global practices in a dangerous race to the bottom. Civil society and privacy activists don’t have the resources to fight large vendors and so the only thing that will stop this is the leak of large databases, like that of 9 million Israeli biometric records a few years back.”

Recollecting the news about a family-business break-up some years ago, where two brothers agreed to split their businesses, the net result was one brother opted out of telephony services offered by the other. All of that is now moot. “There are no more shadows now. Nobody will have refuge and everybody will be exposed,” says Abraham.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/forbesindia-article-real-issue-july9-2013-rohin-dharmakumar-is-cms-a-compromise-of-your-security

Is Bhutan selling its soul to Google?

praskrishna — 2014-01-30T12:27:33Z

Migrating Bhutan government’s communications to Google servers, allowing the United States access to confidential data, raises questions

"Bhutan’s adoption of Google Apps is a disastrous decision, and I wouldn’t advocate for it even if it were free," Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society said.

He added that the project would end up tying Bhutan to a single vendor, Google, since there is no easy way to migrate from Google Apps to another system. "That means that even if in the future some other system is found to be far better than Google, the migration costs would deter the adoption of that system," said Pranesh Prakash, who is also a fellow with the Information Society Project, Yale Law School.

The article by Lucky Wangmo from Thimphu and Pema Seldon form Bangalore was published in Business Bhutan on January 25, 2014. Download Volume 5, Issue 4, NU 15 published by Business Bhutan here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/business-bhutan-vol-5-issue-4-lucky-wangmo-pema-seldon-is-bhutan-selling-its-soul-to-google

Is Aadhaar Essential To Achieve Error-Free Electoral Rolls?

praskrishna — 2018-12-25T01:21:45Z

The Election Commission’s plans to link Aadhaar with electoral rolls may have stirred a hornet’s nest.

The article was published in Bloomberg's Quint on December 16, 2018. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

The commission plans to undertake the exercise to clean up electoral rolls—which need to be updated frequently to avoid duplication and errors, The Economic Times newspaper reported citing people aware of the matter. But with privacy concerns raised against the Aadhaar, is this the best way to achieve error-free voter data?

Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, doesn’t think so. Using Aadhaar data without the consent of the user poses legal problems, he told BloombergQuint in a conversation. “For the Election Commission to link Aadhaar with citizens’ voter ID would require amending the law.”

It is questionable whether this will fall within the bounds that the SC has set for usage of Aadhaar.

Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director, Centre for Internet and Society

The former legal advisor of the Election Commission SK Mendiratta, however, brushed aside privacy concerns relating to the process. The Election Commission, according to him, is a constitutional body and can use information with the government to ensure purity of the electoral roll.

Reetika Khera, associate professor at Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad, said this could be bad for voters. She cited the mass deletion of voters from electoral rolls in Telangana ahead of the recent elections, and urged that due process must be followed.

There are serious problems with the use of algorithmic approaches in various spheres. Aadhaar as a tool to clean up the electoral rolls is the problem.

Reetika Khera, Associate Professor, IIM Ahmedabad

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bloomberg-quint-december-16-2018-is-aadhaar-essential-to-achieve-error-free-electoral-rolls

IRC Poster 2

praskrishna — 2022-05-07T03:35:40Z

IRC Poster

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IRC Poster 2

praskrishna — 2022-05-06T15:14:44Z

IRC Poster 2

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Iraqi Public Data Scenario Workshop

praskrishna — 2013-03-26T09:43:47Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/iraqi-public-data.pdf

Iraqi Public Data Presentation Slides

praskrishna — 2013-04-02T04:53:25Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/iraqi-public-data.zip

Iraqi Minister meets Secretary, Indian Ministry of Panchayat Raj

praskrishna — 2011-05-01T03:52:26Z

His Excellency Mr. Abdul Kareem El-Samarai, the Iraqi Minister of Science and Technology was among 15 other senior bureaucrats from Iraq who met with Mr. ANP Sinha, Secretary, Ministry of Panchayati Raj to discuss the Ministry’s efforts at introducing ICT at the Panchayat level through its e-Panchayat initiatives. This was as part of their study tour to India in association with UNDP-Iraq and UNDP-India. They also met with Mr. Shankar Aggarwal, Additional Secretary, DIT earlier in the day who briefed them about the various aspects of the National e-Governance Plan envisaged by the Government of India to make government services accessible and affordable to all Indian citizens. This news was published by the Karnataka News Network on April 27, 2011.

"India-Iraq cooperation will extend beyond ICT to all other areas of governance within two months" announced Mr. El-Samarai in a separate meeting today as part of the study tour in Delhi convened by Communication Multimedia and Infrastructure (CMAI) Association of India in partnership with the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.

The meeting was also attended by top level telecom officials of the country including Mr. Satya Pal, Advisor to the DoT, Mr. NK Goyal, President, CMAI, Mr. B.M. Baveja, Senior Director and Group Head, Ministry of IT and Mr. S.N. Gupta, Chief Regulatory Officer, BT Telecom among others. Mr. El-Samarai emphasised that Iraq’s newly elected Government is stable and is taking all efforts to use ICT to provide basic services to Iraqi citizens apart from forwarding reforms in health and educational sectors. He stressed on the need for Iraq’s neighbours to respect the sovereignty of the country and welcomed India’s cooperation in Iraq’s efforts in introducing e-governance initiatives and use of ICT in the country. "We look forward to cooperation with India in enhancing our national efforts at governance reform", he said.

"E-Governance is crucial to effect a higher growth rate in India – upto 12% - and ensure that the growth is inclusive and sustainable", said Mr. Aggarwal while noting that e-governance is not only electronic governance but also “empowered governance". The delegates were also addressed about the recent developments in the e-governance strategy of the government including formulation of the National e-Governance Plan, mobile governance and standardisation initiatives, and establishment of data centres and Citizen Service Centres (CSCs) across the country.

The delegation's visit to Delhi was followed by their visit to Bangalore last week in context of the ‘Building e-Iraq National e-Governance Strategy’ of the Iraqi Government which attempts to increase transparency and government accountability in Iraq through ICT in addition to providing better services to citizens through e-governance initiatives. “This visit is not an end in itself but the beginning of an expanded cooperation between Iraqi and Indian Governments in forwarding national efforts at development and reform through use of technology”, said Ms. Caitlin Wiesen, Country Director of UNDP-India.

The delegation visited the National Informatics Centre and got a glimpse of the technology used at the NIC to manage data integration and ICT infrastructure for the entire e-government framework of the country. They also got a direct experience of the technology as they interacted with the NIC officials at Gandhinagar and Chennai directly from the Delhi office through video conferencing technology. Mr. B.K. Gairola, Director General of NIC addressed the delegation about the functions of the NIC including infrastructure for GIS facilities, cyber security for government departments, establishment of data centres and MMPs executed by the NIC to strengthen e-governance processes in the country.

The delegation had a meeting with the Secretary, IT, Government of Delhi yesterday about the National Convergence Mission Plan. They had also visited Narayana Hrudayalaya, Bangalore One Centre and Azim Premji Foundation in Bangalore last week apart from other e-governance initiatives. “We really appreciate the efforts of UNDP in organising the study tour and we will take all efforts to strengthen the relationship that Iraq shares with India”, said Mr. El-Samarai. The last leg of the study tour included a meeting with Mr. Patrice Coeur-Bizot, UNDP Resident Representative who noted that 60 years of cooperation between UNDP-India and the Indian Government resulted in the first ever discussion on e-governance in India under the auspices of the UNDP. “I cannot stress enough on the importance of forging synergy of efforts between UNDP-India and the Iraqi e-Government initiative”, he said. The tour will be concluded by a reception hosted by the Country Representative, UNDP-India before returning to Baghdad.

For more details contact- krithika@cis-india.org (Krithika Dutta, Centre for Internet and Society-Bangalore)

Read the original news published by Karnataka News Network here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/iraq-tour-of-india

Iraqi delegation in Bangalore to study e-governance projects

praskrishna — 2011-04-21T09:41:45Z

A 20-member delegation from Iraq, led by its Science and Technology Minister Abdul Kareem El-Samarai, is in this tech hub for a firsthand account of the e-governance projects used for community development and as an interface between the government and citizens. This news was published in the Economic Times, April 20, 2011.

The delegation, on a three-day study tour since Tuesday in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Centre for Internet & Society, visited multi-specialty hospital Narayana Hrudayalaya to learn about tele-medicine services, which provide healthcare in remote villages using information and communication technology (ICT).

"The e-governance projects and ICT practices employed for citizen services and community development in India could be a useful guide in developing a strategy for e-governance in our country," Deputy Iraqi Science and Technology Minister Samir Salim Raouf said in a statement late Wednesday.

The delegation, comprising officials and experts from various fields, also visited the Azim Premji Foundation , a not-for-prof IT organisation set up by IT bellwether Wipro's chairman Azim Premji. The delegation wanted to gain insight into the foundation's efforts to reform school education across the country through ICT and modern management practices.

"What is interesting is that the civil society and the private sector innovate and contribute to governance in India and everything is not left for the government to deal with," Raouf noted.

After interacting with officials and experts in-charge of the e-governance projects in Karnataka, the delegation went to mobile and wireless communications firm Geodisc Ltd to study its innovative product GeoAmida, an open source handheld device for e-governance and banking solutions.

"The mobile device, which can be used in diverse domains such as e-governance, banking, healthcare, transportation and retail, is a unique solution to address various societal problems faced by the Iraqi government, which is set to formulate a policy for e-governance and use ICT for social reform and development," the statement added.

The delegation, which is a part of the 'Building e- Iraq National e-Governance Strategy' of the Iraqi government, will go to New Delhi Friday for studying similar projects of the central government.

"Our objective is to increase transparency and accountability in Iraq through ICT and provide citizen services through e-governance initiatives," Raouf added.

Read the original in Economic Times here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/iraqi-delegation-in-bangalore

Iraq Delegation to Visit India for Study of E-Governance in Indian Cities ― Meetings in Bangalore and Delhi

praskrishna — 2011-08-02T07:13:52Z

An Iraqi Government delegation headed by HE Mr. Abdul Kareem Al-Samarai, Minister of Science & Technology, Government of Iraq will be in India on a e-governance tour. The study tour is organised by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA).

The Building e-Iraq National e-Governance strategic plan clearly emphasizes the need for connecting services and citizens to better access of information and services using ICTs as a leading resource/innovative force and as a contributing factor to enhancing transparency and accountability as well as facilitate the effective and efficient provisioning of essential services. In this context, and as identified by the Iraqi e-governance ministerial steering committee, community service centers (CSCs) have been identified as having a direct bearing on sustainable social and economical changes consistent with the MDGs.

As agreed within the steering committee, the community based connectivity services centres will be hosted within existing community structures throughout Iraq in order to enhance penetration levels and provide for cost-effective strategies. Post offices and youth centres would henceforth represent the point of entry for the community centres, where the Iraqi government is rehabilitating the buildings and has already provided Internet access with the hope of introducing e-governance services. The centres will also be linked with the implementation of the pilot e-services to promote access to information resources and government programmes and services. Additionally, the centres will serve to address local issues and priorities.

UNDP in partnership with ESCWA is organizing a study tour to India that would expose senior Iraqi stakeholders to e-government and e-governance as a means to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the public sector in service provision, and make them learn from India's experience in:

Harnessing ICT technologies in service of community development, inclusiveness and empowerment, particularly at the local level;

Highlighting e-governance practices in connecting citizens to the state – at both the federal and local levels – and enhancing services;
Presenting success stories and lessons learned from India’s experience in instigating and operating CSCs; and
Providing the Government of India with a frame of reference in designing an appropriate, efficient and effective decentralized planning process and service delivery.

Dr. Samir Salim Raouf, Deputy Minister, Ministry of Science and Technology, Dr. Mahmood Kasim Sharief, Director General, Ministry of Science and Technology, Zagros Fattah Mohammed Mohammed, Director General, Ministry of Planning - KRG, Najwa Saeed Fathullah, Director General, Ministry of Finance, Majeed Hameed Jassim, Director General, Ministry of Communication, Dr. Kathim Mohammed Breesam, Director General, Ministry of Planning, Majed Sadoon Jasim, Director General, Ministry of Interior, Naeef Thamer Hussien, Director General, Ministry of Education, Ismael Khaleel Murad, Chief of Information, Ministry of Higher Education, Anwer Alwan Jassim, Ministry of Higher Education, Khalaf Muhammad Khalaf, Deputy Director General, Ministry of Education, Samer Noori Taqi, Chief of Information, Ministry of Municipalities and Public Works, Safaa Mohammed Kassar, Anbar Governorates, Abdulamer Abdulwahid Mubarak, Basra Governorates, Isam Hussein Ali, Ministry of Science and Technology, Sudipto Mukherjee, Head of Economic Recovery and Poverty Alleviation, UNDP, Abeer Fawaeer, E-Governance Specialist, UNDP and Dalia Zendi, Project Associate, UNDP will participate in the meetings.

Study tour structure

The delegation will hold meetings with Deepak Menon of India Water Portal, Ashok Kamath of Pratham Books, Srikanth Nadhamuni of E-governments foundation, Dr. Subbramanya of Geodesic, Parth Sarwate of Azim Premji Foundation, Abhay Singhavi of Narayana Hrydayalaya and MN Vidyashankar and DS Ravindran of Department of e-governance, Government of Karnataka.

In Delhi, the delegation will hold meetings in the Department of Information Technology, National Informatics Centre, National Institute for Smart Government, Ministry of Urban Development and Ministry of Panchayati Raj.

Expected outcomes

The study tour will be concluded in Delhi with a brainstorming session to discuss and explore the results achieved by the study tour, and ultimately formulate an integrated framework for identifying, establishing, operating and managing CSCs in Iraq with wider national and local e-governance development plan in line with overarching public sector and modernization programme and generate a list of pilots quick-win e-services applications that can be implemented in Iraq.

Other expected outputs are:

To identify critical and relevant lessons from the Indian e-governance models, with particular emphasis on linkages between ICT and broad-based development in the areas of education, health, water and social development of rural and urban areas;
To enhance awareness on the role and operation of CSCs at various levels and their pivotal role in facilitating access to essential services and reducing service costs;
To improve understanding of the challenges in the effective application of ICTs for development and the key factors in the design and implementation of ICT for development projects and programmes;
To enhance the understanding of the measures to be undertaken by the centre and the provinces to identify and put in place e-services;
To highlight the successes and lessons learned from the Indian decentralized and local area planning and development model;
To learn about the latest development in IT industry and the infrastructure required for CSCs and e-services; and
To explore working partnerships between the Government of India and the Indian IT companies.

This study tour is in furtherance to the e-Governance Action plan prepared by the Iraq Government. The Centre for Internet and Society is assisting the delegation for the meetings held in Bangalore.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/iraqi-e-governance-india-tour

IPv4 and IPv6 - FAQs

praskrishna — 2013-05-22T06:20:33Z

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iptv

praskrishna — 2012-08-21T04:16:13Z

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IPR Policy Comments

praskrishna — 2015-11-24T14:59:59Z

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IPR Confluence Presentation

praskrishna — 2015-04-04T06:14:22Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/ipr-confluence-presentation