Centre for Internet and Society

India's social media election battle

praskrishna — 2014-04-03T09:37:03Z

Ahead of the general elections, political parties in India are attempting to woo voters on social media for the first time.

The article by Atish Patel was published by BBC on March 31, 2014. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Politicians are taking part in Google+ Hangouts, televised interviews organised by Facebook and using the Facebook-owned smart phone messaging app WhatsApp to connect with millions of tech-savvy urban voters.

India's 16th general election - to be held in nine phases over April and May - will be closely fought, with some observers saying social media will play a vital role in deciding which party wins the most seats.

According to a report published in April 2013 by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and the Mumbai-based Iris Knowledge Foundation, Facebook users will "wield a tremendous influence" over the results of the polls in 160 of India's 543 constituencies.

It's a finding political parties have taken note of, with major contenders like the ruling Congress party and main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) earmarking 2-5% of their election budgets for social media, according to an October 2013 study by IAMAI and Mumbai-based market researcher IMRB International.

Big data

During the last general election in 2009, social media usage in India was minuscule.

Today, however, Facebook has 93 million users and Twitter has an estimated 33 million accounts in the country. Many political parties have beefed up their online presence as a result.

The main opposition BJP's prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, was among the first Indian politicians to set up a website and today is on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

His main rival, Rahul Gandhi, the Congress party's undeclared candidate for PM, however, doesn't have a website and doesn't use any of the three major social networks.

Anti-corruption campaigner-turned-politician Arvind Kejriwal has amassed 1.5 million followers on Twitter since joining in November 2011, a year before he launched his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and over two years after Mr Modi, who has 3.6 million followers, opened his account.

"Now no serious politician is seen as being able to avoid social media altogether," said Congress government minister Shashi Tharoor, who until he was overtaken by Mr Modi last July, was the most followed Indian politician on Twitter.

"It does have a significant reach in certain segments of the population and as far as we're concerned, that's important enough to pay attention to and clearly the opposition is paying attention to it too," he added.

Taking a leaf from US President Barack Obama's presidential campaigns, India's parties are using tools to crunch the insurmountable amounts of information social media generates - what's known as big data analytics.


Rahul Gandhi doesn't have a website and doesn't use any of the three major social networks

Pinstorm, a digital marketing agency used by some of India's biggest companies to monitor what is being discussed online, now has political parties as clients.

From its Mumbai office, the agency has been collecting, storing and analysing tens of thousands of political statements from over 100 online platforms daily for the past six months to allow parties to find supporters and tweak their political message.

The agency is able to track conversations at national and local level, making it a useful tool for both national and regional parties.

The anti-corruption AAP, taking part in its first general election after an impressive debut in local polls in Delhi last year, uses Pinstorm to "compare how we are faring against others", said Ankit Lal, the party's social media strategist.

Professor Amit Sheth and a team of researchers at the Ohio Centre of Excellence in Knowledge-enabled Computing at Wright State University have also been tracking political sentiment online since July.

He says data collected from social media could in the future replace opinion polls, which many observers say are often rigged in India.

"With social media data, we can measure sentiments, for example, before a rally, during the rally, and post-analysis. It's much more frequent [than opinion polls]," Mr Sheth said.

'Dipstick of the elite'

There are some, however, who are doubtful about social media's expected effect.

Social media "is not a true dipstick. It really is only a dipstick of the elite," said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society.

Sceptics believe with so many Indians illiterate and lacking internet access, particularly in rural swathes of the country, it is still essential for political leaders to hold rallies and spend on billboard and newspaper advertising to reach the majority of the 814 million-strong electorate.

Parties are also interacting with voters on their mobile devices and it makes sense.


Facebook has 93 million users in India

There are more mobile phones in India today than toilets, according to the latest census data, and just over half of the country's 1.2 billion population owns one.

"Mobile is very integral to our strategy," said Arvind Gupta, who heads the BJP's IT and social media cell.

One of the BJP's most unique electioneering tools allows potential voters to listen in on Mr Modi's rally speeches in real time on their phones from anywhere in India. "It's our own innovation," said Mr Gupta.

The number of smartphone users is growing in India and it's how most of the country's web users go online.

That's why WhatsApp, recently purchased by Facebook, is being used by the likes of the BJP and Congress to send photos, videos and messages to potential voters.

"No other medium gives as much mass, simultaneous reach as mobile phones in India today," said Milind Pathak from One97 Communications, a Delhi-based mobile marketing firm.

Political parties like AAP have signed up tens of thousands of members by urging people to give them a missed call for free - party officers then get in touch and formally enrol them as supporters.

"Looking forward, I think the medium will continue to be a heavily-invested area for a political party," Mr Pathak said.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/bbc-news-india-atish-patel-indias-social-media-election-battle

India's social media crackdown reveals clumsy govt machinery

praskrishna — 2012-08-25T06:11:30Z

"High-handed" and "reckless" are some of the words used in the media to describe the government's online crackdown.

Published in Reuters on August 24, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Add clumsy and incompetent to the list.

The government blocked access to more than 300 web pages after mobile phone text messages and doctored website images fuelled rumours that Muslims were planning revenge attacks for violence in Assam.

Much has been said and debated on the legal and moral legitimacy of the ban. But it's also important to study how officials went about deciding what to ban.

In his analysis of leaked government directives listing web pages to be banned, Pranesh Prakash of the Centre for Internet and Society said the list consists of people and pages who are actually debunking hateful rumours.

Twitter accounts of mainstream journalists and YouTube videos containing news clips from news channels like TimesNow, NDTV and Britain's Channel4 were included.

A glance at the list also shows that the banned pages include a Google Plus search page aggregating news stories posted on the topic "Assam riots." The government might as well ban Google.com, where anyone can do the same thing and much more.

It seems the government had no set procedure in trying to trace abusive content on the web. We don't know how they drew up the lists of sites to target, but it may have happened like this:

As northeast Indians began their exodus from cities fearing attacks, ministers and top bureaucrats went into a huddle and decided in all sincerity they must stop the spread of false information.

The task of quickly identifying malicious online content was given to lower ranking officials. Since there are no set procedures on how to scour the vast virtual universe and choose which offending pages to ban, the most likely step they took was to open Google and start typing in words related to the recent unrest, apart from trawling popular social sites.

The resulting list tells us that the official who vetted the selected pages was not too committed or had minimal online skills. Some of the pages are not even web addresses.

On Friday, the Times of India newspaper website (Read here) reported that the Twitter account of junior Communications and IT minister Milind Deora was blocked instead of the Deora imposter the government was trying to target.

Such amateurishness is not restricted to technology issues alone. There are many examples of clueless officials left red-faced in the face of public scrutiny.

Last year, the country's premier investigating agency, the CBI, had to withdraw a version of its list of India's 50 Most Wanted fugitives after it was revealed that one was already in jail and another living with his family after getting bail. The Central Statistics Office made a goof-up with the index of industrial production for January 2012, revising growth to 1.14 percent after initially putting it at 6.8 percent, a huge gap.

One of the most baffling gaffes happened in 2010 when the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity issued a full-page ad on the occasion of National Girl Child Day featuring the photograph of a male former Pakistan Air Chief Marshal who appeared alongside Indian cricketers Kapil Dev and Virender Sehwag.

But the cake must go to External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna. He read out his Portuguese counterpart's speech while addressing the United Nations Security Council.

(David Lalmalsawma is a Reuters journalist. The opinions expressed here are his own and not of Reuters. You can follow him on Twitter @david_reuters)

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/in-reuters-com-david-lalmalsawma-aug-24-2012-indias-social-media-crackdown-reveals-clumsy-govt-machinery

India's social media "spring" masks forgotten protests

praskrishna — 2011-09-01T06:24:38Z

Irom Sharmila has been on hunger strike for 10 years to protest against military abuses, force-fed by tubes through her nose. But the tragedy for the world's longest hunger strike is that she is on the wrong side of India's digital divide.

Twitter, Facebook and aggressive private TV have helped rally India's biggest protests in decades to support civil activist Anna Hazare, a digital groundswell of a wired middle class that echoes the Arab Spring and has taken a Congress party-led government of elderly politicians by surprise.

But Sharmila, who has been on a hunger strike in Manipur to demand an end to the army's sweeping emergency powers there, has only managed a small following, a footnote in media coverage.

"We also once tried to take our fight to New Delhi ... but we did not get support from the rest of the nation," Sharmila told Tehelka magazine.

She must be frustrated. The Hazare phenomenon has rallied Indians from the start with social media. Hazare's India Against Corruption website says it has had 13 million phone calls of support. Its Facebook page has nearly 500,000 "likes".

Its leaders have tweeted each step of the whirlwind crisis, whether describing their arrests in real time or negotiations with the government, outmanoeuvring Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his ministers at every step.

"Protest at PM's residence: 35 people detained, taken to Tughlaq Rd. PS, hundreds still there, come if you can #Janlokpal," twitter user @janlokpal sent its followers in just one example of how the movement was rallying support.

Cases like Sharmila expose the digital divide of Asia's third largest economy and underscore how a growing urban middle class may be getting its political voice heard while millions of poor remain off the digital protest map.

"This is the first time digital social media has resonated with such a large number of people," said Nishant Shah, head of research at the Centre for Internet and Society think-tank.

"But this is far more of a middle class, urban movement, than a national movement. Many people in India are excluded from it."

Twitter and Facebook are barely used in many of India's social causes, including battles over land rights that are one of India's most pressing problems involving millions of farmers.

Huge social issues in India, from caste discrimination to high food prices, from the building of dams to protests by farmers against nuclear power plants, have failed to create the kind of digital mobilisation that Hazare enjoys.

A Digital Divide

India's internet users have grown 1,400 percent between 2000 and 2010, behind only China and Vietnam among Asian countries, according to a report by Burson-Marsteller, a consulting firm.

But that masks India's low base. Internet penetration is around 8 percent in India, the lowest among major Asian countries. That compares with nearly 40 percent in China.

Out of a population of 1.2 billion, there are only 29 million people active in digital social networks. A report by Maplecroft consultancy warned that India was lagging other BRICs, Brazil, China and Russia in "digital inclusion".

"India, for example, the wealthier, more affluent segment of the population, primarily based in urban areas, has embraced the use of modern communications technology," the report said.

"The vast majority of the population has, however, been excluded from this process."

Those statistics highlight that while the middle class has found a voice, electorally the centre-left Congress party will still need to pander to its traditional vote base of millions of farmers and poor Indians ahead of a 2014 general election.

Congress, in power for most of the life of independent India, has failed to use social media tools. One minister lost his job for tweeting too frankly, in a sign of government unease over the web, and the party lags behind an opposition that has embraced Twitter.

Libya Overshadowed

So far, private TV channels have provided 24-hour coverage of the protests -- the news from Libya is hardly to be seen. Urban Indians with mobile phones in hand have dominated rallies in the open grounds where Hazare was on his second week of fasting.

Small protests across the country, from demonstrations outside ministers' houses to rallies outside metro stations, have been organised through Twitter and Facebook.

An app that can be downloaded on to smartphones running the Android operating system gives users the latest news on the campaign for a tough "Jan lokpal", or anti-corruption bill, and details of the latest meetings.

"Social media has been huge for us, it has a life of its own," said Shazia Ilmi, in charge of Hazare media strategy.

Even before Hazare was arrested last week, organisers had prepared a pre-recorded video from him that went on YouTube.

The movement does have deep roots and social media has widened the protests, if not caused them. Many of Hazare's protests have also been through word of mouth. Corruption also affects the poor more than middle classes with endemic bribes, whether permission for street food stands or driving licences.

"It's not an up and down, national movement. It is largely a middle class cause," said Sagarika Ghose, a novelist and journalist at the CNN-IBN news television channel.

"But it's hugely important one. For a younger generation, corruption has become a catch-all phrase for the failure of development."

Some activists are already criticising Hazare as a hype of an elitist social media.

"Those thronging the Ramlila grounds or marching in support of Anna in the metros are not necessarily 'the people' of the country, and it is dangerous to take the two as identical," academic Prabhat Patnaik wrote in The Hindu newspaper.

(Editing by Paul de Bendern and Alex Richardson)

This article by Alistair Scrutton was published in Reuters on 25 August 2011.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/social-media-masks-forgotten-protests

India's Shame: World Reacts to FB Post Arrest

praskrishna — 2012-11-30T05:51:10Z

The arrest of 21 year old Shaheen Dhada for posting anti-Bal Thackeray comments has not only outraged Indians. The story has been picked up and reported across international media as well. Though they may not be aware of the complexities of Indian politics, the fact that young girls were arrested for an FB post has got them questioning the dwindling tolerance for the freedom of speech in India.

This was posted by Sonal Bhadoria in IndiaTimes on November 21, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The Wall Street Journal warns ,'You better think twice before 'Liking' your friends' comments on Facebook. It may land you in jail.' The article quotes Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society saying “Bal Thackeray had violated the same provisions in his lifetime,” with reference to Mr. Thackeray’s inflammatory speeches against the South Indians and Muslims.

The BBC put a question mark on India's commitment to freedom of speech by citing recent examples of the arrest of a cartoonist like Ravi Srinivasan, a 46-year-old businessman in the southern Indian city of Pondicherry, who was arrested for a tweet criticising Karti Chidambaram, son of Indian Finance Minister P Chidambaram.

UK's Daily Mail, says 'So much for freedom of speech' and questions the IT act which led to the arrest.

In a New York Times article, Pranesh Prakash questioned the arbitrariness in the application of the law saying 'There were thousands of people on Facebook, Twitter and in person who were saying the exact same kinds of things that this girl is alleged to have said'. The article also stated that Shiv Sena has a history of banning books, movies and other popular culture that are critical of the political party.

Mashable noted that several dissenters had taken to Twitter to speak out about the arrest including Milind Deora, the government minister of state, communications and information technology, who showed support for Dhadha and Renu with this tweet:

Milind Deora
@milinddeora

To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize ~ Voltaire
It also asked 'Do you think Facebook is a good place to voice political opinions?'

The Christian Science Monitor calls the incident 'the latest in a string of crackdowns on Internet speech in the world's largest democracy'. It says, 'The other cases have included arrest of a resident of Chandigarh who complained on the Facebook page of Chandigarh police that they were not doing enough to find her stolen car; a cartoonist who posted work online protesting corruption scandals by the central government; and a professor in Kolkata who merely forwarded an email with a cartoon that was critical of West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee.' The article also mentions Shaheen Dhada’s uncle, Dr. Abdullah Ghaffar Dhada stating that he had incurred losses of two million Rupees due to the ransacking of his clinic by angry Shiv Sainiks.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/indiatimes-sonal-bhadoria-nov-21-2012-indias-shame-world-reacts-to-fb-post-arrest

India's section 66A scrapped: Win for free speech

praskrishna — 2015-03-26T16:19:42Z

India's Supreme Court court has struck down a law that made posting "offensive" comments on the internet a crime punishable by a jail term of up to three years. But, for the free speech campaigners, there is more work to do, writes technology writer Prasanto K Roy.

The blog post by Prasanto K. Roy was published by BBC on March 24, 2015. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

Section 66A, inserted in 2009 into India's Information Technology [IT] Act of 2000, was sweeping and draconian, and was repeatedly abused across the country, say free speech campaigners.

It was challenged in 2012 by a law student, Shreya Singhal, then 21.

She filed a public-interest litigation in the Supreme Court, shortly after the arrest of two girls in Mumbai for a Facebook post criticising the shutdown of the city after a political leader's death.

One of the two girls had merely "liked" the post.

Earlier in the same year, a businessman in south India was arrested for tweeting that a politician had amassed much wealth.

A professor at Jadavpur University in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) was arrested for forwarding a cartoon about West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Both were charged under Section 66A, among others.

In May 2013, the Supreme Court made arrests under Section 66A tougher - it said an arrest would require the permission of senior law-enforcement officials.

'A victory'

The judgement on Tuesday was read out by Justice RF Nariman, who said Section 66A was unconstitutional and directly affected the public's right to know.

"We have no hesitation in striking it down in its entirety," he said.

The order notes that Section 66A violates an article of the Indian constitution that guarantees freedom of speech and expression.

"This judgement is a victory for anyone and everyone who uses the internet.

"I am ecstatic. It's a complete victory for us, because the Supreme Court struck it down and held it unconstitutional," Ms Singhal told BBC Hindi moments after the court scrapped the law.

Section 66A provided for up to three years in jail for anyone who sent an electronic message that was considered "grossly offensive" or caused "annoyance or inconvenience".

Justice Nariman said such terms were vague, and created a sweeping law that was open to abuse.

The apex court judgement notes that 66A was based substantially on section 66 of the UK Post Office Act of 1953, which made sending offensive or annoying messages by telephone or telegram an offence punishable by up to a month in jail.

That law, last updated in 2003, still retains the terms "annoyance" and "inconvenience".

Section 66A's creation, and much of its implementation, happened on the watch of the Congress party-led political regime that lost to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP government in last year's general election.

Arun Jaitley of the BJP - the current finance minister and former opposition leader - had criticised the law in the upper house of parliament, after it was reported that the government had blocked nearly 300 websites.

Once in power, however, the BJP swung around to defending 66A in the Supreme Court, the government represented by additional solicitor general Tushar Mehta.

Arrests under Section 66A continued into 2015 - last week, a 19-year-old student in Uttar Pradesh was arrested for a Facebook post on a political leader, and spent two days in jail.

Next target

The petitioners and their many supporters, including multiple virtual support groups, are celebrating the order striking down 66A.

But there are concerns about another section - 69A - introduced in the same amendment of 2009, which has been retained.

Section 69A, which was also challenged in Ms Singhal's and others' petitions, allows the government to block online content that "threatens the security of the state" or fulfils other conditions.

Hundreds of websites and web pages have been blocked under 69A, including a government website in 2013.

The apex court's order notes that 69A is a "narrowly drawn provision with several safeguards", and has allowed the section to remain.

Pranesh Prakash of the Centre for Internet and Society says: "The Supreme Court judgement is at its best on 66A, but weaker on 69A."

The free speech campaigners say their work is not yet finished.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bbc-march-24-2015-indias-section-66-a-scrapped

India's Rs 400-crore Central Monitoring System to snoop on all communication

praskrishna — 2013-06-05T10:39:19Z

Latest reports confirm that the government's longstanding aim of initiating the Central Monitoring System in the country is materialising now.

This was published in Tech 2 on May 9, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The Times of India reports that the government began rolling out the project last month, and it lets them access all communication in the country – comprising online activities, phone calls, SMSes, social media conversations and even the geographical location of individuals. Using the Central Monitoring System, officials with the National Investigation Agency or tax officials will have access to "every byte of communication".

Pavan Duggal, an advocate with the Supreme Court, believes that the new system "is capable of tremendous abuse". He went on to say that the government hasn't revealed much on what it intends to monitor with this new system, and under what criteria.

The Centre for Development of Telematics has been given the task of putting this system in place to give government officials this crucial access to communication in the country. In his statement to the Parliament in December last year, IT minister Milind Deora had said that the Central Monitoring System will "lawfully intercept Internet and telephone services".

This system was initiated in the wake of the horrying bomb blast in Mumbai in November 2008. Post that incident, the government reportedly took on the task of making itself technologically adept to "eavesdrop on digital communications".

It would be important to quote here that the IT law – enacted in 2000, amended in 2008 and in 2011 – confers upon government officials the authority to intercept phone calls, SMSes, emails and even monitor websites. That, however, can only be done for "reasonable security practices and procedures".

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/tech-2-may-9-2013-indias-rs-400-crore-central-monitoring-system-to-snoop-on-all-communication

India's Proposed Map Law Prompts Outcry

praskrishna — 2016-05-29T09:30:31Z

In India, proposed legislation to ban use of maps or satellite images of the country without approval from the government has led to an outcry and triggered an online campaign called “Save The Map.”

The article by Anjana Pasricha was published in Voice of America on May 17, 2016. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

The controversy is not just over stiff penalties of up to $15 million for a wrong depiction of India’s borders, but that in a digital era, the law would potentially disrupt a host of businesses and start-ups such as taxi-hailing services.

Reasons

The draft Geospatial Information Regulation Bill seeks to regulate the use of mapping and satellite data for two reasons: secure the country’s strategic installations from enemies and terrorists and ensure that its political boundaries are correctly depicted. The government says it will not create barriers to business.

But Internet experts say the sweeping proposed law will affect ordinary people using mobiles and laptops, all new-age companies such as food-delivery and e-commerce, apps, as well as Apple and Google map products.

Nikhil Pahwa, founder of the website MediaNama, calls location data the core fabric of all digital services.

“What the government has ended up doing is making pretty much every single app illegal because they all use geospatial data and they wont have a license. If you take a photograph, it has location data. If you use Uber to hail a cab, it uses maps and it shows taxi cabs on the map. If I WhatsApp my location to a friend to pick me from a particular location, I am generating geospatial information,” he said.

Nikhil Pahwa, founder of the website MediaNama, calls location data the core fabric of all digital services.

Complications for ordinary citizens

The draft law requires anyone wanting to use, publish or own maps or geospatial data to apply for a license, which will be considered by a security vetting committee.

The Bangalore-based Center for Internet and Society (CIS) has also slammed the new bill, saying it takes India back more than three decades when businesses were governed by a maze of bureaucratic licenses and permits.

“What it does, it puts in place a license raj for all use of mapping technologies. That just does not make sense. No other country in the world has this regressive mapping law,” said Pranesh Prakash at CIS.

Internet opposition

A volunteer-led internet campaign called “Save The Map” led by Bangalore-based tech experts, is steadily gathering momentum. It is calling on people to petition the government against the bill in its present form. It seeks to replicate an extremely successful campaign called “SavetheInternet” which built public opinion and put pressure on the government to ensure equal access to the internet.

The government has sought to calm the growing concerns, saying the bill is only in a preliminary stage and it has invited feedback and suggestions from the public until June 4.

Officials point to India’s growing security concerns, specially since an armed attack at a strategic air base in Pathankot in northern India earlier this year, allegedly mounted by Pakistan-based terrorists. Speaking to an Indian newspaper, Junior Home Minister Kiren Rijiju said the bill is necessary because “India as a responsible country must have provisions to secure its boundary and territory.

However Prakash of CIS points out that the new bill will not necessarily prevent terror groups from getting hold of geospatial data to target Indian installations because they don’t need maps generated inside India to access such information.

“They need satellite imagery and they need maps, period. Now this law does not actually prevent such maps from being created, it does not prevent satellite images of India being captured. What it does is prevent Indians from doing so. So it won't prevent foreign-based terrorists, especially state-backed terrorists, from attacking India,” he said.

Internet and public policy experts agree that the government could impose restrictions on mapping and satellite images of strategic and sensitive locations in the country.

Huge fines

The eye-popping fines of up to $15 million and jail terms of up to seven years proposed for incorrect depiction of India’s borders have also caused surprise.

India has always insisted maps should show Kashmir in the north, which is claimed by both India and Pakistan and the state of Arunachal Pradesh in the northeast, which China claims, within Indian political boundaries.

Foreign magazines and newspapers which failed to do so were only allowed to circulate in the country after the words “Boundaries of India shown in this map are not correct” were stamped over maps that did not conform to India’s interpretations of its borders.

Google already offers slightly altered versions of its maps inside India, showing the disputed regions of Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh as part of India.

Independent political analyst Ajoy Bose said New Delhi has long been very sensitive over how these two territories are depicted. “It has always been a source of annoyance to successive governments, but this government being ultranationalist in nature is very particular about India’s geographical boundaries being correctly shown, and therefore it is taking much more drastic action,” he said.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/voice-of-america-may-17-2016-anjana-pasricha-india-proposed-map-law-prompts-outcry

India's Proposal

praskrishna — 2013-12-30T15:16:44Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/indias-proposal.zip

India's plan to offer citizens digital lockers poses a privacy threat, say experts

praskrishna — 2015-04-03T06:32:20Z

The Indian government launched a test version of a service called the digital locker last month that allows citizens to store scanned versions of important documents online, something that experts say poses a serious threat to people’s privacy.

The blog post was published in Scroll.in on March 19, 2015. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

Based on a similar project being tried out in Maharashtra, the service allows people with Aadhar cards to store scanned copies of their passports, birth certificates, ration cards and other important documents on remote servers. This way, people can digitally back-up important documents and also send them over the internet to others, such as potential employers or banks, for availing themselves of other services.

The service, whose test version was launched on February 12, will be optional. But it could find takers from among the about 90% of India’s households who do not own a laptop or computer and the 95% that do not have an internet connection, according to the 2011 census. Experts are concerned that sensitive data stored in a central place could be stolen or misused.

Serious threat

“Any large linked database with personal information is a serious threat to citizen's data,” said G Nagarjuna, a researcher at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education in Mumbai and a member of the Free Software Movement. “There exists no agency that could secure their data till date without any possibilities of data theft.”

Digitisation is not inherently a problem, experts say. It is the kind of information stored that is. There are two kinds of information people need to be concerned about, said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, in an email to Scroll.in. Public domain information such as land records, pan cards and ration cards should be available to the public anyway. However, private information such as biometrics and passports are of concern.

“Unless the cryptography and architecture is organised in such a manner that only the citizen will have access there can be very serious consequences for the individual’s right to privacy,” he said.

The scheme raises the same concerns about privacy that came up during the creation of Aadhar cards, for which the government has collected biometric and identification data for 773 million citizens.

Information is power

Experts pointed to the dangers of the state having access to crucial data about citizens. The dangers are perhaps greater when the data passes into the hands of private corporations, they said.

The Indian government has not said who will run the central servers on which all the data is to be stored, but Maharashtra said in January that it would upload the data it was collecting to a private cloud service run by Microsoft.

“This is a terrible idea because it is centralising storage of personal information across silos controlled by different data controllers and also giving the citizen no control over who has access to his or her data," said Abraham.

“A blunder of the highest order is to pass this information to a cloud, and that too to a foreign company,” said Nagarjuna. “India is a sovereign republic, and hence we should assert this in the country’s digital assets as well. How secure can India be if our security is passed on to another agency that owes its allegiance to another country?”

Surykant Jadhav, joint secretary of the Directorate of Information Technology in Maharashtra, defended the scheme, comparing it to other optional services that the state provides such as online ticketing and filing of income tax returns. “The lockers are there only if people want to use it,” he said.

Cart before the horse

But the government ought to be trying to improve the basics, such as increasing computer and internet penetration, before launching value-added digital services, said Nagarjuna.

“What is the basic social or economic problem that the government is trying to solve by creating the digital lockers?” “Just as each citizen learns how to protect their assets, the digital natives of a digital society will eventually learn how to protect their digital assets. Digital India cannot be created without providing digital literacy to all the citizens. Did we do that? Once we do that, citizens will learn what is good for them, particularly for their own assets over which the government has no ownership.”

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/scroll-mridula-chari-march-19-2015-indias-plan-to-offer-citizens-digital-lockers-poses-a-privacy-threat-say-experts

India's Online Freedom Advocates Hail Court Ruling on Free Speech

praskrishna — 2015-03-27T01:43:22Z

Online freedom advocates in India are hailing a court ruling that struck down a controversial law seen as infringing free speech on the Internet. But in a country expected to have the world’s largest number of web users by 2018, some concerns about net censorship remain.

The blog post by Anjana Pasricha was published by Voice of America on March 24, 2015. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

The 24-year old law student, Shreya Singhal, who spearheaded the legal battle for overturning the harsh law, said it was the arrest of two young women in 2012 for a seemingly innocuous Facebook post that prompted her to petition the Supreme Court. One woman had criticized a shutdown in Mumbai after the death of a Hindu nationalist leader Bal Thackeray, the other “liked” her post.

Like millions of others, Singhal was alarmed at their detention because she says she could have been the one to post the innocuous comment.

“It [the law] was punishing people for expressing their views on the Internet, whereas if they did it or they did it on TV or they did nit in newspapers, they would not get arrested for the same views,” she said.

Scrapping the law on Tuesday, India's Supreme Court said the Information Technology Act was vaguely worded, and did not explain what could be “inconvenient" or “grossly offensive.” The judgment said the law was liable to have a chilling effect on free speech as it strikes at the root of liberty and freedom of expression.

The law had raised alarm bells after several people were arrested in recent years for posting “objectionable content.” In the latest instance, a 16-year-old boy in Uttar Pradesh state was arrested and released on bail for posting an “insulting” remark about regional party leader, Azam Khan. Among others who were picked up under the law were a professor in Kolkata and a cartoonist in Mumbai.

The previous government, which passed the law, said it was necessary to combat abuse and defamation on the Internet, but critics said it was used by political parties to suppress dissent and criticism.

The Supreme Court ruling also made it tougher for the government to order Internet companies to remove online content.

Sunil Abraham of Bangalore-based Center for Internet and Society says local and foreign Internet companies have faced growing pressure for putting up content deemed offensive in India.

“According to Facebook's latest transparency report, takedown requests and information requests from the Indian government continue to grow, and that is worrying. But that part of the law has been read down. Now when the government sends the takedown notice, it has to be accompany the takedown notice with a court order,” said Abraham.

But free speech campaigners say concerns about online censorship have not completely gone away. The Supreme Court has upheld a law that allows the government to block websites, saying there are sufficient safeguards.

Campaigners like Sunil Abraham think otherwise. “Lack of transparency makes it impossible for anybody to tell whether the government is censoring the Internet in a proportionate manner, whether it is working to truly address the real harms that emerge from bad content online. When the court in India bans books or movies, the judgments of these courts are made available to the public."

"But if when it comes to website blocking, this transparency requirement is missing. In fact, the law has secrecy provisions, which prevents ISP’s that receive these block orders from making them available in the public domain,” said Abraham.

The young student, Singhal, who led the legal battle, said she was “overwhelmed” at the victory for online freedom.

“We are such a diverse society in India with so many diverse and different opinions. It is inherent in us, it is part of us, this democracy, this debate we have,” she said.

Her views were echoed on Twitter and Facebook by people in India, a country of 1.2 billion people where Internet access is growing rapidly.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/voice-of-america-march-24-2015-anjana-pascricha-indias-online-freedom-advocates-hail-court-ruling-on-free-speech

India's landmark online speech ruling is step toward greater press freedom

praskrishna — 2015-03-29T00:55:35Z

In an historic decision, India's Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down part of a law used to silence criticism and free expression. While this marks a pivotal victory that has been welcomed in many quarters, many challenges remain for press freedom in the country.

The blog post by Sumit Galhotra was published by CPJ (Committee to Protect Journalists) on March 28, 2015. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Section 66A of the Information Technology Act--the vaguely worded provision struck down by the court--criminalized online speech deemed "grossly offensive" or "menacing," along with information for the purpose of causing "annoyance" or "inconvenience." Individuals convicted under the provision could face up to three years in prison. This law, along with others that remain on the books, has allowed India to become a paradise for the offended.

The law was challenged by a public interest litigation mounted by Shreya Singhal, in 2012. Singhal, who had just returned to Delhi from her studies in the U.K., was infuriated at how the law was being used to stifle debate and criticism in her home country, according to reports.

The September 2012 arrest of cartoonist Aseem Trivedi, on a range of charges including one under Section 66A, over his cartoons on politics and corruption, caught Singhal's attention. A few weeks later, she learned of the arrest of 21-year-old Shaheen Dhada, who questioned on Facebook the shutdown of Mumbai following the death of a politician, Singhal said. Dhada's friend, Renu Srinivasan, who had merely "liked" the comment, was arrested under the law. According to news reports, both were charged. These cases sparked a national debate on the space for free expression in the world's largest democracy, and led Singhal to challenge the law, she told reporters.

"It's a big victory," Singhal, who is currently studying law in Delhi, told the media following Tuesday's decision. "The Internet is so far-reaching and so many people use it now, it's very important for us to protect this right."

India is expected to overtake the U.S. as the second largest population of Internet users in the world, behind only China, according to the Internet and Mobile Association of India, a nonprofit group representing the Web and mobile industry. As Internet usage accelerates in India, thanks in large part to the widespread use of mobile devices, there has been an ongoing debate on how best to policeit in a country that has to contend with frequent episodes of violence, civil unrest, and terrorist attacks.


Karuna Nundy, an advocate at the Supreme Court of India who helped the legal challenge, says the country has several laws that are a threat to press freedom. (Geoffrey King)

Lawrence Liang, a lawyer and researcher at the Bangalore-based Alternative Law Forum, an Indian legal research organization, shared in Singhal's welcoming of the decision. "It is important to note that this is the first judgment in decades in which the Supreme Court has struck down a legal provision for violating freedom of speech, and in doing so, it simultaneously builds upon a rich body of free speech cases in India and paves the way for a jurisprudence of free speech in the 21st century, the era of the Internet and social media," he told CPJ.

Pranesh Prakash, policy director at Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, an organization that focuses on issues of digital pluralism, called the judgment "a moral victory." He said the decision "furthers free speech jurisprudence in India, but also in all those other countries where an Indian precedent would be important," including many countries in Asia, and places such as South Africa.

As part of the judgment, the court narrowed its reading of Section 79 of the IT Act, under which private parties could submit notice-and-takedown orders directly to Internet intermediaries. The court held that intermediary liability can be pursued only through a court order or other government order, reports said.

Liang told CPJ the judgment falls short in some areas. The Supreme Court's 123-page judgment kept in place Section 69A of the IT Act and Information Technology Rules 2009 that allows the government to block websites if the content in question has the potential to create communal discord, social disorder, or impact India's relations with other countries, according to news reports.

"I would say that if there is missed opportunity in the judgment, it is the clarification of the process of blocking websites. If Section 66A was found to be arbitrary in that its scope covered protected and unprotected speech, then the procedure for blocking websites as laid out in Section 69A is also beset with similar problems," Liang said.

According to Chinmayi Arun, research director at the Centre for Communications Governance at the National Law University in Delhi, the 2009 rules require blocking requests and implementation to be kept confidential. "This means that speakers will have no way of finding out that the government has ordered intermediaries to block their content. Speakers will therefore not be able to question unconstitutional blocking orders before the judiciary--this is a clear interference with their constitutional rights," she told CPJ via email, referring to online users who could fall foul of the law.

Academic in me: As a matter of legal & constitutional analysis, the SC judgment is at its best on #66A, but weaker on 69A & weakest on 79.
-- Pranesh Prakash (@pranesh_prakash) March 24, 2015

For some journalists, the decision highlights how virtually no national party in India, including the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is a champion of these rights. In a piece for independent news website Scroll, journalist Shivam Vij criticizes the current Narendra Modi-led government for missing an opportunity by not acting decisively to address the problematic law. "It has become routine for India's politicians to avoid taking tough political decisions if they can be left to the courts," he said. "When in power, the BJP is as happy as the Congress to have at its disposal laws that can muzzle voices of dissent."

Trivedi told CPJ he agreed that the previous and current government did little to address abuses of the law. Trivedi, who up until the court decision, faced charges under Section 66A, and had joined Singhal as a petitioner in the case, added: "This decision marks a strong first step." The cartoonist's lawyer, Vijay Hiremath, told CPJ that the Section 66A charge has now been removed, but Trivedi still faces charges under the National Emblem Act.

While the striking down of Section 66A is a step in the right direction, many challenges remain for press freedom in India. Karuna Nundy, an advocate at the Supreme Court of India, who was at the forefront of the legal challenge, told CPJ numerous colonial-era laws, particularly in India's penal code, continue to pose threats to free speech and press freedom in India. CPJ has long documented cases of Indian journalists being threatened with sedition, defamation, and laws that criminalize "outraging religious sentiment."

Actually, next step(s): a review of the constitutionality of sedition, challenge criminal defamation, constitutionalise civil defamation.
-- Gautam Bhatia (@gautambhatia88) March 24, 2015

But Nundy expressed optimism for the challenges ahead for press freedom in India and elsewhere. She said the judgment shows, "If you do the work, you take the trouble, you make the challenge, you can achieve the kinds of values that you stand for. That is the work that is the duty of all us as national citizens and citizens of the world."

[Geoffrey King, CPJ Internet Advocacy Coordinator, contributed to this report from Manila]

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/cpj-march-28-2015-sumit-galhotra-indias-landmark-online-speech-ruling-is-step-toward-greater-press-freedom

India's Internet Privacy Woes

praskrishna — 2013-09-05T11:09:30Z

“For the sake of national security and to protect the privacy of its citizens, India should develop its own social media platforms,” says Dr Kamlesh Bajaj, CEO of Data Security Council of India (DSCI), a Nasscom-promoted ‘self-regulatory’ organisation on data protection and privacy in India, in a blog post dated August 13.

This article by Rohin Dharmakumar was published in Forbes India on August 26, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Citing a litany of woes, including American control over internet infrastructure, Bajaj makes the case for India to take a leaf out of China’s playbook (“even though its reasons were different”) and encourages the creation of “Indian” social media sites and search engines.

“Unfortunately, Dr Bajaj provides a wrong solution to a correct diagnosis,” says Pranesh Prakash, a policy director with the Centre for Internet and Society. “First, I can’t think of any governmental intervention—short of a ban on existing foreign services—that can make a new Indian service successful. Second, India’s privacy laws are worse than those in the US. Nothing will stop the US and Indian governments from coming after this company too.”

The problem arises because services like Facebook and Google store all your data unencrypted on their servers, making it easy for them, or governments and hackers, to monitor everything you do. The correct solution, says Prakash, would be to encourage the creation and use of de-centralised and end-to-end encrypted services that do not store all your data in one place.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/forbesindia-august-26-2013-india-internet-privacy-woes

India's Internet Growth & Challenges

praskrishna — 2013-05-22T05:37:28Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/indias-internet-growth-challenges

India's cyber cafes going porn-free

praskrishna — 2011-05-06T04:53:41Z

Pornography fans in India who like to indulge in the sexual eye candy at public cyber cafes may be in for a forced intervention as a new government ruling bans porn websites, requires cafe owners to keep a one-year log of all sites accessed by customers and forces customers to produce an ID card prior to use. This news was published on msnbc.com on April 28, 2011.

These new guidelines, which were released April 11, are getting a lot of pushback from privacy advocates in India, who cite the legality of watching porn in the country.

"Watching pornography is not illegal in India," Pawan Duggal, a lawyer who specializes in IT laws, told The Times of India."It's absurd to ask cyber cafe owners to tell their customers not to access pornographic material even as law allows individuals to access adult websites unless it's not child pornography. The new rules require a second look."

The "Information Technology (Guidelines for Cyber Cafe) Rules, 2011" imposed by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (aka the Department of Information Technology) have several requirements, all of which have met with more questions and concerns over the impact on everyone who accesses the Internet through the cafes, not just porn watchers. Here are the notable issues that show some Big Brother tendencies:

Cyber cafe owners must register with an unnamed agency for licenses for their establishments.

Cyber cafe users must produce a legally valid form of identification prior to using a computer, such as school ID, passport, driver's license and voter ID card. Children without ID must be accompanied by an adult with acceptable identification documents.
If the cyber cafe user isn't able to produce legit ID, then they may be photographed through a webcam.
Refusal to produce identification or to be photographed will result in the user not being allowed to use a computer at the cyber cafe.
"All the computers in the cyber café shall be equipped with the safety/filtering software so as to the avoid access to the websites relating to pornography, obscenity, terrorism and other objectionable materials."
Webcam photos will be part of the log cyber cafe owners need to maintain for a minimum of one year, either in print or online. Cyber cafe owners will also be required to submit monthly reports to the Ministry's overseeing agency that give details about computer use, including: "History of websites accessed, logs of proxy server installed at the the cafe, mail server logs, logs of network devices such as routers, switches, systems etc. installed at the cyber cafe and logs of firewall or Intrusion Prevention/Detection systems, if installed."
Finally, the guidelines bring down barriers between users by disallowing partitions of more than 4.5 feet at computer stations. Children are not to be allowed to use the computers unsupervised.

Duggal told The Times that he thought these rules may very well force cafe owners out of business.

Non-profit watchdog Privacy India has these guidelines square in its sights, protesting: the redundancy of the licensing process (cyber cafes are already subject to registration and licensing), how the guidelines may make cafe owners vulnerable to liability for the actions of their users and blocking internet access to children from "poorer classes, (since they are most likely to routinely access internet through cyber cafes) and denies them the opportunity of developing their computer skills which are crucial for the growth of the “knowledge economy” that India is trying to head towards."

Naturally, privacy is the issue that most concerns the group, which would insist on a purge of the logs after "the minimum retention period." Here's what they have to say about kids and their right to privacy:

In addition, we believe that children are more susceptible to exploitation and consequently have a heightened privacy expectation which must be honoured. We recommend that the current sub-rule be deleted and replaced with a clause which specifically exempts children from proving their identity and forbids taking photographs of them under any circumstance.

And why adults need it, too:

There are many uses of the internet for which a user may legitimately require privacy: For instance, patients, including HIV patients and those with mental illness, may wish to obtain information about their condition. Similarly sexuality minorities may wish to seek support or reach out to a larger community. Enforcing the architecture stipulated in this rule would discourage their access to such vital information. In addition, this architecturewould make it easier for cyber crimes such as identity theft to take place since it would be easier to observe the login details of other users at the cyber café.

The group is also not a fan of all the info that cyber cafes will be sitting on. "We further believe that access to the history of websites and mail server logs is a serious invasion of a person’s privacy, and should be omitted from the back up logs."

As if all those new guidelines weren't already cramping the carefree surfing experience, cyber cafes will also be subject to periodic visits by police inspectors who will have the power to demand all logs and check for compliance.

Read the original here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/cyber-cafes-porn-free

India's centralised snooping system facing big delays

praskrishna — 2013-07-15T06:35:05Z

Central Monitoring System lacks algorithms, database and data.

This blog post by Phil Muncaster was published in "The Register, UK" on July 9, 2013. The Centre for Internet & Society is mentioned.

After recent revelations about governments snooping on their own citizens, it's nice to know that not every such effort is going smoothly, as India’s much criticised NSA-style Centralised Monitoring System (CMS) is facing big delays after it emerged that the project is still missing the vital software which will allow analysts to search comms data.

The nation's Department of Telecommunications has now told the Center for Development of Telematics (C-DoT), which is installing the system, to speed things up, according to official documents seen by the Wall Street Journal.

The Rs.4 billion (£47.8m) CMS was originally conceived as a way of allowing the authorities to lawfully intercept voice calls and texts, emails, social media and the geographical location of individuals.

However, the Intelligence Bureau, which will be manning the system, has delayed its introduction for several reasons.

Firstly, mobile operators in only seven of the sub-continent’s 22 service areas have been connected to the CMS, leaving holes in its reach.

There’s also a major issue in that the system currently lacks the search algorithms needed to identify specific documents, meaning that as it stands operatives would have to search every email in the CMS to find the one they’re looking for.

The datacentre where intercepted data is to be stored is also apparently not yet ready, while the country’s Central Bureau of Investigation has yet to be given access to the system, causing further delays.

At a time when mass government monitoring of communications networks is a hot topic around the world thanks to Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations, rights groups have roundly slammed India’s CMS plans.

Human Rights Watch branded the scheme “chilling” in a strongly worded response, while India’s Centre for Internet and Society warned that the country currently doesn’t have privacy laws which could protect individuals from potential abuse of the system.

A Stop ICMS campaign has also been launched online in an attempt to mobilise opposition to the plans.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/theregister-uk-phil-muncaster-july-9-2013-indias-centralised-snooping-system-facing-big-delays