Centre for Internet and Society

ICT Awareness Program for Myanmar Parliamentarians in Yangon

praskrishna — 2014-07-29T09:37:26Z

Myanmar ICT for Development Organization-MIDO conducted ICT policy training for multi- party parliamentarian representatives in Yangon on July 26 and 27, 2014. Sunil Abraham presented on Innovation Ecosystem and Thinking about Internet Regulation.

Sunil's Presentations

Schedule

Day 1	Topic	Resource Person
0930-1030	What is the significance of ICTs to legislators?	Rohan Samarajiva (RS)
1030-1115	Stories from the field: What do poor people do with ICTs?	Helani Galpaya (HG)
1115-1145	Break
1145-1245	Legislation, policies, plans, strategies, regulation	RS
1245-1330	Modalities of making and implementing ICT policy	RS and HG
1330-1430	Lunch	Videos
1430-1530	What is independent regulation? Why is it needed for sector growth	RS
1530-1600	Break
1600-1700	Panel discussion: How social media can be used in public life	Sunil Abraham (SA), RS & Charitha Herath (CH)
Day 2
930-1030	Regulation of online speech	Nay Phone Latt (NPL)
1030-1100	Break
1100-1200	How to think about Internet policy	SA; counterpoint by CH
1200-1300	Hope in the heart and money in the pocket: Results of effective policy	RS
1300-1400	Lunch	Videos

We plan to have simultaneous interpretation. There will be time for discussion within each session.

Brief descriptions of sessions

What is the significance of ICTs to legislators?

Rohan Samarajiva

This is the introduction, wherein we bring out the economic, social and political significance of ICTs. Why legislators should pay attention to the subject.

Stories from the field: What do poor people do with ICTs?

Helani Galpaya

Here we present the findings of how the poor use ICTs, using demand-side data (both quant and quality) from Myanmar and countries in similar circumstances.

Legislation, policies, plans, strategies, regulation

In this session, a former policy advisor/regulator will present a perspective on the important distinctions between legislation, policies, plans, strategies, and regulation.

Modalities of making and implementing ICT policy

RS and HG

Here we will delve into the practical details of making policy and of implementing policy, using examples.

What is independent regulation? Why is it needed for sector growth

Progress in electronic connectivity is the foundation that will reduce the frictions in the Myanmar economy, create jobs and exports and enable social, political and economic innovations. This requires massive investments, most of which will be private and most of which will come from outside the country. What legislators need to know about creating an environment that will attract and retain foreign investment in a globalized economy will be discussed.

How social media can be used in public life

Sunil Abraham, RS and Charitha Herath

In the panel discussion, SA will pose questions to a policy advisor who has used social media in a political campaign and a social media savvy current government official.

How to think about Internet policy

SA; counterpoint by CH

A leading advocate of enlightened Internet policy, Sunil Abraham of the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India, will present his ideas, highlighting the international dimension of Internet policy. CH will share his perspectives as a serving government official.

Regulation of online speech

Nay Phone Latt

Here, Myanmar’s leading blogger and founder of MIDO will discuss the current concerns with legislation that seeks to control online speech.

Hope in the heart and money in the pocket: Results of effective policy

Results of effective policy implementation will be discussed with reference to specific country experiences.

Resource persons

Rohan Samarajiva, PhD, (program director) is founding Chair of LIRNEasia, an ICT policy and regulation think tank active across emerging Asian and Pacific economies. He was Team Leader at the Sri Lanka Ministry for Economic Reform, Science and Technology (2002-04) responsible for infrastructure reforms, including participation in the design of the USD 83 million e-Sri Lanka Initiative. He was Director General of Telecommunications in Sri Lanka (1998-99). In this capacity, he established the Telecom Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka; conducted the first public hearing and public notice proceedings; successfully concluded a license-violation proceeding; and laid the foundation for a competitive market. He was also a founder director of the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (2003-05), Honorary Professor at the University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka (2003-04), Visiting Professor of Economics of Infrastructures at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands (2000-03) and Associate Professor of Communication and Public Policy at the Ohio State University in the US (1987-2000). Dr. Samarajiva was also Policy Advisor to the Ministry of Post and Telecom in Bangladesh (2007-09).

Sunil Abraham is the Executive Director of Bangalore based research organization, the Centre for Internet and Society. He founded Mahiti in 1998, a company committed to creating high impact technology and communications solutions. Today, Mahiti employs more than 50 engineers. Sunil continues to serve on the board. Sunil was elected an Ashoka fellow in 1999 to 'explore the democratic potential of the Internet' and was also granted a Sarai FLOSS fellowship in 2003. Between June 2004 and June 2007, Sunil also managed the International Open Source Network, a project of United Nations Development Programme's Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme serving 42 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

Helani Galpaya is LIRNEasia’s Chief Executive Officer. Helani leads LIRNEasia’s 2012-2014 IDRC funded research on improving customer life cycle management practices in the delivery of electricity and e-government services using ICTs. She recently completed an assessment of how the poor in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka use telecenters to access government services. For UNCTAD and GTZ she authored a report on how government procurement practices can be used to promote a country’s ICT sector and for the World Bank/InfoDev Broadband Toolkit, a report on broadband strategies in Sri Lanka. She has been an invited speaker at various international forums on topics ranging from m-Government to ICT indicators to communicating research to policy makers. Prior to LIRNEasia, Helani worked at the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka, implementing the World-Bank funded e-Sri Lanka initiative. Prior to her return to Sri Lanka, she worked in the United States at Booz & Co., Marengo Research, Citibank, and Merrill Lynch. Helani holds a Masters in Technology and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Bachelor’s in Computer Science from Mount Holyoke College, USA.

Charitha Herath has served as Secretary, Ministry of Mass Media and Information in the Government of Sri Lanka since 2012. Prior to his present appointment, he was the Chairman of the Central Environment Authority. Currently on secondment for national services from his permanent academic position as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka, he continues to work on his academic research, specializing in governments and politics in Asia, ethnic studies, cultural psychology, social and political philosophy, with his main focus on political psychology. More detail at http://charithaherath.wordpress.com/about-2/

Nay Phone Latt is the Co-founder and Executive Director of Myanmar ICT Development Organization (MIDO). He graduated from Yangon Technological University with a civil engineering degree in 2004. He co-founded the Myanmar Blogger Society in 2007. Award winner of PEN Barbara Goldsmith Award and RFS’s Cyber Dissidents Award. Former Political Prisoner. CEC Member of Myanmar Journalists Association(MJA) Chief Editor of ThanLwinAinMat Online Magazine (www.thanlwin.com). Member of Board of Directors of House of Media & Entertainment (HOME).

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/ict-awareness-program-for-myanmar-parliamentarians-yangon

ICT Accessibility in Sri Lanka

praskrishna — 2011-11-08T10:32:25Z

During a recent visit to Lirne Asia in Colombo, thanks to the efforts of the Lirne Asia team, I had an opportunity to meet the Sri Lankan regulator-TRC, the ICT Agency-ICTA and the Jinnasena Trust to discuss their initiatives for providing ICT and Telecommunications access for persons with disabilities in Sri Lanka.

This was quite a unique opportunity for me since I have never before interacted on a one-to-one basis with the regulator of any other country, other than my own. So I did a preliminary background check of Sri Lanka’s ICT and general legislative framework which revealed that it already had sufficient legislative mandate to ensure that persons with disabilities had equal access to information and ICTs, an obligation under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which Sri Lanka signed way back in 2007. In fact Sri Lanka has mentioned persons with disabilities in its Constitution. Access to ICTs is also covered in the Protection of Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 1996, National Policy on Disability for Sri Lanka, 2003, the Telecommunications Ten Year Development Plan, 2006-2016 and the Universal Service Obligation. Para 18 of the telecommunications Service Providers License also obliges service providers to ensure that their services are accessible for persons with disabilities. So in fact, as far as I could see, Sri Lanka had more commitment in terms of legislation/ policy to facilitate ICT access to the disabled than India had.

However, discussions with the officials and organization revealed that implementation remains a challenge in Sri Lanka as with several other developing countries including India. In Sri Lanka, there are primarily three languages for which accessible content and assistive technology needs to be available. At present, there is a text to speech synthesizer for Singhala, but not for Tamil. There doesn’t appear to be a robust screen reader with which this has been integrated. There is as yet no OCR software to recognize scanned books and convert them into a machine readable format and no fair use exception in their Intellectual Property legislation to facilitate conversion into accessible formats.

In Sri Lanka, most of the accessibility projects funded by the TRC revolve primarily around setting up infrastructure in schools and some amount of capacity building. The TRC hopes to extend it in the next phase of its funding to include development of assistive technologies (ATs).

While this definitely seemed to be on the way towards progress, there still remained one point which I found very troubling. Why is there such a communication gap between persons with disabilities and the policy makers? Even in India, we come across projects where the Government of India is spending precious funds developing technology which they feel is required for the blind, while the blind in fact are already using more advanced technology. For instance, there is a project with the government which is to develop a special browser for the blind, when the blind and visually impaired are already navigating the Internet using screen readers like Jaws and NVDA. My meetings with the regulator and other agencies confirmed for me that persons with disabilities in Sri Lanka and India are facing similar problems. A severe challenge for persons with disabilities is to make policy makers and developers aware of their needs and new developments in technology so that appropriate initiatives are taken which are low cost, available in local languages, and scalable. Increasingly it seems important to involve the private sector as well in accessibility initiatives to increase variety, competition and solutions.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/ict-sri-lanka

ICFI Workshop

praskrishna — 2016-01-03T10:33:14Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/icfi-workshop

Iceland’s proposed porn ban ‘like repression in Iran, N. Korea’ – activists

praskrishna — 2013-03-21T03:56:30Z

A group of 40 human rights activists from around the world fear that Iceland could become “a role model for Internet censorship” if it introduces Internet filters blocking online content deemed pornographic.

This blog post was published in RT on March 1, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

“The act of censoring pornography in Iceland differs in no way from repression of speech in Iran, China or North Korea,” human rights advocates wrote in an open letter to Icelandic Interior Minister Ögmundur Jónasson.

Activists from nearly 20 countries, including the UK, America, Austria and Finland, said that Iceland’s moral reasons for the push to censor Internet pornography is “justifying rather than condemning the actions of totalitarian regimes.”

Critics – including Jillian C. York, Director for International Freedom of Expression, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Sunil Abraham, Executive Director for India’s Internet and Society Center, and Ot van Daalen, head of the Dutch Bits of Freedom Center – have described the controversial measure as “an affront to basic principles of the society.”

They also argued that those advocating the Web porn ban have offered “no definition, no evidence, and suggested no technology.”

The authors of the letter warned that the prohibition of pornographic content could create demand for an underground porn industry, unregulated and most certainly affiliated with other illegal activities, “as we have seen in the case of drugs or alcohol prohibition. Hiding the problem is not a solution and may in fact make things worse.”

The solution, according to the activists, could be better sex education at home and schools: “Sex education that deals not only with conception, contraception and sexually transmitted diseases, but also relationships, communication and respect.”

Iceland, known for its feminist policies, could become the first Western country to censor online pornography, despite concerns over who will be given the authority to choose what is banned.

“It is tempting to regard filtering the Internet as a quick and easy way to restrict unwanted speech, opinions, or media, which the government regards as harmful for either them or the people,” the letter said. “The right to see the world as it is, is critical to the very tenets and functions of a democracy and must be protected at all costs.”

The activists claimed that it is technically impossible to censor the Internet without monitoring all telecommunications with automated machines: “This level of government surveillance directly conflicts with the idea of a free society.”

Iceland is not the only European country that has tried to implement such a ban. In December, the UK proposed blocking access to all pornographic websites, but UK ministers rejected the idea over a lack of public support.

According to supporters of the Icelandic ban, pornography has unquestionably damaging effects on both children and women.

"We have to be able to discuss a ban on violent pornography, which we all agree has a very harmful effects on young people and can have a clear link to incidences of violent crime," Interior Minister Jonasson, the author of the proposed ban, was quoted as saying.

While Iceland has already passed a law banning the distribution and printing of pornography, the proposed ban would eventually restrict access to pornographic websites in the country, and make it impossible to use Icelandic credit cards on X-rated sites.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/rt-march-1-2013-icelands-proposed-porn-ban

ICANN55WorkSummary.pdf

praskrishna — 2016-03-30T14:40:06Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/ICANN55WorkSummary.pdf

icann structure

praskrishna — 2013-12-03T05:30:58Z

ICANN

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/ICANNstructure.png

ICANN Sexual Harassment Case Highlights Lack of Procedure at Global Internet Body

praskrishna — 2016-04-01T15:42:49Z

Alleged perpetrator files counter-complaint with ombudsman’s office after being publicly identified.

The article was published in the Wire on March 24, 2016.

A female researcher associated with the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society has alleged that she was sexually harassed at an ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) public meeting held in Morocco earlier this month, in an incident that highlights a lack of established procedure at the global body responsible for maintaining the technical backbone of the Internet.

According to the woman, who is currently a law student but was representing CIS at the meeting, she was sexually harassed by a participant from the private sector constituency on March 6th at a working session.

“I felt like my space and safety as a young woman in the ICANN community was at stake,” she said.

ICANN-organised events currently do not have a formal redressal system for these type of complaints nor does it have a specific anti-sexual harassment committee to which community members can file an official complaint.

The CIS representative, therefore, has taken up her case with ICANN’s ombudsman office, an office that does not have an explicit mandate to deal with incidents of sexual harassment.

“I currently am unclear as to the exact status of my complaint. The ombudsman office does not have a clear sexual harassment procedure, it has only a standards of behaviour. When I first went to them, they told me nobody has officially complained of sexual harassment since 1998,” she told The Wire.

“I understand the evidential burden that needs to be fulfilled for this [allegation] to be proven. I know it’s difficult to prove this. I just want an enquiry conducted properly and impartially.”

The Centre for Internet and Society released a sharp statement on Monday, pointing out that since the woman was “given no immediate remedy or formal recourse”, she had no choice but to make “the incident publicly known in the interim.”

CIS Executive Director Sunil Abraham pointed out that while the ombudsman office has been in touch with the organisation’s representative, “this administrative process is simply inadequate for rights-violation”.

To that end, CIS has called upon ICANN to “institute a formal redressal system with regard to sexual harassment and institute an anti-sexual harassment committee that is neutral and approachable”.

“Merely having an ombudsman who is a white male, however well intentioned, is inadequate and completely unhelpful to the complainant. The present situation is one where the ombudsman has no effective power and only advises the board ,” the CIS’s statement reads.

ICANN perspective

When asked for a comment, ICANN media representatives pointed The Wire to the written transcript of a public session in which this particular issue of sexual harassment was raised. In that meeting, ICANN board member Markus Kummer specifically condemns “improper conduct of any kind such as harassment” while calling for zero tolerance on such issues within the larger ICANN community.

On the issue of whether ICANN could adopt a broader policy on sexual harassment, Kummer acknowledges that while the organisation’s expected standards of behaviour “could be a bit more specific as regards harassment”, the standards are applicable to “staff and board members and we have to undergo training”.

“Now, we could also make this also available to the community but the board thought it might not be the appropriate way to go about and impose something on the community. It might be more appropriate for the community to come up with these standards…Let me once again assure the community that the board is fully cognizant of the importance of this issue and supports the community in developing standards that may be more explicit in regard of these issues,” Kummer is quoted as saying in the transcript.

Complaint, Counter-Complaint

The incident, however, took a different turn on Tuesday after the ICANN ombudsman wrote to the CIS representative informing her that the investigation had become “very difficult” because she had identified and named the alleged perpetrator in a public social media posting.

“By naming [the alleged perpetrator] before the process was completed, this has meant that the confidentiality of my office has been compromised and his privacy has been compromised. Leaving aside the issue of whether he actually made the comments and behaved as you describe [sic], he is entitled to a fair and impartial investigation,” the ombudsman office’s letter says.

The alleged perpetrator now, according to the letter, has filed a counter-complaint with the ombudsman and has asked the office to undertake an investigation into the female student’s actions in this regard.

“I remind you that his [the perpetrator] initial response on the initial discussion was that he could not recall making the remark. So I sought your comments. I would have liked to take your comments back to him and had some form of conversation. This may still be possible but the force of your complaint is diluted by the problem of procedural fairness by the premature publication of his name,” the letter adds.

Cleaning up

While the CIS representative’s complaint may be the first officially recorded incident at an ICANN meeting, sexual harassment and inappropriate gender bias at numerous technical conferences across the world (ICANN or not) has been a well-documented phenomenon.

In 2012, ICANN ombudsman Chris LaHette was forced to step in after a complaint was lodged regarding the insensitive advertising and promotion surrounding the ICANN 44 meeting in Prague.

While ICANN’s “expected standards of behaviour” – basically a code of conduct – explicitly states that all “members of the ICANN community be treated equally irrespective of nationality or gender..”, there is no official policy that states what aggrieved parties should do after an incident occurs.

Such a policy must be created, CIS points out, and must be “displayed on the ICANN website, at the venue of meetings, and made available in delegate kits”.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-wire-march-24-2016-icann-sexual-harassment-case-highlights-lack-of-procedure-at-global-internet-body

ICANN and Global Internet Governance: The Road to São Paulo, and Beyond

praskrishna — 2014-04-03T09:54:08Z

A conference to be held on Friday 21 March 2014 at the ICANN 49 meeting venue, the Raffles City Convention Centre, Singapore, in the Olivia Room, from 10:00 to 18:00. Organized by the NonCommercial Users Constituency (NCUC) of the Generic Names Supporting Organization, with the generous support of ICANN. Geetha Hariharan participated in this event.

Click to read more on the conference here.

The NETMundial Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of the Internet Governance will be held in São Paulo, Brazil on 23-24 April 2014.

Initiated by Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé, and co-organized by the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee and /1Net, the meeting will bring together a wide range of government, business, technical community, civil society and academic participants from around the world. The organizers describe its objectives as, “crafting Internet governance principles and proposing a roadmap for the further evolution of the Internet governance ecosystem.”

The purpose of this NCUC conference is to provide a first opportunity for intensive, F2F cross-community dialogue on the main substantive topics likely to be addressed in São Paulo. Stakeholders from across the ICANN community have expressed a range of views and uncertainties about the meeting’s precise substantive focus, expected outcomes, and potential significance in the continuing evolution of the global Internet governance ecosystem. It is hoped that the NCUC conference will help the community to work through the issues at stake and to prepare for its participation in the NETMundial.

On Site Participation
The meeting is free of charge and open to all members of the ICANN community. People wishing to attend must register for the conference and indicate whether they wish to be included in the lunch and/or the reception. Attendees must also register for the ICANN meeting in order to access the conference venue.

Remote Participation
ICANN will provide live remote participation via Adobe Connect, audiocast, and telephone dial-in. They also will videotape the conference for subsequent web access. For access please visit http://singapore49.icann.org/en/schedule/fri-ncuc-ig

Written Inputs
Members of the ICANN community are invited to provide personal or organizational written inputs related to the four panel topics indicated on the conference program. These will be added to the online repository associated with each of the sessions. If interested, please send your inputs to ncuc@ncuc.org.

Programme details here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/non-commercial-users-constituency-icann-and-global-internet-governance

ICANN 57

praskrishna — 2016-11-08T01:14:37Z

ICANN 57 is being hosted by the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India from November 3 to 9, 2016 in Hyderabad at Hyderabad International Convention Centre. Vidushi Marda participated in the event as a speaker.

As part of her work for the Cross Community Working Party on ICANN's Corporate and Social Responsibility to Respect Human Rights, Vidushi presented her work on the Human Rights Impact of new gTLD Subsequent Procedures in Hyderabad.

India’s Minister of Law & Justice and Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad reiterated India’s commitment to the multistakeholder model during the Opening Ceremony of the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers’ (ICANN’s) 57th Public Meeting. The meeting, also known as ICANN57, is taking place in Hyderabad, India, from November 3 – 9, 2016 and has convened thousands of the global Internet community members (both on-site and remotely) to discuss and develop policies related to the Internet’s Domain Name System (DNS). It is hosted by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), with support from the Government of Telangana.

ICANN57 is the first post-IANA stewardship transition public meeting and also the first Annual General Meeting under the new Meetings Strategy. ICANN meetings are held three times a year in different regions to enable attendees from around the world to participate in person. These meetings offer a variety of sessions such as workshops, open forums and working meetings on the development and implementation of Internet policies. ICANN meetings offer the best opportunity for face-to-face discussions and exchange of opinions among attendees dedicated to the continued stable and secure operation of the Domain Name System.

For more info about the event, visit the ICANN website.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/icann-57-hyderabad

ICANN 55

praskrishna — 2016-03-30T14:41:34Z

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) held its 55th meeting in Marrakech, Morocco from March 5 to 10, 2016. Padmini Baruah and Vidushi Marda attended the event organized by Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Consular and Social Affairs.

The Centre for Internet & Society's (CIS) work during this meeting revolved mainly around ICANN's accountability (DIDP and Reconsideration requests), transparency, its commitment to human rights, diversity, and questions surrounding the IANA transition. CIS research was circulated via a submission booklet to different people that we met through the course of the conference. A session-wise account of our work at ICANN55 can be accessed here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/icann-55