Centre for Internet and Society

How does the government track all its legal cases?

praskrishna — 2016-09-14T10:17:07Z

The Legal Information Management and Briefing System , an integral part of the digital India initiative, aims to be a database of all the ongoing cases with the government.

The article by Shreeja Sen published by Livemint on September 13, 2016 has quoted Sunil Abraham.

More than one lakh cases currently exist on a law ministry platform curated in the last 13 months.The Legal Information Management and Briefing System (LIMBS), aimed to be a database of all the ongoing cases with the government as a party, is part of the government’s push towards digital India.

Law secretary Suresh Chandra said this is a big step under the Digital India project, intended to monitor and ultimately reduce spending on government litigation.

“The aim is to conduct cases properly. If our system works, along with the national litigation policy, we will be able to prevent 50% cases before they are even filed,” Chandra said.

According to the government, the project will help reduce delays in filing responses in cases , contempt notices because of such delays and consequent monetary penalties.

The website has also undergone the required security audit under the NIC (national informatics centre), to ensure the data is safe and protected. However, a database like this on the internet comes with its challenges.

“To ensure client confidentiality, communication should be bilateral between lawyer and client and should be encrypted and even watermarked. If this project allows access to documents by multiple stakeholders without encrypting it for the recipient, then if there is any leak, the documents cannot be traced back to the person who was responsible,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director at Centre for Internet and Society, a non-profit research organisation.

The LIMBS project began internally at the ministry of railway sometime in 2013, but was soon expanded as a single platform across ministries. In July 2015, it was hosted on the NIC server. The law ministry, by a gazette notification on 8 February, formally launched LIMBS to monitor cases filed against the Union government.

As of now, there is no special budget allocated for this project, which is being handled in house with a team of eight people – four developers on the technology side and four implementers for the case details. The development of the website is being handled by Ajay Gupta, deputy chief vigilance officer, northern railway. From the law ministry, Spriha Johari is the project director responsible for the website.

As of 12 September, the five ministries with the most uploads on the website were railways (69,469 cases), communications and information technology (7,830), finance (4452), environment (3,189) and defence (2,565).

Every day, nearly 400-500 cases are added to the portal. In all 58 ministries and their 202 departments have been brought under the LIMBS project.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-september-13-2016-shreeja-sen-how-does-govt-track-all-its-legal-cases

How ‘private-censorship’ is making online content disappear, quietly

praskrishna — 2011-12-19T05:31:50Z

If only Kapil Sibal knew how successful his ministry has already been in making online content quietly disappear and how pliant Internet companies can be in India when it comes to requests to remove content, thanks in some part to the rules notified by IT ministry in April 2011.

The Union Minister for Communication and Information Technology, days after an avalanche of bad press fell upon him after his reported warning to Google and Facebook to 'pre-screen content', is due to meet Internet companies today, in an attempt to put the recent past behind.

A display of Facebook's homepage on a computer monitor at an Internet cafe in Delhi, India. Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Known as the Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules 2011, they are quite the magic wand when it comes to making online information disappear.

In what should deeply worry users of the Internet, an under-cover investigation by an Internet research company reveals how privately administered censorship – prescribed under the IT rules to intermediaries to limit their liability – is having a "chilling effect on free speech." The yet-t0-be published investigative report by Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is available with Firstpost.

As part of the under-cover investigation a CIS researcher sent ‘takedown notices’ (requests to remove content online) to seven major websites quoting liberally from the IT rules.

The seven websites (the draft report does not name them) comprised two search engines, an online shopping portal, a website which disseminates news, two websites that disseminate news and allows user-generated comments to be published below articles, a website which offers multiple services such as news, search and shopping.

Note that each of the seven websites is an intermediary – merely receiving, storing or transmitting information. Disturbingly, of the seven websites to which takedown notices were sent, "six over-complied despite there being apparent flaws in the notices."

Here is how a website that disseminates news (identified as Intermediary B in the draft report) responded to the request to remove content on its site.

The researcher, who is also a lawyer, issued a takedown notice for the removal and disablement of one user-generated comment published below a news article on the Telangana movement.

The comment in question read as follows: "Telangana cause is justified, no one is denying that. But have you come to the point, you want to burn India? This is what I am opposing, burning demolition, killing, etc. is the hidden agenda of vested interests. And we Hyderabadis (Hindus and Muslims) will not allow anyone to burn our homeland. I have seen this movement since 1968. These leaders who are leading the agitation are selfish, short sighted and they hav no vision and mission. can any of Telangana leaders answer to the following?" The author of the comment goes on to raise eight questions on water-sharing, tourism, education, displacement and reservation.

While the comment condemns violence in the Telangana movement, blames politicians for being selfish and raises questions, the takedown notice brought to the knowledge of the intermediary that the comment was "racially and ethnically objectionable", "hateful" , "disparaging" "defamatory" – as provided in Rule 3(2)(b) of the IT Rules – and "violates any law for the time being in force" as provided in 3(2)(e) of the IT Rules read with Sections 124A, 153A, 153B, 292A, 295A and 499 of the Indian Penal Code 1860."

The terms such as 'objectionable', 'hateful', 'disparaging' and 'defamatory' are not defined anywhere in the Rules.

The takedown notice did not state the cause of action or establish the author of the takedown notice as an affected person. "After approximately 72 hours, it was noticed that instead of removing just the one comment as identified in the takedown notice, Intermediary-B had removed all 15 comments published below the newspaper article," states draft report.

The search engines (identified as Intermediary A and Intermediary E) didn’t disappoint either. They were sent takedown notices to remove 'three communication links' (base URLs of three websites) provided in its search engine results on searching for 'online gambling'.

According to the draft report, the three communication links and, additionally, all other URLs of the three websites, including sub-domains were removed – after 120 hours on Intermediary A and after seven days on Intermediary E. Even though Intermediary A in response to the takedown notice claimed being exempt under IT rules, they "still removed the three communication links mentioned in the takedown notice (and additionally all other URL’s of the 3 websites, including sub-domains), presumably to avoid legal risk and to err on the side of caution," reveals the report.

The only defender of Internet democracy, who would have guessed, was the online shopping portal. And for what? Baby diapers. The takedown notice to the portal without any supporting document or medical report claimed that a certain brand of diapers caused rashes. "Thankfully, the takedown notice was rejected…. Unlike all other intermediaries, Intermediary-F recognised that the takedown notice of the author was completely frivolous."

Unfortunately, in the other six cases, to paraphrase the famous statement, when they were asked to bend, they chose to crawl.

Should they not have acted more responsibly by rejecting flawed takedown notices and defended the freedom of expression of their users?

Speaking to Firstpost, Pranesh Prakash, Programme Manager, CIS, said, "They should have. Google’s self-reported compliance rate of 51 per cent shows that they are probably over-stepping the law in order to appease the Indian government’s requests. Given that 71 per cent of the requests were for ‘government criticism’, their removal of 51 per cent of the material indicates that they removed at least some of the requests they received for ‘government criticism’. While it is impossible to say more without having greater details about the requests, I believe it is fair to say that requests for removal of ‘government criticism’ should generally not be acted upon."

Going by the pliancy shown by the six websites in removing online content, all Sibal had to do was to shoot off takedown notices. And quietly and, most likely, the images that caused him so much heartache would have disappeared. Right?

"Most definitely. And this points to a problem with the current regulations. While it is difficult for government officials and police, etc., to remove content in books, it is very easy for them to remove content from the web. Should web content be this much easier for the government to censor than content in books, movies, etc.?" asks Pranesh.

This article by Pallavi Polanki was published in Firstpost.com on December 15, 2011. Pranesh Prakash was quoted in it. Read the original here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/private-censorship-making-online-content-disappear-quietly

Hosadhigantha

praskrishna — 2013-12-31T09:43:28Z

Hosadigantha

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/HosadiganthaMangaloreDec222013.jpg

Hook

praskrishna — 2012-05-02T06:30:50Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_hook.jpg

Honorable CJI please answer some easy questions

praskrishna — 2016-05-29T08:27:25Z

Living in democracy has been blessing to all of us born post 1947 but certain questions keep surfacing. Since you are the highest seat in the hierarchy of judicial system therefore the onus lies with you to clear the haze and allow the citizens respite from their doubts.

The article by Alka Vasudeva was published in State Times on May 19, 2016. Pranesh Prakash's blog post was mentioned.

First of all you make us understand the benefit of archaic laws established by imperialist mindset of British. The recent judgment regarding the defamation law is really upsetting. The bench feels that a person is half dead when defamed where as in our country the life of dignity cease to exist for 25% of the population.

The particular case of keeping Article 499 saves the honor of the elite. As per this judgment anyone is not free to express the discontentment with the system. Moreover it is leaving a loophole in the judicial system as in 2015 the honorable court struck off Article 66A.

When I was reading a blog post by Pranesh Prakash, who is a Policy Director with the Centre, and is a graduate of the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, with a degree in Arts and Law, I realized that 499 is very similar in nature to 66A.

For reference some part of his post is copied and pasted as such with no editing as the sole purpose has been to re confirm the reasons as to why clinging on to this Defamation law is futile exercise as its twin has already been scrapped.

“Section 66A which punishes persons for sending offensive messages is overly broad, and is patently in violation of Art. 19(1) (a) of our Constitution. The fact that some information is “grossly offensive” (s.66A(a)) or that it causes “annoyance” or “inconvenience” while being known to be false (s.66A(c)) cannot be a reason for curbing the freedom of speech unless it is directly related to decency or morality, public order, or defamation (or any of the four other grounds listed in Art. 19(2)). It must be stated here that many argue that John Stuart Mill’s harm principle provides a better framework for freedom of expression than Joel Feinberg’s offence principle. The latter part of s.66A(c), which talks of deception, is sufficient to combat spam and phishing, and hence the first half, talking of annoyance or inconvenience is not required. Additionally, it would be beneficial if an explanation could be added to s.66A(c) to make clear what “origin” means in that section. Because depending on the construction of that word s.66A(c) can, for instance, unintentionally prevent organizations from using proxy servers, and may prevent a person from using a sender envelope different from the “from” address in an e-mail (a feature that many e-mail providers like Gmail implement to allow people to send mails from their work account while being logged in to their personal account). Furthermore, it may also prevent remailers, tunneling, and other forms of ensuring anonymity online. This doesn’t seem to be what is intended by the legislature, but the section might end up having that effect. This should hence be clarified.”

It is pertinent to mark that “what statements are defamatory and the span of defenses varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction but there is common agreement in all jurisdictions that statements that are unflattering, annoying, irksome, embarrassing or hurt one’s feelings are not actionable.”

Court in various cases held that for proving the clause of defamation it is pertinent to prove the means read of the defendant. Here, it is to be taken into consideration “that if a statement is made with a good intent and is for a good purpose, it cannot be said to be a case of defamation even if it contains allegations against a party”.

Across the countries Defamation law protects an individual’s reputation or feelings from unwarranted attacks. There is little dispute that defamation laws can serve a legitimate purpose and it is recognized internationally as a valid grounds for restricting freedom of expression. A good defamation law – one which lays the groundwork for striking a proper balance between the protection of individuals’ reputation and freedom of expression – aims to protect people against false statements of fact which cause damage to their reputation.

Surely the bench of learned judges might have some considerations other than the dignity of human being. The logic to use such words rest in the fact that as per this law a person can be penalized with financial fine or prison term.

Can reputation be purchased with money? No is the immediate and firm replying when this question is tossed among the scholars. Can the dent on the image of a person repaired by sending the accuser behind the bars? Can the damages claimed in terms of money establish the image again?

If the courts think that only rich spare the time to sue someone using defamation case then there is going to be need of separate courts only to deal with huge pile of such cases almost every day.

Spending eight years in prison with label of MACOCA offence Sadhvi Pragya Singh has been acquitted of the charges. Now it means that the entire list of officers engaged in the exercise to falsely implicate her in Malegaon bomb blast case is either going to be put behind the bars or forced to shell out some whopping amount as penalty. Practically both the measures are going to prove futile as those who believed in her innocence they continue to do so even today and those who heard her name for the first time through news channel debates are either unconcerned or they may keep the suspicion intact.

For elaboration let us talk about Hindi cine star Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt. Both had been in the limelight for wrong reasons but it hardly reflected on their fan following.

Rajiv Gandhi died in 1991 but people have not been able to give him the clean chit in Bofors deal case. Lalu Yadav might have been instrumental in winning the elections for Bihar but his reputation is associated with fodder scam.

If the law is sustained then greater injustice is done towards millions who keep waiting for dates as these rich influential class keeps the courts busy with their bundles of defamation suits.

Here in our country where cases of physical abuse are very high and ignored the continuity of this law seems to be mockery. In our society there is reluctance to accept the survivor of a sexual assault and character assassination is handy how come the monitory compensation restores the lost self esteem? It is a big question.

Though under pressure of public outrage the Nirbhaya Fund was constituted but even today the conservative think tanks exist that do not talk with respect about the brave girl Jyoti. Her rapists are behind bars and one of them freed too. Does it mean the half population of fairer sex does not count when it comes to Reputation? Why the rapists are not held accused and tried under Article 499?

The civil courts are also brimming with cases as every now and then in the offices the employees are put under suspension or terminated citing ” verbal brawl ” as violation of code of conduct . In certain cases the employees daring to seek information using RTI law are also implicated with charges of defamation. Is it acceptable in the democratic set up? Is it not encroaching by legal force the employees’ right to express resentment at work place? Is this law not entangling the procedure?

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/news-state-times-may-19-2016-alka-vasudeva-honorable-cji-please-answer-some-easy-questions

Home Alone

praskrishna — 2012-07-06T08:34:26Z

Digital Natives newsletter, April 2012 issue.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/alone-together.pdf

Hogyan szűrik a kormányok az internetes tartalmakat?

praskrishna — 2010-10-13T12:01:00Z

Az internet szabadságáról tartanak háromnapos konferenciát Budapesten a Google és a Közép-Európai Egyetem (CEU) szervezésében. Kedden az internetes tartalmak szűrése volt a legfontosabb téma a rendezvényen.

Rob Faris az amerikai Open Net Initiative nevű szervezet képviseletében beszélt kedden a kormányzati internetszabályozásról. Faris különböző országok eljárását vizsgálta, és a befolyásolás, a tartalomszűrés három generációját különítette el.

Az első lépés az egyszerű szűrés volt, amely szoftverek segítségével találta meg és tiltotta le a nemkívánatos tartalmakat. A második generáció már valamivel kifinomultabb, de továbbra is részben az elsőn alapul. A szoftveren kívül azonban más eszközökkel, például jogi fellépéssel lehetetlenítette el az állam ezekben az országokban azokat a szájtokat, amelyek a kormányzatnak nem tetszettek.

Egyes országokról is szólt Faris. Kiemelte Argentína esetét, amikor bizonyos időszakokban lehetetlen volt Maradonára keresni a dél-amerikai országból, illetve bizonyos argentin verziójú keresőprogramokon. A sportolón kívül néhány argentin politikusra sem adott találatot a szóban forgó keresőprogram.

A harmadik generációs internetszűrés már igazán kifinomult technológiát alkalmaz. Ez bizonyos politikai nézetek terjesztésén és a közvetítő eszközök "nem túl kemény" befolyásolásán alapul. Ilyen, Vlagyimir Putyint támogató kormányzati propaganda folyik például Oroszországban Faris szerint.

A szakember úgy véli, Kína a legjobb példája annak, hogy a szűrés és szabályozás mindhárom generációja "együtt él" - bizonyos szájtokat teljesen blokkolnak, máshol a tartalmat szűrik, és a harmadik generációs módszerek is megjelentek az ázsiai országban.

Faris előadása után indiai, pakisztáni és kirgiz hozzászólók árnyalták a képet: a pakisztáni Shahzad Ahmad, a Bytes for All szervezet munkatársa arról az esetről beszélt kimerítően, amikor egy bíró a szélsőséges csoportoktól befolyásolva betiltotta szinte az egész Facebook és sok más internetes oldal elérését is Pakisztánban. Végül a legfelsőbb bíróság felülbírálta ezt az ítéletet, amit Ahmad nagy sikernek tekint.

Sunil Abraham az indiai Centre for Internet and Society képviseletében viszont arról beszélt, hogy az indiai szoftverfejlesztés központjában a Microsoft szakértői képzik a bírókat az internetes jog alkalmazására, Indiában tehát más a helyzet, mint a szomszédos Pakisztánban.

A kirgiziai Tattu Mambetalieva a Civil Initiative on Internet Policy képviseletében oroszul szólalt fel, a tolmács és az ő szavaiból kiderült, hogy Kirgizisztánban az ötmillió lakos közül nyolcszázezren neteznek. Viszont ott is van negatív példa: egy internetszolgálató kiadta felhasználóinak adatait a kormányzati szerveknek, és sokan ezután börtönbe kerültek a volt Szovjetunió közép-ázsiai utódállamában.

Read the original in hvg.hu

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/hogyan-szurik