Centre for Internet and Society

Grant Utilization

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Grant Utilization

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Grant Utilization

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Grant Utilization

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Grant Utilization

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Grant Utilization

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Grant Utilization

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Grant Utilization

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Grant Utilization

praskrishna — 2015-11-17T02:57:31Z

Grant Utilization

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GPS Surveying

praskrishna — 2012-02-14T09:27:52Z

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Govt websites to get new addresses

praskrishna — 2012-06-11T03:27:19Z

The government today said by December all its websites would switch over to IPv6 — the next generation Web standard that enables the creation of trillions of new Internet addresses and provides higher levels of security.

Click to read the original published by the Telegraph on June 7, 2012. Nishant Shah is quoted.

Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) went live across the globe today, with leading online giants, including Google, Facebook, Yahoo! and Microsoft (Bing), introducing the new standard on their products and services.

Experts said Internet users would not feel any impact because of the shift.

At present, websites run on IPv4, a 27 year-old standard that allows just over four billion unique IP addresses, which are the sequence of numbers used to identify a device.

Each Internet-enabled device — computer, tablet or smartphone — needs its own IP address to connect to the Internet. However, because of the shortage of addresses, many devices have to share them, limiting the ability of the security agencies to track the exact device involved in a security breach.

Networking giant Cisco has predicted that 18.9 billion devices will be online by 2016.

Switching to IPv6 will ensure a unique IP address for each device.

“IPv6 is designed to handle security issues better... All government websites will be IPv6-compatible by December. For the country as a whole, the road map for transitioning to IPv6 is by 2020,” telecom secretary R. Chandrashekhar said.

Internet traffic that moves over to the new protocol is encrypted. Systems in IPv6 ensure that the traffic gets to the correct destination without being intercepted, analysts said.

To ensure a smooth transition and avert an abrupt disruption, both systems (IPv4 and IPv6) will work simultaneously for the next few years.

“The future of our connected networks is IPv6. Not only is it more efficient and faster than IPv4, which we are currently working with, it is also more reliable and secure,” said Nishant Shah, director (research) at the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society.

India has 35 million IPv4 addresses against a data user base of about 360 million.

In addition, with the government targeting 160 million and 600 million broadband customers by the year 2017 and 2020, respectively, the need to move to IPv6 becomes more crucial. Moreover, there is a strong security requirement to provide unique IP address to each individual user.

The IT department has taken various steps, including organising workshops, to encourage state governments to hold pilot projects.

Twenty-seven government websites have been brought under IPv6 platform.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/govt-websites-to-get-new-addresses

Govt wants to scrub the Internet clean

praskrishna — 2011-12-07T04:07:03Z

Web advocacy groups, experts say govt’s move to evolve content guidelines amounts to censorship. This article by Surabhi Agarwal & Leslie D’monte was published in Livemint on 7 December 2011. Sunil Abraham has been quoted in this article.

India, the world’s largest democracy, may force companies such as Google Inc., Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and Facebook Inc. to take down online content that it deems offensive because they haven’t been able to come up with an effective self-censorship mechanism governing millions of users.

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government had no option but to "evolve guidelines" to ensure that "blasphemous content on the Internet or television is not allowed", with Internet and social networking sites such as those above "failing to respond to and cooperate with" the government’s request to keep "objectionable" content out of their websites, Kapil Sibal, minister of communications and information technology (IT), said in New Delhi on Tuesday.

His comments unleashed a firestorm of criticism by Internet advocacy groups and experts, who said the move amounted to censorship and was anti-democratic, impractical and unwarranted since existing laws were comprehensive enough to remove "objectionable" content. The move, they argued, would also stem the growth of user-generated content sites, and thus the Internet itself.

The government has been battling a series of corruption scandals and criticism of its inability to move forward on policy reforms. A campaign against corruption fuelled by online support has also challenged the government’s authority to legislate, forcing its own version of an anti-graft legislation onto the agenda.

The latest move by the government follows the introduction of new rules to the Information Technology Act, 2008, that were published earlier this year, also heavily criticized, that called on Internet service providers (ISPs) along with other entities to police online postings, including blogs.

Sibal referred to what he considered objectionable content as a "matter of grave concern", which affects the "sensibility of our people and is against our cultural ethos".

Once the new policy framework is implemented, companies “will be duty-bound to share information about those who post content, even if it (the content) is posted outside India”. He didn’t say by when the policy would be put in place.

Discussions with executives from the firms mentioned above had begun in September, Sibal said. They had been asked to come up with solutions to address the perceived problem in a month’s time and had failed to do so, he said.

According to local media reports, the move follows posts about some senior Congress leaders, including party president Sonia Gandhi. The minister, who is also one of India’s top lawyers, did not refer to any specific "objectionable" material during his press briefing, but rued that “the content has still not been removed".

Google India defended the right of free speech, while saying that it didn’t condone illegality.

"Even where content is legal but breaks our own terms and conditions, we take that down too, once we’ve been notified about it," Google India said in a release. "But it also means that when content is legal but controversial, we don’t remove it because people’s differing views should be respected, so long as they are legal."

Facebook India also said that it would remove any content that crossed the line.

It "has policies and onsite features in place that enable people to report abusive content", the company said. "We will remove any content that violates our terms, which are designed to keep material that is hateful, threatening, incites violence or contains nudity off the service."

While Yahoo India declined to comment, Microsoft did not respond to an email till press time.

Internet censorship is a rising trend, with approximately 40 countries filtering the Web in varying degrees, including democratic and non-democratic governments. Governments are using increasingly sophisticated censorship and surveillance techniques, including blocking social networks, to restrict a variety of types of content, says the 2010 Global Network Initiative (GNI) report. GNI seeks to protect freedom of speech online.

This August, for instance, the Centre had written to the department of telecommunications, asking it to "ensure effective monitoring of Twitter and Facebook", which minister of state for communications and IT Milind Deora acknowledged a few days later in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha. He mentioned access to “encrypted data” on social networking sites, but did not elaborate on the subject.

Currently, the Indian Telegraph Act and the IT Act, 2008, (amendments were introduced in IT Act, 2000) give the government the power to monitor, intercept and even block online conversations and websites. The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) has put up a list of 11 such websites blocked by a government order. The data was received from the department of information technology (DIT).

Moreover, under section 79 of the IT Intermediary (Rules and Guidelines), 2011, intermediaries (comprising telcos, ISPs, network services providers, search engines, cyber cafes, Web-hosting companies, online auction portals and online payment sites) are mandated to exercise "due diligence" and advise users not to share/distribute information violative of the law or a person’s privacy and rights. Intermediaries are expected to act on a complaint within 36 hours of receiving it, and remove such content when warranted.

In case the intermediary doesn’t find the content objectionable, the matter will have to be contested in a court of law.

"Currently, you need a court of law to direct a company in case something has to be removed. That takes a lot of time. So there has to be a mechanism that is faster in dealing with such content as (it) can be very damaging," said a DIT official, who did not want to be named.

"The Indian government can, and should, monitor conversations and websites if it believes the content can harm the security, defence, sovereignty and integrity of the country," said Pavan Duggal, a Supreme Court lawyer and cyber law expert. However, he wondered how the government would go about implementing the task of monitoring each and every conversation on an unstructured Internet.

Bangalore-based CIS, an Internet advocacy group, said "this pre-emptive manual screening of content, if implemented, would sound the death knell of freedom of expression in India".

"This screening is worrisome. Companies will err on the side of caution in a bid to please the government, and the courts will not be involved," said Sunil Abraham, executive director of CIS. “This is not only unconstitutional, but technically impossible too. Speech and words have nuances. Can humans decipher these with accuracy?"

The move will undermine key principles on which the Internet was built, said Nikhil Pahwa, editor and publisher of digital industry news and analysis blog MediaNama.

"It is completely impossible to enforce this. There is no way that content can be prescreened before it is placed online," he said. “It also kills the concept of immediate communication, which the Internet stands for."

Cyber law expert NA Vijayashankar, who runs cyber law information portal Naavi, said: "The government has valid reason to control anti-national activities on the Internet. But there are existing laws for it. The current proposition is impractical since pre-scrutiny of content on the Internet is not possible. It will affect the growth of user-generated content, which is helping Internet penetration grow in India."

Internet censorship happens frequently in countries such as Myanmar, Cuba, China (which had blocked keyword searches of the word "Egypt" on the Internet as well as on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter), Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. On the very day the Egyptian government set out to block Internet services in the country (in January), US Republican senator Susan Collins floated the COICA Bill, popularly called the "kill switch" Bill, which, if approved, would give the US president similar powers.

Read the original published in Livemint here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/scrub-the-internet-clean

Govt wants to monitor Facebook, Twitter

praskrishna — 2011-08-09T09:21:55Z

The Union home ministry has written to the department of telecom asking it to "ensure effective monitoring of Twitter and Facebook".

Milind Deora, minister of state for communications and information technology, said in written reply to a question on Friday in the Rajya Sabha that DoT has received a letter from MHA to ensure monitoring of social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter in order to "strengthen cyber security paraphernalia".

He said that in cases where the data is encrypted, the department works with all concerned parties to obtain lawful access to it.

Citing security a reason, India in the recent months has sought more surveillance and monitoring from internet service providers as well as companies like Research In Motion, which sells BlackBerry phones capable of encrypted emails and messaging.

In April the government notified a new set of IT rules, virtually making intermediaries like internet service providers and web hosts and websites like Facebook and Twitter responsible for any wrongdoings on their networks. The rules were widely criticized by privacy activists.

Sunil Abraham, executive director of Centre for Internet and Society said these "blanket surveillance practices" are counterproductive.

"People advocating greater surveillance don't understand how the web works. In some cases, if there is evidence, targeted monitoring can be done but if governments wants to go through each tweet and every status update, it's just waste of money and resources. Agencies involved in monitoring can do better work by focusing on core issues. This will also save ordinary law-abiding citizens from unnecessary harassment," said Abraham.

According to their policies, Twitter and Facebook don't share any private information available on their servers without valid court order or subpoena. Twitter had said in the past that even if there was a court order, it would first inform the users in question before sharing information related to them.

This article was published in the Times of India on August 8, 2011. The original can be read here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/govt-to-monitor-facebook-twitter

Govt vs Tweeple: Has clampdown hit free speech?

praskrishna — 2012-08-24T12:46:27Z

Has the Government crossed the line by ordering the blocking of several Twitter accounts, many belonging to prominent journalists? The debate was featured in NDTV on August 23, 2012.

Sunil Abraham spoke to Sonia Singh of NDTV. Sunil said that "we should focus on designing of the censorship regime in the country and the lack of compliance with the principles of natural justice".

Watch the full video on NDTV here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-ndtv-com-aug-23-2012-govt-vs-tweeple-has-clampdown-hit-free-speech

Govt tweaks enforcement of IT Act after spate of arrests

praskrishna — 2012-11-30T08:27:01Z

The government on Thursday tweaked the law to make it tougher for citizens to be arrested for online comments that are deemed offensive after recent arrests came in for heavy criticism by Internet activists, the media and other groups.

Surabhi Agarwal's article was published in LiveMint on November 29, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

This took place just before the Supreme Court was to hear a public interest litigation seeking an amendment to the Information Technology (IT) Act.

Complaints under the controversial Section 66A of the IT Act, which criminalizes “causing annoyance or inconvenience” online or electronically, can be registered only with the permission of an officer of or above the rank of deputy commissioner of police, and inspector general in metro cities, said a senior government official.

The government, however, has not amended the terms in the section that are said to be vague and subject to interpretation.

The public interest litigation against Section 66A filed by student Shreya Singhal came up in chief justice Altamas Kabir’s court on Thursday. The matter will be heard on Friday.

Two girls near Mumbai were arrested last week for criticizing on Facebook the shutdown in the city for Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray’s funeral. Earlier in November, a businessman in Puducherry was arrested for comments made on Twitter against finance minister P. Chidambaram’s son Karti Chidambaram.

According to people present at the meeting of the cyber regulatory advisory committee on Thursday, the Union government will issue guidelines to states with respect to the compliance of the new enforcement rules soon. The people didn’t want to be named. An official said the move was not related to the case.

Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society think tank, said that while the change in the law is a step in the right direction and will eliminate a lot of frivolous complaints, more needs to be done to make the legislation specific.

Chief justice Kabir said the apex court was considering taking suo motu cognisance of recent incidents.

Singhal contended in her plea that “the phraseology of section 66A of the IT Act, 2000, is so wide and vague and incapable of being judged on objective standards, that it is susceptible to wanton abuse and, hence, falls foul of Article 14, 19 (1)(a) and Article 21 of the Constitution.”

She submitted that “unless there is judicial sanction as a prerequisite to the setting into motion the criminal law with respect to freedom of speech and expression, the law as it stands is highly susceptible to abuse and for muzzling free speech in the country.”

The PIL was argued by Mukul Rohatgi, who said in his opening remarks that Section 66A was vague. Terms such as “offensive” and “annoyance” should be clearly defined as the section is part of criminal law, he said.

Senior advocate Harish Salve, who was also present during the hearing, said India guaranteed the right to “annoy” and there was no need to have a separate law.

Salve, who is in the process of filing an intervention on behalf of some technology companies, added that the section needed to be narrowed to specifically cater to private messages sent electronically and not social media communications.

He said the existing law of defamation should suffice and could be extended to include electronic communications. According to a lawyer who is part of the team representing Singhal, the petition also demanded that the law be made non-cognisable so that the police can’t make an arrest without an order from a magistrate.

“There has been a lot of misuse and abuse of the law recently and we want it to be struck down absolutely and also the court to issue guidelines,” he said.

Apart from the incident at Palghar in Thane district involving the two girls, Singhal’s PIL referred to an April incident in which a professor of chemistry from Jadavpur University in West Bengal, Ambikesh Mahapatra, was arrested for posting a cartoon concerning chief minister Mamata Banerjee on a social networking site.

She also referred to the Puducherry case as well as the May arrests of two Air India Ltd employees, V. Jaganatharao and Mayank Sharma, by the Mumbai Police under the IT Act for posting content on Facebook and Orkut against a trade union leader and some politicians.

Singhal has sought guidelines from the apex court to “reconcile Section 41 and 156 (1) of the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC) with Article 19 (1)(a) of the Constitution” and that offences under the Indian Penal Code and any other legislation, if they involve the freedom of speech and expression, be treated as a non-cognizable offences for the purposes of Sections 41 and 156 (1).

Section 41 of CPC empowers the police to arrest any person without an order from a magistrate and without a warrant in the event that the offence involved is a cognizable offence. Section 156 (1) empowers the investigation by the police into a cognizable offence without an order from a magistrate.

The government official present at the cyber regulatory advisory committee said the expressions used in Section 66A had been taken from different statutes around the world, including the UK and the US.

“There has been a broad consensus that the parameters of the law concerned might be in order but from a procedural standpoint there might be difficulty,” the official said.

Prakash said that while some of the terms in the section may be taken from legislation overseas, the penalty imposed under the Indian law is far more stringent at three years of imprisonment than, for instance, six months under the UK law. “Criminal offences can’t be put at the same level as something which causes insult.”

The cyber regulatory advisory committee meeting was attended by minister for communications and information technolgy Kapil Sibal, and secretaries of the department of telecommunications and information technology, besides representatives of technology companies such as Google and Facebook, industry associations and civil society.

The official also said that the situation will be reviewed every three to four months based on “ground realities”.

A government official said on condition of anonymity that the decision to revive the cyber regulatory advisory committee had been taken at a meeting in August. Section 66A was put on the agenda since it was the subject of much debate, he said. The meeting, however, was not a pre-emptive measure ahead of the PIL that was taken up in the Supreme Court. The official also said that the government will spell out its position in court in favour of the legislation.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/livemint-politics-november-29-2012-surabhi-agarwal-govt-tweaks-enforcement-of-it-act-after-spate-of-arrests

Govt to U

praskrishna — 2012-06-25T05:17:29Z

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Govt to keep Aadhaar record for 7 years, activists worried

praskrishna — 2016-10-17T01:53:24Z

The government will keep for seven years a record of all the services and benefits availed using the Aadhaar number, say new rules, prompting fears that the database could be used for surveillance.

The article by Aloke Tikku was published in the Hindustan Times on October 17, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which issues the 12-digit biometric identity to all Indian residents, will be required to preserve its record of verification of an Aadhaar number for the duration.

“This is an unprecedented centralised data retention provision,” said Sunil Abraham, director of the Bengaluru-based think tank, Centre for Internet and Society.

UIDAI chief executive officer ABP Pandey said the concerns were exaggerated. The agency was keeping records in case a dispute arose over a transaction.

The information will be retained online for two years and another five years in the offline archives, say the rules notified in September.

Users will be able to check the records but only for two years.

This restriction won’t apply to security agencies. Pandey, however, said the records would not be available to them without a district judge’s permission.

But, HT found that the rules allow designated joint secretary-level officers at the Centre to order access to information on the grounds of national security.

“Once Aadhaar becomes mandatory for all services, it can be used by benign and malignant actors to conduct a 360-degree surveillance on any individual,” Abraham said.

This is how the system, which will need millions of fingerprint-reading machines, works.

Every time a person fingerprints and quotes the Aadhaar number, the agency concerned sends the data to UIDAI to crosscheck the particulars.

The UIDAI authenticates about five million Aadhaar numbers, which are quoted to avail LPG subsidy, cheap ration and even passport, a day against a capacity to verify 100 million requests daily.

“You can think of it as Natgrid Plus,” Abraham said, a reference to the National Intelligence Grid being built by the government.

A one-stop database for counter-terrorism agencies, Natgrid will collate information real time from databases of various agencies such as bank, rail and airline networks.

“…we do not record the purpose for which an authentication request was received but only the details of the agency that sent it,” UIDAI’s Pandey said.

But seven years is a long time. Only a select category of government files are kept for longer than five years.

Asked about two-year deadline for users, Pandey said it would have been a logistic nightmare to let people access the records once the information was offline.

The Supreme Court has a ruled that Aadhaar is not a must for availing welfare schemes and is to decide if collecting biometric data for the 12-digit number infringed an individual’s privacy.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindustan-times-aloke-tikku-october-17-2016-govt-to-keep-aadhaar-record-for-seven-years-activitsts-worried

Govt should take a relaxed view of 'violations' of flag code in products sold in foreign countries: Experts

praskrishna — 2017-01-19T02:37:27Z

When it comes to products on sale in global ecommerce vendor sites that seem to violate India’s strict flag code, the government should take a more relaxed and less punitive approach.

The article by Neha Alawadhi was published in the Economic Times on 13 January 2017. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

That’s the view of industry observers and lawyers familiar with internal business practices and regulation.

India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had on Wednesday tweeted that India visas for Amazon executives may be withdrawn unless the America headquartered ecommerce giant apologised for its Canadian site selling doormats in India flag colours.

The point, lawyers and experts say, is that Indian law itself protects Amazon from being prosecuted in this case. India recognises companies like Amazon (whether in India or Canada), as intermediaries, who are exempt from liability under the IT (Information Technology) Act, because a third-party seller was selling those doormats.

Plus, Indian law does not apply outside the country, and a global ecommerce company has millions of products for sale in scores of marketplaces.

“Neither Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971nor the Flag Code applies outside India,” said Virag Gupta, a Supreme Court advocate specialising in cyber law.

The only thing the Indian government can do, said Sarvjeet Singh, programme manager, Centre for Communication Governance, National Law University, Delhi, is to ask the company to take down the listing.

That Amazon had already done, he noted. “Given the volume of traffic and usage and the number of sellers, it is impossible for a company to monitor all the goods listed,” Singh added, and said that’s why the IT Act recognises that companies like Amazon are intermediaries.

Many experts also wondered whether India’s flag code is ready for a reset, aligning it more with today’s less statist views on such matters.

The code calls for a three-year jail term, or a fine, or both for violations. In democracies such as the United States, Canada and the Netherlands, national flag colours in product design does not invoke legal punitive responses. “In a lot of these countries, where issues about Indian flag code violation have come up, these activities are legal and covered by freedom of expression guarantees and we should be aware of these cultural contexts before making statements,” Singh said.

Others feel the flag code smothers creativity. “Repealing most flag-related regulation will unlock creativity, encourage derivative works and remix and greatly increase the visibility of the Indian flag in public places. This in turn will foster a sense of community, national pride and social cohesion,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director at Bengaluru-based research organisation, the Centre for Internet and Society.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/economic-times-neha-alawadhi-january-13-2017-govt-should-take-a-relaxed-view-of-violations-of-flag-code-in-products-sold-in-foreign-countries-experts

Govt set to gain ‘back-door’ access to corporate email

praskrishna — 2012-02-14T12:55:53Z

The government is just a step away from gaining access to RIM’s widely used BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service, writes Shauvik Ghosh in an article published in LiveMint on 14 February 2012.

In a move that may raise serious questions regarding the privacy of corporate emails exchanged between individuals and employees, the Indian government is all set to gain “back-door” access to emails sent and received over Research In Motion Ltd’s (RIM) BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) within the next two-three months.

“There was a meeting last month with DoT (department of telecommunications) on the issue and the concerned security agencies and some home ministry officials,” a senior DoT official said requesting anonymity. “DoT has to furnish a list of enterprises from whom the key has to be acquired.”

The number of such firms is contained in an internal DoT note that was reviewed by Mint.

“There are about 5,000 enterprises using BES in India,” the note said. “These are communications between the employees of the enterprise only and therefore are not of high concern for security or intelligence agencies.”

However, the capability of using the key to access the communications when needed is still being developed.

Meanwhile, the government is just a step away from gaining access to RIM’s widely used BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service.

“RIM has set up the necessary infrastructure in Mumbai to enable real-time access to BBM, as they had said they would,” said the official cited above. “They had provided for interception via the telecom service providers, but the intelligence agencies wanted direct access and so a server has been set up in Mumbai.”

The note said: “The company had installed the server in Mumbai. This has been inspected by a team of officers and permission for direct linkage for lawful interception was expected to be issued shortly.”

The move has raised red flags among privacy advocates over the motives of the government.

“There is no reason given by them on why they need to do this. There are no allegations of terrorists using BES or any indication that any of the 5,000 enterprises have any links to terrorists or other banned outfits in India,” said Pranesh Prakash, programme manager with digital media watchdog Centre for Internet and Society. “What is worrisome is that it is mainly commercial information that is shared on BES and in a large number of cases, this includes dealings with the government of India that they should not be privy to—things like auction bids, etc.”

Such powers can’t be used to pursue offences of financial nature, he said. “There cannot be economic reasons like tax evasion and such for intercepting such communications as the agencies that look into such offences are not authorized to or do not qualify to tap phones, etc.,” Prakash added.

On being asked about the development, an RIM spokesperson responded by citing the company’s January statement. This said RIM had provided a solution that enables India’s wireless carriers to address lawful access requirements for consumer messaging services, which include BBM and BlackBerry Internet Service email.

“The lawful access capability now available to RIM’s carrier partners meets the standard required by the government of India for all consumer messaging services offered in the Indian marketplace,” the company said in that note. “While the details of our regulatory discussions with the government of India remain confidential, we have been assured that all of RIM’s competitors must provide a lawful access capability to this same standard if they have not done so already.”

Mint reported last month that in order to prevent leakage of information, the government was proposing a legal provision, referred to as mandated local server hosting. This would put the onus on companies such as Skype and Google to locate the relevant part of their infrastructure within the country to allow investigative agencies ready access to encrypted communications on their servers.

Apart from leakage of data, the move is also expected to serve security interests and enable law enforcement agencies gain real-time access to information stored on servers and resolve jurisdictional ambiguity.

The original article was published in Livemint. Pranesh Prakash has been quoted in it.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/govt-set-to-gain-2018back-door2019-access-to-corporate-email