Centre for Internet and Society

DOC 2.0: A Resources Sharing Mela by NGO Documentation Centres

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T08:13:51Z

A Resource Sharing Mela and Meet of DCM (Document Centres Meet) at the Centre for Education & Documentation in Domlur, Bangalore.

Programme

18th Nov: 9.30 am to 20th Nov. 2 pm

Draft 3 ( to be finalised )

For DCMers
9.30 pm to 12 noon
CED Terrace

Interaction
2 pm to 4 pm
CED Exhibition Hall

Public Session
5 pm to 7 pm
CED Terrace

18th Nov.	Multi-Media/New Media. AVs, Photos, Internet - blogs	Managing Data Akshara Class.; Mapping Data: Timbaktu experience- Anne Marie.	Knowledge in an Internet Era: Role of DCs in Info-digital Society: Avinash Jha - KICS Sharing Session: Chair: Ashish Rajadhaksha
19th Nov.	Print Media Training Manuals, Newsletters, Posters etc	Producing Data: Data generation tools used by Aalochana in PC4D, Jagori safety audit	Internet : Reclaiming Civil society on the Internet. Public domain V/s copyright: Sunil Abraham:
20th Nov.	Interactive Media: Theatre, Melas?; Yuvati Mela:	Dissemination Marketing issues: Alvito; Mobile Libraries (Aalochana)	Ends

Workshop Banner

See the original here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/doc-2.0

Do you agree with our fee hike? Press 1 to answer Yes; or 2 for Yes

praskrishna — 2015-10-01T15:28:37Z

It has long been a concern that domain-name overseer ICANN is largely funded by companies reliant on the organization to make money.

The article by Kieren McCarthy was published in the Register on September 29, 2015.

Every biz that wishes to sell domain names – called a registrar – has to pay the organization $4,000 a year, plus 18 cents on every domain they sell.

In addition, they have to pay a variable fee that comprises the money ICANN says it spends on registrar-related activities divided by the number of companies that are accredited. This year that cost was $3.8m and with roughly 1,150 companies, that's $3,300 a head.

The pricing structure provides California-based ICANN with just under $40m a year, more than a third of its total budget. But in order to make sure the non-profit organization doesn't abuse its market control to hike up its fees, each year the registrars have to formally approve the fee structure that the ICANN Board has adopted. And they do that through an online vote.

This year, some registrars are wondering whether the $3.8m spent by ICANN is a good deal for them.

"What do your ICANN fees get you?" ICANN asks itself in an email sent to all registrars. "In addition to helping cover the expenses associated with ICANN meetings and ICANN's day-to-day operations, your fees have allowed us to conduct regular outreach with registrars through 'roadshow' type training seminars, webinars, in-person events, and site visits."

Don't ask, don't tell

It's not clear how that money is spent nor on what, since ICANN continues to provide only the vaguest details over its budget, providing annual sums for "travel" and for "meetings" across the entire organization.

ICANN is also actively refusing to hand that information over, telling one outfit that formally asked for additional financial data that for it to do so would be "extremely time consuming and overly burdensome." That organization – the Centre for Internet and Society – is appealing that decision [PDF] to ICANN's Board with a decision made two days ago but still unpublished.

ICANN expenditure is increasing: in 2014 alone, its "travel" costs jumped by 85 per cent to $17m; its meetings budget nearly doubled from an average of $3.2m per public meeting in 2013 to $6m in 2014. But there is almost no information on where this money has been spent, and so far no explanation for why it spent $113m in 2014 with an income of just $84m.

What else is ICANN spending registrars' fees on? "We've recruited Registrar Services staff dedicated to serving Europe, the Middle East/Africa, and Asia and have already begun a series of (low-cost) micro-regional events in China, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea, with plans taking shape for events in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas in the near future," we're told.

But existing registrars are wondering whether all these new staff and events are needed. Are there hundreds of new registrars entering the market? Are they in Asia?

Unfortunately, ICANN has stopped providing that kind of information. In 2009, under pressure to be more open about what was going on, the organization made big play of the fact it was going to produce statistics showing how many registrars there were, how big they were, and where they were based in a new "dashboard."

But those stats stopped being produced two years ago and the most recent data provided is from 2012.

Software and security

Where else do the millions of dollars from the companies that support ICANN go? "We're building up the 'GDD Portal'," says a note from ICANN's staff, "which will become a one-stop destination for all registrar resources at ICANN, and transitioning our customer relationship management software from RADAR to salesforce.com."

This is the same GDD Portal that ICANN had to shut down earlier this year because of a security breach. It had misconfigured out-the-box software and exposed every user's information, including financial projections, launch plans, and confidential exchanges, to every other user. Having at first claimed there was "no indication" that confidential information was exposed, it later admitted that it had in fact happened 330 times.

As for RADAR, it was specifically named in a report by Verisign as a security risk; this is one of the things on a "growing list of examples where ICANN's operational track record leaves much to be desired."

We're listening...

Finally, in explaining why the registrar fees are a good deal for the companies, ICANN's staff note: "Most importantly, we're doing our best to listen to you to ensure that our work is of real value to you."

Unfortunately that listening does not extend to hearing any complaints about the fees, or what they are spent on.

All registrars receive an email during the annual approval of the fees levied against them with a link to an online survey. Incredibly enough, however, they are only allowed to agree to the fees – there is no option to disagree. Or in fact do anything other than sign up for another year.

And what is ICANN's explanation for why the companies that provide it with over a third of its budget are not allowed to express anything but approval of the fees ICANN sets? Problems with the voting software:

The system is only able to accept affirmative expressions of approval. (A technical limitation in the voting software prevents us from knowing when we've reached the level of approval required if we offer both a 'yes, I approve,' and a 'no, I don't approve' option.) But if you have reservations about approving the budget or concerns you'd like addressed first, please let me know and I'll be happy to try to address those directly with you.

So despite charging the companies $3,500 each a year to run the systems that they use, ICANN has been unable to find voting software that is capable of accepting more than one answer. Money well spent.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-register-september-29-2015-kieren-mccurthy-do-you-agree-with-our-fee-hike

Do IT Rules 2011 indirectly leads to Censorship of Internet

praskrishna — 2012-05-31T09:00:41Z

Pranesh Prakash along with Dr. Arvind Gupta, National Convener, BJP IT Cell and Ms. Mishi Choudhary, Executive Director, SFLC participated in a panel discussion on censorship of the Internet on May 8, 2012.

The discussion was broadcast on Yuva iTV. See the video below:

Video

Click for the video on YouTube

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/do-it-rules-indirectly-lead-to-censorship-of-internet

DNA Survey Questions

praskrishna — 2011-07-24T03:42:52Z

survey questions that were asked.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/publications/dna-survey-questions.pdf

DNA Profiling Bill Documents

praskrishna — 2014-12-04T23:54:12Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/dna-profiling-bill-meeting-documents.zip

DNA Poster 2

praskrishna — 2013-09-24T10:14:11Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/dna-2.pdf

DNA Poster 1

praskrishna — 2013-09-24T10:12:51Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/dna-1.pdf

DNA List of Offences

praskrishna — 2015-07-17T01:34:05Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/dna-list-of-offences.pdf

dna exclusive: Geeks have a solution to digital surveillance in India: Cryptography

praskrishna — 2013-07-15T06:24:40Z

While you were thinking of what next to post on Twitter, the government has stealthily put an ambitious surveillance programme in place that tracks your every move in the digital world — through voice calls, SMS and MMS, GPRS, fax communications on landlines, video calls and emails.

The article by Joanna Lobo was published in DNA on July 7, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The programme, conceived in 2011, has now been brought under one umbrella referred to as the centralised monitoring system (CMS). It is the death of privacy.

But as concerned citizens argue for the need to formulate policies and laws to protect privacy, there's a simpler solution in sight for now: a CryptoParty.

At this 'party', an informal gathering of people, non-geeks can learn how to legally encrypt their digital communications and how to store data without the fear of anyone snooping in. Encryption is a process of encoding messages so that it can only be read by authorised parties.

What is it?
"A CryptoParty educates people in the domain of cryptography. It's usually about the basics: how to send encrypted email, how to protect your hardware and how to use free and open source software," says Satyakam Goswami, a free software consultant associated with the Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC), Delhi (remove this). Goswami was one of the 72 participants at the CryptoParty organised on Saturday at Institute of Informatics & Communication (IIC), Delhi University South Campus On June 30, a CryptoParty organised at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bangalore had 30 people in attendance. "We were taught about the what, how and who is watching us. We were also taught how to encrypt emails, chat, video calls or instant messaging,” says Siddhart Prakash Rao, a computer science graduate and a free software and open source enthusiast who is about to pursue a Masters in Cryptography.

The topics may be a mouthful for non-geeks but CryptoParty advocates maintain that all this is taught in the simplest way possible. The choice of subject depends on the composition of the group — if it is a gathering of geeks, like at the Bangalore event, then the topics are more technical.

How can it help?
CryptoParties started in August 2012 by an Australian woman (who goes by the pseudonym Asher Wolf) after a conversation on Twitter about The Australian Parliament's new cybercrime bill that allowed law enforcement to ask Internet Service Providers to monitor and store data.
Attending a CryptoParty is a good way to learn how to overcome government snooping legally.

“Citizens should use encryption to safeguard their private communications against both corporations and the government. Encryption is one of the best ways to react to CMS along with increased civic vigilance and democratic questioning of our government and parliamentarians,” says Pranesh Prakash, policy director, CIS, and one of the frontrunners in the fight to formulate a policy to safeguard privacy in India.

"In India, people tend to be rather ignorant. They are not aware of the kind of surveillance they are subjected to once online. It's a lack of understanding," says Sumandro Chattapadhyay, a researcher with Sarai, a programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.

Bernadette Langle, who also works at CIS has been instrumental in organising the handful of CryptoParties in the country. When dna spoke to her, she was on her way to Delhi after participating in the Bangalore event. Langle will also be part of a CryptoParty being planned for October in Mumbai. "Ten years ago, you had to be a geek to be able to encrypt and protect yourself online. Now, you need software and it's much easier," she says.

The advantage is that the privacy tactics taught at such parties is completely legal. All knowledge is in the public domain. “A government will only deny its citizens basic communications privacy if it is authoritarian,” says Pranesh. “So while it can try social engineering and other means to gain access to what you've encrypted, it simply cannot 'decode' it as long as you have chosen a strong pass phrase and keep that protected, or they create quantum computers capable of breaking your encryption.”

The CIS is currently working on revisions of the Privacy (Protection) Bill 2013 with the objective of contributing to privacy legislation in India. Till that bill becomes an Act and till there's a better way to overcome needless government surveillance, attending a CryptoParty could possibly be the wisest solution for those concerned about privacy.

(For more details on CryptoParties, visit www.cryptoparty.in)

How to encrypt:
SMS: Make content secure by using software like TextSecure (Android) or CryptoSMS (Symbian). However, SMS metadata (who you are sending the message to and at what time) can still be tracked.

Instead of Whatsapp, install Jabbir and add off the record encryption.

For email, you can use OpenPGP in conjunction with Thunderbird to encrypt mails you send from Gmail/Yahoo Mail/Live Mail accounts so that even Google, Yahoo and Microsoft can't read them

For web browsing, use a VPN (which will hide your traffic from your ISP), or Tor (which will help anonymise your traffic, but will slow down your connection slower).

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/report-dna-july-7-2013-joanna-lobo-geeks-have-a-solution-to-digital-surveillance-in-india-cryptography