Centre for Internet and Society

catv2

praskrishna — 2012-10-12T06:15:02Z

catv2

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

catv2

praskrishna — 2012-10-12T06:13:46Z

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

catv1

praskrishna — 2012-10-12T05:19:34Z

catv1

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/catv1.jpg

Catch-all approach to Net freedom draws activist ire

praskrishna — 2011-04-01T15:43:55Z

The Internet has revolutionized the way we socialise, date and even protest. Online activism is a faster, more effective way to get more people to react to a cause. But at the same time it is this speed that makes Internet-generated protests a far graver danger than offline protests. Egypt faced an Internet shutdown when the protest started gaining steam and China has been throttled with heavy cyber censorship for years. Unfortunately, silencing the voices of dissent online is as easy as raising them. This article by Annie Johnny appeared in the Sunday Guardian, New Delhi on 13 March 2011.

A workshop recently conducted at the Constitution Club in New Delhi brought together human rights activists, bloggers and techies and explored the challenges faced by online activists.

“When the Internet was in its nascent stage, there was the Utopian belief that the government would not have the same role to play as it does offline. However, the Internet is being increasingly regulated by the government,” says Dr. Anja Kovacs, fellow, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.

The Binayak Sen and Pink Chaddi campaigns provide a picture of how fast and efficient online activism is. “Initially, the campaign was restricted to a centralised network of people and was a way for me and my friends to vent out our thoughts. But it grew beyond our expectations. Between March 2008 and May 2009, we had about 1.5 million visitors. Our experience with the Internet as an effective tool in mobilising people has been very positive,” says Satya Sivaraman, one of the initiators of the Free Binayak Sen Campaign website.

Blocking websites that promote child pornography and hate speech is acceptable. Activists, however, are concerned about the mysterious disappearances of blogs and the vague explanations given to justify them.

“There is a provision for spam in the IT Act. While the rule is meant for only for spam, it is extended over a much wider area. According to it, anything that is deemed objectionable can be blocked. Instead of targeting offensive material, the act should target harmful content. Child pornography and hate speeches cause harm, whereas what is ‘offensive’ is subjective,” says Pranesh Prakash, programme manager, Centre for Internet and Society.

Bloggers in countries like Thailand and Singapore face serious consequences for posting anti-state views online. However, very few people all over the world are standing up against the curtailing of the right to freedom of expression online.

“There are ways to access blocked sites but most people do not bother to do that. If a site is blocked, they will simply accept it. The government in India is becoming increasingly restrictive. While their reason for concern is valid as the restrictions are in place to protect national security, the way they are dealing with this is inappropriate. Drafting vague rules related to objectionable content’ without specifying whom the content is objectionable to, is not going to help. There needs to be clearly defined categories for banning sites,” says Kovacs.

Rising against the growing restrictions and the wide gaps in Internet accessibility, The Internet Rights and Principles coalition, which works on Internet rights, is coming up with a Charter for Human Rights and Principles for the Internet.

The charter, which is still being drafted and has been put online for suggestions, emphasises that human rights apply the same way online as they do offline, and lays down rules and Internet policies necessary to protect human rights.

Another interesting observation is that most online protests don’t always spark parallel offline protests. The Meter Jam protest against the high auto fares in Mumbai is one such example.

“While it helped the middle class vent their frustration, on the day of the actual offline protest, hardly anyone boycotted autos. Business went on as usual,” says Kovacs.

See the article on the Sunday Guardian website
Download the original pdf here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/catch-all

Catch file

praskrishna — 2011-03-15T13:02:27Z

pdf

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/advocacy/catch-net-freedom

Caspar Bowden

praskrishna — 2011-06-23T11:34:55Z

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

Cases on the right to be forgotten, what have we learned?

praskrishna — 2015-11-08T02:24:22Z

Internet Governance Forum (IGF) 2015 will be held at Jao Pessoa in Brazil from November 10 to 13, 2015. The theme of IGF 2015 is Evolution of Internet Governance: Empowering Sustainable Development. Jyoti Panday is attending the workshop on "Cases on the right to be forgotten, what have we learned?" to be held on November 11, 2015 at IGF 2015.

Click to read the full details on the IGF website.

Since the EU Court of Justice ruled to uphold and codify the Right to Be Forgotten, Free expression activists fear that the decision will open the door to corporate and government censorship. However and apart from the European case, how much do we know from the rest of the world? It is part of a cross-workshop collaboration with Workshop 31 that look at the procedural and legal implications of such rulings.

In a conversational format, the roundtable seek to understand arguments, scope, discussions and current situation of the Right to be Forgotten outside the EU and around the world in rulings and legislations (enacted and proposed).

The round table will start with kick off presentations (3 minutes) of cases by local activists, such as

Mexican data authority IFAI fine to Google
Colombian Court case against El Tiempo and ultimately Google
Chilean bill intended to modify the Data Protection Act
Legislation in Nicaragua codifying the ‘right to be forgotten’
Japan's court case against Google
South Korean analysis process to adopt the ‘right to be forgotten’

After those presentations, participants will be divided into groups to be facilitated by the speakers. These groups will discuss and note problems, challenges and enabling environments on the cases in order to draw some “lessons learned”. The full group will reconvene on the roundtable format to detect particularities of the debate beyond EU and will present, discuss and define 10 lessons that can be drawn from these experiences to protect freedom of expression in these debates.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/cases-on-the-right-to-be-forgotten-what-have-we-learned

Case Studies

praskrishna — 2011-08-24T07:54:15Z

See the case studies

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/publications/case-studies.pdf

Cartonama Workshop

praskrishna — 2012-02-14T10:21:16Z

HasGeek presents an intensive, hands-on training for managing and building location based services at the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS), Bangalore on 2nd and 3rd March, 2012. CIS is a partner for this event.

About the Workshop

Around 95% smartphone users around the world - which translates to about 468 million people - are using Location Based Services to look for points of interests, ATMs, restaurants, hotels and many other services. They are checking traffic status, and sharing locations and check-ins with friends on various social networks. In the last four years, this industry has grown six times, to a whooping $6 billion.

Cartonama Workshop will provide developers, neo-geographers and entrepreneurs working on location based services with hands-on training on advanced tools to manage and represent their geographic data.

The trainers will help participants to learn use of tools such as databases, tile servers, tile studios, Geocoding APIs, search APIs and JavaScript libraries through an application building exercise. The learning process is interspersed with lectures and discussion sessions on issues such as quality of geographic data, commercialization, licensing and privacy. For more details about the workshop sessions, visit the HasGeek funnel.

Speakers

Schuyler Erle
Free Software developer and evangelist for over fifteen years. He was a co-author of 'Mapping Hacks' and 'Google Maps Hacks'. He was also a co-founder of the OpenLayers and TileCache projects, and is a charter member of the OSGeo Foundation. He also works in the fields of wireless networking, intelligent search engines and the Semantic Web and was the lead developer of NoCatAuth which is an open source wireless captive portal. He built geocoder.us, which is an open source United States. address geocoder. More recently, Schuyler helped found the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and serves on its Board of Directors. He currently resides in San Francisco.

Mikel Maron
Programmer and geographer working for impactful community and humanitarian uses of open source and open data. He is co-founder of Ground Truth Initiative, and of the Map Kibera project. He’s on the Board of the OpenStreetMap Foundation, and President of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, having helped to facilitate the OSM response to the Haiti earthquake. He’s travelled widely, organizing projects in India, Palestine, Egypt, Swaziland, and elsewhere. Previously, he co-founded Mapufacture and worked on collaborative platforms, and geoweb standards, with a wide spectrum of organizations from UN and government agencies to anarchist hacker collectives.

In 2008, Mikel Maron and Schuyler Erle conducted a series of workshops in India. From Delhi to Ludhiana, Pune, Mumbai, Kerala and Bangalore. The workshop series poked people like Arun Ganesh and inspired them to map and build applications. Arun and his friends mapped Chennai extensively and created beautiful maps. They also put the data together into busroutes.in

. BusRoutes.in remains as one of the best examples of using crowdsourced geographic information to create applications that are useful.

Sessions


Introduction to OpenStreetMap	GPS Surveying for OpenStreetMap	Downloading from GPS	Editing Data for OpenStreetMap

Tagging and Map Features	Geographic File Formats	Geo-enabled Databases	Processing OpenStreetMap Data

Data Swiss Army Knives	Creating Shapefiles	Tiles	Tilemill

Java Script Mapping APIs	Serving Tiles	Geocoding and Location queries	Putting it all together

Why You Should Attend the Workshop?

The workshop is only open to 30 participants. This is to ensure that the trainers can pay individual attention to each participant.

The workshop will train you with both back-end as well as front-end tools necessary for developing functional location based services and will enable you to build maps which can be used on devices ranging from phones to tablets to computers. It is aimed at teaching you the entire technology stack, right from managing the data to deploying the data on the server, and finally presenting it to your end user. During the hands-on sessions, you will develop web-based location services and learn how to manage your geographic data by creating interactive maps.

Mikel and Schuyler have extensive experience working with interactive maps, open data, Open Street Maps (OSM) and diverse communities on the ground. Participants will benefit immensely from the knowledge, experience and expertise of the trainers.

Registration

Tickets are priced at Rs. 10,000. Participants can register through the DoAttend portal. Or, you can pay offline through cheques and DD. Your ticket price covers workshop facilities and the facilitators' travel to India. The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) has sponsored part of the workshop expenses.

Participants are expected to bring their own GPS devices / mobile phones and computers for the application building exercises.

If you have any queries, write to Sajjad Anwar.

Buy Tickets Now

Venue

The workshop will be held at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore. The congenial atmosphere at CIS facilitates both formal and informal interactions, and peer-to-peer learning.

No. 194, 2nd C Cross, 4th Main
Opposite Domlur Club
Domlur 2nd Stage, Bangalore - 560 071

The Centre for Internet & Society

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a Bangalore-based independent, non-profit research organisation. CIS is primarily involved in research on the Internet and its relationship to society. Through its academic and research programmes, campaigns, and advocacy, CIS brings together scholars, academics, students, programmers and scientists to engage in a large variety of issues concerning the Internet: from histories of the Internet to enhancing accessibility for persons with disabilities, openness, telecom and Internet governance, among others.

CIS is supporting the Cartonama Workshop by providing the venue and hosting the workshop facilitators in Bangalore.

HasGeek

HasGeek was initiated in September 2010 to create discussion spaces for developers around emerging technologies. Our events are developer-focused. We began by organizing five editions of the DocType HTML5 conference in Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad.

In 2011, we organized a series of events in Bangalore starting with the Android Camp in April, PHP and Cloud Computing in June, JSFoo in October, and Droidcon India in November. Each of these events had an open talks submission and voting system, which made every event more participant-focused.

In 2012, we are attempting to reach out to a wider audience of developers, entrepreneurs and students, across large and small Indian cities, by addressing interesting technology problems such as UI Engineering, Data Science, SMS and email notifications, among others.

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

Cartonama Conference

praskrishna — 2012-09-17T13:59:05Z

HasGeek is organising a Cartonama Conference on September 22, 2012 at the TERI Complex in Bangalore, from 9.30 a.m. to 6.00 p.m.

Cartonama conference is centered around geospatial data, mapping and location based services. It deals with two primary themes: infrastructure for managing geospatial data including mapping software, cartographic techniques and tools; and application of geospatial data, primarily location-based services. Cartonama is open to entrepreneurs, developers, individuals and institutions working with GIS and cartographic techniques, advocacy groups, among others.

We will also host four workshops which will provide hands-on training about tools for managing geospatial data and how to build location-based services. Workshops will be held between September 23 to 25, 2012. Tickets for the Cartonama conference can be bought at http://cartonama.doattend.com

About HasGeek

HasGeek is a Bangalore-based organisation. We put together events for developers with the intention of creating discussion spaces about technologies that are new today, and could become mainstream tomorrow. HasGeek is supported by CIS.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/cartonama-conference

Card transactions with Aadhaar validation need more time: experts

praskrishna — 2013-12-26T06:25:04Z

Cost and supply implications are seen by experts as the main hurdles in implementing the RBI directive.

The article by Kirti V. Rao and Moulishree Srivastava was published in Livemint on December 5, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) move to introduce a new card payment infrastructure able to authenticate transactions using Aadhaar unique identity number-linked biometrics may take some time to implement as it has cost and supply implications.

“All new card present infrastructure has to be enabled for both EMV chip and PIN and Aadhaar (biometric validation) acceptance,” RBI said in a notification on 26 November.

Europay MasterCard Visa, or EMV, chip and PIN authentication involves card information stored in a chip that is accessible through a PIN or personal identification number, which replaces a cardholder’s signature.

Currently, all card infrastructure in India such as automated teller machines (ATMs) and point-of-sales (PoS) machines are moving towards full compliance with the global EMV standard that requires reading integrated circuit cards to authenticate credit and debit card transactions.

Although all transactions through debit cards are now required to be authenticated by PIN, validating financial transactions by using the biometric Aadhaar identity number database is yet to gain traction. Such a service is expected to begin in May.

Not all experts are in favour of the central bank’s move to use biometrics data to authenticate transactions.

“This is a terrible idea. Biometrics should never be used as authentication factor since it cannot be revoked when it is compromised,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bangalore-based think-tank Centre for Internet and Society. “Digital signatures and its variations like the EMV chip are the right way to proceed.”

A banker did not fully agree with Abraham.

Pulak Sinha, general manager (payment solutions) at State Bank of India, said: “In our experience, there is a need for biometric authentication in certain geographical segments in the country. Our bank has used biometric authentication for financial inclusion initiatives and has found it very useful. Having said that, each bank is the best judge as to which technology is more relevant for their customers.”

Sinha added, “Also changing new infrastructure to accept all types of technologies has its own challenges as well as financial implications. Again, business cases need to be built and when people get additional services they may have to pay.”

There are cost implications if the RBI directive is to be implemented, according to Rajiv Kaul, chief executive of CMS Info Systems Pvt. Ltd, which runs two cash management companies and has recently received an order from SBI to deploy 8,000 cash machines across the country.

“Some of the ATM infrastructure currently installed have some of the capabilities for EMV chip cards, but even as they are hardware-equipped, software will need to be upgraded,” Kaul said. “For biometric compliance, both hardware and software will need to be installed, which will result in extra cost. So, for the short term, from the biometric perspective, the cost will go up.”
Some experts hold that the notification provides a chance to assess the as-yet-untested Aadhaar-linked biometrics model where the EMV model may be hard to implement.

“RBI has been pragmatic in mandating it incrementally as it is giving Aadhaar a runway to evolve in terms of operations, use cases, risk, technology standards, dispute resolution and get these things in order,” Uttam Nayak, group country manager, India and South Asia at Visa Consolidated Support Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, told Mint on 26 November. “Because Aadhaar is tokenless and doesn’t need a card, it has great potential for inclusion.”

Biometrics-enabled cash and PoS machines will require additional expenditure as they need high-speed Internet connectivity to transmit biometrics data, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, member of the upper house of Parliament, said in a letter to RBI governor Raghuram Rajan.

“The hardware and software cost of upgrading a single unit with biometrics hardware is not very much but changing the entire ecosystem would have costs,” acknowledged SBI’s Sinha. “When people get additional services they will have to pay.”

“A high percentage of the population is still unbanked. The opportunity (to reach people through biometric validation and Aadhaar) is too tempting for the acquirers (banks and others using PoS devices) to not take this up,” said Robin Roy, associate director of financial services at consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers Pvt. Ltd.

Whether there would be enough suppliers of machines to implement the directive is also a concern, some experts said.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/livemint-december-5-2013-kirthi-v-rao-moulishree-srivastava-card-transactions-with-aadhar-validation-need-more-time

Card

praskrishna — 2016-10-21T13:42:24Z

Card

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

Can’t read, so use new tech to let books speak

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T13:43:27Z

An article in the Times of India about the Right to Read campaign organised by the Centre for Internet & Society at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi as the world book fair kicked off.

Fifteen-year-old Ravi has never read a book. Diagnosed with a brain disorder when he was just three years old, he was taught how to read in a school for special children. But apart from some local newspapers and occasional letters from his family, he could never manage to enjoy a book because reading printed words was never comfortable to him.

On Saturday, Ravi was among the 300 print-impaired people — all dressed in identical blue sweatshirts and suffering from various disabilities like blindness, autism, dyslexia etc — who gathered at Pragati Maidan as the World Book Fair kicked off. Taking part in ‘Right to Read’ campaign organized by Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), they tried to create awareness about the plight of nearly 70 million people in the country who cannot read but, nevertheless, have the ability to enjoy a book or get information if book publishers take care to use the technology.

‘‘We want that people with disabilities should also be able to enjoy popular books like White Tiger or Five Point Someone. But for this, a lot needs to be done. The outdated copyright act needs to be amended so books can be converted to form which is accessible like audio books. Many publishers and writers do not give permission to have their books converted,’’ says Nirmita Narasimhan, programme manager of CIS.
As Amina flashes her wide grin, she seems just like any other normal 12-year-old child. However, a learning disorder stopped future studies for her and now her parents want to get her ‘‘settled’’ in life. ‘‘I want to study further,’’ was all she said. Amina has come from a small town in Bihar and is in Delhi with an NGO that is helping her adjust to life as a dyslexic.

Another participant in the campaign, Manoj, is blind. While he learned braille several years ago, his biggest regret is that because of his disability, he cannot enjoy the latest bestsellers. ‘‘I read whatever books are available in braille. Popular books are never accessible to me,’’ he said. The nationwide campaign began last year and since then has taken place in Kolkata and Mumbai, with Delhi being the third destination.
‘‘The campaign seeks to draw attention to the fact that out of nearly one lakh books that are published each year, barely 700 are available to people who cannot read print. The books can be converted into formats like braille, audio and large print to make them accessible to disabled people using screen readers (talking software) but it’s rarely done,’’ said a campaign volunteer.

Members of the campaign claimed that according to World Blind Union nearly 5% books are available to print-impaired persons in the developed countries. But in India the number of such books is just .5%. Javed Abidi, convener of Disabled Rights Group and one of the key-note speakers in the campaign, said: ‘‘Mostly it’s the visually impaired who have carry out the task to make the books more accessible to them. They have to scan the book and convert it and so that they can enjoy it. This needs to be changed. The onus should be on the publishers so books are made accessible to everyone.’’

The leaders of the campaign approached Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal when he came to speak at the inauguration ceremony of the fair. The minister said he has already done a lot for disabled citizens. Since the campaign was launched, over 600 authors and publishers have pledged their support to the campaign. ‘‘While technology has enabled the print-impaired community to access print materials in electronic formats that can be read using assistive technologies, converting books to these formats is not permitted by the law. The campaign also seeks necessary amendments in the Indian Copyright Act,’’ said Narasimhan.

For original article on The Times of India

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/new-tech-to-let-books-speak

Cancer Hospital

praskrishna — 2018-08-13T15:10:19Z

Cancer Hospital

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

Centre for Internet and Society

catv2

catv2

catv1

Category

Catch-all approach to Net freedom draws activist ire

Catch file

Caspar Bowden

Cases on the right to be forgotten, what have we learned?

Case Studies

Cartonama Workshop

About the Workshop

Speakers

Sessions

Why You Should Attend the Workshop?

Registration

Venue

The Centre for Internet & Society

HasGeek

Cartonama Conference

About HasGeek

Card transactions with Aadhaar validation need more time: experts

Card

Can’t read, so use new tech to let books speak

Cancer Hospital