Centre for Internet and Society

RightsCon Silicon Valley 2016

praskrishna — 2016-04-06T15:10:21Z

RightsCon is the world’s leading event convened around the issues of the internet and human rights. The annual conference convenes business leaders, visionaries, technologists, legal experts, civil society members, activists, and government representatives from across the globe on issues at the intersection of tech and human rights. The event was organized by RightsCon.

Program

This year, we had three days ofprogrammingplus a day of satellite events (Day Zero satellite events + three full days of main programming), tackling some of today’s most challenging business and policy issues: freedom of expression, online harassment and countering violent extremism, privacy and digital security, encryption, network discrimination and connectivity, human rights, trade and business, transparency reporting, digital inclusion, internet governance, and much more. Click here to see our program schedule.

With 250+ sessions and over 1,000 registered participants, RightsCon 2016 provided unparalleled opportunities to engage with leading speakers and organizations, both in sessions and through private meetings and discussions. It was also home to an array of parties, movie screenings, and social events throughout the week to help participants meet others in the space.

Elonnai Hickok participated in the following panels and meetings at RightsCon held at Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, California from March 30 to April 1, 2016:

1. Beyond CSR: Promoting Strong Human Rights Performance - Centre for Law and Democracy
2. Ranking ICT Companies on Digital Rights; A How to Guide - Ranking Digital Rights
3. Who is an Intermediary? Harmonizing Definitions? - CIS
4. Manila Principles: One Year Later - CIS and EFF
5. Cross Border Data Requests - American University Washington College of Law, University of Kentucky College of Law.
6. Closed door meeting for Ranking Digital Rights
7. GNI meeting on Mutual Legal Assistance

More info on the RightsCon website

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/rightscon-silicon-valley-2016

March 2016 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2016-04-13T08:05:42Z

CIS Newsletter for the month of March 2016 is here.

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is happy to share its March 2016 newsletter. Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed at http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters.

Highlights
CIS published and circulated two press releases on March 11 and 15, 2016, as the Lok Sabha passed the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016: 'The Law cannot Fix what Technology has Broken!' and 'The New Bill Makes Aadhaar Compulsory!' CIS submitted an initial list of recommendations to the Members of Parliaments to highlight the aspects of the Bill that require immediate attention. The recommendations were prepared by Amber Sinha, Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Sunil Abraham, and Vanya Rakesh. In an article titled Flaws in the UIDAI Process published in the Economic and Political Weekly, Hans Varghese Mathews. He stated that the Government of India is engaged upon biometrically identifying the entire population of India. An experiment performed at an early stage of the programme has allowed us to estimate the chance of a false positive: and from that to estimate the proportion of duplicands. For the current population of 1.2 billion the expected proportion of duplicands is 1/121, a ratio which is far too high. Vipul Kharbanda wrote an analysis of Aadhaar Act in the context of Justice A.P. Shah Committee Principles. The analysis has thrown light on the substantial aspects of the Act in relation to privacy concerns which have been raised by a number of experts. Pooja Saxena and Amber Sinha produced two infographics that 1) evaluate the Aadhaar Bill 2016 against the National Privacy Principles, and 2) highlight the vulnerabilities in the UIDAI implementation process not addressed by the Aadhaar Bill, 2016. CIS has initiated the CIS Papers series with a fascinating exploration of humanitarian use of big data and its discontents by Sean McDonald, FrontlineSMS, in the context of utilisation of Call Detail Records for public health response during the Ebola crisis in Liberia. With the objective to sensitize and impart the skillset in handling NVDA – the Screen Reader and the usage of BookShare Online Library for the print disabled to the Special Educators, Karna Vidya Technology Centre in collaboration with Computer and Internet Society conducted a one-day workshop on February 27, 2016. 48 special educators participated and benefited from the workshop. An article titled 8 Challenges In Growing Indian-Language Wikipedias by Subhashish Panigrahi was first published in Huffington Post on March 19, 2016. This was cross-posted in Medianama titled as Multiple key factors preventing Indic Wikipedia growth on March 21, 2016. CIS has published a report on the 30th Session of WIPO-SCCR giving an analysis of the Broadcast Treaty Negotiations and the Negotiations on International Instrument for Exceptions and Limitations for Libraries and Archives. Anubha Sinha wrote an essay titled Fueling the Affordable Smartphone Revolution in India as part of the The Good Life in Asia's Digital 21st Century essay collection. She stated that smartphones have emerged as the exemplar of mankind's quest for shrinking technologies. They embody the realization of a simple premise – that computing devices would do more and cost less. This realization has been responsible for modern society's profound transformations in communication, governance, and knowledge distribution. Rohini Lakshané wrote an analysis of the patent landscape in a research paper titled Patents and Mobile Devices in India: An Empirical Survey. The paper has indicated that although India has the second-largest wireless subscriber base in the world, with more than 150 mobile device vendors, it has, until recently, remained relatively unaffected by the global smartphone wars. The Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, has constituted a National Expert Committee for developing a draft National Geospatial Policy (NGP) to provide appropriate guidelines for collection, analysis, use, and distribution of geospatial information across India, and to assure data availability, accessibility and quality. A pre-drafting consultation meeting for the NGP was organised in Delhi on February 3, 2016. Anubha Sinha attended the meeting. The glue that allows infrastructures to link and operate efficiently is standards as they make technologies interoperable and efficient tells Vanya Rakesh in a blog entry titled Adoption of Standards in Smart Cities - Way Forward for India. P.P. Sneha wrote a blog post which studies the digital creative industries in India while examining some initial questions. She stated that the term ‘creative industries’ has been around for a while now, but with the advent of the digital, and with interest from different sectors, especially with a focus on policy and economic development, it would be essential to critically examine the discourse around the term, and see where it may be changing to open up new possibilities, particularly for the arts, humanities and design. CIS strongly condemns the acts of sexual harassment that took place against one of its representatives Padmini Baruah during ICANN 55 in Marrakech. It is completely unacceptable that an event the scale of an ICANN meeting does not have in place a formal redressal system, a neutral point of contact or even a policy for complainants who have been put through the ordeal of sexual harassment. ICANN cannot claim to be inclusive or diverse if it does not formally recognise a specific procedure or recourse under such instances.

--------------------------------------
Accessibility & Inclusion
-------------------------------------
India has an estimated 70 million persons with disabilities who don't have access to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. As part of our endeavour to make available accessible content for persons with disabilities we are developing a text-to-speech software in 15 languages with support from the Hans Foundation. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

►NVDA and eSpeak

The workshops were conducted earlier but published recently on our website:

Report on eSpeak with NVDA Screen Reader and Assistive Technology for Visually Challenged (Organized by National Association for the Blind, New Delhi, Centre for Differently Abled Persons, Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli, and CIS; January 21, 2016; Tiruchirappalli).
Report on NVDA with E-Speak and BookShare Online Library (Organized by Karna Vidya Technology Centre, Computer and Internet Society, and CIS; February 27, 2016; Chennai).

-----------------------------------
Access to Knowledge
-----------------------------------
As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

►Pervasive Technologies

Article

Fueling the Affordable Smartphone Revolution in India (Anubha Sinha; The Good Life in Asia's 21st Century Essay Collection; March 16, 2016).

Blog Entries

Report of the 30th Session of the WIPO SCCR by the Centre for Internet & Society (edited by Nehaa Chaudhari with assistance from Nisha S.K., Aarushi Bansal, Amulya P., and Saahil Dama; March 16, 2016).
Dataset: Patent Landscape of Mobile Device Technologies in India (Rohini Lakshané; March 31, 2016).

Patents and Mobile Devices in India: An Empirical Survey (Rohini Lakshané; March 31, 2016)

►Wikipedia

As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).

Articles

Eight Challenges That Indian-Language Wikipedias Need to Overcome (Subhashish Panigrahi; The Wire; March 17, 2016). A version of the article was also mirrored by Opensource.com on March 28, 2016.
8 Challenges In Growing Indian-Language Wikipedias (Subhashish Panigrahi; Huffington Post; March 19, 2016). This was cross-posted in Medianama titled as Multiple key factors preventing Indic Wikipedia growth on March 21, 2016.
8 Challenges for Improving Indian Language Wikipedias (Subhashish Panigrahi; Opensource.com; March 28, 2016). The article was originally published in the Wire on March 17, 2016 and later mirrored on Opensource.com on March 28, 2016.

Participation in Event

BHASHA-Indian Languages Digital Festival (Organized by news media YourStory; March 11, 2016; New Delhi). Subhashish Panigrahi gave a talk in the panel “The challenges of making regional language content available on the Web and on mobiles.
8th IBA International Conference (Organized by Indus Business Academy; March 24 - 26, 2016; Bangalore). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja gave a talk on Democratizing of Knowledge Access- Case of Regional Language Wikipedia.

-----------------------------------
Openness
-----------------------------------

Our work in the Openness programme focuses on open data, especially open government data, open access, open education resources, open knowledge in Indic languages, open media, and open technologies and standards - hardware and software. We approach openness as a cross-cutting principle for knowledge production and distribution, and not as a thing-in-itself.

Submission

Consultation on 'National Geospatial Policy' - Notes and Submission (Anubha Sinha; March 29, 2016)

-----------------------------------
Internet Governance
-----------------------------------

As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on studying the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government.

►Big Data

Article

Too Clever By Half: Strengthening India’s Smart Cities Plan with Human Rights Protection (Vanya Rakesh; The Wire; March 22, 2016).

Blog Entry

Adoption of Standards in Smart Cities - Way Forward for India (Vanya Rakesh; March 19, 2016).

►Freedom of Expression

Statements

Sexual Harassment at ICANN (Padmini Baruah; March 18, 2016).
CIS' Statement on Sexual Harassment at ICANN55 (Vidushi Marda; March 21, 2016).

►Privacy

Submission

List of Recommendations on the Aadhaar Bill, 2016 - Letter Submitted to the Members of Parliament (Amber Sinha, Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Sunil Abraham, and Vanya Rakesh; March 16, 2016).

Articles

Flaws in the UIDAI Process (Hans Varghese Mathews; Economic & Political Weekly, Journal, Vol. 51, Issue No. 9, February 27, 2016).
Aadhaar: Still Too Many Problems (Pranesh Prakash; Livemint; March 7, 2016).
Aadhaar Bill fails to incorporate suggestions by the Standing Committee (Amber Sinha; The Wire; March 10, 2016).
Are we Losing the Right to Privacy and Freedom of Speech on Indian Internet? (Amber Sinha; March 10, 2016).
Privacy Concerns Overshadow Monetary Benefits of Aadhaar Scheme (Pranesh Prakash and Amber Sinha; Hindustan Times; March 12, 2016).
Will Aadhaar Act Address India’s Dire Need For a Privacy Law? (Nehaa Chaudhari; Quint; March 31, 2016).

Blog Entries

A comparison of the 2016 Aadhaar Bill, and the 2010 NIDAI Bill (Vanya Rakesh; March 9, 2016).
Aadhaar Bill 2016 & NIAI Bill 2010 - Comparing the Texts (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; March 9, 2016).
The New Aadhaar Bill in Plain English (Amber Sinha, Vanya Rakesh and Vipul Kharbanda; March 11, 2016).
An Urgent Need for the Right to Privacy (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; March 16, 2016).
The Law cannot Fix what Technology has Broken! (Japreet Grewal and Sunil Abraham; March 16, 2016).
The New Bill Makes Aadhaar Compulsory! (Amber Sinha; March 16, 2016).
Analysis of Aadhaar Act in the Context of A.P. Shah Committee Principles (Vipul Kharbanda; March 17, 2016).
Vulnerabilities in the UIDAI Implementation Not Addressed by the Aadhaar Bill, 2016 (Pooja Saxena and Vipul Kharbanda; March 21, 2016).

Participation in Events

GNI-Industry Dialogue Learning Session: Human Rights Impact Assessments and Due Diligence in the ICT sector (Organized by Global Network Initiative; March 11, 2016; Washington D.C.). Elonnai Hickok attended the event.
RightsCon Silicon Valley 2016 (Organized by RightsCon; Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, California; March 30 - April 1, 2016).

-----------------------------------
Telecom
-----------------------------------
CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Op-ed

Connectivity: Let's Apply What We Know (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; March 2, 2016).

Submission

TRAI Consultation on Differential Pricing for Data Services - Post-Open House Discussion Submission (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; March 30, 2016).

-----------------------------------
Researchers at Work
-----------------------------------
The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by contemporary concerns to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It is interested in producing local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:

Blog Entry

Studying Digital Creative Industries in India: Initial Questions (P.P. Sneha; March 17, 2016).

-----------------------------------
News & Media Coverage
-----------------------------------

CIS gave inputs to the following media coverage:

The Crypto Wars Are Global (Joseph Cox; Motherboard; March 4, 2016).
Govt narrative on Aadhaar has not changed in the last six years: Sunil Abraham (Shreeja Sen; Livemint; March 8, 2016).
Aadhaar: Govt will not compromise on national security (Shreeja Sen; Livemint; March 9, 2016).
Hard to broad ban! (Taru Bhatia; Governance Now; March 9, 2016).
Seven reasons why Parliament should debate the Aadhaar bill (and not pass it in a rush) (Anumeha Yadav; March 11, 2016).
Aadhaar is actually surveillance tech: Sunil Abraham (Sahil Makkar; Business Standard; March 12, 2016).
Will Only Legal Backing For Aadhaar Suffice? (Indian Express; March 14, 2016).
India's billion-member biometric database raises privacy fears (Sanjeev Miglani and Manoj Kumar; March 16, 2016).
A scheme in India to help the poor raises privacy concerns (John Ribeiro; IDG News Service and CSO; March 16, 2016).
Pratap Vikram Singh - Why Aadhaar is Baseless? (Governance Now; March 17, 2016).
Forget privacy, Aadhaar Bill gives too much power to the executive (Aloke Tikku; Sunil Abraham; March 17, 2016).
In India, Biometric Data Storage Sparks Demands for Privacy Laws (Anjana Pasricha; Voice of America; March 18, 2016).
Dead and Clicking (Jayanthi Madhukar and Sowmya Rajaram; Bangalore Mirror; March 20, 2016).
India Still Trying To Turn Optional Aadhaar Identification Number Into A Mandatory National Identity System (TechDirt; March 22, 2016).
Debate: Five Aadhaar Myths that Don’t Stand Up to Scrutiny (Reetika Khera; March 23, 2016).
How the government gains when private companies use Aadhaar (M. Rajshekhar and Anumeha Yadav; March 24, 2016).
Making Aadhaar Mandatory: Gamechanger For Governance? (NDTV; March 24, 2016).
ICANN Sexual Harassment Case Highlights Lack of Procedure at Global Internet Body (Wire; March 24, 2016).
Securing the internet’s future (Hindu Businessline; March 25, 2016).
On Google Maps, JNU top result in search for 'anti-national' (Kim Arora; The Times of India; March 25, 2016).
Woman Alleges Harassment at Major International Conference (Kavita Patil; Bangalore Mirror; March 30, 2016).

-----------------------------------
About CIS
-----------------------------------
The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

► Support Us

Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of 'The Centre for Internet and Society' and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru - 5600 71.

► Request for Collaboration

We invite researchers, practitioners, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at sumandro@cis-india.org (for academic research), with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia projects, write to Tanveer Hasan, Programme Officer, at tanveer@cis-india.org.

CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/march-2016-bulletin

8 Challenges In Growing Indian-Language Wikipedias

praskrishna — 2016-06-18T17:11:05Z

While speaking at BHASHA: Indian Languages Digital Festival, a day-long discourse at New Delhi on Indian languages and their state in new media, especially digital platforms, I touched upon Wikipedia in Indian languages. Most people, in fact, do not even know that Wikipedia exists in many Indian languages.

The article was first published in Huffington Post on March 19, 2016. This was cross-posted in Medianama titled as Multiple key factors preventing Indic Wikipedia growth on March 21, 2016.

I personally did not know about the Odia Wikipedia until 2011 when a friend told me about its existence. Back then the project was completely inactive. And then a couple of friends and I started contributing, and the project grew to what it is today. The site now has more than 300,000 visitors every month and it is the most-visited Odia language site on the internet. Other languages, I believe, could follow a similar trajectory on Wikipedia, but there are several challenges along the way.

Many people do not even know how to search for information online in their own language, typed in its script.

1. Ignorance of language communities

Many people do not even know how to search for information online in their own language, typed in its script. Some even share that because Google's home page does not have their script it means that their language does not exist on the internet. This ignorance perpetuates the gap.

2.Wikipedia's editor community

Wikipedia, as you all know, is written and edited by people like you and me who volunteer their efforts. Many people probably do not know or do not try to learn that they themselves can correct the mistakes and inaccuracies that exist in many Wikipedia articles and become editors. The Wikipedia editor communities for several Indian languages are really small. When these languages are spoken by millions of people, only a handful of editors contribute in editing the Wikipedia in these languages.

3.Language input in computers

A vast majority of people in this country do not know how to type in their own language. There is also little documentation for users to learn about language input. Even though many government-run schools in India are seeing more computers and internet, native language input is not widely. However, there is a lot of free software for language input and the challenges of typing in Indian language that existed a few years back have almost gone. You just have to look for the right tools.

4. Language input in mobile devices

With over 1 billion people with mobile phones, the 15% internet penetration rate will soon grow. This in turn will help a lot many Indians to get access to the internet. If these people are not educated about native language input then they will be unnecessarily constricted by the English-centric internet. Many Indians that have smartphones need inbuilt input methods to be able to contribute in their own language Wikipedia.

Many Indians that have smartphones need inbuilt input methods to be able to contribute in their own language Wikipedia.

5. Low availability of Indian-language content on the Internet

Lack of native language content on the Internet bars many from accessing knowledge. As per the Internet and Mobile Association of India survey conducted in 2012, over 6% of the population is deterred from going online because of lack of content in their languages. Take the example of my state. When the Kerala government's official tourism portal is available in Odia and other Indian languages, the Odisha government's tourism portal has no information in Odia language today. Our languages are neglected in our own states.

6. Mismatch of conventional and new media

Many conventional media houses still use non-standard variants of ASCII/ISCII script encoding systems instead of adopting the Unicode standard. Unicode being a global standard and having the advantage of unifying the world has been available for Indian languages for about 25 years now. But many of our traditional media have failed to adopt this. Many popular Indian-language newspapers are yet to become available in Unicode.

7. Lack of open access

Most of the information produced on the internet in general and by the government, in particular, is copyrighted. The paywalled garden of copyright restrictions keeps the information closed and stops people from sharing and learning more. On the contrary, Wikipedia is available under a Creative Commons Share-Alike license which allows anyone to make use of the content and even distribute commercial copies of it. The idea of opening up information for the masses in a free license could make the information reach millions of people.

Many conventional media houses still use non-standard variants of ASCII/ISCII script encoding systems instead of adopting the Unicode standard.

8. People with disabilities

Many people cannot read, speak and write. India has over 60 million people with hearing impairment. There is a need for a good quality text-to-speech and speech-to-text engine for people with physical disabilities. Also, these software products have to be free so that common people who cannot afford to buy expensive proprietary software like JAWS can contribute to Wikipedia in their language. Many text-to-speech engines that are available today for Indian languages sound so mechanical that it is tough for common speakers to use them.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/huffington-post-march-19-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-8-challenges-in-growing-indian-language-wikipedias

Woman Alleges Harassment at Major International Conference

praskrishna — 2016-03-30T17:06:10Z

A prospective lawyer's name tag was flipped, and she was asked rude questions by a CEO at a conference, where, ironically enough, she was invited to devise sexual harassment policies.

The article by Kavita Patil was published in Bangalore Mirror on March 30, 2016.

Padmini Baruah, 22, a National Law School of India University (NLSIU) student representing Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), at the ICANN55 (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) held at Marrakech, alleged that she was sexually harassed by Khaled Fattal, the chairman and CEO of The Multilingual Internet Group.

On March 2, Baruah had reached out to the conference ombudsman and expressed her concerns about the lack of a specific sexual harassment policy. She was directed to the ICANN55's Standards of Behavior, who invited her for a discussion at the conference in Marrakech.

About three hours before her meeting with the ombudsman on March 6, she had a shock. "I was, unfortunately, subjected to sexual harassment in the nature of verbal remarks and infringement of my personal space by the perpetrator in question, a man I eventually came to know was called Khaled Fattal," she recalled. "Fattal approached me, pulled at my name tag, examined it and dropped it. A little later, he lifted my name tag and flipped it back and forth asking me, "Where are you from?"

He then leaned in, lecherously looked at me and asked, "Do you know how to make a cheese sandwich?" I was taken aback and responded angrily saying, "Yes, that is why I came here, to make you cheese sandwiches." He went on to throw another lecherous look my way and said, "Well, I love veg sandwiches."

Sunil Abraham, executive director of the CIS, said, "ICANN doesn't have a special cell where complaints can be raised but they have an ombudsman. The ombudsman is investigating the case and is in touch with both Baruah and also the perpetrator." He said after she raised the sexual harassment complaint, he received many mails from women who had faced harassment at the event but never made an attempt to raise their voice. "Through CIS we have issued a public statement of support for Baruah and we are waiting for the result of the investigation," he said.

Fattal and the ombudsman were not available for comment despite repeated attempts made by BM to get a response. Baruah, meanwhile, was informed by the ombudsman that her's was the first harassment case reported in the history of ICANN.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bangalore-mirror-march-30-2016-kavita-patil-woman-alleges-harassment-at-major-international-conference

ICANN 55

praskrishna — 2016-03-30T14:41:34Z

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

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

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

ICANN55WorkSummary.pdf

praskrishna — 2016-03-30T14:40:06Z

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

On Google Maps, JNU top result in search for 'anti-national'

praskrishna — 2016-03-29T01:37:17Z

"Anti-national" is not a location. But Google Maps seems to have an address for it - Jawaharlal Nehru University in the capital. On Friday, Google Maps pinned other such "locations" in the same place. It yielded the same result for other search terms such as "sedition," "freedom of expression," and "patriotism."

The article by Kim Arora was published in the Times of India on March 25, 2016. Rohini Lakshane was quoted.

The university, that recently became a hotbed of national politics following the arrest of the JNUSU president, also showed up in Google Maps search for other terms like "intolerance", "Kanhaiya Kumar", and "Smriti Irani". Google reviews for the central university suggest that this has been happening since last week.

JNU, it appears, is a victim of Google Map's word association. "This is a bug. Google Maps results take signals from many points on the web, including news outlets. The terms "Anti National," "Kanhaiya Kumar" and JNU have been in the news so much recently that they became associated in Maps which is why this result is triggered. This is a bug and we're working to fix this as quickly as possible," a Google spokesperson told TOI over email.

Google reviews of the university showed a barrage of one-star reviews uploaded in the last couple of weeks, reacting to the events and political demonstrations on the campus. "Ashamed to note that such a popular university houses anti nationals," said one such review. By Friday afternoon, Google Maps was among the top ten India trends on Twitter.

Rohini Lakshane, a researcher with the Center for Internet and Society in Bengaluru, ran a search for "antinational" on Google Maps from an Indian IP, and then again from those outside the country. She found that the JNU result only showed up for searches carried out from an Indian IP, and for those on Google India if used from an IP outside the country.

"Google's search engine seems to be correlating the keyword "JNU" with these terms owing to their extremely large concentration in the Google Maps reviews as well as associated metadata from other content on the web. This is quite common for topics that are widely written about on the internet and discussed on social networking sites. If the heavy concentration only exists within a certain country or region, then the results may only correlate for searches done from IP addresses there," says Lakshane.

Google search algorithms are known to take into account terms that are frequently used together to display results. In July 2015, for example, controversy broke after Google images started showing Prime Minister Narendra Modi's image if one searched for "Top 10 Criminals in the World". Google had then issued an apology for the faux pas, and said, "Sometimes, the way images are described on the internet can yield surprising results to specific queries. We apologise for any confusion or misunderstanding this has caused. We're continually working to improve our algorithms to prevent unexpected results like this."

Google Maps has earlier been subjected to pranks. In May 2015, Google had to temporarily suspend its Map Maker function after an image of an Android bot urinating on an Apple logo appeared on a map. Map Maker is an application where lay users can mark new places, routes, or institutions in areas they are familiar with.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-times-of-india-march-25-2016-kim-arora-on-google-maps-jnu-top-result-in-search-for-anti-national

Securing the internet’s future

praskrishna — 2016-03-28T02:24:35Z

Mike Godwin, who proposed the eponymous law about online discussion threads, speaks about net neutrality, differential pricing and why no government is likely to oppose stricter surveillance measures.

The article by Bhavya Dore was published in Hindu Businessline on March 25, 2016.

For gravity, there’s Newton’s law, for internet discussion threads, there’s Godwin’s law. Twenty-five years ago, a law student trawling through cyberspace noticed a recurring pattern: at some point in an online discussion, someone would invariably invoke Hitler or the Nazis. The observation led to an act of ‘mimetic engineering’ — rifling through discussion boards, pointing this out, and promptly naming the law after him.

Godwin’s law states: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one — that is, the likelier this becomes.

Mike Godwin, 59, a portly, white-haired gent in Harry Potter glasses is best known for this aphoristic piece of wisdom. “The purpose,” he says, “was to make the people who engaged in frivolous comparisons of atrocities seem like they weren’t thinking.”

It is generally understood that when one of the arguers is falling back on the Nazis as rhetorical shorthand, that person is starting to lose the argument.

“It certainly means one of the arguers has gone to a higher or lower level,” he said.

Godwin was in India in February as part of a series of talks organised through the Centre for Internet and Society on net neutrality.

In early February, at the Mumbai University’s civics and politics department, he was on a panel with three others at a discussion that occasionally took an agitated tone.

“[The debate] hasn’t become heated in every country to the same degree,” he said. “In India it has.” The public discussion has been polarised, with activists vehemently opposing, among other things, ‘Free Basics’ — a Facebook offering. On February 8, the telecom regulator ruled against differential pricing, debarring telecom operators from offering slices of the internet at different prices.

Godwin doesn’t see net neutrality and differential pricing as mutually exclusive. “I think some forms [of differential pricing] are potentially good and some forms are potentially bad,” he said. “And the regulator has to look closely and make a determination about the harms or benefits.”

Godwin has worked with the Wikimedia Foundation, which offered Wikipedia Zero for free in some countries through specific providers, as a gateway to Wikipedia. But he isn’t trying to convince you one way or the other.

“[There is] an idea that there was something valuable about carriers [service providers] being neutral,” he said. “And I still think that that’s true… But the thing that changed was this: with Wikipedia, I realised it doesn’t matter if you have neutrality if nobody can afford it. Neutrality hasn’t served the people who can’t afford to pay to have the wires built up to their provinces.”

This then boils down to the fundamental question: how do we create a world that gets people connected? “It may involve cross-subsidies of various sorts, and all of these things historically have invited some degree of government regulation,” said Godwin. “The question is less ‘do you regulate or not regulate’, the question is ‘do you do it right’.”

But does Free Basics mean anything to a developing country which needs real basics first: water, sanitation, shelter? Godwin doesn’t buy into the premise that the internet is a luxury that comes after all these things.

“I think that [idea] is wrong,” he said. “Because when people can share information or resources about where the water is or what good health practices are or how to properly cultivate a crop, they help everyone else. And the impulse to help and share what they know is strong.”

Godwin’s first law has now been well entrenched in popular culture. But wait, he has a second one. This one goes: Surveillance is the crack cocaine of governments.

“Almost all governments want to engage in surveillance,” he said. “Some governments have disagreements with other governments over their surveillance but rarely will we see them categorically refuse to surveil.”

And yet, he says, our outrage over this is driven by an “antiquated notion of privacy” that the content of our emails or conversations should be free from prying eyes. “In the rest of the century and future centuries people will look back at this idea and laugh: that people thought that content was the important thing,” he said. Someone reading your mail isn’t the only possible violation, but whether they are accessing the whole ecosystem of your communication. “The metadata can give away the whole store,” he said. “The metadata can be more revealing. Who are you talking to, at what time of day, for how long, how big is the message? These are all things that can matter.”

That’s not the only thing that’s changed. The internet has, since its early days, become a more charged, more violent place, where poison, bile and abuse fly thick and fast.

“The level of hatefulness directed towards women online is particularly bad,” he continued, “It is a huge cross-cultural problem.”

The other enduring problem is how do you balance free speech rights while curtailing hate speech? “If there were an easy answer I’d tell you what it is,” said Godwin.

Still, banning or blocking sites, as the Indian government has been in the past eager to do, is hardly a solution. “I won’t say there is never an argument for it,” said Godwin, pausing a beat, “I will say that I have never heard one that was any good.”

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-hindu-business-line-march-25-2016-bhavya-dore-securing-internets-future

8th IBA International Conference

praskrishna — 2016-04-04T15:32:54Z

The 8th IBA International Conference was organized by Indus Business Academy in Bengaluru from March 24 to 26, 2016. The theme of the conference was Taking India to Greater Heights. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja gave a talk on Democratizing of Knowledge Access- Case of Regional Language Wikipedia.

India’s journey since independence has been eventful. The long struggle against colonialism left Indian private capital in a poor state. The Government intervention was essential and hence there was a need for the public sector. Experiments with socialism and national planning turned out to be a mixed success. The 1991 crisis propelled India towards a market driven economy. Politically, its unpopularity reverted India to a state of socialism once again. The 2014 elections have renewed interest in a market driven economy.

Indian achievements have been sizable. The successful Mars Mission, Agni mission, Green Revolution, White Revolution, IT industry growth all demonstrate the positive achievements that India has made in the last 60 odd years. In recent months, across the world, there is a renewed interest in India.

Yet we can hardly be complacent. The lowering oil prices, conflict in the Middle East, slowdown in Chinese economy, fears of Russian expansionism, decline in European growth, concerns about the state of US economy and rising trends in terrorism have created turbulence across different parts of the world. India cannot be immune to these changes.

India’s response can manifest itself in multiple forms. There could be rapid expansion of defence procurement and preparedness both on external as well as internal fronts. It could involve building alliances with countries aligned strategically to Indi’s interests.

It could manifest through the rapid growth of manufacturing sector. The services sector could move higher in the value chain. The spillovers generated by the establishment of industries could spawn a major entrepreneurial ecosystem.

With the UN approval to celebrate International Yoga Day, India’s soft spiritual power is also rising in the horizon. Indian philosophical and ideological thoughts are getting renewed interest across different parts of the world. Indian talent, youth demographics etc. have literally placed India on the centre stage. No doubt, exciting times are ahead.

This Conference aims to deliberate on such changes and suggest ways and means to leverage this growing interest in India and identify the new perspectives emerging in Business, Management, Leadership and Consciousness as a result of these changes.

The schedule for 8th IBA International Conference can be accessed here. More info on the event here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/8th-iba-international-conference

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

praskrishna — 2016-04-01T15:42:49Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ICANN perspective

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

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

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

Complaint, Counter-Complaint

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

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

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

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

Cleaning up

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

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

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

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

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

Making Aadhaar Mandatory: Gamechanger For Governance?

praskrishna — 2016-03-24T06:50:10Z

Why a programme that both the Congress and the BJP have hailed as transformational has divided Parliament this week? The Aadhaar Bill which was passed this week aims at facilitating government benefits and subsidies to citizens said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

Yet it became a reason for the Rajya Sabha to raise key questions. On the panel - Chandan Mitra, Rajya Sabha MP, BJP; Ajoy Kumar, Spokesperson, Congress; Tathagat Sathapathy, Lok Sabha MP, Biju Janata Dal; Rajeev Chandrashekhar, Rajya Sabha MP; Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet & Society; and Shekhar Gupta, Senior Journalist.

Video

Link to NDTV website

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/ndtv-march-20-2016-making-aadhaar-mandatory-gamechanger-for-governance

How the government gains when private companies use Aadhaar

praskrishna — 2016-04-01T15:58:38Z

This blog post by M. Rajshekhar and Anumeha Yadav was published in Scroll.in on March 24, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

Last week, Rajya Sabha made a last-ditch attempt to modify the contentious Aadhaar legislation introduced by the Modi government. Since the legislation was introduced as a Money Bill, the Upper House had no powers to amend it. It could only send back the bill with recommended amendments.

One of the clauses which Rajya Sabha wished to amend related to the use of the Aadhaar number, the 12-digit unique identification number assigned after the collection of an individual’s biometrics in the form of fingerprints and iris scans.

Clause 57 said that anyone, whether an individual or a public or private organisation, could use the Aadhaar number. Rajya Sabha voted to restrict the use of the number to the government. After all, the government had justified introducing Aadhaar legislation as a Money Bill by stating that it would be used for delivering government subsidies and benefits funded out of the Consolidated Fund of India. If the delivery of government welfare is the aim of Aadhaar, why should private companies be allowed to use it?

The Rajya Sabha recommended dropping clause 57 to limit the use of Aadhaar to government agencies. But the Lok Sabha rejected its recommendation, and cleared the Bill in its original form, paving the way for private companies to use Aadhaar.

Strikingly, however, well before the Bill was cleared, a private company started advertising its services as “India’s 1st Aadhaar based mobile app to verify your maid, driver, electrician, tutor, tenant and everyone else instantly”. In an article for Scroll.in, legal researcher Usha Ramanathan said, “A private company is advertising that it can use Aadhaar to collate information about citizens at a price. It says this openly, even as a case about the privacy of the information collected for the biometrics-linked government database is still pending in the Supreme Court.”

LinkedIn for plumbers

The company that owns the mobile app called TrustID believes it is not doing anything wrong.

Monika Chowdhry, who heads the marketing division of Swabhimaan Distribution Services, the company that created TrustID, defended the app, saying it offers the valuable service of verifying people's identities. “In our day to day life, we do a lot of transactions with people – like maids or plumbers. Till now, you would have to trust them on what they said about themselves and what others said about the quality of their work.” The company is solving that problem, she said. “We are saying ask the person for their Aadhaar number and name and we will immediately tell you if they are telling the truth or not,” Chowdhry said.

Chowdhry said that over time, the Aadhaar number of individuals will be used to create a private verified database of TrustIDs. “Our plan is to create a rating mechanism,” she said. Referring to the option for maid, plumbers and other service providers on the app, she added: “People like you and me, we have Linkedin and Naukri. What do these people have?”

How does the company use Aadhaar for verification and is there a reason to be concerned?

Aadhaar authentication

After you have logged into the TrustID app, you can choose from a dropdown menu of categories. You can send anyone's Aadhaar number, gender and name – or even biometrics – and the app claims it can verify their identity.

The app performs Aadhaar authentication – which means it matches an Aadhaar number with the information stored against that number in the servers of the Unique Identification Authority of India. At the time an individual enrols for an Aadhaar number, they disclose their name, gender, address and give biometric scans. This information is held in a database maintained by the UID authority.

One of the criticisms of Aadhaar has been that the database of millions of people could be misused in the absence of a privacy law in India. First, there is the question about whether the biometrics are secure. Second, there are risks that accompany the uncontrolled use of unique numbers.

In response, the proponents of Aadhaar have said that the data is encrypted and secure, and can be accessed only by the authority. Those wanting to authenticate – or match – the Aadhaar number cannot directly access the database. They can simply make requests to the authority which authenticates the number for them.

So far, it appeared that the authority was taking Aadhaar authentication requests solely from government agencies. For instance, to pay wages to workers of the rural employment guarantee programme.

But TrustID’s example showed that private companies too have been sending authentication requests to the authority. This is not entirely surprising for those who have followed the blueprint for Aadhaar as envisioned by Nandan Nilekani, its founder. In an interview in 2012, Nilekani spoke about creating a "thriving application system" using Aadhaar for both the public and private sector.

Chowdhary said Swabhimaan Distribution Services registered as an Aadhaar authentication agency in November 2015, and the app was launched in January 2016.

TrustID, or Swabhimaan, is not the only private company that has signed up as an authentication agency for Aadhaar. A quick Google search throws up the name of Alankit, which wants to “provide Aadhaar Enabled Services to its beneficiaries, clients and customers and can further verify the correctness of the Aadhaar numbers provided ” .

This shows the authority entered into agreements with private companies well before the Aadhaar law was passed in Parliament. The companies were running ahead of legislation in a space unbounded by law, and the UIDAI supported them in this.

It is unclear how many private companies were sending requests for Aadhaar authentication. Scroll's questions to Harish Agrawal, the deputy director general of Aadhaar's Authentication and Application Division, remained unanswered.

In an interview to Business Standard, ABP Pandey, the director general of the UIDAI, said, "Usually what happens is that first a law is passed and thereafter the institutions are built and operations start. Here it has happened the other way around. The operations – the enrolment – is almost complete. The organisation is also there and has been working under executive orders. Now everything has to be kind of retrofitted in to the acts and the regulations."

Why is this problematic?

For one, allowing private companies to use the Aadhaar number shows that the government’s stated aims of Aadhaar are misleading.

Both in the Supreme Court and in Parliament, the government has pushed for the use of Aadhaar as an instrument of welfare delivery. It justified passing Aadhaar legislation as a Money Bill by emphasising its importance to its welfare schemes. But as the case of Swabhimaan shows, Aadhaar's uses clearly go well beyond what the Bill's preamble describes as the “targeted delivery of subsidies, benefits and services, the expenditure for which is incurred from the Consolidated Fund of India.”

Two, biometrics and unique identification numbers are a qualitatively new form of private information. As such, they bring unknown risks. India does not have a privacy law, and a law defining the use of biometrics and unique numbers is yet to be created. Delhi-based lawyer Apar Gupta said, “Even the Aadhaar Bill is yet to be approved by the president. Its rules are yet to be drafted. There is not enough legal guidance on its use.”

Three, companies like Swabhimaan would be in a position to construct databases of their own. Take TrustID. When it starts retaining Aadhaar numbers, and adds ratings to them, it creates a database of its own, which amounts to creating profiles of people.

Here, as Ramanathan said, the analogy with the networking site LinkedIn doesn't work. “When I have an account on LinkedIn, I update my data,” she said. But the TrustID app generates profiles out of the ratings that others give. Even if a prospective employee shares his/her Aadhaar number, it does not amount to free consent since getting a job hinges on giving that number.

In the future, companies could use Aadhaar numbers in unknown ways, for instance, to combine multiple databases – banks, telecom companies, hospitals – to create detailed profiles of you and me that they can monetise. In effect, Aadhaar becomes a commercial instrument for private companies, and not just a mechanism for the delivery of government welfare.

Gains for the government

Sunil Abraham, the executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, further explained the risks that arise when databases are combined. He cited the example of OCEAN, the system created by researchers at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology to raise privacy awareness. OCEAN used publicly available information held by the government (voter identity card, PAN card, driving licence) to access details about citizens in Delhi. This public data was combined with people's Facebook and Twitter accounts, and the aggregated results were visualised as a family tree which showed information extending to a person’s parents, siblings and spouse.

"If a company like TrustID tied up with OCEAN, it can create a very detailed profile of an individual," said Abraham. "To continue with the example of a job-seeker, if a employer uses TrustID to verify applicants' identity or profiles, the App may combine a database like OCEAN to track that you logged into Twitter at, say 2 am on most nights. It can profile you as someone who might not turn up at work on time in the morning."

Abraham pointed out that the government too stands to gain by allowing private companies to use Aadhaar for authentication. "Use of authentication by private companies will mean UIDAI can have information on authentications performed on you, or by you, over time in the private sphere as well, say during such a job search," he said. For instance, when TrustID runs a search for your prospective employers using your Aadhaar number, the government knows you have applied for a job at certain companies. "This is unnecessary involvement of the government, giving it access to information in an area that it should not have access to."

Over time, such Aadhaar authentication for private services in companies, hospitals, or hotels will "help the government gain granular data on citizens", he said.

Perhaps that explains why the government rushed the Aadhaar Bill through Parliament, allowing little time and room for public debate.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/scroll.in-march-24-2016-rajshekhar-anumeha-yadav-how-the-govt-gains-when-private-companies-use-aadhaar

Seven reasons why Parliament should debate the Aadhaar bill (and not pass it in a rush)

praskrishna — 2016-03-24T02:25:24Z

Critics say the Aadhaar Bill does not address concerns over privacy, even as government is rushing the Bill without adequate parliamentary scrutiny.

The blog post by Anumeha Yadav was published in Scroll.in on March 11, 2016. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

Since it was launched by the United Progressive Alliance government in 2009, the Unique Identification project called Aadhaar has functioned without a legal framework. The project, which aims to assign a biometric-based number to every Indian resident, has been run under an executive order, which means Parliament has no oversight over it.

An Aadhaar Bill was introduced in 2010 but it was rejected by a parliamentary committee over legislative, security, and privacy concerns.

For long, critics have expressed concerns over collecting and centralising citizens' biometric data ‒ such as fingerprints and retina scans ‒ on a mass scale in the absence of a privacy law. The Supreme Court in several orders in 2014 and 2015 affirmed that the government cannot require people to register for an Aadhaar number and no one can be deprived of a government service for not having an Aadhaar number. The Supreme Court is now set to form a constitution bench to examine the contours of the right to privacy flowing from the government's arguments in the Aadhaar case.

Before the bench begins its work, however, the Modi government has introduced a new Bill on Aadhaar, which could override the court's orders.

The Aadhaar (Target Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill was introduced on March 3 in Lok Sabha. Finance minister Arun Jaitley said the new Bill addresses concerns over privacy and the security and confidentiality of information.

But a close examination of the Bill shows several questions remain.

1. Does the Bill make it mandatory for you to get an Aadhaar number?
Yes, you may have to compulsorily enrol under Aadhaar, despite the privacy concerns explained in the sections below.

Four-time member of the Lok Sabha, Bhartruhari Mahtab of the Biju Janata Dal, was on the parliamentary committee on finance that examined the previous Aadhaar Bill introduced in 2010. He said the new Aadhaar Bill does not specify that it will not be made mandatory.

“There is duplicity over this issue,” said Mahtab. “Nandan Nilekani [the former chairperson of the Unique Identification Authority of India] repeatedly told us in the parliamentary committee that Aadhaar is not mandatory. The Supreme Court also said, 'You cannot make it mandatory.'”

But if a service agent asks for Aadhaar mandatorily, then as a beneficiary, citizens have no option but to get an Aadhaar number, Mahtab explained. “The government, or a private company, cannot force me to get an Aadhaar number," he said. "The government should bring a law that clearly says Aadhaar is not mandatory.”

A committee of experts on privacy, chaired by Justice AP Shah, had recommended in 2012 that the Bill should specify that individuals have the choice to opt-in or out-of providing their Aadhaar number, and a service should not be denied to individuals who do not provide their number. The Unique Identification Authority of India had then stated to the committee that the enrolment in Aadhaar is voluntary.

But the new Aadhaar Bill does not incorporate a categorical clause on opt-in and opt-out. Instead, it broadens the scope of Aadhaar. Jaitley said the Bill will allow the government to ask a citizen to produce an Aadhaar number to avail of any government subsidy. But section 7 of the Bill is phrased more broadly, and refers to not just subsidies but any “subsidy, benefit or service” for which expense is incurred on the Consolidated Fund of India, or the government treasury.

7. The Central Government or, as the case may be, the State Government may, for the purpose of establishing identity of an individual as a condition for receipt of a subsidy, benefit or service for which the expenditure is incurred from, or the receipt therefrom forms part of, the Consolidated Fund of India, require that such individual undergo authentication, or furnish proof of possession of Aadhaar number or in the case of an individual to whom no Aadhaar number has been assigned, such individual makes an application for enrolment: Provided that if an Aadhaar number is not assigned to an individual, the individual shall be offered alternate and viable means of identification for delivery of the subsidy, benefit or service.

As noted above, the proviso in section 7 is premised on the phrase: “if an Aadhaar number is not assigned”. This, along with language preceding in the section, indicates that a citizen may be compulsorily required to apply for enrolment.

Section 8 permits a “requesting entity” to utilise identity information for authentication with the Central Identities Data Repository. A “requesting entity” is defined under Section 2(u), and will include private entities.

2. Does the Bill allow Aadhaar authorities to share your personal data?
Yes, in the "interest of national security", a term that remains undefined.

Both legal experts and members of Parliament have flagged the provisions in the Bill on the circumstances in which users' data, including core biometrics information, can be shared.

The debate centres over the interception provisions in section 33.

In a piece in The Indian Express, Nandan Nilekani, the former chairperson of the issuing authority, stated that the Aadhaar Bill provides that no core biometric information can be shared, a principle without exception. “...Clause 29(1) is not overridden by Clause 33(2),” he noted.

However, a closer reading of the Bill shows this is not the case. Clause 33(2), in fact, does provide an exception to clause 29(1)(b):

33(2) Nothing contained in sub-section (2) or sub-section (5) of section 28 and clause (b) of sub-section (1), sub-section (2) or sub-section (3) of section 29 shall apply in respect of any disclosure of information, including identity information or authentication records, made in the interest of national security in pursuance of a direction of an officer not below the rank of Joint Secretary to the Government of India specially authorised in this behalf by an order of the Central Government

where, Section 29(1)(b) states:

29. (1) No core biometric information, collected or created under this Act, shall be — (b) used for any purpose other than generation of Aadhaar numbers and authentication under this Act.

Pranesh Prakash, a lawyer and policy director of the Centre for Internet and Society said: “This implies that the core biometric information, collected or created under the Aadhaar Act, may be used for purposes other than the generation of Aadhaar numbers and authentication 'in the interest of national security.'"

Legal experts point out that the phrase “national security” is undefined in the present bill, as well as the General Clauses Act, and thus the circumstances in which an individual's information may be disclosed remains open to interpretation.

Section 33(1) permits the disclosure of an individual's demographic information (but not biometrics) following an order by a district judge. It says that no such order shall be made without giving an opportunity of hearing to the UIDAI , but not to the person whose data is being disclosed.

3. Does the Bill protect you from interception and surveillance?
No, the Bill does not provide for transparency concerning covert surveillance.

Section 33(2), which permits disclosure of demographic and biometric pursuant to directions of the joint secretary in interest of national security, says such disclosures will be for three months initially, and a fresh renewal can be granted for another three months, without a limitation on the number of such renewals.

This can lead to a user being under continuous surveillance, and without any notification to the user even after the surveillance ceases, violating one of necessary and proportionate principles on communications surveillance related to user notification and right to effective remedy. In some countries, this principle has been incorporated in law. For example, in Canada, the law limits the time of wiretapping surveillance, and imposes an obligation to notify the person under surveillance within 90 days of the end of the surveillance, extendable to a maximum of three years at a time.

“The interception provisions are severely problematic," said Apar Gupta, a technology lawyer. "They are not open to independent scrutiny and even derogate from the already deficient practices which relate to phone tapping (Rule 419-A of the Telegraph Rules) and interception of data (Interception Rules, 2011).”

Legal scholar Usha Ramanathan pointed out that the Bill lacks provisions on giving notice to a person in case of breach of information, in case of third party use of data, or change in purpose of use of data – which were among provisions recommended by the Justice Shah Committee on Privacy in 2012.

4. Does the Bill allow you to seek redress in case of breach of information?
Yes, but the provisions are weak.

Government officials overseeing the project said that the 2016 Bill is an improvement over the 2010 Bill as it safeguards the information of those enrolled as per sections of the Information Technology Act, 2000.

But technology law experts say the adjudicatory system for disclosure of sensitive personal data under the IT Act has structural flaws and is not functional.

“Initial complaints against the disclosure of sensitive personal data go to an adjudicating officer who is usually the IT Secretary of the state government and may not be trained in law,” said Gupta, the technology lawyer. “There is no court infrastructure and no permanent seat for such cases. The appellate body, the Cyber Appellate Tribunal, has not been made operational in the last three years. Hence, the civil remedies offered [in the Aadhaar Bill] are at best illusionary and unenforceable.”

5. Does the Bill give you the right to alter your information?
No, it leaves you to the mercy of the Unique Identification Authority of India.

Imagine a situation where a user simply wants to change their first or last name, or say, not use their caste name. Under Section 31 of the Bill, individuals can only request the UID authority, which may do so “if it is satisfied”. There is no penalty on the authority if it fails to respond. The Bill does not provide for a user to even be able to approach a court to ask for their information relating to Aadhaar to be corrected.

International norms for data protection give individuals the right to correct and alter information, if their demographic data changes. They provide for individuals to have a copy of their information, and to approach courts for an order to rectify, block, erase inaccurate information.

In an interview to Mint, Sunil Abraham, director of the Centre for Internet and Society, compared the rights of Aadhaar users to the rights we now take for granted as internet users. “Authentication factors [biometrics in the case of Aadhaar], commonly known as passwords, should always be revocable,” noted Abraham. “That means if the password is compromised, you should be able to change the password or at least say that this password is no longer valid.” In its current form, the Aadhaar Bill gives users no such rights.

6. Is the current Bill an improvement over the previous one?
Not really.

The Aadhaar Bill 2016 provides that the renewals of requests for disclosure of data will be reviewed by an oversight committee consisting of the cabinet secretary and the secretaries in the department of legal affairs and the department of electronics and information technology.

This is a watered down version of the provisions in the previous Unique Identification Authority of India 2010 Bill, said Chinmayi Arun, executive director, Centre for Communication Governance at the National Law University Delhi.

“The previous version or the 2010 Bill provided for a three-member review committee, consisting of the nominees of the prime minister, the leader of the opposition, and a third nominee of a union cabinet minister, with the restriction that these nominees could not be a member of parliament or a member of a political party,” Arun said. “This would be a more independent committee than the one proposed now, wherein there will be executive oversight for executive orders."

Regarding penalties, the previous 2010 Bill made copying, deleting, stealing, or altering information in the Central Identities Data Repository, punishable with a jail term of upto three years and a fine not less than Rs 1 crore.

Section 38 of the new Aadhaar Bill now makes the same offence punishable with a jail term of upto three years and reduces the upper limit of the fine to “not less than ten lakh rupees”.

7. Finally, does the Aadhaar Bill have enough parliamentary scrutiny?
The government has introduced the legislation on Aadhaar in the form of a Money Bill, which means the power of the Rajya Sabha to review and amend the Bill is curtailed ‒ if the Speaker Sumitra Mahajan certifies that this is a Money Bill.

The parliamentary committee on finance under Bharatiya Janata Party MP Yashwant Sinha had rejected the previous Bill in December 2011 citing legislative, security, and privacy concerns. Despite this, two successive Prime Ministers – Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi – have pushed ahead with Aadhaar project.

A common refrain has been that the unique biometric identity will resolve the problem of the poor in India to prove identity and overcome "one of the biggest barriers preventing the poor from accessing benefits and subsidies." But last April, the UIDAI in response to an RTI application revealed that of 83.5 crore Aadhaar numbers issued till then, 99.97% were issued to people who already had at least two existing identification documents, only 0.21 million (0.03%) used the "introducer system" that provides an exception to those lacking identity proof.

More recently, there has been no public consultation by the government over the latest Bill.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/scroll.in-anumeha-yadav-march-24-2016-seven-reasons-why-parliament-should-debate-the-aadhaar-bill-and-not-pass-it-in-a-rush

Debate: Five Aadhaar Myths that Don’t Stand Up to Scrutiny

praskrishna — 2016-04-01T15:48:17Z

We need to reboot the Aadhaar debate by asking why we want to create a centralised biometric database of Indian residents in the first place.

The article by Reetika Khera was published in the Wire on March 23, 2016.

A recent article, ‘Identification simplified, myths busted’, by Piyush Peshwani and Bhuwan Joshi (hereafter, Peshwani & Joshi) makes some questionable claims about the UID project. Peshwani & Joshi’s strategy appears to be to ignore those questions to which they do not have an answer (e.g., that Aadhaar is mostly redundant as far as NREGA, PDS, etc., are concerned). For others, they cherry-pick ‘facts’ without acknowledging the debates surrounding those facts. Here is a selection.

#1: To get Aadhaar, you need a Proof of ID (PoID) and Proof of address (PoA)

Peshwani & Joshi: “For many, Aadhaar is perhaps the first document of their existence – a robust proof of their identity and address that can be verified online. No more closed doors for them!”

Peshwani & Joshi: “The Demographic Data Standards and Verification Procedures committee prescribes a list of valid 18 proof of identity and 33 valid proof of address documents for getting an Aadhaar.”

Fact: In fact, 99.97% of those who have Aadhaar, used PoID and PoA to get it. For those who have neither, there is an “introducer system”, but according to a reply to an RTI request, only 0.03% of those who have the Aadhaar number used this route.

As far as closed doors are concerned, Aadhaar does not guarantee any benefits: work through NREGA, widow or old-age pensions or PDS rations. There are separate eligibility conditions for those programmes which continue to apply.

#2 On costs

Peshwani & Joshi: “Does it justify the cost? Yes, absolutely, according to the World Bank, which said the initiative is estimated to be saving the Indian government about $1 billion annually by thwarting corruption, even as it underlined that digital technologies promote inclusion, efficiency and innovation.”

Fact: Savings due to the use of Aadhaar have been disputed. The government has claimed it has saved Rs. 14,672 crore on LPG subsidies due to Aadhaar while they are likely lower – by a factor of 100 (see Business Standard or Wall Street Journal).

Peshwani & Joshi: “Even before the World Bank’s endorsement of Aadhaar, the Delhi-based National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) conducted a detailed cost-analysis study on Aadhaar in 2012… the study found that the Aadhaar project would yield an internal rate of return in real terms of 52.85% to the government.”

Fact: The NIPFP cost-benefit was based on unrealistic assumptions – e.g., estimates of leakages that Aadhaar could plug were available for only two out of seven schemes; for the rest, they assumed leakage rates which are termed ‘conservative’, but are actually not.

In their response, the NIPFP team admitted that “a full-fledged cost benefit analysis of Aadhaar is difficult” because “many gains from Aadhaar are difficult to quantify because they are intangible” and, “even if in specific schemes there may be tangible benefits, the information available on those schemes does not permit a precise quantification of those benefits.”

They went on to say that “The study has steered away from relying exclusively on analyses of isolated and small sample sets”. What evidence did the NIPFP study rely on? “For ASHAs, Janani Suraksha Yojana and scholarships, no analysis, large or small has been used. For the Indira Awaas Yojana, the three analyses relied on exclusively are a Times of India news report, a press release based on a discussion in Parliament and a “Scheme Brief” by the Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR). Interestingly, the corruption estimate in the IFMR brief cross-refers to the Times of India article (apart from a CAG report)!” (Khera, 2013)

#3 De-duplication

Peshwani & Joshi: “Aadhaar means no fake, ghost or duplicate beneficiaries. Double-dipping will become more and more difficult with Aadhaar, a number that is well de-duplicated with the use of biometrics.”

Fact: De-duplication is one possible contribution of Aadhaar – but that needs biometrics, not a centralised biometric database. Local biometrics (used extensively in Andhra Pradesh before UID) mean that biometric data is stored by the concerned government department or on the local e-POS machine’s memory chip. It has the advantage that connectivity is not required (you are authenticated by the machine), errors and corrections can be correctly locally, making it more practical. The distinction between a local and centralised database is important (see #5 below).

Further, no one has a reliable estimate of the duplication problem. Two government estimates of duplicates exist: the Dhande committee for LPG (2%) and in NREGA job cards from the Government of Andhra Pradesh (also 2%).

#4 Exclusion

Peshwani & Joshi: “As far as exclusion in delivery of other services due to biometric authentication accuracy is concerned, it is important to go beyond scratching the surface.”

Fact: When the PDS was integrated with Aadhaar: “The Andhra Pradesh Food and Civil Supplies Corporation found that…nearly one-fifth ration card holders did not buy their ration.” Further, “When the government delved deeper in the issue, it was found that out of the 790 cases interviewed for the study, 400 reported exclusion. Out of the excluded cases, 290 were due to fingerprint mismatch and 93 were because of Aadhaar card mismatch. The remaining 17 cases were due to failure of E-PoS.” More here.

Moreover, Peshwani & Joshi pick one definition of ‘exclusion’ (due to biometric failure) when in fact, exclusion has a broader meaning. For instance, “In Chitradurga (Karnataka), Rs.100-150 million in wages from 2014-15 were held up for a year. When payments were being processed, their job cards could not be traced in NREGAsoft. Upon enquiry, the district administration learnt field staff had deleted them to achieve ‘100% Aadhaar-seeding’.”

#5 Profiling and privacy violations

Peshwani & Joshi: “A prominent criticism of Aadhaar is that it ‘profiles’ people.” …“Most of us have one or more identity/address documents, such as a passport, ration card, PAN card, driving licence, vehicle registration documents or a voter ID card. The government departments managing these already have our data. Aadhaar is no different. We give our data to banks, to insurance companies and to telecom companies for accounts, policies and mobile connections.”

Fact: That’s like saying BJP can be more corrupt because the Congress was corrupt. Instead we need to engage more seriously with the work of Sunil Abraham, Amber Sinha and others at the Centre of Internet and Society. There are crucial differences between Aadhaar and Social Security Number in the US, see this. Malavika Jayaram listed the UID project among a slew of “big brother” projects facilitating mass surveillance in India.

Conclusion

The debate on UID tends to begin with the premise that Aadhaar is necessary for ‘good governance’. Those claims of the UIDAI have long been demolished. In a nutshell, Aadhaar cannot help identify the poor, its possession does not guarantee inclusion into government social welfare (go to #1). It cannot reduce PDS or NREGA corruption as claimed in their early documents. Thankfully, PDS–NREGA corruption has been on the decline without Aadhaar – more needs to be done. (More details? Try this and this.)

Bihar shows how much corruption in the PDS can be reduced without Aadhaar. Credit: Reetika Khera

Aadhaar is not required for portability of benefits or for cash transfers. Cash transfers need bank accounts. To get a bank account, you need a proof of ID and a proof of address (go to #1). Aadhaar can help de-duplicate, but so can local biometrics (go to #3). We need to “reboot” the Aadhaar debate, starting on the right terms – why exactly do we need to create a centralised biometric database of Indian residents?

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-wire-march-23-2016-reetika-khera-debate-five-aadhaar-myths-that-dont-stand-up-to-scrutiny

In India, Biometric Data Storage Sparks Demands for Privacy Laws

praskrishna — 2016-03-23T02:27:05Z

In India, calls for strict privacy laws are growing after this week's passage of a measure that allows federal agencies access to biometric data of the nation's citizens, the world's largest such repository.

The article by Anjana Pasricha was published in Voice of America on March 18, 2016. Pranesh Prakash gave inputs.

The government says the use of biometrics will help cut rampant graft in the distribution of subsidies, but activists and opposition lawmakers warn it could usher in an era of increased state surveillance.

Raghubir Gaur, who works as an electrician in the capital, New Delhi, says he has never collected subsidized rations such as wheat and rice, because “somebody else has been taking the rations I should have gotten.” Now, with a national proof of identity, or "Aadhaar" card in his hands, Gaur says he is confident he will be able to access his designated subsidies.

The Aadhaar card is being used to give welfare benefits to the poor, who often cannot provide any proof identity, allowing corrupt officials to siphon entitlements.

The government says it has saved nearly $2 billion by preventing misuse of the subsidies in the last fiscal year alone.

Critics fear ‘police state’

Civil activists and research groups, however, have dubbed the Aadhaar program “surveillance technology” that constitutes a serious breach of privacy. They point to identity-verification systems in other countries, where cards or identification numbers are used for verification without creating a gigantic central database that documents every last transaction.

Indeed, the Aadhaar database also stores fingerprints and iris scans of every account holder, labeling each with a 12-digit identification number.

Concerns that this could lead to a massive invasion of privacy have been heightened because the new law allows the data to be used “in the interest of national security.”

“From verifying yourself to the ticket conductor on a train to someone who is delivering something at your house, all the way to opening a new bank account, all these transactions get logged against the centralized data base," says Pranesh Prakash of the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore. "So this invades your life completely and thoroughly.”

Some lawyers and privacy advocates say this has made it even more important to support a strong privacy law to ensure the huge government database isn't misused.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has defended the biometrics legislation, saying the data will be accessed only in rare cases that require authorization by a senior official.

“You mark my words, you are midwifing a police state,” said lawmaker Asaduddin Owaisi, just one parliamentarian opposed passage of the legislation and found no comfort in Jaitley's assurances.

Fraud concerns

Despite objections, the bill was passed by legislators who argued that such a move is critical to ensuring subsidies reach intended beneficiaries in a country where millions are poor and illiterate.

Attempts to draft a right to privacy bill to protect individuals against misuse of data by government or private agencies date back to 2010, but have made little headway. The latest push started in 2014.

Citing a cyberattack targeting the U.S. government, in which a hacker gained access to the information of millions of people, research groups have also flagged security concerns around India’s ambitious Aadhaar program.

“If this database gets leaked, the entire identification system collapses because people will be able to authenticate themselves as anyone else. So identity fraud is a great concern,” said Prakash of the Center for Internet and Society.

Nearly one billion biometric identity cards have been issued in India in the last six years.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/voice-of-america-anjana-pasricha-march-18-2016-in-india-biometric-data-storage-sparks-demands-for-privacy-laws