Centre for Internet and Society

The quest for genuine clout on the internet

praskrishna — 2013-10-29T07:08:40Z

There is a lot of interest and speculation on the impact of social media on politics because of its amplification effects.

The article by Karthik Subramanian was published in the Hindu on October 13, 2013. T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.

There is no denying that it has overtaken the traditional media in certain facets of news - most notably when it comes to breaking news and that it provides grounds for expressing one's ideas unbounded.

But the marketing and the advertising world are only just coming to grips with the medium. (Twitter is set to launch its IPO soon and Facebook is going to increasingly face the need to monetize its services. The Web has a history of complaints where users have found it tough to different between user-generated content and 'promoted' content.)

In effect, the question of the “influence” that social media and its star patrons wield is still being assessed, especially in the loaded context of whether its proactive use would translate to votes in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. Not only are the number of active social media users negligible in the Indian context, there are doubts on whether a 'cause and effect' scenario is possible.

There are two predominant points of view, while talking about the influence of social media campaigns on politics: One that closely reads the Facebook ‘likes’ and Twitter trends as an important measure of public pulse; and the other which dismisses any sort of influence that social media has on real and grass root level politics.

T. Vishnu Vardhan, a researcher at Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, prefers the middle ground. “It is important to not ignore the growing popularity of social media in India with [telecom] service providers providing Facebook access at Rs. 1 for an entire day. However, I would refrain from seeing a direct correlation between a person's participation on social media to real-time events in society including politics.”

Propaganda fallacy

“In India and especially in Tamil Nadu it has been proved that the Propaganda Model is a fallacy. There is no simple formula, whether it be cinema of 1970s or the Social Media of the 2010s. There are too many factors and layers that influence real-time events.”

Companies around the world are trying to make sense of this 'Big Data' that people's digital lives are generating. And whilst individuals and even some clever campaigns make snap pronouncements based on superficial data and analysis, there are a few companies that are looking at it through the prism of complex algorithms and technology-enabled web crawling.

One such company Kochi-based startup Riafy Technologies is attempting to make sense of the digital noise in a broad sweeping sense looking at three domains: relational intelligence, predictive analysis and big data.

One of the their applications 'Movie Tarot' predicts the outcome of Friday releases at the movie box office, based on the digital traffic on the days preceding the release. Not every instance of praise or every denouncement is treated equally. Instead, they have an intelligent algorithm that they apply to predict the box office collections and the ultimate verdict. (They claim to have a fairly accurate track record thus far.)

The company's CEO John Mathew says there is a correlation between a person's online presence and behaviour in the real world. “This influence is significant in age groups of 18-34,” he says. “As for Lok Sabha elections, the 'social media influenced' voter turnout would be marginal when we look at the country as a whole, but this number would be substantial in the 'swing constituencies'.”

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-october-13-2013-karthik-subramanian-the-quest-for-genuine-clout-on-the-internet

The Public Voice: Privacy Rights are a Global Challenge

praskrishna — 2012-10-22T14:28:09Z

October 21, 2012 is an important day for global civil society defending privacy and free speech. The Public Voice coalition will be hosting a global conference in Punta del Este, Uruguay, and you are invited to take part in the conversation and interact with the panelists. Malavika Jayaram is speaking at this event.

You can follow the live conversation here, and join the conversation by using #thepublicvoice hashtag, ask questions, participate in polls and interact with those covering the event in several languages. The conference aims to assess cultures and privacy perspectives from around the World, and members of civil society wil discuss the spread of Surveillance Technologies and its implications in societies, experts will explore Latin American policy, law, and technology perspectives on privacy governance and suggest to governments and private sector to safeguard citizens privacy.

You can read the program and follow the live Webcast in English and Spanish.

During the day the panelists will assess cultures and privacy perspectives from around the world. They will raise public awareness of surveillance technology and its consequences to consumers, for freedom of expression and human rights, and they will explore Latin American policy, law, and technology perspectives. It is the small window civil society has before the 34th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners comprising all the governmental agencies all over the World, webcast available here. It certainly can bring the relevant topics for citizens to the discussion table. I hope you join us.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/privacy-rights-are-a-global-challenge

The Problems With Policing Sexism on Twitter

praskrishna — 2012-11-22T03:43:40Z

In mid-April this year, Indian writer and activist Meena Kandasamy attended a beef-eating festival. Then she tweeted about it. In two hours, she got over 800 abusive tweets. Kandasamy, who lives in the southern Indian city of Chennai, was threatened with rape, acid attacks, and being burnt alive. She was called a whore, slut, and terrorist.

Kavita Rao's article was published in the Atlantic on November 20, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

"Bloody bitch, you should be gang raped and telecasted live (sic)," tweeted one persistent abuser. Another, an Indian professor living in the U.S., threatened to fling acid at her. On an average, Kandasamy claims she gets about 30 to 50 abusive tweets every day. "The idea is that an independent, thinking woman should not make her voice heard," she says.

Women-hating on Twitter is not peculiar to India. Earlier this year, women around the world shared vitriol they received on Twitter—threats of rape, torture and assault—under the trending hash tag "Men call me things." Still, Indian women are particularly vulnerable because the country remains deeply patriarchal. Indian women tweeters say that men may be abused, too, but not with such vehemence. "My male colleagues are accused of being political stooges, but I am called a whore, slut, or concubine," says Smita Prakash, a Delhi-based editor at news agency Asian News International, with more than 25,000 followers on Twitter.

Mumbai-based author and popular tweeter Kiran Manral started a blog against child sexual abuse in April 2011. Immediately, she got tweets claiming she was "destroying Indian culture" and distributing child pornography. Some followers sent her links to porn. One male tweeter boasted that he knew her address, and threatened her family.

Why not simply ignore the trolls? Women tweeters say it's not that simple. "Tweeters are hydra-headed," points out Manral. "Block one person, and another surfaces." Harini Calamur, a Mumbai-based film-maker and prolific tweeter, recently tweeted against the ban of an essay that offended right-wing Hindus. She was then persistently abused by a troll who tweeted, "Will you accept anyone speaking of your parents' sexual intercourse?" and went on to talk in graphic detail about her parents' sex lives for several hours.

The effect of all this misogyny? A quasi-censorship. "Talk about domestic issues and everyone is happy," says Prakash. "Talk about politics or religion and there will be a whole brigade of male abusers who think women should stay in the kitchen. Many women I know, especially in the media, have either left Twitter or stick to safe, dull topics." Confirms Manral, "I have stopped tweeting on political issues because it's simply not worth the trouble. I have a family; I cannot have people on the net making up stories about me."

Unfortunately, recent solutions to this abuse may create censorship of a different kind. On October 22nd, Chennai police arrested two men under the controversial Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, in what may be the first action of its kind against Twitter abusers. The men had allegedly tweeted abuse at popular singer Chinmayi Sripada. Sripada's mother, T Padmhasini, says she also received several death threats before being forced to go to the police. The contentious law prohibits messages sent via a computer or communication device that are "grossly offensive, have menacing character or cause annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred, or ill will."

None of these fuzzy terms is defined, and that is precisely the problem, say cyber experts. Pranesh Prakash, policy director of the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore based organisation which works to defend Internet rights, said in a local paper, The Telegraph, "The section is clearly in violation of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech." A week or so later, on October 30th, another tweeter was arrested under Section 66A. His crime: tweeting allegations that the son of Indian Finance minister P. Chidambaram was corrupt. The man had only 16 followers, but now faces up to three years in jail.

Indian cyber watchers are now alarmed that the catch-all section may be used to silence any dissent against the government, or by religious groups desperate to take offence. Their fears are well grounded. In August, after riots in the eastern state of Assam, the Indian government blocked the Twitter accounts of several journalists and right wing groups, and deleted hundreds of Facebook pages.

Chef and popular tweeter Madhu Menon receives plenty of graphic abuse himself, but prefers to simply ignore or block abusive tweeters. "I've always opposed laws that use words like 'grossly offensive' and 'menacing nature', especially in a country that loves to take offence at the smallest things," he says. "Yes, some of those tweets can be cruel and offensive, but I'd rather have that than the kind of vague, malleable definitions that our IT laws currently use. If people are being threatened with rape or assault, there are other criminal laws to take care of that."

Counters Debarati Halder, a lawyer and founder of a counselling centre for cybercrime, "The section needs to stay, because it is the quickest, easiest way to stop abuse against women. But the police need to realize that freedom of speech is also guaranteed under the Constitution."

Calamur, Manral, and most bruised women tweeters agree that Twitter has given them far more than it has taken away, in friends, connections and a vibrant virtual community." I would rather be abused every day than freedom of speech online be curbed in any way. I don't support Section 66 at all," says Calamur firmly.

"I would like Twitter to put some kind of filters in place," suggests Prakash. "At present I can't see troll tweets if I block the user, but others who go into my 'mentions' can do so, and read the graphic abuse, which is disturbing."

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo recently pledged possible new measures to eliminate "hate speech," including hiding tweets from users without a bio, or very few followers. But this may make little difference, as hate speech is defined as hatred against race, color, sexual orientation and ethnicity, but not against women. "'Fuck off, bitch!' will still be considered humor," says Calamur, wryly.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/the-problems-with-policing-sexism-on-twitter

The Privatisation of Censorship: The Online Responsibility to Protect Free Expression

praskrishna — 2012-12-09T01:48:13Z

Pranesh Prakash was a panelist at this workshop organised on November 5, 2012. It was organized by Index on Censorship.

Much is known about state censorship, but increasingly private corporations are implementing censorship either at the behest of governments, or as part of a ‘walled garden’ approach. This censorship takes many guises: whether the proactive take-down of entirely legal material, the blocking of websites by overly zealous ISPs, mobile filters that cut access to websites such as Index on Censorship and the use of surveillance technology on behalf of autocratic states. The combination of state-led censorship with the privatisation of censorship requires a debate on the responsibilities of corporations and the framework needed to protect free expression online.

This side session will focus on two key areas:
1. Take-down, blocking and filtering of content
2. The export of surveillance technology, privacy

The panel will explore the ways in which the above can affect free expression online, and how civil society, governments and corporations can and should approach these issues, addressing the following questions:

1. Whether, why and in what ways censorship and surveillance is either as or more pervasive, intrusive and chilling than offline, and the impact on free speech and press freedom?
2. The inappropriate, intrusive or excessive use of filters and firewalls including how these impact directly and indirectly on access to media and the nature of news provision
3. Criminalisation of free speech and free expression – chilling use of takedown requests (impacting on public online debates, on media freedom including investigative journalism), and constraints on comment and debate (twitter, trolls, comment threads etc);
4. Excessive and blanket surveillance and data-gathering
5. Regulations and laws including intermediary responsibility that curtail digital free speech

Chair:
Michael Harris, Head of Advocacy, Index on Censorship

Panelists:

Dr Hosein Badran, Regional Chief Technology Officer, Cisco Systems International, covering MENA
Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director at the Centre for Internet and Society
Abhilash Nair, Northumbria University, UK
Camino Manjon Sierra, International Relations Policy Officer, Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, European Commission
Andrew Puddephatt, Global Partners and Associates

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/privatisation-of-censorship

The print-impaired millions and their right to read

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T13:10:56Z

Books, books everywhere, but not a word to read. This is the scenario for the approximately 70 million print-impaired in India, a sizeable population that includes the visually-impaired young people as well the elderly — whose vision depletes with advancing age.

If you are visually impaired and want to read the latest bestseller, the chances are that you would be staring at a blank, almost-impenetrable wall. The reason: hardly about 500 to 700 of the approximately one lakh titles that are published in India every year are converted to formats like Braille, audio books and e-books for the benefit of this population, as well as versions with large prints for those with weak vision.

Now, as the Budget Session of parliament is likely to consider amendments to the Copyright Act, those advocating a ‘right to read’ for the print-impaired are hoping that among the changes would be a permission to convert books to various accessible formats like Bookshare or Daisy Book Forum for this population that want to travel into the magic world of words but are forced to be out of it.

A National Right to Read Campaign, backed by the Global Right to Read Campaign (GRRC), is already on the job, creating public awareness against what activists call the ‘exclusion’ of millions of Indians from the ‘fundamental right’ to read books.

While there are technologies and software that have enabled this population to access print materials in electronic formats that are read aloud by the machine, it is still illegal for the print-impaired people to, say, scan a book and read it using a screen reader software (such as Adobe Read Aloud) or share it with others. The matters are complicated even more by lack of international laws that allow cross-border sharing of accessible-format books between libraries in India and other countries.

“Even though the International Publishers Association is looking for a licensing system, specifically for conversion of books to accessible formats for the visually impaired, publishers are not publishing in these versions,” says Chris Friend, chair of the GRRC and World Blind Union (WBU) representative.

However, 600 authors — including Arun Shourie, Tarun Tejpal, Meghnad Desai and Girish Karnad — and publishing houses like Harper Collins, Marg Publications, etc have pledged support to the campaign.

Persons who cannot read print are not only the blind, as is the popular perception. A print impaired person can be either visually impaired or those who have other physical, cognitive or sensory disabilities such as dyslexia, autism, learning disabilities, etc, point out Sam Taraporevala and Nirmita Narasimhan of the Centre for Internet and Society, which is spearheading the Right to Read Campaign along with the Daisy Forum.

Dismal scene

In developed countries, according to WBU estimates, only about five per cent of published books are available to print-impaired persons. In developing countries like India, the percentage is reduced to a dismal 0.5 per cent. There is increasing global attention on the issue in the form of a Treaty for the Blind, Visually Impaired and other Reading Disabled Persons, which is being discussed at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) of the UN, and for which India has expressed its support.

Disabled rights activists like Javed Abidi are for faster availability of books in other formats, and say that it’s a ‘matter of shame’ that it has not been the norm despite India moving fast along the information highway.

Publishers like Cambridge University Press and Sage, while joining the movement for making books accessible for the print impaired, are a little apprehensive about the potential of abuse of the converted formats by book pirates as well as violation of rights of authors, whose permissions are necessary to convert any book to another format under the law.

“Publishers fear leakage of accessible formats into the open market,” says Manas Saikia of CUP. Something that Friend completely pooh poohs. “It’s a myth that we visually impaired are going to rob authors’ rights or leak the books into the open market. The Daisy format watermarks every converted production, and any leakage can be traced back to the source. Also, some publishers are opposing the WBU treaty at WIPO saying we want free books. That is another myth. We are ready to pay, just give us books to read,” he says.

But the debate in public space seems to be creating some impact. Even as publishers and authors are coming out in large numbers to support access of books to the print impaired, the human resource development ministry is working on providing an exception for conversion to various formats if it is for the print impaired.

In fact, G R Raghavendra, registrar for copyrights at the ministry, confirms that such a move is afoot to remove this ‘unfortunate’ lacuna in the law. Quite naturally, everyone who loves the printed word is hoping that the print-impaired book worms will sooner than latter witness sunnier days.

For the original article in the Deccan Herald

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/print-impaired-millions

The Power of Information: New Technologies for Philanthropy and Development

praskrishna — 2011-09-23T11:16:18Z

The Indigo Trust working with The Institute for Philanthropy and The Omidyar Network will be hosting a conference: “The Power of Information: New Technologies for Philanthropy and Development” on September 15th 2011. The conference, which will be held in central London will be invitation only.

The conference will explore the ways in which innovative developments in information and computer technology can aid development, improve service delivery, enhance communication and enable critical information to reach the most excluded communities in the developing world.

This conference will enable philanthropists and the donor community to gain an insight into the ways in which the emerging field of Information Computer Technology for Development (ICT4D) has the potential to enhance interventions in all sectors across the developed and developing world.

The conference will include an opportunity to meet with donors already funding in the field and to break out into the following sector specific break-out panels, where philanthropists and practitioners can explore how ICT can enhance their current work:

Transparency, Accountability and Democracy
Health
Finance and Rural Development
Youth empowerment and education
Human Rights
Fostering Innovation and Enterprise

We are delighted to announce that Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia will be our special dinner speaker.

Richard Allan (Facebook) is our morning Keynote Speaker.

Confirmed speakers include:

Amy Sample Ward (Independent)
Anna Kydd (SHM Foundation)
Ashifi Gogo (Sproxil)
Bill Zimmerman (ActivSpaces – AfriLabs – VC4Africa)
Bosun Tijani (Co-creation hub)
Chris Locke (GSMA)
David Edelstein (Grameen Foundation)
Erica Hagen (Map Kibera)
Erik Hersman (Ushahidi/ihub)
Francesca Perrin (Indigo Trust)
Gustav Praekelt (Praekelt Foundation)
Ida Jooste (Internews)
John Kipchumbah (Sodnet)
Jon Gosier (HiveColab)
Ken Banks (FrontlineSMS)
Laura Walker Hudson (FrontlineSMS)
Loren Treisman (Indigo Trust)
Marjan Besuijen (Hivos)
Martin Tisne (Transparency and Accountability Initiative)
Matt Berg (Millennium Villages)
Owen Barder (Aid Info)
Patrick Meier (Crisis Mappers/Ushahidi)
Philip Thigo (Sodnet)
Rodrigo Baggio (CDI Brazil)
Rose Goslinga (Syngenta)
Rose Shuman (Question Box)
Sameer Padania (Macroscope)
Stephanie Hankey (Tactical Tech)
Stephen King (Omidyar)
Su Kahambu (iCow)
Sunil Abraham (Centre for Internet and Society)
Susan Kariuki (Youth Agenda)
Tom Steinberg (mySociety)
Uju Ofomata (One World)
William Perrin (Indigo Trust)

There will also be a video message by Pierre Omidyar, Founder of eBay.

About the Omidyar Network

Omidyar Network is a philanthropic investment firm dedicated to harnessing the power of markets to create opportunity for people to improve their lives. Established in 2004 by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam, the organization invests in and helps scale innovative organizations to catalyze economic and social change. To date, Omidyar Network has committed more than $383 million to for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations that foster economic advancement and encourage individual participation across multiple investment areas, including microfinance, entrepreneurship, property rights, consumer Internet, mobile technology and government transparency. To learn more about Omidyar Network, please visit www.omidyar.com.

About The Institute for Philanthropy

Established in 2000, the Institute for Philanthropy is one of the world’s leading organisations providing international donor education; its staff brings more than 50 years of experience at the highest level in strategic philanthropy. With offices in London and New York, we work closely with a global network of wealthy individuals and families, and in partnership with private companies, trusts, foundations and schools. We work to increase effective philanthropy in the United Kingdom and internationally. We do this by (1) providing donor education; (2) building donor networks; and (3) raising the awareness and understanding of philanthropy.

This was announced on the Indigo Trust website on 15 September 2011, the original can be read here.

Sunil Abraham participated in this event, a video of his speech is now available on YouTube.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/power-of-information

The Power of Communication: The Media, Public Space and Participatory Democracy

praskrishna — 2014-09-30T05:49:27Z

Bhairav Acharya will be presenting a paper at this event to be held in the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in Shimla on October 13 and 14, 2014.

For more details, see here.

Bhairav would talk about the tension in defamation law, between its deontological command (Kant's categorical imperative of truth) and its consequentialism (harm, to reputation or to public peace).

The talk would explore the utility of our present common law construction of libel; and, if it's not too bold, he hopes to make the case that Indian libel law should incorporate a new test of serious and actual harm as its primary defence to libel, and that the defence of truth should be done away with. This is because Bhairav believes that free speech law should strictly construe Mill's harm principle. In other words, lies and rumours after all, if the state can freely engage in questionable propanganda, people should be allowed to spread baseless rumours — are good for health and should not be criminalised.

Background note

The media has been a growth sector over two decades and more of liberalisation. All evidence points towards the media industry having substantially outrun the overall rate of growth of the economy. This is not surprising since advertising which has been the principal driver of media growth, tends to leave behind other sectors in times of economic buoyancy. Technology has been another powerful driver of media growth over the last two decades. From the first glimmers of satellite broadcasting over the C band which enabled local cable operators to provide a menu of untold variety in the early 1990s, to the recent spurt in the “direct to home” transmissions, the Indian TV scenario has been transformed from a tightly controlled government monopoly, to a state of unregulated proliferation.

A further enabling mechanism has been the rapid growth of internet access. The digital divide remains very much a reality and the numbers that are able to tap into the full potential of the internet, is still a rather small fraction of the total population. The proliferation of cellular telephony though, has made limited modes of access a reality for growing numbers. And the damage potential is at the same time manifest in the growth of the politics of rumour.

It has been a central dilemma of the recent phase of media growth in India that the physical infrastructure has expanded, but the rules of the game are yet to be agreed. The official response has been to put in place a doctrine of intermediary liability, which has had a special bearing on the emerging sector of the social media. This is a principle that is being fought in the court-rooms by well-endowed internet giants. But at the level of individual users, section 66A of the Information Technology Act -- enacted in 2009 – remains a source of peril for social media users.

There are worries often expressed that competition among media channels has fuelled a race to the bottom. “Sting operations” which are by definition illegal unless they serve a strong public interest, have become a common recourse. Respect for privacy and personal reputation has become a rather loosely observed component of the code of media ethics.

Incidents in the recent past when media coverage has been directly paid for by political and business entities have fuelled public concerns about spurious and inauthentic information circulating in the public domain merely to serve profit objectives.

Episodes when the media has amplified public discontent and caused severe stress within the apparatuses of the state, have led to frequent expressions of concern. Serving and retired intelligence officials have remarked on the destabilisation potential of the new social media. And current and past prime ministers have spoken of the need to be vigilant about the use of the social media, but also to ensure that the free speech right is respected and the potential of the new media in serving larger national goals is realised.

The global financial meltdown in September 2008 made deep inroads into the fortunes of the media. The months that followed sharply highlighted the vulnerability of the media industry to corporate pressures. Despite its very loud voice and its pervasive presence in the lives of several million citizens, the media industry is dwarfed by India’s major corporate players. Illustratively, the advertising budget of just one among the leading players in the “fast moving consumer goods” (FMCG) space would be of the same order of magnitude as the total revenue of India’s biggest media groups.

This has been the context in which certain very large corporate entities – possibly among a host of smaller ones – have moved into the media space. The official response to this complex of changes has been marked by fits and spurts, which finally subside into indecision and inaction.

Efforts to transform the state-owned broadcasting agencies into public service media have faltered. And with commercial motives being dominant, large numbers of citizens who are of no conceivable interest to advertisers have fallen between the cracks, losing their voice within the public sphere.
Older experiments in using the official media as a vehicle for transmitting a message of development and diversity, have fallen into obscurity and neglect. While the ambitious experiment of using satellite-enabled broadcast media for developmental objectives is yet to be evaluated, the state-owned media are seen to have not transformed their approach according to the times.

Radio, which could be the most democratic and accessible of broadcast media, remains underdeveloped in its potential because of a refusal by the government to surrender its monopoly over news and current affairs content over the media.

A broad-based and critical debate on media policy, which looks at its promise as a space for participatory democracy, has been sorely lacking. This is in part because media industry players have worked themselves into the vantage position of setting the terms of the discourse. The voices of civil society and in particular, of those who stand to gain the most from a broadening of democratic spaces, have remained unheard.

This is the context in which an event under the above title is proposed at the institute. The ground covered in the event could include:

public understanding and perceptions of the media;
media representations of the “public” – “in” and “out” groups; voices heard and unheard;
“development” as represented in the media and the public space;
the voice afforded to diverse communities in determining development priorities;
the means afforded to diverse communities in voicing their opinion;
how the technical means of getting diverse opinions into the public space have evolved: from print, to the tightly controlled broadcasting space, to the unregulated broadcast space of the 1990s onwards;
securing transparency and public accountability in the media space;
from the perception of the telephone as a luxury irrelevant to the lives of the majority in the country, to its current status as an irreplaceable accessory of everyday life across all categories;
the plus and minus side of the ledger on the new communication possibilities;
the rights to privacy and personal reputation – reconciling these with accountability and the public right to information;
the politics of rumour; the damage potential of rumour and how rumour is also a means of enforcing public accountability;
how efforts to politically manage information invariably prove self-defeating, whether it is in the 1975-77 Emergency or today;
where do we go for a free and democratic media universe.

The event would seek to look back, look at current realities and look ahead to how things could be made better within a democratic order.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-power-of-communication-media-public-space-participatory-democracy

The Potential of Open Development for Canada and Abroad

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T11:56:58Z

IDRC held a panel discussion on 'The Potential of Open Development for Canada and Abroad' on May 5, 2010 in Ottawa.

The panel discussion was hosted by Jesse Brown of TVO and the panelists examined the possibilities of more 'open' future and looked at ways to manage the potential risks while harnessing the opportunities for social benefits. The panelists included:

Sunil Abraham (Centre for Internet and Society, India)
Michael Geist (University of Ottawa)
Anita Gurumurthy (IT for Change, India)
Ron Deibert (Citizen Lab, University of Toronto)
Yochai Benkler (Berkman Center, Harvard University)

Click here for a video of the panel discussion

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/idrc-panel-discussion

THE PORN ULTIMATUM?

praskrishna — 2013-06-05T09:56:24Z

Ravi Sharma (name changed), a 22-year old auto driver, watches adult-rated movie clips on his smartphone whenever he is on a tea break. Like most of his friends in New Delhi, Sharma has a flash drive reserved for sleazy movies. Sharma’s access to pornography could soon become a crime, much like assault or drunken driving, if Kamlesh Vaswani has his way.

This article by Adith Charlie, Rajesh Kurup and Priyanka Pani was published in the Hindu Business Line on May 21, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Vaswani, an Indore-based lawyer had filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in Supreme Court, requesting to make watching porn a non-bailable offence. He also wants a complete ban on pornography. He says he has his reasons too.

In a recent incident in the capital, a five-year-old girl was allegedly raped by two men and left to die. According to media reports, the accused had watched porn on their mobile phones minutes before the crime. There has been a 7.1 per cent increase in crime against women nationwide since 2010, as per data from the National Crime Records Bureau. Vaswani believes that the free availability of porn is making the country unsafe for women.

Nirmala Samant Prabhavalkar, member of National Commission for Women (NCW), says that viewing porn, especially at an impressionable age, becomes “an addiction and trains the mind in an inhumane and sadist way”.

According to Google Trends, India ranks fourth in the world for searching the word ‘porn’, a testimony that pornography, mainly electronic, is available across the country. New Delhi has the dubious distinction of the highest-worldwide percentage of searches for “porn” in 2012.

As smartphones become ubiquitous and cheaper (price starts around Rs 3,000) they offer a perfect medium for viewing adult content. A 2011 study by IMRB found that one in every five Indian mobile users wants adult content on 3G-enabled phones.

A different view

Vaswani is not the only crusader against pornography, but is a representative of the minority. The majority favours another strand of thinking: that what an adult views in his private space should not be controlled by the establishment.

They feel that increased censorship of the web would clamp down on the constitutionally enshrined principles of the freedom of speech and expression.

But what is termed as pornography, or what degree of obscenity should be blocked?

Interestingly, the term pornography when used in relation to an offence is not defined in any statutes in India. It is obscenity that has been effectively explained in the Indian Penal Code and the Information Technology Act.

The section 67 of the Information Technology Act states that publishing or transmission of obscene and sexually explicit material in electronic form is punishable. Child pornography, is prohibited under Section 67B of IT Act.

According to the Indian Penal Code (Section 292) a person in mere possession of the obscene stuff for his personal use without any intention of producing or disseminating the material is not culpable.

However, obscenity means different things for different people.

“In countries such as Saudi Arabia, even showing cleavage falls under pornographic purview. So, who decides what is morally acceptable in the Indian society?” asks Rajesh Chharia, President of the Internet Service Providers Association of India.

Technologically possible

A blanket ban on porn Web sites, as is the case in Denmark and Australia (for extreme content), risks banning innocent Web sites too. In 2008, whistle blower WikiLeaks had released the names of sites which were blocked by Denmark’s regulators. Many regular sites were erroneously included in the list. Porn, available in India, is mainly hosted on overseas servers, making it difficult to monitor them, while those on domestic platforms can be easily restricted, according to Vishak Raman, Senior Regional Director of Fortinet, a network security provider. Yet, the technology exists for making a full-fledged ban on porn possible.

In case the Supreme Court upholds the PIL, the onus of implementation will be on the telecom regulator, the Department of Telecommunications and, the Department of Information Technology.

Raman says that companies like his can provide a ‘semi-inline’ solution, for a multi-million dollar fee, to block porn. It is unlikely that DIT and DoT will bear the cost of the entire exercise.

Thus, the ISPs would have to make the investments for a porn-free internet, says an industry official.

Sexual Behaviour

But then could pornography be solely responsible for aggressive sexual behaviour? Contemporary literature does provide some insights. Watching pornography does contribute to an increased risk of violent behaviour but only in men who have aggressive sexual tendencies, as per research by Neil Malamuth, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. In other words, porn does not turn all ordinary men into rapists.

“There has been definitely a spurt in sex-related crimes in the country. However, we can’t say that a total ban on porn will free the society from such evil, but yes there should be a restriction on content on Internet,” NCW’s Prabhavalkar said.

On a TV talk show, porn star and actress Sunny Leone had said: “It's complete nonsense to blame rape on adult material out there. Education starts at home. It's the moms and dads sitting with their children and teaching them what is right and wrong.”

When eWorld approached Leone to understand her outlook on the PIL, husband Daniel Webber said that they do not have any views on the matter. “Whatever is decided by the Supreme Court in this country is decided,” he said.

The Establishment

Pranesh Prakash, a policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, says that the government cannot cite the IT Act and block content on grounds of it being immoral following the 2009 amendments to the Act.

In 2010, the Bombay High Court, had rejected a PIL filed by Janhit Manch. The NGO wanted the court to direct the government to block pornographic Web sites on the grounds that they have “an adverse influence, leading youth on a delinquent path”. The court held that it would be unconstitutional to do so as it would be infringing on the citizens’ freedom of expression.

Further, the Court observed said that the petitioner should file a complaint under the IT Act, if he feels aggrieved.

Says Nithianandan Balagopalan, a Mumbai-based lawyer: “Any law that falls foul of fundamental rights of a citizen of India is open to be challenged in a court of law and can be struck down as being ‘ultra fires’ if indeed found to be so.

Yet, Vaswani believes he has a strong case. “The court (in the 2010 Janhit Manch PIL) might have passed orders safeguarding the freedom of free speech and expression. What we are discussing here is not speech, but conduct. This cultural pollution has to stop,” he was quoted in the media.

Some experts believe that proper enforcement of existing laws are more important that enacting new ones. “There should be stringent punishment for those involved in organised production and distribution of pornographic material. The police must not be lenient with such people,” says Ramesh Vaidyanathan, Managing Partner of Advaya Legal.

Around the world

India is not the only democracy in the world to consider a ban on pornography. The latest to join the ranks is Iceland, which too wants a ban as part of its attempts to completely do away with the country’s sex industry. In 2009, it introduced fines and jail terms for those who patronise prostitutes, and later in 2010 it banned strip clubs.

A ban on porn would mean restrictions on the use of the Internet. A free Internet stimulates innovation. The world's largest democracy and a model for much of the developing world, India is set to become one of the most important test cases for the future of Internet freedom globally. Any decision by the Supreme Court on this front would be path-breaking, ramifications of which would be felt for a long time to come.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/hindu-businessline-adith-charlie-rajesh-kurup-priyanka-pani-may-21-2013-the-porn-ultimatum

The politics of Facebook

praskrishna — 2014-04-03T11:30:51Z

With the social media becoming an important political battleground, is Facebook affecting friendships and trying to influence our political leanings?

The article by Shweta Tiwari was published in Livemint on April 1, 2014. Dr. Nishant Shah is quoted.

When social activist Uthara Narayanan, 32, posted an innocuous article link on the Gujarat riots on Facebook in January, she was in for a surprise. An old friend from college fiercely defended Gujarat chief minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, getting abrasive and personal in the post. “I had known her for more than 14 years and yet hadn’t seen this side to her,” says Narayanan. “I didn’t realize when she had gone off and gotten such strong views on the debate.”

From then on Narayanan decided to stay away from her friend though they live in the same city. “It left a bad taste in my mouth and marred our friendship for me, though I am still Facebook friends with her.” Almost as if agreeing with her, Facebook’s wall automatically started keeping her friend’s posts away from her wall—thanks to the EdgeRank algorithm.

Like-like stick together

EdgeRank, the Facebook algorithm that decides which posts to show in your newsfeed, bases its decision on three factors: an affinity score between the user and the one who’s created the post, the type of post (comment, like, create or tag), and time lapsed since it was created. The first basically means that you will see posts from friends you have interacted with and like to interact with on the social network.

In January, Catherine Grevet, a PhD student at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US, studied this algorithm in the light of politics and concluded that people tend to get attracted to circles of friends who affirm to their own political leanings, all because of Facebook’s algorithms. “People are mainly friends with those who share similar values and interests,” Grevet wrote in the study. “As a result, they aren’t exposed to opposing viewpoints.” Grevet presented the study at the 17th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing in the US in February.

Alok Sharma, a Mumbai-based creative writer who used to be a political cartoonist, says social media has led to Indians opening up. “We are taught to be a little politically correct, especially in face-to-face conversations. But when it comes to social networking sites, Indians express their views like fanatics,” he says. He blocked a couple of Facebook friends after a spate of personal comments on one of his posts. “My friends know me and get the crux of what I might be trying to say in a thread but there are others who are on my Friends list but don’t understand the context and take it all wrong.”

The misunderstanding arises because many of us post on the network as we would speak among friends and not as we would say things in public. “Facebook is not a community, a clique or a group of friends,” says Nishant Shah, director of research at Bangalore-based non-profit The Centre for Internet and Society. “It is just a network,” he says. That means that not all people on your Facebook list are friends—you are just connected to them on the network. You might have a professional relationship with them, be teammates or acquaintances or colleagues, but you don’t know them personally. Given that the average Facebook user has 229 Facebook friends—according to the numbers from US think tank Pew Research Center’s Internet Project which tracks statistics about the social network—that’s just too many people to even know personally.

“The audience on the social network is much larger than the friend list, including Facebook itself, which, if it finds your comment problematic, will censor even before a complaint is produced,” says Shah. A post on Facebook or a comment or a like, can get you in trouble not just with other individuals or communities who take offence but even the law, as happened to a girl in 2012 who put up a post criticizing the shutdown of Mumbai after the death of Shiv Sena patriarch Bal Thackeray.

“Though used like it, Facebook is not a conversation,” says Shah, “Because everything you write is archived and recorded. And can be used against you if need be.”

A medium to shout in

But would you shout at a stranger on the street as you do on Facebook? Basav Biradar, a programme manager based in Bangalore, actively posts on politics and comments on Facebook. He feels most people on Facebook give strong opinions that are not well-informed. “A lot of these opinions are dependent on propaganda and campaigns rather than facts. Why don’t people do some homework before forming an opinion?” With over 100 million Indians active on the social network, however, an uninformed opinion is hardly reason to stop anyone from posting, commenting, liking, offending and getting offended through posts on Facebook.

Shah calls this phenomenon cyber-bullying in politics. “Specific vocal and passionate groups and communities have emerged who silence any voice of dissent or critique by trolling the dissident,” says Shah. “They do not need anonymity. They don’t try to hide who they are. They feel so empowered by the backing of the politicos who are either hiring or supporting them, that they have risen in hordes and are stifling the space for dissent and questioning even more effectively than they have been able to do in real life.”

It’s almost like standing in a rally and hearing a swarm of slogans. Sashi Kumar, chairman of the trust Media Development Foundation that runs the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai, gives a similar analogy. He believes that the language of communication on Facebook is not written but oral. “Writing implies a well thought through opinion, whereas speech is responsive and involved. Within the Internet, there’s a strange morphing of written form which is expressed in a way of oral communication. You speak to someone on Facebook, you respond, you hear, you react, you communicate, you talk.” He says that this morphing is leading society back to more oral forms of communication where written forms like newspapers will be a thing of the past.

Replacing traditional media

	With surprising events like the support for Jan Lokpal law, Pink Chaddi campaign and even the backlash against the December 2012 gang rape case in Delhi, social media seems to have somewhere, somehow made all of us more participative, more aware and more active in political and social spaces. Most politicians have active Twitter and Facebook accounts. Most newspapers and even news channels quote their feed as statements when summing up news. Social networks have become almost mainstream. So much so that when earlier in March Modi attacked Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar at a political rally in Muzaffarpur, Bihar, Kumar’s response was detailed, and through a Facebook post.

With surprising events like the support for Jan Lokpal law, Pink Chaddi campaign and even the backlash against the December 2012 gang rape case in Delhi, social media seems to have somewhere, somehow made all of us more participative, more aware and more active in political and social spaces.

Most politicians have active Twitter and Facebook accounts. Most newspapers and even news channels quote their feed as statements when summing up news. Social networks have become almost mainstream. So much so that when earlier in March Modi attacked Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar at a political rally in Muzaffarpur, Bihar, Kumar’s response was detailed, and through a Facebook post.

A joint study by the IRIS Knowledge Foundation, a public service initiative of business and financial information provider IRIS Business Services Pvt. Ltd, and the industry body Internet and Mobile Association of India, suggests that social media use is now sufficiently widespread to influence the outcome of the next general election and consequently government formation. The March research, which studied Facebook’s own data, claims that among the social media spaces, Facebook users have the maximum clout.

Kumar agrees and feels that news now is more user-generated: “It’s the people who want to pursue their own news, know more about their own news, create news. In a way it democratizes journalism. People are talking more about issues, giving opinions and comparing notes. Politics has shifted from the streets to these social medias.”

The future holds more participation, and a sense of being a stakeholder in the political process. An “enlarging of political participation”, as Kumar puts it. “Of course because everyone has a mike, a mouthpiece now, there will be lot of more trivial conversation and hairsplitting which might not add up to anything, but the important thing is that people are engaging themselves politically. We are on the streets. All because of technology.”

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/livemint-april-1-2014-shweta-taneja-the-politics-of-facebook

The Pervert in the Cubicle: Of Pornographers, Pirates and Terrorists: A Talk by Nishant Shah

praskrishna — 2013-08-28T10:10:34Z

Dr. Nishant Shah was a speaker at the 2013 Annenberg - Oxford Media Policy Summer Institute organized by Center for Global Communication Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania and the Programme for Comparative Media Law and Policy at the University of Oxford from June 24 to July 5, 2013 at the University of Oxford.

Click to read the schedule published by the University of Oxford

The Center for Global Communication Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania and the Programme for Comparative Media Law and Policy at the University of Oxford (PCMLP) are pleased to invite applications to the 15th annual Annenberg-Oxford Media Policy Summer Institute, to be held from Monday, June 24 to Friday, July 5, 2013 at the University of Oxford.

For the past fifteen years, the Annenberg- Oxford Media Policy Summer Institute has brought together researchers, academics, and practitioners for two weeks of scholarship on a range of media issues. A partnership between the Center for Global Communication Studies at the Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania and the Programme for Comparative Media Law and Policy at the University of Oxford, the program brings together a diverse range of participants from across the world.

The annual summer institute brings together young scholars and regulators for two weeks to discuss important recent trends in technology, international politics and development and its influence on media policy. Participants come from around the world; countries represented at previous summer institutes include Myanmar, Bosnia and Herzegonia, Iran, Kenya, China, Brazil, Egypt, Nigeria, Jordan, Italy, Iran, Colombia, El Salvador, among others.

This year the summer institute seeks, as part of the cohort, researchers and academics (PhD candidates and early career academics, for example), who will come with a research project related to the general subject of the seminar. We welcome applications from emerging scholars and practitioners working on topics such as media and democracy, public service broadcasting, Internet policy and politics, monitoring and evaluation of media development programs, the media’s role in conflict and post-conflict environments, strategic communications, as well as other topics. For full application instructions please visit our Frequently Asked Questions page . The application is available here. Please note, applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until April 1, 2013.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/annenberg-oxford-media-policy-summer-institute

The perils of not protecting intellectual property for new ventures

praskrishna — 2015-03-20T13:55:55Z

Soothe Healthcare's big dilemma ahead of the launch of its affordable sanitary napkin was whether or not to patent the technology and design.

The article by Evelyn Fok and Shonali Advani was published in the Economic Times on March 20, 2015. Sunil Abraham gave his inputs.

"At this point, it's not worth the risk-reward," said Sahil Dharia, managing director of the two-year-old startup. "It's an acceptable loss." The startup world has two kinds of entrepreneurs: those who patent their ideas, and those who don't.

Dharia falls in the latter category, and with good reason. He would rather Soothe use its capital to build the brand, Paree, than to fight lawsuits over infringements. In the first group are a small number of hardware product startups following strong intellectual property traditions established abroad, both for legal protection and to be taken seriously by investors.

As a long-term business strategy, protecting a company's intellectual assets has its advantages. For instance, a patent would allow a startup to expand to new geographies quicker by entering into licensing agreements with other firms. But given that acquiring and protecting an intellectual property right is tedious and expensive, it is not an easy decision for startups.

"There is definitely a risk when these businesses accumulate market or technology, when they have huge revenues and are sitting on cash reserves. Competition will use every possible lever against them," said Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bengaluru-based research organization Centre for Internet and Society.

As a startup matures in terms of size and scale, the importance of intellectual property becomes evident, particularly when raising funds. "Having an IP portfolio is valuable if the company is being acquired by a larger company that can leverage and protect the IP," said Sandeep Singhal, co-founder and managing director of Nexus Venture Partners. Nexus has backed product startups such as solar firm d.light and enterprise solutions company Druva, which has registered patents abroad. "While valuation is not determined by IP, we look at a business plan that has proven differentiated IP than without," Singhal said.

"It is like a double-edged sword. Patenting is very expensive, but if somebody else is doing something similar and they patent it, you could be out of business," said Abhishek Latthe, founder of two-year-old Internet of Things company SenseGiz, which filed for two patents last year on product and algorithmic design. The company has sold 20,000 units of its first product, a bluetooth tracking tag, and is in talks to raise capital.

Patent litigation in India is still at a nascent stage, bogged by inefficient and inconsistent courts. "A lot of out-of-court settlements happen, and the compensation that courts are awarding for IPR infringements are still not very high - Rs15 lakh is one of the highest I've seen," said Abhishek Pandurangi, partner at Mumbai-based law firm Khurana & Khurana, which advises startups on IPR.

Taking the longer view, Indian startups -especially those focusing on the US market that is awash with non-practicing entities or so-called "patent trolls" - have taken steps to license their intellectual property, often in focus markets with strong IP regimes such as the United States, Singapore and Europe. Software startups, the bulk of India's startup ecosystem, are divided on the issue. Given the rapid innovation cycle that renders most new technology irrelevant in six months, any effort channeled into protecting intellectual property seems futile.

Besides, many budding startups cannot afford to file a patent. Taking into account attorney and agent costs, registering a patent could cost up to Rs 5 lakh in India and Rs 10 lakh in the United States. The effort can take up to 9 years, or, given that patent decisions highly depend on local policy, "go down the drain," as one IP researcher put it. According to the Indian Patents Act, 1970, mathematical methods, computer programmes and algorithms fall under the category of "Inventions not Patentable," meaning that software innovations cannot be patented in India.

For many entrepreneurs in India, intellectual property is not core to their company's value or business model. They prefer instead to focus on priorities that pay off in the short term - acquiring customers, developing products and raising funds. "There is no reason to patent sometimes," said Jayesh Badani, founder and chief executive of innovator marketplace Ideaken.

The Centre for Internet and Society found that of 93 mobile app developers in India who were surveyed for a study last year, only 20% had acquired patents to protect their products, and 26% were concerned about their work being infringed. Patent grants to Indian applicants grew 45% between 2002 and 2013, compared with 300% for foreign inventions, show data available from the Controller General of Patents, Designs, and Trademarks.

Consider the case of Jaydeep Mandal, a 29-year-old inventor who won a national invention award while an engineering student in Calcutta, which paid for him to patent his technology. Today, he is a managing director at four-year-old Aakar Innovations, which spent a year-and-half developing a machine that produces compostable menstrual hygiene products. The company has filed patents in India, Bangladesh and Cambodia.

"I learnt the importance of IPR from day one so I'm concerned, but many entrepreneurs would not know how important it is. That's how many individual innovators lose out," Mandal said. Dharia of Soothe Healthcare has a different take on this. "If I had lots of money I would patent," he said. "But I believe in free markets - people will copy design and that is how the market raises its standards, and it forces me to innovate again."

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/economic-times-evelyn-fok-shonali-advani-march-20-2015-the-perils-of-not-protecting-intellectual-property-for-new-ventures

The Perils and Prospects of Bringing the Next Billion Online

praskrishna — 2015-08-23T08:04:01Z

Sunil Abraham is the executive director of the Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore. In his PDF talk, he explains the fight for net neutrality in India and how many solutions fall under the category of walled garden.

Video

For more see Personal Democracy Media

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/perils-and-prospects-of-bringing-next-billion-online

The Partnership on AI has Intel, SalesForce, Ebay and others as its newest members

praskrishna — 2017-05-19T05:36:30Z

A slew of industry heavyweights have decided to augment the ranks of the Partnership on AI. New joiners to the group, which includes companies and non-profits, include names like Intel, Salesforce, eBay, Sony, SAP, McKinsey & Company, Zalando and Cogitai.

The blog post by Mudit Mohilay was published in the Tech Portal on May 16, 2017.

The group also announced a slew of non-profit partners including the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, the AI Forum of New Zealand, the Centre for Democracy & Technology, the Centre for Internet and Society (India), Data & Society Research Institute, the Digital Asia Hub, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Future of Humanity Institute, the Future of Privacy Forum, the Human Rights Watch, the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, UNICEF, Upturn, and the XPRIZE Foundation.

The new members are a late addition to a group which already consists of many of their industry peers including Facebook, Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Apple. The companies will be sharing the platform with several non-profit organizations and the overall aim will be promoting best practices while using AI and discussing the benefits and the dangers associated with the same. Considering the rapid race at which AI is encroaching in our daily lives, this is a highly relevant platform.

The platform will also be hosting a whole bunch of AI Grand Challenges with the aim of providing financial and motivational incentives to researchers working with AI. The group will also be working with researchers who are studying the effects of AI on the human social structure. A best paper award for the greatest contribution to “AI, People, and Society,” has already been announced and is open.

The group will also be working on establishing a series of groups that are topic or sector specific. These groups will be working to generate best practices for various niches. The aim here is to build a community that can deal and even forestall the problem which may arise as Artificial Intelligence is inducted into our society at a deeper level.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-tech-portal-may-16-2017-mudit-mohilay-partnership-on-ai-intel-sales-force-ebay-and-others-as-its-newest-members

The Panama Papers and the question of privacy

praskrishna — 2016-04-24T14:03:35Z

This statement was originally published on privacyinternational.org on 4 April 2016.

Read the entry by Claire Lauterbach published in Big News Network on April 6, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

We do agree with Ramon Fonseca about one thing: that "Each person has a right to privacy, whether they are a king or a beggar."

But that's where our commonality with co-founder of disgraced Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca ends.

Last year, a whistleblower leaked 11.5 million documents about the firm's business brokering offshore companies, details of which were published yesterday. Reportedly the largest leak in journalistic history, the cache reveals hidden assets by a dozen current and former world leaders, and scores of celebrities and tycoons, some of which are linked to high level corruption scandals.

This scandal isn't about privacy, though. If anything, it's about the need for transparency about how the powerful wield their power. We need transparency - and good solid investigation - to understand where and how our right to privacy is eroded.

Privacy and transparency are not opposites. They are two sides of the same coin. As privacy advocates, we use transparency capabilities to investigate surveillance. Meanwhile, privacy as a right requires transparency from the institutions that gather and use our data.

Privacy International, like other human rights groups, conducts investigations in the public interest. That allows us to understand, for example, how Colombia built a shadow surveillance system despite evidence of illegal interceptions, or how UK police appear to be collecting private communications data at protests, according to a Vice News investigation.

Many of the Panama Papers' revelations are in the public interest insofar as they concern the transformation of public assets - like taxpayers' money and state funds - into private gains, and allow the powerful to avoid scrutiny. Privacy and transparency are not opposites. They are two sides of the same coin.

Fonseca called journalism around the leaked files an "international campaign against privacy".

But what Fonseca is really doing is advocating a status quo of 'privacy for the kings, and transparency for the beggars'. Or rather, privacy for the business moguls, politicians, corporations and government agencies, and transparency for the citizens, consumers, activists and journalists.

For the public, our financial systems are now surveiled by design. Our transactions are labelled as suspicious and sent for mining by intelligence agencies. We need IDs to open accounts, and our records are profiled by credit agencies who facilitate key decisions about us and our families. Secretive institutions collate this information to decide whether or not we are terrorists. While a certain degree of this is necessary for public order, what's clear is that we are watched while the 'kings' are able to circumvent many of these measures and escape scrutiny. We should never make the mistake of conflating the right to privacy for the individual with the desire to hide shadowy, ethically dubious, borderline-or-actual illegal activity for the immensely wealthy and powerful.

The real issues around privacy include: the spreading of draconian laws, from the UK, to Pakistan, to Kenya, that sanction warrantless surveillance and online monitoring, with insufficient protection for the public. It's the intrusive biometric registration of some of the most desperate people, like refugees from Dadaab to Calais, desperate for food and medical care. It's the instrumentalisation of consumer data to draw conclusions about us, with or without our consent. It's also the parallel trend of rolling back Freedom of Information laws (see: UK and United States). And, as the Panama Papers show, it is allowing transfers of public funds for private gain to be obscured.

That is the real "campaign against privacy" - not public interest journalism.

As our friend and partner Sunil Abraham, Executive Director of the Centre for Internet and Society in India states succinctly, the right to privacy should "be inversely proportionate to power and almost conversely the requirement of transparency to be directly proportionate to power."

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/big-news-network-april-6-2016-claire-lauterbach-panama-papers-and-question-of-privacy