The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade released a draft national e-commerce policy and invited public comments. The Internet Democracy Project submitted comments highlighting why the policy is dangerous in its framing of data as a resource to extract for national development.
Listen to episode #15 of Online Gods podcast, on News Images and Surveillance, where Nayantara speaks to Ian M. Cook about the Internet Democracy Project’s work, specifically in regards to our research and workshops on gender and surveillance. About Online Gods: Online Gods is a monthly podcast on digital cultures and their political ramifications, featuring lively conversations with scholars and activists. More
Alternative Law Forum, the Internet Democracy Project and the Right to Food campaign of Karnataka organised a public meeting on the Aadhaar verdict, which was delivered in September this year. The meeting was intended to be a forum to discuss the 1448 pages long judgment, which deals with the issues in the batch of 38 … More
Instead of understanding ‘data’ as a resource to be tapped, what if we employ other metaphors around data? How does that change our reading of the draft Personal Data Protection Bill? Data as bodies, data as labour, data as exhaust, data as distraction - so much turns on which metaphor we choose to give precedence to! Taking this as a starting point, a group of activists and researchers got together to understand what the draft Personal Data Protection Bill means for social movements and issues they might be embedded in, and in turn, how different movements can contribute their wisdom to strengthen the bill. This was jointly drafted by participants following two workshops organised in Bangalore and Delhi by the Internet Democracy Project in September 2018.
Remember we had begun to use rangoli as a way to explain networking concepts? We have turned that exercise into a video now! Well, some parts of it - watch it here. With the support of Greenhost and the Totem Project, we made an explainer video that goes into what ‘internet’ means, how information travels … More
(This article was first published in Asia Times. You can find the link to the original article here.) In the last week of July, two events happened in rapid succession: the release of India’s much-awaited draft data-protection legislation, and a breaking news story that Watson, IBM’s computing system that helps physicians recommend individualized cancer treatments, … More
The Government of India constituted a committee of experts to draft a data protection bill that would be put in place the data protection framework for India. The committee published a white paper and invited comments and feedback. The Internet Democracy Project made recommendations to the committee, drawing from the Report of the Committee of Experts headed by Justice AP Shah, and highlighting the need to center the data subjects, incorporate new articulation of rights and have strong implementation mechanisms. Read our submission here.
(Originally published on Asia Times. Link here.) While the US seems to be busy unraveling progressive net neutrality protections passed during the Obama administration, India’s Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is putting down roots for one of the strongest net neutrality frameworks in the world. In a detailed set of recommendations released earlier this … More
“Break it down.” “Lose the jargon.” “No, you may not borrow any more salt and pepper shakers and move them around!” Sound familiar? As digital rights advocates and activists, there are many occasions where we discuss networks — how the internet works, who are the entities involved in the delivery of a message, what’s the problem with … More
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) invited comments for consultation paper no. 09/2017 on Privacy, Security and Ownership of User Data in the Telecom Sector. The Internet Democracy Project submitted comments to TRAI, asking the regulator to centre users’ rights over their data as part of the fundamental right to privacy, while balancing these rights with innovation in uses of data and also innovation in regulation. We also submitted that TRAI should not go as far as to recommend data protection requirements for ‘all players in the ecosystem’, as this goes beyond the TRAI’s mandate.