(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 … More
Freedom of expression and opinion online is increasingly criminalised with the aid of penal and internet-specific legislation. This special issue of the Association of Progressive Communication’s Global Information Society Watch brings to light the problematic trends in the use of laws against freedom of expression in online spaces in Asia. The India chapter of the report has been authored by the Internet Democracy Project. Find the full report here. Our chapter on India has also been excerpted below. 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. More
(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 … More
“Break it down.” “Lose the jargon.” “No, you may not borrow any more salt and pepper shakers and move them around!” Sound familiar? Participants at COCONET digital rights camp, reproducing a rangoli design drawn on paper, which was a representation of local area networks (LAN) and wide area networks (WAN). … 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. More
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India issued a consultation on Network Neutrality covering traffic management practices, transparency requirements, policy framework, appropriate regulatory mechanism and more. The Internet Democracy Project made a submission in support of brightline rules of network neutrality with exceptions for reasonable traffic management. Read the full report here. More
In two theoretical pieces and three case studies combined on one new website, genderingsurveillance.in, we highlight a range of different ways in which gender, technology and surveillance intersect. More
Recent efforts by Verisign at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in response to China’s new draft Internet Domain Name Management Rules present a serious threat to the right to privacy and freedom of expression online. By facilitating the implementation of real name policies for domain name registration in China, the rules risk seriously encroaching on Internet users’ rights, and Verisign’s technical and policy proposals to comply with them don’t include any consideration of potential human rights impacts. There is a whole constellation of actors involved in making this policy possible, all of whom have a responsibility to respect human rights. More