Following Deep Dives’ piece on one woman’s experience with ‘revenge porn’ by Neha Dixit, our colleagues at Deep Dives invited Anja Kovacs for a tweet chat about our digital rights. That tweet chat has now been storified. What are our digital rights? What laws come into play in cases of digital violence against women? Read the entire chat here. More
Dr. Anja Kovacs from the Internet Democracy Project attended the Internet Governance Forum, 2016, at Guagalajara, Mexico, with the support of the Association for Progressive Communications. This post details highlights of the forum for her: there have been important gains in the debate with regards to gender and economic, social and cultural rights, but is the space for civil society at the cybersecurity table shrinking? Read on for more. This post was originally published on Association for Progressive Communications’ blog. 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
On 8 August 2016, Anja Kovacs was interviewed by Greg Macdougall of EquitableEducation.ca. It was the first full day of the World Forum on Free Media in Montréal, which happened in conjunction with the World Social Forum happening Aug 9 – 14. Greg and Anja discussed a wide range of topics, including ‘zero rating’ and net neutrality; state surveillance; public dissatisfaction with Facebook and creating alternatives; and how the internet, capitalism, communications and the link to broader struggles for rights, justice and humanity. You can listen to the full interview here. More
Not only in India is net neutrality getting regulatory attention. In the EU, for example, it is as well. This letter is an effort by a global coalition of civil society and user organisations to respond to the 5G Manifesto promoted by telecoms operators in the EU to water down the recently adopted EU Regulation on the open internet. In short, the EU’s telecom operators have stated that if strong net neutrality rules are passed, they will not support the development of the planned 5G infrastructure – which the EU institutions are so excited about. But as we argue in this letter, in the EU as elsewhere, 5G and net neutrality should go hand in hand! The letter urges lawmakers in the EU to ensure that rules to protect net neutrality adopted around the world – including in India, Chile and the US – should be upheld in the EU as well. More
We are excited to release the first iteration of Watchtower, an interactive map of the Indian government’s cybersecurity institutions! This visual tool gathers an alphabet soup of bodies in the Indian government working on cybersecurity- it includes mass surveillance projects masquerading as enhanced security and welfare measures, centres monitoring … More
India has repeatedly expressed its support for multistakeholder Internet governance at the global level. If India is to make the system work for its interests, it is the implementation of multistakeholderism at the domestic level that now needs to become a priority More
As again became clear in the recently concluded WSIS+10 Overall Review, governments around the world, including India’s, continue to argue that cybersecurity should be under the primary purview of the state. Many however, believe that multistakeholderism rather than multilateralism is the way forward in cybersecurity, as has been the case in Internet governance. What is the kind of dominant role then that the government is poised to play? Why do we need multistakeholderism in cybersecurity? In this post, we investigate these questions. As it is the civil society’s role that is most often questioned, we focus on their role in particular. More
We are thrilled that the Indian telecom regulator, TRAI, has notified regulations in favour of an open internet, after grueling rounds of consultations in which many stakeholders with different views and interests participated. Facebook’s Free Basics also comes within the sweep of TRAI’s prohibition of any service that seeks to segregate users on the basis of content they want to access. Service providers found contravening these regulations could be fined an amount of fifty thousand for each day of contravention, upto a maximum of fifty lakh rupees. More
In an open letter to the leaders of the world’s governments signed by various organizations, companies, and individuals, we encourage them to support the safety and security of users, companies, and governments by strengthening the integrity of communications and systems. In doing so, governments should reject laws, policies, or other mandates or practices, including secret agreements with companies, that limit access to or undermine encryption and other secure communications tools and technologies. Sign the letter here. More