by Suniti Sampat and Aditi Prakash as part of the Dirty Picture Project. With Pink, Bollywood has made a bold attempt at making a movie about women and the way society treats them. In a lot of ways, women’s lives in most parts of India have been circumscribed by the dangers the sex faces. Should we ...

In its beginnings, it was hoped that the internet would transcend the biases and discrimination that characterize offline spaces- to emerge as a frontier for gender equality. In line with the “ cyborg manifesto ” put forth by the feminist scholar Donna Haraway- identities on the internet were to bec...

The Telangana government has over the past year made information technology (“IT”) a major focus area for development. It aims to double IT exports within a period of five years. It has, to this end, created a single-stop online clearance mechanism for companies. Amongst other activities, it has als...

On August 25 2016, WhatsApp fundamentally changed its privacy policy in a manner that threatened to undermine privacy. In our previous post , we had explained how these changes allow WhatsApp to share account information (such as user’s phone number, contacts and profile picture etc.) with Facebook ...

by sflc_admin | September 23, 2016 CC BY-SA 3.0 NY WhatsApp updated its privacy policy on August 25, 2016 for the first time since its acquisition by Facebook in October 2015. As per the updated policy, WhatsApp will now share limited user information including name/phone number with Facebook so as ...

By Devdutta Mukhopadhyay and Vidya Dronamraju as part of the Dirty Picture Project. The Leading Ladies When we decided to review Sarabjit, we looked forward to a break from the typical mindless masala entertainer that Bollywood is notorious for churning out. Moreover, examining the ordeal faced by S...

by Shilpa Rao India and the United States agreed on a joint cyber framework last month. This was at the second India-US Strategic and Commercial Dialogue held in New Delhi on August 31, 2016, which followed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Barack Obama’s discussion of such a framework in i...

This post originally appeared in The Wire on 02 September 2016. While the Aadhaar project is economically beneficial for the government, it is possible that its initially stated goals could have been achieved with cheaper and less intrusive technologies. Credit: Reuters If the Minister for Informati...

by sflc_admin | September 9, 2016 Introduction Following our initial comments on the Consultation Paper on Proliferation of Broadband through Public Wi-Fi Networks, below are our set of counter comments that serve as responses to the comments made by Telecom Service Providers (hereinafter referred t...

In April 2016, two state governments issued directives seeking to regulate communication on WhatsApp, an internet-based instant messaging application used by more than 70 million people in India, largely on their mobile phones. With increasing internet shutdowns, banning of mobile telephony and arre...

by sflc_admin | September 8, 2016 A PDF version of the following comments can be accessed here Introduction In India, as per the subscription data 1 released by TRAI wireless subscriptions constitute 88 % of broadband connections. Thus, the Internet revolution in India is largely fueled by mobile de...

Rajasthan Patrika, a highly popular newspaper, has seen a sharp decline in government advertisement allocation over the last year. According to reports , the alleged reason for the decline was the political ideology of the Patrika, which did not favour the state government. The state government howe...

by sflc_admin | September 2, 2016 Aadhaar operates with the collection, sharing, and storage of biometric as well as demographic information of the individuals. With its mass enrollment, it is being planned and aimed as a means for enabling a larger digital ecosystem to make the shift to a data cent...

by sflc_admin | September 1, 2016 SFLC.in is organizing the second in a series of consultations on hateful and harassing speech online on Tuesday, September 6, 2016 from 02:30 to 04:30 PM at Conference Room-1, India International Centre, New Delhi. This consultation will bring together representativ...

In February 2014, Facebook purchased WhatsApp for a whooping $19 billion. This deal came under scrutiny from various privacy advocates. They questioned if the standards of privacy and security of communication on WhatsApp would be maintained post acquisition. WhatsApp reassured users of its commitme...

No One Is Coming To Arrest You. (Before I begin, let me apologise in the beginning itself for any typos, lack of sources shown or missed while writing the present post since it’s a court day and I am doing this on my phone. However, the random questions and calls that I have received on the issue ha...

By Aarti Bhavana With just a month left for the 30th September deadline, ICANN has been busy completing all the tasks required by NTIA to ensure a smooth transition. The question of whether or not the IANA transition will happen has been answered via a letter from Assistant Secretary Lawrence Strick...

There have been various reports in past couple of days claiming that viewing a torrent site or even a blocked site could land you into jail for up to 3 years! Subsequent reports have attempted to clarify that no one is going to jail for simply visiting a blocked website. This post traces the reasons...

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court of India dismissed a public interest litigation petition calling for the ban of messenger apps like Whatsapp, Telegram etc for their adoption of end-to-end encryption. In the months since, service providers and companies across the world are increasingly choosing...

by sflc_admin | August 17, 2016 The journey of the Aadhaar scheme can be traced back from its inception in 2006, following which it has undergone scrutiny by way of two Bills that aimed to provide it statutory backing, one Parliamentary S tanding C ommittee evaluation, and multiple challenges in the...