This post originally appeared on Scroll.in on 19th September 2016. On September 7, Seema (name changed) became the youngest person in India to get an Aadhaar number, after she was enrolled within five minutes of her birth in Khajuwala, Rajasthan. The government’s biometric-based identification syste...
Blogs by CCG NLU Delhi
Mobile Internet services have been suspended in Kashmir for the past 87 days. There has been a sharp increase in both the frequency and duration of ICT shutdowns in the past two years. We have been tracking ICT shutdowns since 2012 as part of our research for the Freedom on the Net- India Report ( 2...
By Shilpa Rao When the security advisors of BRICS countries met in New Delhi on September 15, 2016, they emphasised the need to improve cooperation in cybersecurity to combat cybercrime. They also agreed to enhance cybersecurity efforts through information sharing and improving cooperation between t...
The much-discussed IANA transition has finally been completed , now that the U.S. Government’s contract with ICANN for IANA Functions has expired . This brings to an end the governmental oversight of these functions, a plan outlined back in 1998 , and transfers it to a global multistakeholder commun...
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 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
The Bombay High court recently passed a John Doe order laying down a set of safeguards to minimise over-blocking. The Delhi High Court on the other hand ordered blocking of 73 websites for showing “substantial” pirated content. This blog post traces the history of John Doe orders in India, their imp...
By Kritika Bharadwaj The Central Government notified certain sections of the Aadhaar(Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016(‘the Act’)last month. As of now, only the sections setting out the establishment, powers and functions of the Unique Identificatio...
By Gangesh Varma** The ‘control-of-the-Internet’ rhetoric never lost its appeal. The domestic politics in United States, particularly the opposition from Republican Senators , is not a new obstacle to the IANA Transition. The Republican Party Platform for 2016 captures the key policy positions of th...