DesiSec :. Cybersecurity & Civil Society in India
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00:00
Data acquisitionBitSoftwareProjective planeInformation securitySource codeInformation privacyRight angleNetwork topologySeries (mathematics)Physical lawExpert systemCybersexYouTubeAreaQuicksortNumberSpeech synthesisSoftware developerPoint (geometry)InternetworkingRouter (computing)Civil engineeringComputer clusterFreewareMereologyCryptographyCountingService (economics)Copyright infringementThomas BayesWireless LANState of matterComputer animationMeeting/Interview
04:44
Information privacySpeech synthesisMereologyJSONComputer animation
05:26
Type theoryControl flowInfinitySphereLine (geometry)Information privacyPlastikkarteFormal verificationInformationSlide ruleLevel (video gaming)AbstractionForm (programming)Right angleDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Extension (kinesiology)Meeting/Interview
06:28
InformationShared memoryPersonal identification numberPasswordFamilyTheory of relativityInformation privacyGroup actionException handlingCASE <Informatik>ParadoxRight angleMeeting/Interview
07:21
Physical lawInformation privacyRight angleVideo gameCASE <Informatik>Line (geometry)Prisoner's dilemmaView (database)Point (geometry)Procedural programmingSpacetimeInformationGroup actionWordFluxState of matterBiostatisticsProjective planeLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
08:19
SphereVideo gameFamilyExtension (kinesiology)MereologyInformationMechanism designGame controllerProjective planeUniqueness quantificationIdentity managementDatabaseForm (programming)Meeting/Interview
09:04
IRIS-TLimit (category theory)Form (programming)Information privacyRight angleWhiteboardPhysical lawRule of inferenceWaveletQuicksortFlock (web browser)Meeting/InterviewComputer animation
09:49
State of matterFigurate numberInternet service providerRight angleCASE <Informatik>Control flowInformation securityProcess (computing)Arithmetic progressionElement (mathematics)Information privacyMeeting/Interview
10:40
BitOrder (biology)Sampling (statistics)Information securityInformation privacyMereologyWebsiteCybersexChemical equationVolume (thermodynamics)DichotomyGroup actionMeeting/InterviewComputer animation
11:39
WebsiteSineInformation privacyInformation securityCybersexData storage deviceCASE <Informatik>Meeting/InterviewComputer animation
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Event horizonWebsiteComputer networkMenu (computing)CurvatureMetropolitan area networkPort scannerSmartphonePosition operatorPhysical lawEncryptionStress (mechanics)Right angleState of matterDistribution (mathematics)MereologyInternet service providerIntercept theoremProcess (computing)TelecommunicationService (economics)Thermal conductivityCybersexTap (transformer)In-System-ProgrammierungComputer animationMeeting/Interview
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CASE <Informatik>Instance (computer science)Process (computing)Centralizer and normalizerInformationProjective planeTrailCovering spaceArithmetic meanSource codePhysical systemDirected graphMeeting/InterviewDiagram
14:23
Data modelPhysical lawInformation securityModal logicInformation privacyChemical equationDependent and independent variablesInformationSpreadsheetPhysicalismElectronic mailing listExterior algebraMeeting/Interview
15:10
Information privacyStatuteContext awarenessProcess (computing)Physical systemAnnihilator (ring theory)Meeting/Interview
15:53
System callInformationComputer architectureRight angleInformation securityPhysical systemIntercept theoremMeeting/InterviewComputer animation
16:39
Physical systemSoftware frameworkBlock (periodic table)Information securityPhysical lawState of matterIntegrated development environmentFunctional (mathematics)Power (physics)Absolute valueVector potentialWater vapor1 (number)Meeting/Interview
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View (database)Information securityDatabaseStatuteQuicksortEndliche ModelltheorieEncryptionPhysical lawSet (mathematics)Binary codeTelecommunicationService (economics)Meeting/Interview
18:48
MereologyState of matterWordGame controllerVideo gameInformationProjective planeFall-Kontroll-StudieDifferent (Kate Ryan album)AnalogyFamilyMeeting/Interview
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Complete metric spaceData conversionSphereDecision theorySound effectMeeting/Interview
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Form (programming)Repository (publishing)Term (mathematics)Condition numberInformation privacyMultiplication signWebsiteWeightLecture/ConferenceMeeting/InterviewProgram flowchart
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System callData storage deviceInformationWeightMultiplication signNetiquetteInformation privacySubsetSet (mathematics)MereologyMachine visionLevel (video gaming)Division (mathematics)CybersexPattern languageInformation securityComputer animationMeeting/Interview
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MereologyGodVideo gameDependent and independent variablesNormal (geometry)Speech synthesisInformation privacyPower (physics)Computer animationMeeting/InterviewLecture/Conference
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Maxima and minimaCivil engineeringDataflowFacebookXMLUMLComputer animation
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NeuroinformatikNumbering schemeMultiplication signType theoryComputer configurationDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Identity managementDampingComputer animationMeeting/Interview
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InternetworkingIdentity managementMUDGame theoryMultiplication signView (database)GenderFigurate numberIntegerDependent and independent variablesUniverse (mathematics)WordForcing (mathematics)ForestState of matterInteractive televisionPoint (geometry)Meeting/Interview
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Social classMaxima and minimaInformation securitySoftware testingDemosceneForm (programming)Sign (mathematics)Service (economics)Meeting/Interview
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IRIS-TState of matterCategory of beingVideo gameInformation securityInternetworkingPhysical lawSound effectCybersexImplementationStudent's t-testInsertion lossCartesian coordinate systemForcing (mathematics)Mechanism designExpert systemMeeting/Interview
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Multiplication signWordPerspective (visual)Information securityState of matterProcess (computing)Group actionDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Computer animationMeeting/Interview
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Group actionPerspective (visual)Data conversionCausalityMultiplication signMeeting/Interview
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HypermediaCausalityInformation securityCybersexInformation privacyDecision theoryRight anglePerspective (visual)Arithmetic meanPhysical lawRegulator geneMeeting/Interview
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Decision theoryQuicksortMultiplication signMereologyCausalityWordCybersexCognitionNatural numberVideo gameSpeech synthesisExpressionCASE <Informatik>Formal languageGroup actionMeeting/Interview
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Integrated development environmentFigurate numberRevision controlUniform resource locatorFile archiverCentralizer and normalizerSpeech synthesisBasis <Mathematik>State of matterWhiteboardCategory of beingRegulator geneTheory of relativityForm (programming)Multiplication signPoint (geometry)Exception handlingArithmetic progressionPattern recognitionFlow separationAuthorizationIdeal (ethics)Computer animationMeeting/Interview
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Hydraulic jumpSheaf (mathematics)CodeGroup actionCodeSpeech synthesisStatement (computer science)Sheaf (mathematics)WebsiteCasting (performing arts)GodDivisorSound effectTerm (mathematics)Meeting/Interview
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Goodness of fitCapability Maturity ModelExecution unitInformation securityCybersexMeeting/Interview
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Information securityTerm (mathematics)TrajectoryCybersexData storage deviceSpeech synthesisExpressionRevision controlCylinder (geometry)Web 2.0Physical lawState of matterCartesian coordinate systemSymbol tableRange (statistics)InformationSoftwareSheaf (mathematics)1 (number)Meeting/Interview
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Sheaf (mathematics)InformationSheaf (mathematics)WordSpeech synthesisOffice suitePortable communications deviceInformationNeuroinformatikArithmetic meanInstance (computer science)Traffic reportingMeeting/InterviewXML
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ExplosionFacebookDrop (liquid)FacebookTraffic reportingIntrusion detection systemBoss CorporationDigital photographyPhysicalismProcess (computing)Group actionAsynchronous Transfer ModeSheaf (mathematics)Set (mathematics)Validity (statistics)Moment (mathematics)CASE <Informatik>TelecommunicationTerm (mathematics)Computer animationMeeting/Interview
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Multiplication signKernel (computing)CASE <Informatik>NumberProcedural programmingTerm (mathematics)WeightPlanningEndliche ModelltheorieSoftware testingLevel (video gaming)Key (cryptography)UsabilityPhysical lawRange (statistics)Instance (computer science)Meeting/Interview
36:58
Range (statistics)Frame problemInstance (computer science)PlanningIntegrated development environmentDistanceFreezingDemosceneSheaf (mathematics)Group actionRoutingSpeech synthesisRule of inferenceHypermediaReplication (computing)CurvatureBlogMeeting/Interview
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Radical (chemistry)Speech synthesisCondition numberInformationForm (programming)Endliche ModelltheorieGroup actionComputer animationMeeting/Interview
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Regulator geneGroup actionState of matterData structureRight angleSpeech synthesisArtificial neural networkRange (statistics)Meeting/Interview
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DatabaseInformation privacyRight angleDecision theoryMereologyFreewareSpeech synthesisLine (geometry)Meeting/Interview
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Physical lawSpeech synthesisPartition (number theory)Instance (computer science)Set (mathematics)Dependent and independent variablesComputer configurationSoftware testingRight angleLevel (video gaming)Dressing (medical)ExpressionWordMeeting/Interview
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Speech synthesisExpressionReading (process)Vulnerability (computing)Power (physics)VolumenvisualisierungState of matterFreewareOcean currentRight angleInternetworkingNumberForm (programming)QuicksortMeeting/InterviewComputer animation
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SpacetimeContent (media)FreewareSpeech synthesisRight angleInformation privacyView (database)TelecommunicationEqualiser (mathematics)Condition numberForm (programming)Theory of relativityComputer animationMeeting/Interview
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EncryptionInternetworkingLibrary (computing)Physical lawPhysical systemInformation privacyBitWindowCoefficient of determinationNormal operatorInstance (computer science)Multiplication signExpert systemInformation securityIntegrated development environmentSoftware testingDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Source codeNeuroinformatikHacker (term)CryptographyComputer animationLecture/Conference
49:16
AreaTheoryWordMarginal distributionOffice suiteComputer programmingSoftwareInformation securityHypermediaSet (mathematics)TwitterFigurate numberWebsiteTelecommunicationPhysical systemCentralizer and normalizerInstance (computer science)Term (mathematics)Event horizonVideoconferencingFacebookSource codeSpecial unitary groupRight anglePlastikkarteInternetworkingSoftware developerFocus (optics)InformationData conversionSelf-organizationEquivalence relationMathematical analysisReal-time operating systemDatabaseSingle-precision floating-point formatLecture/Conference
54:28
Data acquisitionMeeting/InterviewComputer animation
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:16
Okay, welcome back to stage number three for
00:21
Deutschland premiere a German premiere of a movie and The movie will be introduced by the maker of the movie Oxford Raffin, he's with the cult of the dead cow And He will introduce the movie himself. It's about the cybersecurity and civil society in India
00:41
Please give a warm welcome for him and the movie. Thank you very much Thanks for coming and I'm very grateful to Republica for Extending this invitation. It's very great honor I think probably the best way to Introduce the film is maybe tell you just a little bit about myself and how I ended up in India and started working on
01:06
this film About 12 years ago. I was based in Munich and I was working for a crypto firm there and Just through the daisy chain. I managed to be invited to Be part of a delegation
01:21
Advising the Tibetan government in exile in Dharamshala on Sort of network development best best practices for developing their networks there and that led to a few more visits and I met the local technical community And there were a lot of very interesting people there. Not the least of which was
01:44
An Israeli guy named you held been David who had been working experimenting with at that point Wi-Fi development router development and when the law changed in India to permit Wi-Fi networks
02:00
you held, you know pretty much put up the First I think like within one or two hours put up the first Node what began to be a community wireless? Network Wi-Fi network in Dharamshala, which turned out to be the first Community network in the country. So it was a lot of fun being involved with that
02:23
Eventually or four and a half years later I moved to Dharamshala and was there for three years working with the community and doing a number of things and 14 months ago. I moved to Bangalore and became associated with the Center for Internet and Society
02:43
And was commissioned to do some interviews with lawyers activists Policy analysts these kinds of people who are sort of you know topic area experts and things like privacy and surveillance
03:02
and We started just with a series of interviews that were going to be edited down to about 10 minutes apiece and Put up on YouTube and formed the beginning of a discussion about civil society and cyber security in India eventually a narrative started to emerge from this and
03:22
We thought okay. We'll make a documentary movie So it's something that came out of another project We have three Three short documentaries two of which we'll be able to see this evening The First one is on privacy and surveillance in India
03:44
the second is anonymity and free speech the third one Which we're winding up. It should be done in about a month is on human rights and technology and All of this will when it's eventually Released on the internet
04:01
It'll go out under a Creative Commons license. You can get it from the Pirate Bay or Whatever download sources we can arrange And hopefully people will use this footage. They might recut it they might use it in their own projects, and we're hoping that it's going to be the beginning of a
04:20
Larger project and a broader public discussion, so I think if we could Start the movie is about 40 41 minutes, and we'll have some discussion afterwards Sort of cliche that Indians simply aren't private that as a nation. We're not private or as a culture. We're not private, but I
05:39
can see that Maybe the things that we consider private and public
05:43
Different maybe the line between the private sphere and the public sphere might fall somewhere different from where it does in the West But I don't believe that we're Not private privacy exists in Different forms you know and there are different levels of abstraction
06:02
If you look at the Indian sitting situation today offline there is no privacy You could have a credit card verification guy who comes to your house and asks for a whole lot of information Writes it down on a book And you don't know what happens to that book or to that guy who came to verify your credit card information so
06:21
To a large extent privacy Generally speaking in India just doesn't exist and I think That kind of gets to what might be different about India Maybe the things that we consider private we may not consider financial information private We may not consider passwords or ATM pins private
06:40
We share them in a collectivist kind of way the way we share a lot of things within families but I think there are certain things that we would consider very private and that The invasions of which we would consider Transgressions privacy is not so much dead as much as it is accessible by a certain group of people more easily than by others So the more privileged you are the richer you are the wider you are
07:05
Well the more male you are Etc. It's easier to to have a certain access to privacy and related rights than others so it's a paradox because It's possibly needed most by people who are not able to access it
07:21
So I think even when you look at the case law in India it very much develops from this notion of bodily privacy Which derives from the right to life a right to live with dignity, you know, when people are incarcerated Do they lose certain rights? How are they to be treated in prisons and most of our privacy jurisprudence starts from that point of view of the body as a private space and the notion of information or data as being private is something that's only
07:46
being taken seriously, it's you know slow sort of Transition towards that so I think the notion of what is private and what might not be private is Is still in flux and is developing and I think with the kind of regimes where?
08:04
That the state is implementing where People are being documented where biometrics are being taken where all kinds of big data projects are being rolled out I actually think the notion of privacy is going to get even more finely grained Than it used to be the way a lot of us live our lives in
08:22
is to somehow divide it into different spheres and these spheres may overlap like my personal life my Overlap with to some extent with my family life, which might overlap with my work life but there's a lot of information that is only relevant and only in those parts and I think a
08:42
Surveillance mechanism or something like even the unique identity project or any kind of nation-based either surveillance project or or data-based project disturbs that way in which we live our lives and Disturbs that precarious control that we have over the kind of information that we want to share and where we want to share
09:04
I think it's assumed some other form and I think it's actually more important than it ever was I mean, I think privacy in some ways might be dead But I think the value of privacy might have changed I don't think privacy is dead and if you are living in a democracy Then privacy is very very essential to maintain the health of the democracy
09:23
People already think that you know, yes on paper where democracy but are we really when boats can be bought when Your rights are transgressed in every way where the rule of law or the lawlessness of things Make it so difficult for you to protest anything where that sort of kills any desire to protest
09:44
Where people subvert everything? Your democracy is pretty flawed to start with this is a very complex issue, but at the end of the day What is the state the state is meant to protect the citizen? Now if the citizens rights are going to be violated by that state in the name of say combating terrorism
10:05
Then I think that is a failure of the state Ideally, if you are looking at security for the citizens, then you have to develop processes which are competent enough to protect the citizen without violating the rights of the citizen and this has been well debated over
10:24
Decades and and most progressive democratic societies have now more or less agreed and codified the fact that privacy is as important an Element of the security of the state and the citizen as much as say combating terrorism There is always a tension between the public interest and the individual's interest. So I don't think this
10:47
Inherent tension would be any different when it comes to the cyber Site when it comes to cyberspace an individual will have to trade off a part of his Privacy and his freedoms online freedoms in order to have online security and offline security as well
11:03
So what I think is more important is how that tension or how that That dichotomy between Security and privacy is negotiated in a democratic republic. Is it is that Balance handed down by tradition. Is it handed down by fiat?
11:26
It is handed down by an opaque group of people who make the law and say this is the balance between Security and privacy or is it negotiated as part of a wider public discourse and Democracy as a whole provides an answer to that where that balance should lie
11:40
You know, I think a lot of policymakers in India don't seem to Buy into they seem to think that the technology allows us to constantly monitor They allow us to constantly surveil and as storage becomes cheaper and cheaper. Yeah, let's just collect everything and worry about it later It may be relevant an aspect of cyber security is to protect privacy. For example, if somebody were to hack into your
12:04
Personal data or even your official data, isn't that supposed to be an issue of? Security cyber security and if that is the case then how can you dissociate both of them? The Indian government doesn't encrypt its own data and we're often seeing documents leaked by the Indian government
12:22
So, I'm not sure they're in the best position to advise other people on how to use technology but If they want that to be real and have some teeth they need to change the laws around encryption strengths we have the weakest Encryption strength that's allowed. So if you know, so pretty much people turn everything off well
12:43
Indian government takes it as a right to intrude into citizens lives and Does not offer any counter protection and as far as judicial oversight is concerned. It has not even thought of the initially most issues of Legal phone tapping and interception wiretapping and most issues of cyber
13:07
Interception are in many ways mandated by a 1996 Supreme Court judgment which Mandated that if you are going to tap conduct wiretaps, then there has to be a certain process in place So having done that the current situation was that for example the ISP that is the internet service providers and the telecom service
13:28
Providers they would they were mandated to set up centers in their facilities Where everything whenever a legal requirement would come they would at the switch give you this kind of data
13:41
Based provided that it has been duly authorized and so on so forth But recently they have found cases and instances where there has been leakages from these kind of Facilities so the government of India therefore decided that we need to centralize everything and ensure that these kind of leakages don't take place So they created what is called the central monitoring system. It's a huge
14:04
multi-million dollar project where everything will now come to one single source and One single depository will of this information will be created and a audit trail will be created through digital means Where whoever requests first it will be validated whether it is a valid request and all the processes are falling play through and if they
14:25
Have taken place then that particular data will be shared the government of India and its agencies have not shown any Competence great amount of competence in the kind of surveillance they carry out in the kind of techniques They use to maintain internal security or indeed to form the kind of laws necessary
14:43
Which would balance privacy and national security? So the first question we ought to ask as citizens is is the government competent enough to carry out its responsibilities in an information age There was this really terrifying spreadsheet where it was a list of about 161 people who had been threatened abused physically
15:05
Harmed and actually died so it was this whole creation of actual physical harm Where in the process of seeking transparency from their government and accountability their own privacy was compromised and sacrificed and they're
15:22
Being visible in the context of making these claims and of asking these questions Which they are perfectly entitled to do in a democracy and under a statute that allows them to do this They were physically at risk the danger with such a system here is that This works in a system where we have complete faith that the government will not misuse this data
15:43
You have prevented private players from misusing the data But now what safeguards do you have of the government that because everything is being done in an opaque manner for example even questions under the right to information Act about what the architecture is Answers are being denied on that on the grounds that this will threaten national security
16:05
I failed to understand how national security is Compromised if a system which will facilitate Lawful interception is discussed openly and it should so since this is a completely opaque system a we don't know What the safeguards are and B since we don't know what the safeguards are
16:23
We have no idea whether this is being misused at all in the first place Unlike a lot of other countries where threats are external I actually feel a lot of threats are internal You know we as citizens are exposed to far greater threats from our own government snooping on us
16:42
than anybody else trying to hack into Indian systems, so I Actually think the framework of law Plays a very important role in either enabling Surveillance or enabling Security to be handled in a certain way, and I think the law can be a block or it can actually free up space and
17:04
I Don't see how you can divorce technology from The legal and social and political environment in which it functions Usually my experience and history tells us that once a power is available to an entity whether it is the government or a private
17:22
Body power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely so when you are giving this kind of a power minus safeguards or Questionable safeguards there is tremendous potential for misused Yeah, I think as with a lot of things where you are sitting Has a lot to do with your view of the world and I think if you are sitting in a government seat
17:44
Your view of cybersecurity is probably everything is a threat whether it's external internal domestic international There is a sort of paranoid view of what cybersecurity is intended to tackle But I think as an ordinary citizen or a layperson
18:01
You may not distinguish between an external threat, or you know a government attempt to hack into military databases or you know to get government intelligence I think that You may often feel that your security is compromised by a legal regime or by certain
18:22
statutes that allow a certain kind of surveillance or censorship or That you know say for example if you have a low encryption strengths that are legally permitted in India That impacts what you as a citizen can do to secure your communications, so I think
18:40
It has a lot to do with your definition of cybersecurity and what it's meant to tackle and what your threat model is The the disturbing part about surveillance and and and and data basing or broadly perhaps technology more working towards the interests of the state rather than my You know my pleasures and my projects or my interest is precisely that that I lose that precarious control
19:07
Over how I share my information where how I'll leave my life. What is available. What is known about it I? Think there are different Notions of surveillance
19:23
You have this whole mean You have the whole Big Brother Analogy and the whole panopticon and you know when everybody is watched do they behave differently when you know that the jailer? has complete visibility of everything that you do you know the Foucault notion of it and
19:40
Bentham notion of this panopticon where Everything you do is visible and therefore you think before you act you think before you speak That's a very powerful metaphor in the surveillance sphere But I think that's often quite a misleading metaphor because it implies that you know you're being watched
20:01
Whereas a lot of the surveillance that takes place nowadays is invisible You don't know that you're being surveilled and if you don't know that you're being surveilled Are you really modifying your behavior because of it if you don't know that it exists Is it really impacting you is it really creating a chilling effect? Yet it is happening and there's all this data being collected about you and decisions are being made that you're not aware of and is
20:23
that actually scare you Actually to be very honest Indians are quite clueless about how much personal data is being Collected and in how many forms because many of these forms are now being done in a manner which seems very innocuous
20:43
But all the data in the end is ending up with one single Repository which is the government so therefore there are huge issues here, which Indians are mostly unaware of People ignore privacy policies people click through terms and conditions and therefore
21:01
Websites are designed to get you to disclose more and more things and I think that's something we're not really aware of in India Where the surveillance takes place more and more Indians start using the net for the first time They are not quite sure of the etiquettes of online behavior. We used to call it an etiquette in the good old days So if you see a lot of new users behaving in ways, which we find strange
21:24
It's because they've not been sensitized to online etiquette online patterns of use. How do you Work with others online. How do you treat others online? How do you deal with strangers and a subset of that is how do you protect yourself and not harm others online as well?
21:41
So part a large part of this is to do with civic education online civic education and of which cybersecurity privacy education would be a significant part, but I think we should look at it more of Way to sensitize the online Indian or the online public onto the norms of behavior online and then the rest will follow
22:05
if you just abdicate responsibility for Your privacy and your free speech to some amorphous, you know altruistic notion of what governments and corporations should do you shouldn't then be surprised if they
22:21
They don't take those things seriously, and I think users should be doing a lot more to protect how they interface with technology
22:47
Firefox opera Facebook
23:43
Option between you could either choose lessons in typing Where they because typing was a skill which was being taught in schools once upon a time or you could opt out and take computing I'm kind of often very confused with what it means to be anonymous, right? Because anonymity for example presumes that there is an identity which first needs to be secured and preserved
24:04
And then you need to perform something else which does not betray your original identity And in that way, it's not about just being it's not just about the value of anonymity online with the value of anonymity As a social currency, what does it help you perform might be a more interesting question to ask for instance, right?
24:27
On the one hand. It's not that you know your your Your being online and your presence in a way in a virtual realm, you know De-materializes you from all of your identity traps including that of gender
24:42
But at the same time I think and this is where one has to look at the early histories of the internet So in the multi-user dungeons in the early days of the internet one of the greatest kind of you know games that was played Was gender guessing. So for example, I remember being on Lambda Mu in 99 and At that point the surprise that somebody had when they finally figured out after six months of talking that I don't live in the u.s
25:07
That I don't go to an American University that I live actually in India and encountering those first Neocolonial questions of are you in India? Really? How do you speak English and my general response used to be through my mouth? How do you speak English?
25:21
It was kind of nice to have this almost real-time looking interaction That was possible and that For the longest time you weren't even sure if the person you are interacting with what geography they are from and so on because they were Not polite questions to ask
25:50
This is doodarshan news. Good evening and welcome in the headlines Finance minister says austerity package will not go against the interests of the working class Center convenes conference of chief ministers to discuss issues relating to basic minimum services
26:05
Awami League leader Sheikh Hasina invited to form next government in Bangladesh China not to sign comprehensive test ban treaty and I think security is a very fundamental
26:20
Value or state of being for human beings If you think of what are the most disempowering states in your life, it's the states where you are most insecure You need to have a certain sense of security To be able to use the internet to be able to Be fearless in what you do on the internet
26:42
Normally laws are made after effects with me after the kindness came in after mistakes I mean, that's how law originates. So the cyber will be new Now who should be the best person or has the best judgment to make laws implement laws and follow laws Is it big?
27:01
Ministers is in the judiciary or is it the you know cyber experts So I think one need to have discourse And then formulate a mechanism through which you can make laws
27:33
a
27:41
Lot of the bureaucrats especially people who deal with cyber security come from a very status perspective Where the safety and security of the state is the first thing you think of and they see that as their job So that's not my job. My job is to first of all think about user perspective of what? The stake of people is in these debates different groups just come at it from a very different perspective
28:04
I think what's really important now doors to ensure that the conversation can happen amongst these And what I think is a pity is that we don't always see the willingness to actually engage in that conversation yet government's justified by saying to prevent terrorist act
28:20
one has to be ahead of terrorists because Terrorists can take 99 Is chances or the law enforcer has to be hundred percent
28:41
You know On top of things to make sure that even the terrorists 99 percent. They fail one time they succeed it is causes Major damage to the country because cyber security is mostly conceptualized like that It looks as if security online and privacy are opposite to each other
29:01
But actually to be really secure Individuals should have the tools to make those decisions Again themselves and if they have the tools to make those decisions themselves That means they can also decide how much they want to guard their privacy so the There seems to be a contradiction between the two It's only because there is a faulty understanding of what cyber security means at least if you approach it from a human rights perspective
29:26
People want to know what are the laws and regulations At the same time people also should be cognizant of the fact that Whatever they're doing when they enter the cyber world, there's not just entering the
29:44
The country that you are resident of but rather you are part of the whole world given the Political nature of social life in India, right? So I always grew up saying that thinking that I could speak my mind about anything to anybody unless they can hit me
30:01
More or less and sometimes also to people who can hit me. So there has always been a very vibrant At most fear at least of expression which is not Necessarily a bad thing. It's not only a good thing because it allows for I don't know The first thing that comes to mind is the hate speeches during the 1992 communal violence is in Bombay
30:21
But it also allows for people to Sit on a park bench in a garden at four o'clock in an afternoon and have a very strong critical reaction To whatever is happening around them and sometimes it can be around celebrities political figures India's foreign policy and so on and so forth So the way I would characterize this is that if you were to look at the relationship between Hindus and Muslims or between
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Religious communities in India there is one way in which one can see it as a horizontal relationship Which are marked by conflict you may have occasional violence But there are various ways in which the communities have also learned to deal with each other Various forms as it were a speech that have kind of regulated the relationship between communities because now
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You have created a juridical category on the basis of which I can claim a certain kind of an affective hurt But it also becomes one that is memorialized It enters the archive of the state and enters the archive of relationship between communities so for me the idea of
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The cultural exception to be made for Indians in relation to speech regulation Is a very dangerous path to go down in because there is a classist assumption that censorship should operate only For an other the other being the uneducated illiterate poor woman child
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Insane etc so when we conducted a workshop for the film central board The chairperson of the board at that point of time a well-known actress Told us that while I am all for free speech I cannot allow it because India is a very poor illiterate country
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Look at the Indian Penal Code of 1860 there are several provisions which govern hate speech First is sections 153 a and B. Which say that you cannot which govern statements made which will incite religious or racial hatred or
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national origin or Caste or creed or any of these that statements made under this can be punished There's also a section 293 293b would say that statements made with the intention of hurting the religious feelings of anyone can also be
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Are an offense. Lala Rasputrai when asked whether Indians had to be treated differently in terms of Censorship Emphatically said no. He said he wanted the future Citizens of a free India to grow up in an atmosphere in which they were exposed to all kinds of influences Good and bad and for them to make up their minds
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And that was the only assurance of a political kind of maturity that would emerge It's sad, but a hundred years later We're still recycling the colonial myths about you know the native kind of audience or about native stupidity or native excitability And a lot of that kind of for me actually under runs
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Some of the the contemporary debates about censorship in India I think it's next to impossible to talk about cyber security Anywhere in the world without referencing the law and India It's particularly impossible given a certain kind of a historical you know trajectory that
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Censorship or speech regulatory laws have had With the larger question of security of the state And I think this is important to kind of historicize because much of what we inherit in terms of cyber security issues In their kind of conflict with freedom of speech and expression
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Have a much longer history if you look at the web of laws that exists that can be used in a way to kind of curb Various aspects of freedom on online you're really talking about a really intricate network The visible ones of these are things like the information technology act etc But you also have a wide range of laws whose kind of application cannot even be anticipated
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See, I think there was a lot of desert section 66 is also very clumsily worded because there was a legislative intent Behind section 66 a but the way it's been worded It is so broad that almost any speech can come under one of the provisions of 66 a
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For instance you look at section 66 a The first clause clause a which says any person who sent by means of a computer resource or a communication device Any information which is grossly offensive or has menacing character the second one is 66?
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a-b which has any information which he knows to be false, but for the purpose of causing intimidation enmity hatred or ill-will Persistently by making use of such computer resource a communication device The report on the arrest for a over a Facebook post is finally out the ID's report says the arrests of the two girls could have
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Been avoided the report also says that charges against the two girls should be dropped at the earliest in the defense They involved cops say that the girls were arrested for their own protection Now the report also recommends action be taken against the errand cops One of the big problems with section 66 a of the IT act is that introduces a set of terms
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Which are very ambiguous because there is no precedent for them so for example like grossly offensive Now there is of course the public interest litigation at the moment that's pending that challenges the validity of 66 a But 66 a has really kind of emerged as the specter that haunts communication online in India
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And the reason for that is very clearly it's blatant abuse in highly publicized cases now on the one hand These cases have kind of raised in a sense of certain kind of a consciousness and in kind of Indignation around the misuse of the law, but at the same time it renders a large number of people extremely vulnerable
36:23
The problem is that the procedure is often the punishment in India now We've seen in our own experience as lawyers Where when people write to us or seek our opinion on whether a certain kind of article that they're planning to write or Posts that they want to make etc will pass the test of law
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Earlier we were very confident in giving them advice saying that you're absolutely protected in terms of you know 19 1 P. But till such time that 66 a is on the law books I would be hesitant to give someone an absolute clean chip given the ease with which this can happen It's way too vaguely framed and because there have been a whole range of instances in which it was used in a way
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That clearly was illegitimate I think a lot of people have gotten the message that if there is a need it can and will be used against you and Whether or not people admit that it will make you think twice about whether or not you will write what you think freely
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the second problem with 66 a conceptually is the fact that You have a scenario increasingly where there is no distinction between the kind of speaking subject There is an assumption of a certain flatness of all speaking subjects So whether you're you know kind of a media house or you're a politician or you're an individual blogger
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You're being treated on the same plane and that's unacceptable What 79 does is basically it's the safe harbor provision that protects Intermediaries from certain kinds of action, but is undone in a way by the IT rules that followed section 79 and Here if you recognize that intermediaries are one of the key players in the environment and then the ecology of speech
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Then the kind of safeguard that's provided to an intermediary In a way is almost directly linked to the safeguards provided to an individual speaker I think the struggle now or the challenge is going to be not about
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Letting people know what Anonymous speech is about or what conditions are needed for it, but in fact trying to
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Understand now how do we perform new kinds of anonymities when we are online Google receives? Requests from the government to share, you know information about its users Now here you have a situation where as an intermediary even if it does not want to and if it is Subject to legal compliance of this form Google's actions have a direct impact on the individual
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Now till now this issue has been seen primarily as one of regulation between the state and the intermediary or between Google and the Government of India Now what we really need to do is creatively think of ways in which Individuals begin to assert this as a much larger kind of a structural question of speech in which
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Companies and governments may sometimes conflict, but we are very often collude Risking the rights of the individuals I think what we will now need is to realize that this is happening that the act of witnessing The act of documentation is no longer human to human
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So there are a range of other kinds of collectives artificial intelligence and intelligences Databases and so on which are doing that particular act and now you need to safeguard against those kinds of witnessing If you believe that we need to have a right to privacy And I define privacy as being able to make a decision yourself on how much you want to reveal
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Then obviously you need to have a right to anonymity Because without the right to anonymity You cannot really have the right to privacy Because as part of the right to privacy you have to be able to decide that you do not want to reveal anything at all
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So if you would say that we can't have an anonymity because it's bad for free speech if that's a line You would take then I think you're fundamentally undermining another right and that can't work If there is already freedom of speech in a democratic country then anonymous
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Commentary Could be misplaced in many senses Because the country is democratic it does have freedom of speech Hence the laws protect you from speaking out then I think the citizens also have
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Responsibilities not just that democracy does not necessarily on the freedom But it also has duties that you have a duty to say who you are and criticize the government of the employee or the policy Whatever in your name having said that if that particular country Or the government does not allow or restrict freedom of speech then that since
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You have no option, but to do but to be anonymous for example into it Even if you paste a poster On war saying just two words human rights. You will be arrested you go beyond bars If you just shout a slogan you will be arrested you will be imprisoned
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Anonymous speech will always enhance freedom of speech and expression because by definition Someone who's truly engaged as a speaking subject and speaking the truth to power renders themselves vulnerable and This vulnerability can in a way be offset by anonymity
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greetings Indians we are anonymous Currently it has been seen that the government from various states and the center are in a spree to censor Not only the internet, but also the right to free speech and expression as declared in the Constitution of India The fact that there is something called anonymous
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Has always been kind of in a way testimony to the idea that Forms of certain forms of speech or speech acts are only possible with the veil of invisibility Now there could be a number of reasons for this on the one hand. It's just about a certain kind of a political courage
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Where the risks are far too great in fact my contention would be that if there were much greater spaces of anonymity You would actually have a lot more by way of revelations the right of privacy in the right of free speech Have often been understood as kind of distinct rights But I think in the kind of ecology of online communication
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It becomes crucial for us to look at the two as being inseparable what we need now is a coming together of the two Where if for example you're saying that certain forms of speech are only available and exercisable by you under conditions of Relative privacy then the question of speech cannot be distinguished from the question of privacy
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Could we have could we have some more light?
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so We have ten minutes for questions and comments. I just
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Is this I can hear you okay good? We lost the sound on the last bit at the end of the credits One of the speakers came on and we didn't actually hear what she had to say and it was actually one of the
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Funniest unintended bits of the movie there's the classic story about on the internet anybody can be a dog and it's like an old New Yorker cartoon and this woman was describing that situation and Right in the middle of the commentary a dog started barking in the background. It was like right outside the window
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We were filming so It's always difficult when you have to explain a joke and but that's what happened so if there are any questions or comments or Can you elaborate on what she was?
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This on I don't yeah Can you elaborate on what she was saying? forget her name the one of the first speakers about strong encryption being legal there
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I Yeah, I'm actually not Sure what the encryption strengths are in India, but apparently they're very low like almost minimal So but is that actually enforced like I mean if you use standard like if you just take a normal operating system that has reasonably strong crypto is that like
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It I suppose it I mean without actually knowing the answer I can guess That There are a lot of laws on the books and they're used Often very capriciously or if you're a target, so for instance in the olden days before Wi-Fi was available in India if you even had a
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If you could get Wi-Fi in your own computer like say in the US or Europe or whatever and you took that computer Into India theoretically you could have been arrested. It would have been a violation of the law So this is how the law works now without knowing the actual encryption strengths
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You know if people are traveling to India or even local hackers. I'm sure are using You know PGP, and you know other encryption systems, so I think they're just using them But if you became a person of interest Then officially charged I guess the film was very self-explanatory
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Okay, so if there are no oh Okay We have What would you say is the big difference in India and maybe in Europe and America with surveillance and? This debate is just very new for this country or that is a long history or why is it an issue now?
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Maybe just for me an issue Right I mean I think it's an issue Newly pretty much everywhere. I mean people are a security experts policy analysts Maybe politicians whatever would have been following this stuff for years, but since essentially
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WikiLeaks the Snowden disclosures, this is when it's become more of a Public issue so the average person is starting to hear these terms. They're beginning to investigate and It reminds me actually very much of say the environmental movement 20 30 years ago
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If you were talking about the environment 30 years ago That was almost exotic you know the so-called Joe six-pack the average person So called average person just it wasn't on the radar, but now everybody From school children
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Environmental issues And I think it's going to take some time for things like surveillance privacy to creep up and become as common as this topic, but In India, it's fresh like everywhere else and what makes this Particularly fascinating for me as an outsider is that say I'm not exactly sure of the
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situation in in the EU, but in United States for instance The NSA does have to there are FISA courts, and there is some oversight, so there's a Judicial although a fairly ineffective oversight, and they do have to report to
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Various Senate and congressional committees in India. There's literally no oversight of the intelligence communities And they're very strong and powerful and have big budgets and they deal with legitimate national security issues, I mean there's lots of tension between India and Pakistan and
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China and in the region I mean there are legitimate reasons why government have robust you know security apparatus But I think what a lot of these speakers are looking at is how these intelligence agencies are now focused inwards and I
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Think it's about half of their budget now goes to serve as domestic surveillance with pretty much no So this is an area of increasing concern in the country. I want to know whether you try to
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talk to people from Which are like involved in this kind of programs like? Politicians or like yeah I'm until people right I Actually no none of them would appear on camera And I have met
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You know like a year or two ago the former director of the research and analysis wing which is essentially the equivalent of the CIA perhaps He was even unwilling and he's retired now. He was really unwilling to talk anybody who's Currently serving in the military or the intelligence communities or politicians whatever that
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Simply you know won't talk about these issues publicly Sometimes you can find retired military officers who have a little more leeway But our focus really was not so much on
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Cybersecurity as a national security issue But really how it affected average people and what do these things mean to them? So it would have been a little counterproductive in a way plus like pulling teeth to try to get to some of these people But it would be an interesting conversation One more question do you have an
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Idea what what they are all collecting so are they just? collecting data from the internet or credit cards and cell phones and Is it right that they have one database to put all this in or?
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and if there's a Agencies or is it police or are they separate there or they just collect all together? Well there are Approximately I think it's five or six Intelligence agencies in the country and they all have different mandates and they're all gathering data
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There's something called the central monitoring system. Which basically is a real-time collection of You know all kinds of social networking So they could take like real-time snapshots, and I'm sure for you know like terrorist events or something like this it could it could be great
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Helping to catch bad guys, but in terms of the data that is collected various intermediaries These would be Organizations like companies like say Facebook and Twitter
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The Indian government is the largest I believe single request Requester of data on Indians, and it's not often given up occasionally It's given, but really it's it's fairly rare There are also domestic
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Social media networks, and I think the government simply makes a request and it goes and plus all of the telcos And various communications that these are all licensed by the government, so if they want something they get it And again like literally no oversight, and you wouldn't know
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Whereas say with Twitter? They would inform users I guess the short answer is the government pretty much in India gets whatever it wants and the intelligence agencies are very cooperative
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No more questions, so then thank you again and all the best for your work in the future. Thank you everybody