CyberBRICS

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India

Private and Controversial: When Public Health and Privacy Meet in India

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By Smriti Parsheera (CyberBRICS Fellow)1 The book Private and Controversial: When Public Health and Privacy Meet in India brings to light the complex interactions between the fields of public health and privacy, placing them in the context of current developments in India. This includes the developments around the management of the Covid-19 pandemic, the ongoing … Read more

India’s Policy Responses to Big Tech: And an Eye on the Rise of ‘Alt Big Tech’

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Smriti Parsheera The term ‘big tech’ offers a helpful and widely used label for describing the world’s most powerful technology companies. The challenges posed by big tech across the domains of competition, innovation, human rights, and social and political impact are real and immediate. So is the need for building more effective checks against them. … Read more

Cinderella’s shoe won’t fit Soundarya: An audit of facial processing tools on Indian faces

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Gaurav Jain & Smriti Parsheera The increasing adoption of facial processing systems in India is fraught with concerns of privacy, transparency, accountability, and missing procedural safeguards. At the same time, we also know very little about how these technologies perform on the diverse features, characteristics, and skin tones of India’s 1.34 billion-plus population. In this paper, … Read more

Legal Status of Privacy Rights in India – A Comprehensive Analysis of Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019

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By Bhavna Sarma, Research Scholar at RML National Law University, Lucknow, India and CyberBRICS Associated Scholar INTRODUCTION Internationally, the right to privacy is well recognised as a fundamental right. Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes the right to privacy and it states that “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference … Read more

The Role of Think Tanks in the Digital Era: The CyberBRICS Example

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Below the transcripts of Prof Luca Belli’s intervention at the International High-level Think Tank Forum of the World Internet Conference, Wuzhen Summit. Good morning to all participants and organisers and many thanksfor having invited me to be a speaker at this important session of the World Internet Conference 2021. It is a great honour for … Read more

Cybersecurity Convergence in the BRICS Countries

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By Luca Belli The thirteenth BRICS Summit took place on 9 September 2021 and cybersecurity featured prominently amongst the priorities identified by BRICS leaders.  The BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – are explicitly advocating for enhanced cooperation on cybersecurity issues, both at the international and intra-BRICS level. The facility with which cooperation … Read more

The Way the Cookie Crumbles: The Future of Cookie Regulation in India

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By Sohini Banerjee and KS Roshan Menon Despite their innocuous associations, internet cookies symbolise the power imbalance inherent on the internet. Moreover, they throw up significant privacy concerns that lie at the heart of our digital economy. Recently, European privacy group None of Your Business (‘NOYB’) developed a system to identify websites with unsatisfactory use … Read more

Cyber resilience in Indian Financial Services is the Need of the Hour

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By Sohini Banerjee and K.S. Roshan Menon Abstract The World Economic Forum’s 2021 report on global risks featured cyber threats as among the most significant risks to society and the economy. At the outset, it is worth noting two key factors at play. First, the financial services sector has been a prime target for threat … Read more

Notes From a Foreign Field: The European Court of Human Rights on Russia’s Website Blocking

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By Gurshabad Grover and Anna Liz Thomas From PUBG to TikTok, online services are regularly blocked in India under an opaque censorship regime flowing from section 69A of the Information Technology (IT) Act. Russia happens to have a very similar online content blocking regime, parts and processes of which were recently challenged in the European … Read more

Data sovereignty, of whom? Limits and suitability of sovereignty frameworks for data in India

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By Anja Kovacs and Nayantara Ranganathan Abstract: Sovereignty is seeing renewed relevance in the age of data in India as it has become the framework of choice in a number of data governance proposals by the Indian government. To understand the scope, import and consequences of these reassertions of sovereignty, however, it is important to unpack … Read more

Analysis of India’s Aarogya Setu app

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By Smriti Parsheera, Nikhil Narendran, Swati Muthukumar and Aparajita Lath[1] Aarogya Setu, which translates to mean ‘health bridge’, is a mobile application that was launched by the Indian government in April, 2020. The purpose of the app is to carry out self assessment of one’s health status, contact tracing and provide health related information. The … Read more

Net neutrality in India: ensuring openness amidst the crisis

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By Smriti Parsheera In the previous post we traced India’s journey down the net neutrality road, starting from the framing of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI)’s discriminatory tariff regulation in 2016 to the present debate on creation of an advisory multi-stakeholder body. Our focus here is to discuss the ways in India’s net neutrality rules … Read more

Net neutrality in India: from rules to enforcement

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By Smriti Parsheera Policymakers in India have acknowledged that non-discriminatory treatment of content, or, in other words, maintenance of network neutrality, constitutes an essential feature of having an open Internet. This post focuses on the development of India’s net neutrality framework, tracing the steps that have been taken so far and the questions that lie … Read more

Content takedown and users’ rights

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Content takedown and users’ rights

By Gurshabad Grover and Torsha Sarkar AST year, several Jio users from different states reported that sites like Indian Kanoon, Reddit and Telegram were inaccessible through their connections. While attempting to access the website, the users were presented with a notice that the websites were blocked on orders from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT). When contacted by the … Read more

The beginnings of the Great Firewall of India?

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By Nikhil Pahwa The unintended consequence of the Supreme Court’s order on Internet Shutdowns in Kashmir — where it put down accountability norms for Internet shutdowns, and said that some essential websites should be accessible, is that it has given rise to the creation of the Great Indian Firewall: filters that control what users can and cannot … Read more

Download the exclusive preview of “CyberBRICS: Mapping Cybersecurity frameworks in the BRICS”

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CyberBRICS: Mapping cybersecurity frameworks in the BRICS Book

CyberBRICS: Mapping Cybersecuity Frameworks in the BRICS This book stems from the CyberBRICS project, which is the first initiative to develop a comparative analysis of the digital policies developed by BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries. BRICS have been chosen as a focus not only because their digital policies are affecting more … Read more

This privacy law needs public debate

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By Amba Kak,​ lawyer and policy advisor at Mozilla, and CyberBRICS Associated Scholar. Associated Scholar This article was originally ​published​ in the print edition of the Times of India on July 30, 2019. The inaugural Parliament session of the government’s second term began with IT Minister RS Prasad proclaiming passing a data protection law as a … Read more

Rethinking the intermediary liability regime in India

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By Torsha Sarkar, Policy Officer, Centre for Internet and Society, and CyberBRICS Associated Scholar The author would like to thank Elonnai Hickok and Arindrajit Basu for their feedback. Introduction In December 2018, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (“MeitY”) released the Intermediary Liability Guidelines (Amendment) Rules (“the Guidelines”), which would be significantly altering the … Read more

Seminário CyberBRICS: Cybersecurity, Data Protection and The Digital Future of The BRICS

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Seminar CyberBRICS

No dia 04/06 realizamos o evento “CyberBRICS: Cybersecurity, Data Protection and The Digital Future of The BRICS”. O evento buscou promover respostas aos desafios relacionados à regulamentação de dados pessoais e à governança de cibersegurança, fornecendo insights valiosos sobre as políticas digitais do BRICS, que possam ser usados por pesquisadores, reguladores e empresas. Foi possível … Read more

Seminar CyberBRICS: Cybersecurity, data protection and the digital future of the BRICS

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Seminar CyberBRICS

On June 4, 2019 we held the event “CyberBRICS: Cybersecurity, Data Protection and The Digital Future of The BRICS”. The event sought to promote responses to the challenges related to personal data regulation and cybersecurity governance by providing valuable insights into BRICS digital policies that can be used by researchers, regulators and companies. It was … Read more

Seminar CyberBRICS: Cybersecurity, data protection and the digital future of the BRICS

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Seminar CyberBRICS

The Rio de Janeiro Law School of Fundação Getulio Vargas (DIREITO RIO) will host the Seminar CyberBRICS: Cybersecurity, data protection and the digital future of the BRICS. The event aims to provide answers to the challenges related to personal data regulation and cybersecurity governance by providing valuable insights into BRICS digital policies that can be … Read more

3D Printing and IP Futures: What did we learn from China, India and Russia?

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By Angela Daly – Chinese University of Hong Kong Additive manufacturing, better known as ‘3D printing’, is an innovative manufacturing technique which involves the creation of three-dimensional objects using a variety of methods, based on a digital design file containing a 2D blueprint for the final object. In recent years, inexpensive 3D printers using plastics … Read more

Unpacking policy moves for sovereign control of data in India

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By Arindrajit Basu, Elonnai Hickok and Aditya Singh Chawla In a new White Paper, researchers from CyberBRICS partner CIS-India explore the issue of Data Sovereignty, mapping the current Indian policy measures for data localization and reflecting on the goals, challenges and implications of such measures. The CIS White Paper on “The Localisation Gambit: Unpacking policy … Read more