In the recently concluded Budget Session, we saw several key issues being taken up as part of the budget deliberations in both the Houses. In this post, we take a look at these disruptions and analyse how the Parliament fared with respect to digital rights.
In this post, we highlight the conflict between efficiency and privacy posed by a key component of the internet: cookies. While cookies presently perform a lot of key functions in ensuring a smooth user experience, they also raise concerns about user privacy and data collection as we discuss here.
Bharat Financial Inclusion Limited recently admitted to disbursing 84,000 loans without customer consent owing to a ‘technical glitch’. Though the bank took some steps upon the receipt of the complaints, there is little regulatory oversight and acknowledgement of these instances in general.
IFF submitted comments in the ongoing consultation for India Digital Ecosystem Architecture (InDEA) 2.0 released by the MeitY in January 2022. Our core approach is towards ensuring that the rollout of the architecture happens in a manner that safeguards the rights of the user.
In this post, we have presented a non-opinionated summary of MeitY's InDEA 2.0 paper, focussing on the data-rights-centric parts of the document. Through this summary, we hope to better inform public awareness and increase public participation on the issue.
A vulnerability in the ECI’s National Voters Service Portal website was exposed by an independent security researcher in December last year. The vulnerability allowed access to un-redacted, registered phone numbers of voters. The vulnerability was eventually patched by the ECI IT team.
IFF’s #connectivitytracker for Jan 2022 is here! In this edition of the report, we analyze the data on telecom and internet connectivity, digital divide in the context of access to online education, and the progress of government schemes aimed at improving internet access.
IFF has provided our comments on the Consultation Paper on Proposed Health Data Retention Policy. In our comments, we have tried to highlight the harms of mandatory data retention, issues around a fragmented healthcare regime and data portability issues.
> > > > tl;dr Throughout 2021, we have tried to respond to the various policy initiatives and projects launched by the Central and State governments with meaningful and privacy-respecting policy analysis. We have also utilized the Right to Information Act, 2005 to bring accountability in the working of every public authority. Consultations
The Winter session saw frequent disruptions. However, with the JPC reports being tabled, the Parliament proved to be crucial for digital rights.