In Flux: a technology policy podcast by the Centre for Internet and Society, India Centre for Internet and Society, India

In a continuation from the last episode, in the final episode of the 2020 season of Influx, Shruti Trikanad and Yesha Paul speak to Shweta Mohandas, and Arindrajit Basu, taking them through several law and policy questions around the conceptualisation, implementation, and impact of digital identity projects around the globe, along with the interests, actors and politics at play!

With the recent widespread proliferation of Digital Identity systems across the globe, the amount of impact these systems have has only become more and more apparent. While examination of the policies governing these systems is important, it is also essential to understand how these systems are designed, and how their design frameworks can be improved. In the first part of our season 1 finale, Pooja Saxena and Saumyaa Naidu speak to Pranav M B about the design aspects of the Digital ID research project at the Centre for Internet and Society. Reading list: (1) https://digitalid.design/evaluation-framework-02.html; (2) https://digitalid.design/research-maps/uk.html; (3) https://digitalid.design/research-maps/estonia.html

How is the AI ecosystem evolving? How do different individuals and organisations perceive Artificial Intelligence? Does “Ethical AI” miss the hills for the trees? Do techies and lawyers talk enough? In this episode, Shweta Mohandas addresses these questions and more, while re-examining the body of work on Artificial Intelligence policy, and use cases she has built over the past three years. Reading list: (1) https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/artificial-intelligence-in-india-a-compendium; (2) https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/niti-aayog-discussion-paper-an-aspirational-step-towards-india2019s-ai-policy; (3) https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/people-driven-and-tech-enabled-2013-how-ai-and-ml-are-changing-the-future-of-cyber-security-in-india; (4) https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/comments-to-aiforall-pdf

Where must we locate our right to privacy in times of a crisis? How much information about ourselves do we give up? Is spying on a neighbour justified in an attempt to contain the spread of a disease? In our ongoing conversations dealing with various aspects of surveillance, Shweta Reddy and Mira Swaminathan speak to Torsha Sarkar about the topical issue of balancing a public health objective with protection of our fundamental rights. They offer various privacy principles and ethical considerations that any initiative trying to institutionalize surveillance must take into account, with the goal of ensuring that short term solutions do not become the long term features of an organized society. Reading list: (1) https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/essay-watching-corona-or-neighbours-introducing-2018lateral-surveillance2019-during-covid201919

On May 19th, a few weeks after we recorded this episode, the German supreme court held that extra-territorial mass surveillance on foreigners is unconstitutional. This was a massive victory, particularly for global south citizens who have unwittingly been the target of illegal western mass surveillance for years. Human rights law has glaringly been unable to prevent this abuse of global power, particularly by the US. In this episode, Torsha Sarkar speaks to Arindrajit Basu about the reasons behind this incapacitation of international human rights law, and what we can do to fix it. Reading list: (1) https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/EN/2020/bvg20-037.html (2) http://nujslawreview.org/2019/12/27/extraterritorial-algorithmic-surveillance-and-the-incapacitation-of-international-human-rights-law/

Cities around the world are increasingly adopting closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras for surveillance. In this episode, Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon discuss their research on the deployment of CCTVs in New Delhi, a city infamous for high rates of violent crimes against women. Using critical feminst studies, they investigate the narrative that greater surveillance equals increased security for women. Through interviews with women, police personnel, and government officials, they uncover the contradictory motivations and objectives of the program, and how its impact is mediated along the axes of gender, geography, and class. Reading: https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/development-informatics