Internet Freedoms Archives - Tech Law Forum @ NALSAR

The Dark Web : To Regulate Or Not Regulate, That Is The Question.

[Ed Note : In an interesting read, Shweta Rao of NALSAR University of Law brings us upto speed on the debate regarding regulation of the mysterious “dark web” and provides us with a possible way to proceed as far as this hidden part of the web is concerned. ]

Human Traffickers, Whistleblowers, Pedophiles, Journalists and Lonely-Hearts Chat-room participants all find a home on the Dark Web, the underbelly of the World Wide Web that is inaccessible to the ordinary netizen. The Dark Web is a small fraction of the Deep Web, a term it is often confused with, but the distinction between the two is important.

Kill the Kill Switch

India is at the third position in a list with some of the most ‘democratic’ countries like Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc. Internet shutdowns can have some serious free speech and free association implications, which is why it is necessary to have clear and precise regulations to ensure that this power is not used arbitrarily and unreasonably.

The internet has grown from being just a communication medium to becoming a marketplace, an entertainment source, a news centre, and much more. At any given moment, there are thousands of gigabytes of information travelling across the planet. But all of this comes to a standstill when the internet shuts down. An internet shutdown is a government-enforced blanket restriction on the use of internet in a region for a particular period of time. The reasons vary from a law and order situation to a dignitary visiting the place. There is a requirement for an analysis into whether such shutdowns can be justified, even on the direst of grounds.

Consent to Cookie: Analysis of European ePrivacy Regulations

This article is an analysis of the newly passed ‘Regulation on Privacy and Electronic Communications’ passed by the European Union.

A huge part of our daily life now revolves around the usage of websites and communication mediums like Facebook, WhatsApp, Skype, etc. The suddenness with which these services have become popular left law-making authorities with little opportunity to give directions to these companies and regulate their actions. For the large part these services worked on the basis of self-regulation and on the terms and conditions which consumers accepted. These services gave people access to their machinery for free, in return for personal data about the consumer. This information is later sold to advertisers who later on send ‘personalised’ advertisements to the consumer on the basis of the information received.

Cashless Societies: Causes for Concern

cashless_society-infographic

Source: CNN

A cashless society is no longer a myth but an impending reality, one of the causes for concern is the issue of privacy which this article deals with.

The idea of a cashless society, i.e., ‘a civilization holding money, but without its most distinctive material representation – cash’, is said to have originated in the late 1960s. The transition to go cashless had been slow and steady, but it is now increasing at a rapid pace this last decade. As technology evolves, the shift from a cash reliant to a cashless society is becoming more apparent. At least in the urban society, using ‘contactless payments’ or ‘non-cash money’ is not unheard of. It has been reported that not only did the first debit card possibly hit the markets in the mid-1960s but that in 1990, debit cards were used in about 300 million transactions, showing the rise of the same in today’s society. Before welcoming this change with open arms, we must take care that we do not ignore the security and privacy concerns, some of which will be addressed in this article.

Encryption and the extent of privacy

Ed. Note.: This post, by Benjamin Vanlalvena, is a part of the NALSAR Tech Law Forum Editorial Test 2016.

A background of the issue

On December 2, 2015, 14 people were killed and 22 were seriously injured in a terrorist attack at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, which consisted of a mass shooting and an attempted bombing. The FBI announced on February 9, 2016 that it was unable to unlock the iPhone used by one of the shooters, Farook. The FBI initially asked the NSA to break into the iPhone but their issue was not resolved, and therefore asked Apple to create a version of the phone’s operating system to disable the security features on that phone.