For Reasons of State : Part 1

A post on why I strangely find myself supporting the government on privacy intrusion This is the first of my two part blogpost’s on the proposed ban on blackberry services in India. These series discusses the demand for establishing a blackberry server in India for the interception of communications. I argue that this an indicia [...]

article on online privacy in india

The Indian Journal of Law and Technology (IJLT), arguably the one of the best journals on law and technology published in India in its latest issue has published my article on Balancing Online Privacy in India.  Leaving aside my visible bias for the journal, the article examines how courts have responded in cases of state [...]

The National Identification Authority of India Bill 2010

Image via Wikipedia I will be covering the recently introduced National Identification Authority Bill 2010 .This bill has been introduced to establish Unique Identity Authority as statutory body/board which at present is presided by Nandan Nilekani. They have put up draft legislation at their website while seeking suggestion from various stakeholders and general public. I [...]

for this accursed string strangles us all

I am quite fond of the quote, “for this accursed string strangles us all”. It is the cry by an Indian Mutineer who when lead to the gallows pointed to the telegraph line which would carry his execution orders and yelled it to the morbid amusement of our former colonial masters. The cry becomes relevant [...]

Petronet LNG v. Indian Petro Group : Two Unpleaded Torts

Image by Write Pics via Flickr One of the decisions I came across while recently authoring a paper on privacy law was the Delhi High Court decision in the case of Petronet LNG v. Indian Petro Group and Anr. (CS (OS) No. 1102/2006). What I found interesting were the categorical findings in the decision on [...]

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the age of Facebook

In this blog post I am borrowing more than just the title from Niel Postman’s seminal work on media studies. I am also borrowing the metaphors which were utilized by him, originally spawned by my personal heroes, George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. I quote the thesis of Postman’s work which has been succinctly stated at [...]

The Fading Norm

Image by graney via Flickr It would seem natural and obvious to a user of social media that technology is changing the norm of privacy. Here the change is not limited to technology itself but the sociological response to it, as I sense we become more agreeable to share personally identifiable information. This change may [...]

The privacy debate is raging online with the recent statements by Mark Zuckerberg that Online Privacy is a fading norm. the onset of cloud computing presents another challenge to online privacy. Columbia Law Prof. Eben Moglen at a recent talk given at the Internet Society of New York, lucidly explains the threats posed to privacy [...]

A broader implementation of human readable contracts

The success and popularity of the creative commons license is symptomatic of the growing sentiment of Internet users and authors against the expansionary nature of intellectual property law. The creative commons license allows the authors of creative works to license out of default copyright provisions and allows greater rights to the users of their works. [...]

Two Acts, One Trick

Within hours of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, news channels were making comparisons of the attacks to the terror strike on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The invented coinage, “India’s 9/11” gained quick currency and was applied to how the attacks had affected each one of us individually.  The similarity is not [...]