Empowerment and Fragility

Zeynep Tufecki’s book, Twitter and Tear Gas, is an insightful analysis of the impact of social media on protests and social movements in today’s radically networked societies.

Most of the commentary about the role of social media in creating political communities either glorifies these media platforms (think Arab Spring) or vilifies them for their propensity to spread fake news and to create echo chambers (think Trump’s election campaign). Zeynep Tufecki’s book, Twitter and Tear Gas, however, provides a much-needed nuanced analysis on how digital platforms have altered the way in which a social movement’s dynamics play out. With the aim of understanding the challenges and strengths of digital activism, Tufecki tells a fascinating story of how social media empowers protests while simultaneously also exacerbating the fragilities of these movements.It is well known by now that the primary strength of networked public protests is the speed with which a large number of people and resources can be mobilised. This is because social media makes it easy to find people who share your political viewpoints even across geographical boundaries. What is not obvious, however, is that the speed and ease of participation also become a weakness of the networked movements. This is because ad hoc planning doesn’t allow for building capacities among protesters, which is needed to sustain a movement in the long-term. Often this results in the networked movements facing a tactical freeze in the face of changing circumstances.Read more here>

C is for Cyber

Susan Landau’s Listening In is an encyclopedia of cyber security, but misses out on the opportunity to set the stage for policy dialogue.

After the San Bernadino terrorist shootings of 2015, the FBI recovered an iPhone belonging to one of the attackers. FBI and Apple Inc came to loggerheads when Apple declined the FBI’s request to create software that would unlock the security protection on the iPhone. FBI wanted “exceptional access” to be built into the encryption systems on Apple’s iPhone, using the pretext of national security. However, Apple argued that in an age of cyber attacks, weakening of security should be the last thing to do, even if that means that the data of terrorists and criminals remain hidden from law enforcement. The basis of Apple’s argument was that security loopholes would be eventually found and exploited by hackers, presumably causing more harm to national security.Using the above case as the background for her book Listening In Cyber Security in an Insecure Age, Susan Landau, a cryptography and cybersecurity expert, studies the clash between the individual’s need for privacy and the law enforcement agencies’ need for access to information. Landau unequivocally bats for not weakening security standards, even if that makes government investigations difficult. She sets the stage for her argument for stronger encryption standards by narrating one example after another of cyber espionage, exploits and attacks, and how these have been getting more sophisticated over time. She traces the first cyber espionage to 1986. With the involvement of the CIA, KGB, and a student in Germany hacking into systems at an energy research lab at Berkeley, this story makes for a fascinating read.Read more here>

Get Criminals Out Of Politics

To break the nexus of crime and politics in India, we should not wait until the conviction of accused candidates. Other solutions exist.

With less than 24 hours to go for the assembly elections in the state of Karnataka, the topic of the criminal backgrounds of various candidates is back in focus. A recent report by the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) reveals that 391 of the 2655 candidates face criminal charges, and 254 of these face charges of a serious nature. All three major parties, namely BJP, Congress, and JDS, have such candidates on their party tickets.Of course, a criminal complaint is not proof of guilt. The Representation of the Peoples Act (RPA), 1951 states that a person cannot be debarred from contesting elections nor expelled from the parliament or legislative assembly unless s/he is convicted with a jail term of two years or more. However, there are multiple stages between the filing of a criminal complaint and a court judgment that merit consideration.After a criminal complaint is filed, usually in the form of an FIR with the police, there are at least three stages before a court of law begins the hearings. First comes the investigation conducted by the police or other competent authorities, during which they evaluate the merits of the complaints and collect evidence. Next, the investigating authority files a charge sheet with the court. Third, the court studies the charge sheet and appropriately frames charges against the accused. It is only then that the prosecution and defence lawyers begin arguing the case before a judge.Read more here>

Where is the Nudge Unit?

The government had promised to use the insights of behavioural economics to shape public policy. This budget revealed no signs of it.

As some of us might remember, in September 2016, it was announced with much fanfare that the government think tank NITI Aayog was going to set up a “Nudge Unit” on the lines of the Behavioural Insights Team in the UK. It was reported that NITI Aayog had tied up with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) to go about changing behaviours of people. The policies that were supposedly going to benefit from this nudge unit were the flagship programmes of the current government — Swachh Bharat Mission, Jan Dhan Yojana, Digital India, etc.In delivering his Union Budget speech today, the Finance Minister has laid out the priorities of the Union Government for the next year. However, Mr Jaitley did not mention anywhere that this Government will spend any money and effort on incorporating behavioural insights into public policy.It’s impossible to know whether NITI Aayog’s Nudge Unit has been set up and what it is working on. Neither the NITI Aayog website nor the BMGF website has any information that hints at setting up of such a unit. What is more, in February 2017, the Government had cut its ties with BMGF on a health mission due to an apparent conflict of interest. We do not know how that incident affected BMGF’s promise to fund the nudge unit.Read more here>

On Sale: Your Vote

Our data, taken without our consent, can be used for informational warfare that harms our democracy.

The Cambridge Analytica (CA) controversy has captured international mindspace over the last two days. In an interview with the Guardian, Christopher Wylie, the whistleblower at CA, laid bare the facts of how the company, under the influence of Steve Bannon (Donald Trump’s former chief strategist and former executive chairman of Breitbart) and Robert Mercer (an AI billionaire and Republican donor) used data from social media for “information warfare”. Wylie claims that over 50 million Facebook user profiles were harvested under false pretences, and then used for ballot box gains in the 2016 US presidential elections.People not only share and like things on social media, but often participate in “free” quizzes and personality tests that let these social media companies gather data on their personal and ideological preferences. The analysed data can  then used for commercial purposes, by either directly displaying ads and news tailored to particular demographic groups, or by further passing this data (knowingly or otherwise) to analytics companies like CA. The data analytics firms combine data from multiple sources and, using highly advanced algorithms, can generate sophisticated psychological profiles at group and individual levels. They can sell these to anyone who stands to profit from exploiting this data. These profiles are powerful tools, and can be used for tactical and strategic purposes against one’s opponent, or for spreading propaganda and fake news to influence  susceptible people. Thus ensues “information warfare”.Read more here>