Hello. I am Gurshabad Grover.
Opinion pieces
- A judicial overreach into matters of regulation In The Hindu, I look at the how the Madras High Court is over-reaching trying to make policy in the 'traceability' (formerly on Aadhaar-social media linking) case.
- The Huawei bogey In the Indian Express, I write about how India should advocate for privacy at the 3GPP and prove allegations against Huawei before restricting their operations.
- Why the TikTok ban is worrying In the Hindustan Times, I write about the problematic interim decision of the Madras High Court that led to the ban on downloading TikTok in India.
- To preserve freedoms online, amend the IT Act [rules] In the Hindustan Times, I write about the law that allows the government and ISPs to carry out online censorship without accountability.
- India should reconsider its proposed regulation of online content In the Hindustan Times, I write about the draft intermediary guidelines published by Meity in December 2018.
- Anti-trafficking Bill may lead to censorship In Mint, Swaraj Barooah and I analyse problematic provisions in the Trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill, 2018 that may impact free speech.
- Freeing Media from Google and Facebook In the July edition of India Outbound magazine, Sunil Abraham and I look at models that free journalism from the adtech giants.
Misc.
- The Impact of Consolidation in the Internet Economy on the Evolution of the Internet On the Centre for Internet and Society blog, Akriti Bopanna and I summarise a discussion on the impact of market consolidation on the economic and technical future of the Internet.
- RTI Application to BSNL for the list of websites blocked in India In a short post for the Centre for Internet and Society blog, I write about how a public ISP refused to give a colleague the list of blocked websites in response to a Right to Information request.
Policy comments and submissions
- Submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression: Surveillance Industry and Human Rights Submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Speech and Expression. (With Elonnai Hickok, Arindrajit Basu, Akriti Bopanna, Shweta Mohandas and Martyna Kalvaityte)
- Response to the Draft of The Information Technology [Intermediary Guidelines (Amendment) Rules] 2018 The Centre for Internet & Society's submission to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. (With Elonnai Hickok, Arindrajit Basu, Akriti Bopanna and Torsha Sarkar)
- Response to GCSC on Request for Consultation: Norm Package Singapore The Centre for Internet & Society's submission to the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace. (With Arindrajit Basu and Elonnai Hickok)
- Response to TRAI Consultation Paper on Regulatory Framework for Over-The-Top (OTT) Communication Services The Centre for Internet & Society's submission to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. (With Nikhil Srinath and Aayush Rathi)
- Comments on the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations The Centre for Internet & Society's submission to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. (With Sandeep Kumar, Torsha Sarkar, and Swaraj Barooah)
- Comments on the Draft Digital Communications Policy The Centre for Internet & Society's submission to the Department of Telecommunications of the Ministry of Communications, Government of India. (With Anubha Sinha and Swaraj Barooah)
- Comments on the Draft National Policy on Official Statistics The Centre for Internet & Society's submission to the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India. (With Sandeep Kumar)
Papers and policy briefs
- Regulating the Internet: The Government of India & Standards Development at the IETF Technical standard setting has regulatory and policy implications. Taking the example of TLS 1.3 at the IETF, we highlight the need for the Government of India to encourage participation at standards development organisations. (With Aayush Rathi and Sunil Abraham)
- Facebook and Mass Surveillance (PDF) For my independent study (advised by Prof. Raj Ayyar) on Foucault's work on surveillance, I wrote about Facebook and its surveillance capitalism business model.
A barely-alive blog
- Perspectives on the Srikrishna Bill and Report A collection of research and opinion pieces on the draft data protection Bill and accompanying report published by the Srikrishna Committee.
- Does God Like Bitcoin? For no reason, let's take a look at contemporary religious views on cryptocurrencies.
- Net neutrality in India A copy of my essay submission for my application to the LAMP Fellowship. I wrote about net neutrality and related regulation in India.
Programming projects
- Stalker Drone Make your Parrot AR.Drone stalk an object.
- Scrabby A Scrabble bot that will beat you. (With Anmol Singh and Mayank Vachher)
- wordgenJS Generate random (cool) usernames, passwords, colours, animals and much more.