 Hello everybody. My name is Jan Gerlach. I am a lead public policy manager at the Wikimedia Foundation, which is the nonprofit organization that hosts Wikipedia and other projects for free knowledge. The Wikimedia Foundation is a affiliate participant in the network of centers, the centers that research internet and society around the world. And I am today delighted to talk to Smitha Krishna Prasad of the Center for Communications Governance at the National Law University in Delhi. Under normal circumstances we will be meeting at IGF at this time. One of the centers has established this lovely tradition of coming together at the opportunity of the annual meeting, the Internet Governance Forum. Unfortunately this year we'll have to make do with a virtual chat only, but I'm still delighted that we get to meet today and talk about your work Smitha. And let us know what do you work on these days and also a little bit about the history of your center which will be very interesting to hear about, but also looking into the future, maybe a few opportunities for other centers in the network to collaborate with you. Thanks Jan. Hi everyone and thank you for joining in. So I'm Smitha Prasad as Jan mentioned and I work with the Center for Communication Governance. We're a research center that's based out of the National Law University Delhi and really one of the only academic research institutes in India that focuses on information and technology law and policy. So it's been quite an interesting ride here. The network itself was set up in about 2013 and we've been long standing members of the network of centers and had some great collaborative work come out of that participation in the network. Now just to give you a little bit of background in terms of what the center does. We have two broad verticals of work. One is our tech and society work which is more focused on civil liberties and a right and right space discourse that's around around technology and privacy and technology law. So we do a lot of work on privacy or speech and expression media freedom platform regulation emerging technology, different aspects of that kind of work in within this team. Another vertical of work is on technology and national security where we focus more on aspects of cyber security and international law as they apply in the context of national security and you know also obviously we have some very interesting overlaps I would say between the two work of the two teams. So it's been it's been really great to kind of expand the scope of our work over the past few years. I myself have been with the Center for about four years now and I think just to give you an idea of our work on a daily basis our work takes the form of academic research and writing whether it's more in terms of you know academic journals or writing reports and things like that. We also engage a lot in policy processes around technology law. There's a lot going on in India with the data protection bill coming up before it's being considered before parliament right now. There's a lot of you know this talk about amending our intermediary guidelines intermediary liability rules. There's talk about governance of AI systems and then there's of course also a national cybersecurity strategy that we see potentially being published any day now they've you know announced that it could be this month could be next month. We're just waiting to see what that looks like so we participate in we in a lot of these processes where we write about this we talked to the government stakeholders about this and different stakeholders about this. We engage in a lot of being based at a university we engage in a lot of capacity building activities and that's really actually been one of the areas where we've had the most fruitful collaborations with other members of the network of centers. We have an annual summer school program that we run with the University of Hamburg and it s real who are both members of the center network and this year sadly we might not be able to have it in person, but usually we have students coming in from Germany and meeting the Indian students here at National University Delhi and it's, it's a great experience that whole week of really great interaction between faculty and students alike. We also because based the university itself has a lot of affiliations with training opportunities for government officials as well as judicial officials be engaged in a lot of that kind of capacity building as well. And then I think the fourth prong of what we try and do is a little bit of research support in litigation in India around technology law issues. So we've had, you know, we, we engage with the legal community here and try and provide whatever support we can in terms of memos or drafts that they would need. And I think the plan in terms of future work for the center is really to kind of build on that aspect of our work especially. One of the more exciting things that we're doing in the coming year is setting up a fellowship for litigators young litigators who have an interest in technology or digital rights and placing them at opportune at appropriate organization so that they can engage in this kind of work as well. And that's, that's broadly what we do it's a lot incredible an incredible scope I would say, which leads me to to to wonder how big is your center how many people work there. We're not very big we're very small we're about 10 people totally right now I think wow. Yeah. Okay, we try and do as much as we can all of these different issues. Not many shoulders to carry all that work. Impressive. Hopefully, we will be able to grow in the coming years, really develop on this set of areas that we built for ourselves, the set of work that we built for ourselves. I've been impressed also with with your output of course I've been following your work for a couple of years and and the reports that that you've published always. With a with a clear view to to civil liberties also and around around regulation of hate speech I think it was one of the bigger topics that that you've as a center worked on over the last couple of years and and of course how it connects to to security as well as the connections in India and and and all the really regulatory processes that are going on right now. This is such timely enough, such timely work and I've been super impressed with that. How do you, as such a small team. How do you how do you keep up with with with all the things that are going on because what struck me as interesting that you just said is the ministry may propose this bill any minute now and I think that's something that I've seen in the past as well working or trying to follow Indian regulation. How do you stay on top of that with such a small team. I think, you know, it's as long. I think we try and make sure that everyone has developed their capacity and their engagement and knowledge of these different broader areas of law. We try and make sure that through many of the areas of work that the kinds of work that I mentioned earlier, our own independent writing and research but also smaller initiatives within the team and our collaborations with our external we make sure that everyone is on top of. I guess the latest developments in as to the extent possible and like the latest developments in legal processes and legislation and things like that as well. And that usually helps us pick up and kind of start wherever the policy process meets us in that sense. So I mean, it's also, you know, there's been a lot happening for the past three years in India so I think you have to be, to some extent immersed in the space in that what's happening here to really know what to expect and some and not that you always know what to But there's I think it's there is some sort of flow to what's been happening in that sense you are able to track those developments to some extent. It just requires I think, being very active in the space and being very involved and engaged on those subjects specifically and we have a team of really very young very bright enthusiastic people who are all willing to. I'm very grateful for this work. Oh, you know, as many as is required to get the work done. So I think it's, it's not always easy but everyone is very passionate about the work that they do so I think that helps a lot. And speaking of passion maybe I think what I've always admired in the meetings with the network of centers is how how passionate everybody is about this work right and there's there's a lot of sort of connections between all the centers, specifically thematically but there's also a lot of things that really make each center unique in the kinds of approach that they take. How would you say that your center is sort of like a unique in this sense. I know that you are sort of one of a kind of for such a center in India. So how would you say you fit into the network of centers and where do you think you contribute to that. This is of course not like a critical question at all but I'm just wondering how you see yourself in that sort of larger network. You know, we try and actively participate in a lot of the different work that the different centers in that members of network put out. So it really helps them to be in touch with everybody because you know, just generally what developments have happened in their respective countries and I think that's something that we do try and make available about what's happening in India as well and maybe we'll be doing more of in the coming years, and it helps to build to be part of this network and really helps to kind of understand, I think, especially from a comparative perspective what's happening in other countries and then apply that to your own country and I think that's really one of the biggest value ads that we can get out of such a network. At the same time, the other I think collaborative events like like I mentioned the summer school that we do every year. The meetings at IGF or rights gone I think everything has its own place in that sense and we are I think one of the only centers that are members from India, of course, so we do bring that aspect of the work in but I think there's also more than just the regional perspective it's the value of really being able to engage with different people who are thinking about the same issues that you are from different perspectives, possibly to learn more and I think that's that's really what's helpful about this. Great. That really sounds right to me as well of course I'm sort of looking at this as a as a member that is not a research participant right. Wikimedia sort of tries to understand and follow the actual the output that others deliver so we we I don't want to say we're piggybacking but we benefit a lot from this right just just reading the output and seeing what you all do so basically thank you for that. And I wonder, you've mentioned that the summer school, which sounds like an exciting thing, but also really hard to do under current circumstances. So how, what are what are other projects where you would want to invite other centers to collaborate or to maybe even what would you be open to collaborating with with others, where do you want to be pitched. One of the, the collaborative efforts that we've always spoken about at the center is just set up fellowships that would allow students or younger researchers from different centers to engage with each other and I think that's definitely that we'd love to host but also kind of be part of in a broader sense, if that opportunity arises of course I think when you're doing these things across borders there's a lot of, you know, logistical issues that might pop up and it might take a while to fix those but that's definitely what we'd love to take forward. The other, I think bigger project that we are undertaking at CCG right now is building a privacy law library. So what I can share a link later with everyone as well but the project has two aspects really one is a global privacy law library so we're looking at case law from different countries that have significant privacy jurisprudence. And kind of just broadly summarizing those cases and putting up kind of information about where that country stands in terms of their privacy jurisprudence and the countries are region so we right now we have the EU up and we have a large part of cases from the US up we are working on different countries like Canada, South Africa, we're working on South Asian countries. And then trying, I think the idea is to have this as an ongoing dynamic project where as new case law emerges we add those to the database as well. And the second aspect of that is to look at India a little more closely because of course that's our area of work and to look at case law in India with the Supreme Court as well as law courts. And also look at where the law itself legislation stands and not just from a, like the broader comprehensive data protection law perspective but look at deeper aspects of what privacy means and say whether you're talking about family law you know marriage and divorce and things like where that plays a role or financial sector laws or telecom sector different areas of just brought different sectors and different areas of law and look at how privacy applies in each of those. And I think the hope would be that we are able to expand that aspect as well into a more global. Part of the database but of course for right now we're just doing jurisprudence, would be love to hear how other centers would be able you know would want to see how they can collaborate on these on this aspect and build the database into something that's meaningful and helpful for everyone. Because it's meant to reach different stakeholders it's meant to reach lawyers were trying to do their research, you know, researchers on privacy law policymakers. Anyone really who can benefit from it so I think that would be something that we'd love to see how we can take forward in a collaborative manner with other centers as well. It's a fantastic project and to clarify your, your focusing on jurisprudence not on action on regulation but really how on crisis and to see how our courts apply the law. Yes, so that's the current focus at least and I mean the database is supposed to be built into some sort of a more dynamic. A repository of all things privacy law I suppose so eventually we hope to have legislation and other other issues as well on it. Right. Yeah, that sounds like a perfect opportunity to collaborate also sounds like a lot of coordination effort that you may have at your hands. But I guess it's worth it hopefully so I think we'd love to take that up. That's the nature of the bees comes with the work doesn't it. Maybe as a last question from me. What, what is sort of your hope for the next year I think everybody's really fed up with what's, what's, what's, what's your hope for next year for your center of course. I think you know just growing with the work that we're doing right now like I said we're, we're just going to be starting this fellowship within India on rights litigation, building up building on this database and I think we're kind of excited and eager to see what the next year brings us in terms of policy making and law making in India, the data protection bill is before parliament like I said the cybersecurity strategy is going to be out. There's been a lot happening here and we, you know we've also seen a lot of interesting developments on the emerging tech and AI front which I think is really exciting we've been participating in those conversations in India as well and I think many members of the network have engaged on that specifically a lot more these days so we'd love to, I think see how that work can grow within the policy context in India would also more broadly I think, in terms of the bigger questions of AI governments I think which are applicable, irrespective of what kind of policy developments happen in any country so that's definitely something that we love we're looking forward to do. There's also room for closer coordination for the centers around that as well I see, I think there's always room for more coordination I guess right, which is one of the reasons why we're on this lovely call. All right, Smith, thank you so much this was super interesting to learn more about the Center for Communication Governance. I'm sorry we couldn't meet today in person at IGF, but hopefully next year we can do that. And again the invitation to all the members of the network of centers to reach out to you if they want to contribute to the database on privacy jurisprudence, or learn about other stuff that you've just mentioned. Thank you so much. Thank you.