As my time at the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) in India comes to an end, as a Digital Literacy Fellow I have been able to contribute to the area of digital rights-centric social impact while honing my legal research and policy communications skills. Since the first report I shared, the key projects I was tackling have reached completion and the scriptwriting, as well as research for an episodic series on Privacy 101 in India, is now in its post-production stages. How data as currency pervades and draws from every aspect of our lives – is one of the most poignant and critical learnings I have been awakened through my time on this project, as we delved into subjects such as an introduction to privacy, privacy through a feminist lens, AI-enabled voice assistants, surveillance capitalism, and the principle of data minimization.
Furthermore, as digital literacy and awareness work relies on fundraising and volunteer management, I also had the opportunity of cultivating volunteering experiences for building a Wikipedia-like resource repository for digital rights issues and IFF work in India. To that end, I successfully compiled resources and built a knowledge base pertaining to health digitization policies, laws, and developments in the country. I also prepared and presented communications for IFF’s Quarterly Members’ Call, wherein we apprise members, donors, and digital rights supporters of the progress we have made in different verticals and the plans for the future of digital rights advocacy at IFF. Apart from this, the day-to-day operations of researching and drafting communications here for the goal of digital literacy have enhanced my own knowledge on issues of free speech, mass surveillance software such as Pegasus, press freedom, and censorship, among others. In support of this, I have been able to succeed in relevant and rapid responses when Muslim activists and reporters in India were arrested to stifle their freedom and unlawfully had their houses bulldozed for exercising their fundamental right to free speech. In the light of Roe v. Wade being overturned, we also studied how menstruation-tracking apps affect privacy and women’s rights in India considering there is no comprehensive data protection regime like the GDPR existing in Europe. I also drafted explained videos on issues pertaining to the privacy of financial transactions and donor data in India, along with the arrest of a fact-checking journalist, Mohd. Zubair in an attempt to stifle free speech.
My time here has also given me the opportunity to work with a UK-based organization, Tactical Tech, for localization, translation, and communication aspects of their Glass Room Project’s multimedia exhibition on misinformation. To that end, I am part of the IFF team, spearheading a budgetary breakdown, seeking a translation network and supervising their translation work, and organizing how the exhibition will be taken to different venues and target audiences across India. This fight against a digital endemic such as fake news and misinformation is critical to the future of fundamental rights in technology. Research, communications, and fundraising are some of the areas I have had a steep learning curve in, and taken incredible lessons from during my time in the digital rights and communications realms at IFF.
At last, I would like to thank Dr. Robert and Mrs. Brenda Hurley for funding the Brenda and Morrison Hurley Arts Internship Award and for making this possible. It was an amazing experience working as a Digital Literacy Fellow. I would also like to thank the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) for providing me with this wonderful opportunity.
