Challenges Intermediary Code of IT Act, Equity for Covid-19 Resources and More: SMC Monthly Report April 2021

Praveen Moves to High Court Against the New IT Rules

Praveen Arimbrathodiyil, FOSS advocate and SMC member, with the assistance of SFLC moved to Kerala High Court challenging certain provisions of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.

Statements are further explanations:

• https://fsci.in/blog/fsci-challenges-intermediary-rules-2021/
• https://sflc.in/praveen-arimbrathodiyil-vs-union-india-sflcin-assists-challenging-part-ii-intermediary-rules-2021

Joint Statement Against Using Aadhaar based Facial Recognition for Vaccination

Internet Freedom Foundation in association and 16 other organization including SMC, released a joint statement against the use of Aadhaar based facial recognition for COVID-19 vaccination program. You can read the statement here: https://internetfreedom.in/sign-on-and-support-close-to-10-organisations-and-158-individuals-who-are-warning-against-aadhaar-based-facial-recognition-for-vaccination/

Joint Statement to Ensure Equitable Access to The COVID-19 Resources

A joint statement by Rethink Aadhaar, Internet Freedom Foundation, Forum For Medical Ethics Society, and Swathanthra Malayalam Computing released to ensure the equitable access to the COVID-19 vaccines, and health care resources for all humans. The statement can be found here and you can endorse the same here.

Ecosystem News

FDP on FOSS by ICFOSS

Anivar Aravind talked in the panel discussion about "Myths and Challenges in FOSS" which was conducted on April 22, 2021 as a part of 5 day FDP on Tech FOSS-Accelerating FOSS Technologies by ICFOSS.

Software for Centralized Localization

Ron Stephen Mathew has developed an opensource software for centralized localization. The web app can be found here: https://pothumozhi.github.io/ and a discussion thread on the same happened at Community Portal.