Workshop at Mozilla’s 20th Anniversary Celebrations

On Saturday March 31, SFLC.in hosted an event organized by the Mozilla Delhi Community on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Mozilla. The event was organized at our New Delhi office from 11:30 AM to 2:30 PM, and had Mozilla volunteers sharing their experiences working with the Mozilla community and discussing the road-map for future campaigns.

At the event, Shashikanth Reddy, Technology Officer at SFLC.in and Mozilla Volunteer, conducted a Digital Security Training session with the theme “Basic Digital Security Measures”. In this session participants were introduced to privacy, digital security and also assessment of risks using the threat model. He pointed out that even though the Supreme Court of India recognized the fundamental right to privacy, India does not have adequate privacy and data protection laws. Emphasizing on the importance of informational self-determination, Shashikanth made a short presentation on basic security measures like preventing malware infection; using tracking protection and strong passwords with a password manager; risks with using HTTP and open public wi-fi networks, among other things. He spoke about the common ways of malware infection and mentioned a few precautions that users must take to ensure that they do not become victims of a malware attack. For e.g, a user should not download email attachments unless they trust the sender; beware of clicking on suspicious links, and should not connect/insert unknown USB or CD/DVD drives.

This was followed by a discussion on Aadhaar to raise awareness about issues such as exclusion and citizens’ privacy. Srinivas Kodali, interdisciplinary researcher working on data, cities and Internet, was invited to share updates on Aadhaar. In addition to highlighting problems with the Aadhaar project, Srinivas also spoke about the petitions against Aadhaar that are being heard in the Supreme Court of India.

The event ended by introducing participants to the different ways they can contribute to Mozilla and its community campaigns like Add-ons, Rust, WebVR, Privacy/Advocacy etc.