Sunil Abraham

Sunil Abraham is an Indian technology policy analyst and free software advocate, and the director of public policy at Facebook India.^[1] He was formerly an endowed professor at ArtEZ University of Arts^[2] and the co-founder and executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society. He is a board member of Open Society Foundations.^[3] and an honorary steward at Shuttleworth Foundation.^[4] He joined Facebook in October 2020 to lead their Public Policy division in India.^[5]

Sunil Abraham
Sunil Abraham
Born	(1973-06-17) 17 June 1973 (age 52) Bangalore, Karnataka India
Alma mater	Dayananda Sagar College of Engineering
Occupation(s)	Director of Public Policy, Facebook India[1] Endowed Professor, ArtEZ University of Arts, Former Executive Director at the Centre for Internet and Society

Career

In 1998, Abraham founded Mahiti, a company providing low-cost software services to the voluntary sector,^[6] where he continues to serve as a board member.^[7] Abraham was elected as an Ashoka Fellow in 1999,^[8] and received the Sarai FLOSS Fellowship in 2003.

He managed the United Nations' International Open Source Network from 2004 to 2007.^[9][6] In 2008, he co-founded the Centre for Internet and Society, a non-profit research organisation based in India.^[6][7]

Views

Abraham has spoken in favour of greater online free speech,^[10][11] digital privacy, and net neutrality.,^[12] He has criticized some of the aspects of Aadhaar,^[13] the biometric-based unique identity system of India. He was an early proponent for a data protection law for India.^[14]

Bibliography

• Digital Natives with a Cause?: A Knowledge Survey and Framework (2009)^[15]
• Open government data study: India (2012)^[16]
• Government access to private-sector data in India (2012)^[17]
• Open standards (2008)^[18]