Slashdot Mirror
Cyber-Policing In India: Bye-Bye, Anonymity
The Zapper writes: "The Mumbai (Formerly Bombay) Cops now want to control the Cyber World. In what they call a 'Step to curb hacking and proliferation of Pornographic Email ' they are going to introduce I-D cards issued on basis of passports and driving licenses without which no one will be able to have internet access in Cybercafes all over Mumbai.
If this gets implemented, and it seems it will, the Mumbai netizens can kiss anonymity good bye for ever. The I.T bill recently passed by the present Government makes hacking and accessing pornographic sites a crime punishable by imprisonment for more than an year.
Here is Link to the
story on Yahoo India."
Inmate 1:I killed a guy what did you do? inmate 2:I fucked up and trying to go to whitehouse.gov and went to whitehouse.com
Did anyone even think to call up Mumbai's press office? Or did you just immediately jump on the bandwagon and start decrying "censorship". Come on, people; Mumbai's police force even has its own website. Is it too hard to send an email?
This isn't an example of a backwards nation (like Iran or France) trying to squash a technology (the Internet) they can't hope to master. Mumbai is at the forefront of the tech world (mobile banking, the first language in India to have a universal keyboard, biotechnology parks for women, etc.) They know what they're doing here: if they're implementing an ID system like this, then you know it's the correct technological solution.
You don't know what their reasons are. You're just speculating until you talk to them and find out. A mature individual doesn't exhibit knee-jerk reactions to everything.
Just wait until some cop or politician or something in India gets their history published all over the tabloids.
Even if it's fake, people will soon see that stupid technology like this cuts both ways, and can easily turn on its implementors....
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I support anonymous posting
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Oh, hold it. This is India. They outlaw Christian missionaries (and often murder them). In fact, they're mostly Hindus -- probably the world religion with the most relaxed attitudes towards sex. Wonder why THEY want to ban pornography? Could it be that they think it damages their society?
*boggle*
--
-- Slashdot sucks.
Strange to see the land that created Kama Sutra and sacred sex (I forgot the name of those temples with statues of people having sex) to become so afraid of porn.
__
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Anonymity on the 'net is a thing of the past.
The needs of trustworthyness and verifiability will force the adoption of biometric verification for all data transmission. If you're doing commerce, you have to KNOW you can trust the source and the wire. Its business.
In some respects this is sad. You'll never again be able to put on masks when you're on the 'net. The phrase "On the internet nobody knows you're a dog." will become incomprehensible in a few years.
All communication will automatically be encrypted, signed and traceable from origin to destination. Spoofability will vanish. There will be no place to hide.
Paedophiles and criminals will have to loiter 'round the shadows at mall and the bus terminals like they did before 1995.
I'm not going to miss it.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I thought this sort of thing could only happen in Saudia Arabia... or Utah.
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Not widespread by any means, but definitely more than a misremembering of an NPR report.
If next time you are going to make a statement as serious as "there is female genital mutilation in india" or "there is no female genital mutilation in india" in a public forum, you would check with Google first, it would be to the betterment for us all. Just a thought.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Wow. One year for coming across a pornographic site. What if it was an accident, such as a site forwarding the browser to a prono site, an unwanted pop-up, unsolicited email?
Chortle? Did you ever hear about Carnivore? The CIA (well, OSS) and M5 invented this kind of paranoia (and the Germans wished they had! [Well, some Germans.]).
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
...is the Net itself, in cases like this. Wherever governments try to police their citizen's thoughts, the Net will be a subversive force. Read Shockwave Rider one more time and rest easy in the knowledge that Mumbai's citizens will soon be free again.
Once upon a time, Communism was an idea for a society that cared for all its citizens, instead of just the rich. Once it began to genuinely threaten the plutocracy, propaganda and police forces were implemented. Now everyone knows Communists are scum.
Once upon a time, recreational drug use -- especially hallucenigens -- was a harmless way to expand one's mind. Once the drop-outs and revolutionaries of the 1960's began to genuinely threaten the plutocracy (and it did, too -- Nixon had troops in the basement of the White House after Kent State), propaganda and police forces were implemented. Now everyone knows drug users are scum.
Once upon a time, computers were tools of free speech. You could write as you wished, you could share ideas, you could communicate with anyone. It is starting to genuinely threaten the plutocracy in many ways, in ``intellectual propery'' subversion and the routing around of censorship. Propaganda and police forces are being implemented. Soon everyone will think of you, the users of this uncensored bulletin board which runs on free software, as scum.
-------
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
You have to understand that anybody who owns more than two computers runs a cyber-cafe: one to run Linux and squid, and two to sell Internet access with. Indians are incredibly entreprenurial. Makes you wonder why their government is so socialist.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Is it me or does that seem like an awful lot for a single city?
Seems like the site moved the page. Anyways this is the link for the company who suckered India's goverment into buying highly priced honeypots.
http://www.peakxv.net/InterOp/interop.html
The more uninformed goverments are, the more likely cruddy laws will be passed that hinders tech sectors such as those in the industry on a security related basis. Well thankfully I don't have these laws in the US oh so great land of the free && *snicker*
Want Root?
Recently the Indian government was suckered into buying honeypots and in January for those who don't recall they hired a dozen script kiddies to handle security (I couldn't find the link sorry), so what I see happening is, goverments are getting scared by technology, and instead of coming up with logical solutions, they feel harsh punishments will deter someone's future actions.
Instead of creating such broad laws which can also hurt innocent people somewhere down the line, hardcore studies should be done before such broad laws are created, and every 5 or so years another study should be done to ensure the laws are working to the benefit of the people as opposed to throwing something out because of fears, or because its almost election time $WHEREVER.
Sadly it looks like we are going to have a complete world full of drones who'll either be afraid to interact, or a world full of what the government will view as anarchists if things continue with these trends.
Want Root?
> How is requiring an ID card to use internet cafes any different from having to have a library card to check out books
You are borrowing LIBRARY property. In cyberspace you aren't borrowing anyone's property. BIG DIFFERENCE.
> a license to drive a car
You don't need permission from the government to exercise your Right To Travel
e.g. An International Driver's Permit works quite nicely. (Not valid in the place of issue)
Cheers
--
"The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite." - Thomas Jefferson
Go here3 23 1%255E1702,00.html
or:
http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,200
With things like this going on in India, I'd say drastic measures are called for indeed.
-carl
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
The vast majority of the people are landless and disenfranchised (emphasis mine)
India is a stable democracy and has been that way for the past 54 years - no coups, nothing. Yes, democracy is implemented haphazardly in India, but to suggest that anyone in India is disenfranchised is ridiculous. Maybe you don't know what the word disenfranchised means.
The land must be redistributed
The commies are coming, the commies are coming...
and social (marriage) laws enacted so as to link the wealth of the land to population increases. There should not be more people than the resources of the country can support comfortably.
I have no idea what you mean by that but if you're thinking of forcibly sterilizing people or disallowing them from getting married or having children, I'm very, very afraid of you.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Anonymity is important to preserve, and can still be preserved. I'm not sure what criteria they're going to to implement, but something as simple as requiring a search warrant (an already existing mechanism to prevent abuse of police power) for the release of the records is sufficient to protect us from those who would carry on illegal activities online.
What the heck is this evil crime called morphing? Does this mean they can't do digital animation online?
I think I need my eyes testing, I must be going blind; because I read this as ....
... to curb hacking and proliferation of Pornographic Email ' they are going to introduce 1D [Graphics] cards
Or, more specifically, how is the indian government issuing ID cards to track what you're doing in a cybercafe (notice they're talking public access points here, nobody said anything about them issuing ID cards for using the internet in your own home), different than say a certain well known government censoring what sites you're allowed to visit at your local library public library?
--
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
If a culture believes that pornography is bad and the government of that culture enacts laws to curb it, is it really oppression? We have laws against kiddie porn, etc., but we don't think that's oppressive because it makes sense to us. It's a different culture. Different things make sense to them. How is requiring an ID card to use internet cafes any different from having to have a library card to check out books, a license to drive a car, etc.?
Got Rhinos?
For an introduction to the steamy side of India's cultural heritage.
Test 1 2 3 4
Anonyminity lets you surf for pr0n, MP3, MPEG, post wild outrageous flamebait, use vile, violent fekking language, snoop into other people's sites, obtain information about your socially unacceptable behaviors, diseases you might rather not discuss in the open (gee, my hemmoroids act like seat cushions). You can discuss your whacked out goat.se.x-based religion, plot to overthrow the city council, learn to cook animals rather that just veggies, to grow your own food rather than live on the backs of others, study obscure forms of writing. All without revealing who you are. Some societies (e.g., Afghanistan) find this offensive. Others might too. Imagine that. I think that the need for anonyminity is stupid, but recognize that in the face of large organizations, it is a necessary evil.
What scares me about this is the precedent that it sets. Once a door like this is openned anywhere, it raises the likelyhood that the same thing will happen elsewhere. If this goes through, how long will it be before we *all* end up carrying such an id card?
Frightening thought, wouldn't you say?
Kez
The scary thing is, you could very well be right. At that point, the internet suddenly starts looking unattractive.
Kez
These "Internet Cafe"s have better connectivity like a high speed leases line, cable internet connection etc. So sometimes people prefer these compared to the poor dialup service. In addition to this I won't be surprised if people see good business oppertunity in Internet porn sites in a city like *mba* which already has a well established "sex industry" (also not legal in India).
Recently some companies have started introducing Cable internet connection for domestic users ... I hope that things will improve ...
That is the sound of f Indian geeks leaving the country en masse for greener and more liberal countries.
And is it just me thinking that there is a certain sense of irony in prohibiting pornography in one of the most population-dense countries in the world? Methinks they have this male-female sexual congress thing down pat.
Please excuse my ignorance and stereotypes, but as far as I know, India tends to look the other way when it comes to the sex trade, especially in Mumbai. I have read that the city has hundreds of brothels.
I think that really the government is only doing this for two reasons:
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Think about this:
If you could walk around in the world anonymously. No one would know who you were and couldn't trace you. How much would crime increase?
I use this as a strong point. Of course, things as bad as rape and murder (and tax evaison!) wouldn't happen over the net, but when people are forced to tell who they are, even if no one would know who they were, they tend to be cautious and safer. It isn't big-brotherism, because they aren't watching you every second, they are just forcing you to show your face when you do something naughty.
Imagine having the name of someone who just sent you that pron spam, or the name of the 43 year old man that is chatting with your 14 year old daughter.... it isn't all that bad, is it??
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
First, as of course you realized, appeals to the US 1st amendment make very little difference in other countries. It is also of very little use when debating how things "should" be to appeal to how they happen to be.
That said, your point has merit. The right to speak anonymously has been upheld in this country - and for the Klan specifically - and there are solid reasons behind that. However, there are a couple of differences here. First, the circumstances of, say, a klan march are somewhat different than an untracked internet usage. If a Klansman wlaking through a black neighborhood shouts a threat at a specific protester, the police may nab the marcher and take his pillow case off. As a matter of practical usage, this is exactly what the police have instituted. Second, the action in question is not merely speech, but also commerce, and even in the good old USA there are much stricter controls on commerce than on pure speech - even though the Supreme Court has held that the use of money is protected speech in many contexts. You can't buy a car without the state knowing who you are, for instance. Well, here you can't rent internet access from a cybercafe without the state at least being able to know who you are.
The suggestions that a method not involving login cards could be used - say, supplying identification to the cafe, which would then track who used what computer and when - do have merit, and are much closer to other commercial tracking methods. However, the system they propose is actually less intrusive. Unless and until the police need to track who used a computer, only the user and the computer need know. If the system were done using normal identification and registration, everyone who worked at the cybercafe or had access to the log books (licitly or not) would know who was using what computers when and for how long.
First question... are there only cyber-cafes there?
I have relatives in Mumbai. Though it's been a while since I visited, the first thing to note is that most (or at least many) people don't have telephones in their home. It's much more common for 1 person in a building to have a phone, and for everyone else to borrow it. Thus, for people who have computers, dial-up isn't common, and broadband quite rare.
This is particularly true in College Hostels. Unlike dorms here (or at least where I went to school) there aren't phones in every room. Plus, if your family has a computer, it's probably for the entire family -- not just you. Cybercafes are a much more major source of internet access.
An illustrative example. I have about 7-8 email addresses that I use, plus another 5-6 that simply forward, plus two domains in which I can create an infinite number of addresses. This is just me. My mom (who lives here) has 4 email addresses, my brother has several and even my technophobe father have his own. My grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins in India all share 1 hotmail account. (And they actually have "home" access through my uncle's office.)
Summary: There aren't only cybercafe's in Mumbai, but there are a lot more people who have no other alternative.
I can spell. I just can't type.
Where then do they get the models for this site?
India has a number of pressing issues they should be handling as a priority rather than this, however I can understand the social forces driving this initiative.
They are based on the nature of religion. In western europe and the United States, religion has taken a back seat to politival motivations. In countries with far more history, and cultures that have developed over many thousands of years, religion remains at equal footing with politics, thus, religous goals are achieved through political acts and setting of social policy. This is not nessecerily a bad thing, but a DIFFERENT thing than one would epect in the United States where seperation of Church and State is a fundemental principle woven into our social fabric at almost an unconcious level.
--CTH
--
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Ah. You are correct. The mistake I've made here seems to be the same one made by meany of those here discussing this topic. It's a sad comentary that Americans (myself included of course) seem to have an inability to discuss other cultures inteligently, without making such blunders.
--
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
A culture based on ideology is more dangerous than a culture based on greed. Greed makes people act predictably, and in a manner consistant with the logic around such things as self-preservation.
Ideology drives people to do many strange and unpredictable things, or are they only unpredictable from my perspective because I may not share the ideology? Well, no that can't be right, because Ideology is often open to indevidual interpretation. Greed is greed, and to quote one of my favorite movies of all time, 'Ladies and gentlemen, [...] greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works.'.
--CTH
--
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
I see a lot of Yanks talking as if it couldn't happen in the U.S.
I did some consulting for a U.S. government agency a few years back. Their network was using DHCP but the higher-ups were quite upset because they couldn't associate user with IP address. They spent millions ripping out their old network operating system and implementing another just to get this capability.
The government of the U.S. hates anonymity. They would like to be able to track absolutely everything and as soon as they can see a way to do it without getting too much noise from their citizens that's precisely what will happen.
Don't chortle too much about India.
Hmm... Advanced thought-policing and big brothering from the same country that's currently having problems with the 'Monkey Man'.
/ india.monkeyman/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/south/05/17
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
The main point to be considered here is that the target audience of most of the internet cafes in India are the teen agers. Once they lose their anonymity, they'll find other ways of browsing (for eg, getting a dial-up & using Anonymizer). The net effect is that most of the cyber (so called) parlors will close down. Corruption prevails in all walks of society in India. I guess most of the internet cafe owners wouldn't mind giving some bribe to the local cops to turn a blind eye on people surfing without providing any valid ids. Or even better, they can subscribe to an Anonymizer-like service, which would prevent anyone from pointing to them as accomplices to cyber crimes.
..:: Molotov's cocktail is a Russian blowjob
The Indian government is beginning to realize the importance of monitoring cyber crimes just now. They recently set up a Cyber Crime Research and Development Unit (CCRDU). The Information Technology Act still is in infancy. There are many grey areas and much left to be desired. The complete text of the act can be found here. IT law persons can read it and have a good laugh at some sections. The frivolousness of the whole thing can be gauged from the fact that the first arrests under the cyber-crime laws were made only on February 9th, 2001.
..:: Molotov's cocktail is a Russian blowjob
All Indian citizens should rise up against this affront on their freedom. Hackers around the world should come to aid of their Indian counterparts in finding technological solutions around this crap. It is thought slavery, pure and simple. Resist it with everything you've got. Do it in the name of Ghandi if you have to. A billion Indians passively demonstrating with civil disobedience should do the trick. It would also send a powerful message to the rest of the world that the human species is not about to be enslaved by Big Brotherism whereever it takes root.
The internet is your weapon. Download it all and copy it all!
Please he was Gandhi not Ghandi.
Sorry.
Yes, democracy is implemented haphazardly in India, but to suggest that anyone in India is disenfranchised is ridiculous. Maybe you don't know what the word disenfranchised means.
You should look it up yourself. A landless peasant is disenfranchised and is forced to be a slave by moving into a big city where he is exploited. This is true all over the world.
The land must be redistributed
The commies are coming, the commies are coming...
Communism does not redistribute the land. It confiscates it and turns everybody into a slave for the state. Capitalism, on the other hand, gives the land to a few and enslaves the rest. This is sad. I've said it before, any system that is based exclusively on labor is doomed. What will happen to a slave economy when robots replace everybody, i.e., when human labor and expertise become worthless. Don't think it won't happen in your lifetime. You'd be fooling only yourself. Thanks to the internet, we are about to see an explosion in human knowledge and technology. One little breakthrough, that's all it will take. After that you'll witness an explosion in automation that will make all previous economic revolutions look like child's play. Unless we are prepared to change the system, get ready to face disaster.
and social (marriage) laws enacted so as to link the wealth of the land to population increases. There should not be more people than the resources of the country can support comfortably.
I have no idea what you mean by that but if you're thinking of forcibly sterilizing people or disallowing them from getting married or having children, I'm very, very afraid of you.
You should indeed be afraid, but not of me. You should be afraid of your own gullibility. Anybody who does not realize that population control must be tied to the wealth of the land has not a clue. Even animals know this instinctively. It is much more acceptable to institute marriage laws that are directly tied to how much people can afford than to forcibly sterilize people and make them abort their unborn fetuses.
In India and elsewhere in the world where there is a population problem, the family of the bride is called upon to offer all sorts of dowery to the groom. It should be the other way around. The groom should show proof that he can afford a family. Change this stupid ass-backward practice and you'll see a drop in world population.
The internet is your weapon. Download it all!
disenfranchised adj : deprived of the rights of citizenship especially the right to vote [syn: disfranchised, voteless]
Your peasant may be exploited all to hell, but that's not the same thing as disenfranchised.
This is a modern and misleading interpretation of the word. One of the rights a human being should have is a right to a piece of the pie, the pie being the earth and its resources. One can be given the right to vote all one's life, but if one does not have a means of independent subsistence, one is a slave, ready for exploitation. And it does not matter how much they try to brainwash you into thinking you are free. Besides, there is nothing more pathetic than a slave who is deluded into thinking he's free, just because he/she has achieved some status among the other slaves. This was the definition of freedom (enfranchisement) in the Roman and Babylonian empires: you were free if you and your family were granted property. The others were slaves.
And I have to ask: why should the groom be required to show that he can support a family? My interest would be in showing that somebody can support the family, and my money's on the wife. The World Bank has been finding that, tradition notwithstanding, a hell of a lot of women are better businessmen than their husbands anyway, less inclined to piss away wealth on status and liquor (in fact, I'd bet the dowery tradition has a lot to do with fathers showing off how much they can give away.)
You can put as much of a politically correct spin on it as you want but the fact is that, in 99.9% of the earth's species (including the human species), the male is the one with the territorial instinct. Sure the females usually have more sense in making the territory prosper (in fact, in some African societies, the women control the market place and I think that's cool) but territoriality is the domain of the male. Any social system that ignores this basic human (and animal) instinct is a formula for disaster. Indeed, we witness the failure of modern social engineering in big cities all around the world, what with crime, poverty, abuse and countless family dysfunctions.
The territorial instinct is often vested in the male, it's true, and it's frankly one of the more embarrassing aspects of my gender since it's not good for much of anything yet takes up so much time and energy. Male lions are very good at protecting their territory against other male lions, but not nearly as good at hunting as their females. Pimps are exteremely territorial, but all the work is done by the hookers. Gang members will defend their turf against other gangs, but still live with their mothers because all their efforts are completely unproductive. The very fact that females tend to be less territorial and more practical inclines me to invest in them rather than their mates.
IOW, you are a male basher who delights in seeing men and women constantly at war. It's idiots like you who are responsible for the sorry state of the world.
I'm not "male-bashing", I'm simply pointing out that not every aspect of male behaviour is necessarily a good thing.
What you are doing is thinking of yourself as being wiser than nature. You are a fool.
Just don't confuse it with territoriality, which in of itself neither feeds nor protects anybody, but rather seeks self-aggrandizement, if need be at the expense of the community or even family. Howler monkeys are probably not our best models.
Nature sets up a system among animals that ensures both species survival and ecological balance. It's a system that has been tried and tested over millions of years and you think you can do better? You are worse than a fool. You are an arrogant, self-righteous fool.
Territoriality is crucial to the survival of the species. It allows the strongest to survive while maintaining a balanced control over population. Human societies need to institute rules of behavior that are linked to territorial resources in order to guarantee a comparable balance. We don't need to eat our children to do that. The females of all species (including human females) must choose their mates according to their abilities to provide and maintain a profitable territory. This is the only natural way to control world population without instituting a fascist system that destroys our freedoms. The only way to do this is through a system of land inheritance. The land must not be divided for a price and sold like other commodities. This is pure folly, a sure prescription for disaster and we see the disatrous results of our present system all over the world. The land should be preserved as an inheritance for us, our children and their children.
I wonder if alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.indian-asian will see a decrease in high quality posts now. There's something I find attractive about sari-clad women showing off their goods. Especially the ones where the lady is reaching above her head to grasp the mango branch, all birth-of-buddha like.
--
"Fuck your mama."
Beyond the obvious invasion of privacy these ID cards are promoting, there is another problem with tracking people across the internet. It is too simple to forge IP information as it is, there is no indication in the article that this new technology will guarantee 100% tracking to a given computer. In a cafe environment there is probably little security between computers, a hacker could use the IP of the computer across the room.
Of course, this level of accountability is so far a fiction, as well it should be. Too many consumer boxes are used as springboards to facilitate hacking elsewhere. The poor sap who owns the computer that is currently doing malicious deeds can't really be held accountable for its actions, to do so wouldn't really solve anything. It seems it will be the same in India, just because the computers say that this IP was accessing this server at this time doesn't actually mean that you can reliably track it to an individual.
Over the long term we'll probably employ a system similiar to this by choice. As people gain better ways to identify themselves online, we'll probably decide to cut the truly anonymous out of our online lives entirely. In the same way Anonymous Cowards are culled from our discussions by default, we'll find our time is too valuable to spend it interacting with someone who can't be bothered to identify themself.
Pardon me for pointing this out, but the Hundu religion prevalent in India is much more open about sexuality than the Christian religion. Your argument would hold water for Islamic countries, but definitely not for India.
Not only is Hindu literature filled with explicit sexual trysts, but sex between appropriate partners has always been acceptable there, even outside of marriage. This is one reason why prostitution is so common in India and much more open than it is in most of the West--it's socially acceptable in most circles to visit prostitutes.
This is why India's desire to censor net porn from its citizenry is so puzzling. That, and the fact that they have so much poverty, child slavery, and other severe problems that it's just absurd to waste precious resources filtering porn.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
Lots of Questions, here are some clarifications 1) Cybercafes are for tourists ? Not in India, in India, more users access the net from cybercafes than from homes, i suspect the figure might be double because not many people can afford a computer when their annual salary is less than its cost. So a LOT of people are affected 2) Why should we care ? Who needs porn ? Lots of people may need it and I am not one of them. Also this is not just about porn, this is about something else. The Indian I.T act empowers a police officer above a certain rank to make arrests without a warrant. Now if i pissed off my neighbouring police officer with loud rock music, he could easily have me 'fixed' in for an year and even if he never proved the charges, he wouldnt need to- in India my case wouldnt come up for hearing before atleast 3 months. Most drag upto years and people endup in jail for more time as undertrials than the maximum sentence they could get for their crimes.This is not a speculation, it is quite often that such things happen here. 3) I dont want the world to know what sites i visit. If tomorrow i start a net campaign against the ruling party, they could and would have me in jail in about 24 hours. Just yesterday, the first thing the chief minister of an Indian state did after getting elected was to put an opposite party candidate in prison for 'poll violence'. 4) If the govt wants to stop porno access, they can ban the urls from the servers of the handful International Gateways that India has, why play big brother ? All said and done, India is still a techno savvy country with only a few people like the Bombay Commisioner, who is still learning MS-Office with his colleagues,who think they can do anything and get away with it.That is why we do expect that Some-one will stop this from happening. How is this different from Carnivore ? It is even worse, with Carnivore, you had my i.p address and then you may be able to track my home address, with I.D cards you straightaway have my address and phone number. There is one positive thing however and that is that potenital crackers now have a greater chance of being caught, but most Indian sites are hacked by Pakistani punks, maybe the govt should look for the enemy somewhere else instead of in their own country. regards The Zapper