Slashdot Mirror
Indian Police Demand Internet Monitoring In Bombay
h4rm0ny writes "Both the BBC and the Houston Chronicle are running stories about planned monitoring of customers at cyber cafes in Bombay. Cafe owners have responded by organising into a group to oppose the moves.
The police want cafes to demand photo id, a home address and maintain records of access for at least a year. The Great Deamons of Justification have been invoked - Terrorism, Paedophillia, Hackers and in this case Users of Adult Sites. On the cafe owner's part - they are countering with questions of liability for verifying customer details and the issues of privacy.
India remains a country with a very low percentage of the population having their own internet connection. Bombay's 3000 cafes are used by approximately 1.5 million people so these new laws would give the police much larger scope to monitor people's online behaviour than in other countries.
Other Indian cities are watching the results closely."
The police want cafes to demand photo id, a home address and maintain records of access for at least a year. The Great Deamons of Justification have been invoked - Terrorism, Paedophillia, Hackers and in this case Users of Adult Sites. On the cafe owner's part - they are countering with questions of liability for verifying customer details and the issues of privacy.
India remains a country with a very low percentage of the population having their own internet connection. Bombay's 3000 cafes are used by approximately 1.5 million people so these new laws would give the police much larger scope to monitor people's online behaviour than in other countries.
Other Indian cities are watching the results closely."
I can't imagine that there is a way that this can actually stop anything. Laws and censorship never work in any country. What makes India different? And if not, why should cafe owners be forced to pay extra for filters? "If you take away the right to say fuck, you take away the right to say 'fuck the government'" - Lenny Bruce -Kosher Beef Jerky (Two For One Deal!)
I don't know how good it will be even with the basic encryption used to communicate. If two parties decide that word "x" means "y" and so on and then just use their new language to communicate, it will be very difficult to decipher because most of the real indian talent is either in private industries or in western countries. The people who work in IT for Bombay police etc. probably don't even understand TCP/IP very well..... I believe this will be misused more than really used for anything good for society. More bribes, more bureaucracy, more red tape
It looks like India could be joining Saudi Arabia and China in the list of countries where HTTPort is an essential install.