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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."
Do you get your own room to masturbate to online porn? Do you do it out in the open?
I have been pwned because my
I went to India late last year for a visit and found out that two or three of the medium sized cities that I visited to my surprise had cable modems available to the general population. Pricing was at par with the US taking into account currency conversion rate and cost of living. Not many people subscribe though because computers are not common except with the tech savvy people.
Other Indian cities are watching the results closely.
Hell, I'm watching it closely. How is this too different from what presidential candidate Howard Dean proposed for this country?
Oh, right, Dean proposed that all computers, whether in an internet cafe or in your home, be equipped with a card reader to scan your national id card* prior to letting you access the internet.
* Ok, inter-operable state-issued id cards.
(Please note, up until hearing about this I was leaning Dean in my search for the right "Anybody But Bush" candidate. But since my major problem with Bush is his administration's willingness to abrogate our civil rights, I want to be sure that the Democrat I vote for will protect our traditional American rights. And Dean had already raised concerns with Vermont's ACLU when he announced that views about privacy would change post 9-11.)
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
It sounds crappy but this could lead, finally, to the understanding that anything plaintext can be tapped/subpoena'ed/copied and that the only true way to protect your identity and your communications is with encryption.
Police snooping will only further legitimize encryption in your day to day communications (for the average citizen).
On individual cases, it might. Unfortunately, the cost to greater society in terms of intimidation and abuse are higher than the benefits of solving the crime.
Freedom isn't just philosophically attractive, it is also extremely pragmatic. It increases human happiness and productivity. Unfortunately. police are seldom happy people and cannot recognize this value.
I cannot think of any major criminal activity that can be done on the Internet, still less in the restricted environment of a cybercafe. Sure, threats and extortion can be communicated, but these are accessory to the crime contemplated/committed.
Incidentally, if I recall correctly, the city police in Hyderabad did try to bring in a similar move some two years back or so; the cyber-cafe-owners association there apparently resisted the measure successfully. The police now only insist that the computers be placed in cubicles with clear windows, mainly to discourage folks from browsing porn.
Personally, I think stuff like this (much like that earlier banning of that insurgent group's YahooGroups thing) is indicative of two things urgently required in India:-
a) An EFF-like group to charter and fight for maintaining the constitution's libertarian values,
b) Greater awareness among the Indian public of the issues involved, particularly, the right to privacy and other cyber-legal issues.
(Or if there already is such a group, I'd be great if someone could, perhaps, point their URL out or something.)
More than mere navel gazing.
In any case, the YahooGroups incident, methinks, is actually shows that the situation isn't as dire as you might think; consider, for instance, the fact that CERT-India's discussion fora themselves were flooded with angry protests from Indians worldwide, as also the massive negative publicity for a government that wants to project the country as an IT "superpower" (and indeed, the ban, I'm told, has been quietly lifted anyway, although it perhaps can be commented on better by someone like you who is currently in India). This, I believe, is indicative of the very real restrictions that GoI has to face, if it does indeed try to do anything funny; it will be a very long time indeed before CERT-India ventures to ban any other website.
Incidentally, and I pointed this out in another web forum, it's interesting to note a delicious irony regarding American and Indian legal histories:- the First Amendment to the US Constitution gaurantees free speech, while the First Amendment to the Indian Constitution placed restrictions on speech that the original Constituent Assembly didn't call for. Food for thought.
More than mere navel gazing.
I read this yesterday morning on the BBC news site. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3431645.stm compared to what China is involved in this is peanuts http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3434 115.stm
India's government and police don't work on much of a checks and balances system. So they can do whatever they want really. Last time I went to india I had to pay an extra $100 cash because I was taking in electronics and the customs police knew I was from the US. I didn't have an option of going to a supervisor...because the supervisor was in on a cut of the $100.
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