Slashdot Mirror
Mandatory Keyloggers in Mumbai's Cyber Cafes
YIAAL writes "Indian journalist Amit Varma reports that Mumbai's police are requiring the city's 500 Internet cafes to install keystroke loggers, which will capture every keystroke by users and turn that information over to the government — nearly in realtime by the sound of it. Buy things online, and the underpaid Indian police will have your credit card number. 'Will these end up getting sold in a black market somewhere? Not unlikely.'"
I predict the sudden rise of on-screen keypads, operated via the mouse.
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
Depending on the key logger's capabilities, an easy way to improve your security is to open another edit window (for example notepad) next to the password input window. Enter a character of your secret password, credit card number, etc), then, using the mouse, switch focus to the second window, type in a bunch of random characters, switch back, rinse and repeat. The logger ends with a bunch of gibberish, some of which is your key. If you do it right, extracting your secret from the resulting log will be really difficult (especially since the mouse allows you to add new characters in the middle of the already typed string, which means the characters in your secret won't even be in order).
After they hire all the people required to sift and parse this data, there will be no Indian programmers left for outsourcing. Bravo, keep up the good work - bureaucracy know no bounds.
You damn liberals just don't get it: we are fighing a War on Terra, and need EVERY tool available to us. You don't need privacy if you have nothing to hide.
It's the duty of every good conservative to have blind faith in government. Government derives it's power from the wealthy, and as every good conservative knows, God tells us the wealthy are better people (that's why they have money). So if you are against the government... ANY government (especially a good conservative dictatorship), you are just a terrorist.
A preliminary google search of two sets of keywords
e yloggers&num=10&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=&as_oq=& as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt =any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=active&ie=UTF-8&o e=UTF-8
t roke+loggers&hl=en&lr=&safe=active&as_qdr=all&star t=10&sa=N
6 5.htm
... yet.
http://www.google.com/search?as_q=Mumbai+Police+k
http://www.google.com/search?q=Mumbai+Police+keys
reveals no reliable mainstream media source for this allegation. The only one I could find was this article from mid-day:
http://www.mid-day.com/news/city/2007/august/1631
For those who don't know, "Mid-Day" is basically Mumbai's version of the National Enquirer, rants on about conspiracy theories and local celebrity gossip, hardly a reliable source. All the blog entries about this are based on this one mid-day article.
Of course, it could mean that I'm not searching correctly. I'd appreciate it if somebody posted any (and I mean any) information from any mainstream media outlet (and not dubious blogs). Until then, I remain skeptical and maintain that this is probably a hoax circulated by some sub-par journalist as a means to get fame, and the "Outsource victims" moaning on slashdot lapped it up swiftly, of course...
Keep in mind that the Indian media is dangerously moonbatty and very anti-establishment (borderline third-world paranoid anarchist actually). Therefore if this actually happened then the media would pounce upon it like a pack of hungry wolves. They haven't
Has slashdot been trolled, again?
l'Homme n'est Rien l'Oeuvre Tout: Gustave Flaubert to George Sand