Preface: This article discusses in brief the techno-legal issues in the activity called ‘hacking’, its treatment in the Information Technology Act 2000 (later amended by the I.T. Amendment Act 2008), the practice and the social acceptability of ethical hackers and the responsibility of information system security professionals.
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Participated in the Panel Discussion in “Puthiya Thalaimurai TV” on 20 Nov on the issue of arrest of two girls in Mumbai for posting their message in FaceBook expressing displeasure on closure of shops in Mumbai, after the death of Bal Thackerey. It was a live programme from 9 PM to 10 PM with the other participants in the panel being Ms Salma, Social Activist and Poet and Writer and Shri Vijayashanker, from the Frontline Editorial Board.
RBI understandably, is seriously mulling over the idea of ‘disincentivisation’ of use of cheque books. In other words, use of cheques is going to be discouraged and instead use of electronic remittances and use of Internet Banking and other electronic remittances are to be encouraged. As the regulatory and Public Sector Monitoring agency dedicated to customer interest and investor protection, I fail to understand why RBI should embark upon this task of disincentivisation of cheque leaves. Even advanced (technologically and academically more literate) nations like UK once thought on these lines and later gave up the idea. Major banks nowadays fail to make public the amount of loss of the number of cases under disputed electronic remittances. SBI the major public sector bank of the nation, even escaped revealing such figures under the cover that SBI cards is a separate entity not coming under the public authority of SBI. Under these circumstances, this move of RBI is not in the common man’s interest. The time is not ripe in India to discourage the use of cheques or replace it.
It is time the government did something to enhance the level of information exchange and co-ordination among the various agencies that are involved in information security, cyber crime prevention, investigation and other related areas. At the apex level at the Government of India, say the PM’s office or some such higher level, there must be a common repository of cyber crime related information, from which authentic data can be taken by all the stake holders say the state police department, Intelligence Wings of various state police, Crime Branch sleuths and others. This may be monitored, controlled and checked for any possible misuse.
Quite often there is a big hue and cry that Sec 66A of the IT Act should be repealed. There is a writ petition in the Madras High Court on this. Some people are always of the opinion and vehemently too, that individual privacy, liberty and freedom of opinion and expression is supreme. Let it not be mistaken that even the constitution-protected individual rights to life and liberty and expression is always with reasonable restrictions, as interpreted in many judgements. Individual right of expression should never be above the national interest. When the nation’s supremacy is questioned or the national sovereignty is sought to be impacted, there is no question of individual right of expression or freedom. Under such circumstances, it is not the right but the duty of the powers that be to protect communal harmony even at the cost of curbing individual right to freedom.
Views on Blocking of websites and monitoring of SMS appeared in “The Hindu” 29 Aug 2012. Click for the news item
In response to a Public Interest Litigation filed in the Supreme Court of India, the Government recently submitted an affidavit wherein, as reported in the Press on 28 Aug 2014, the government has stated that ‘it is impossible to block the pornographic websites in the Internet and if one website is blocked, hundred sites come up’. It sounds as though, the problem cannot be solved. In fact, this problem has a techno-legal solution. Technologically it is possible like having a national level firewall, web-filters, content monitors etc (and in the long run going for an Indian operating systems for computers, our own anti virus, indigenous firewall and above all, our own servers to host) and legally it is feasible to have control over such websites and take speedier action in blocking that would serve as a deterrent to many more coming up. While it is true that the government cannot be expected to take care of all security initiatives like blocking pornographic websites etc , it cannot be digested that the government cannot wash its hands off, saying that there is no solution to the problem.
Without going into the wider ramifications of the issue and the technical feasibility and legal remedies available, let us look at the issue from a citizen’s perspective. From a social angle, it is the duty of Internet users especially the elders and parents to have watch on the websites their siblings visit, to ensure that the computer systems are kept in the open halls wherein the parents too can look at the monitors and have constant interaction with the children on their likes and dislikes in the Internet. Technologically, initiatives like child-lock URL filters, web-filters, PC fire-walls with content filtering etc can be put in place.