Silence! Big Brother is watching you
Twenty-year-old Sachin Nair (name changed) didn’t know that his college project on terrorist organisations would bring two cyber crime officers knocking on his door. All he did was search for Muslim terror organisations and follow the links that Google showed him.
The incident highlights one thing — they are always watching you. Whether you like it or not. They know every website you visit, and soon, will read every mail you send or receive and know all your friends you chat with on a daily basis. Research in Motion (RIM), the makers of Blackberry would soon share their data encryption systems with the Indian government, who wants to bring everything under its watchful eyes.
“They say they are doing it for national security, but what about the privacy of a citizen?” questions Nair. “There’re a lot of personal things in my mail that I don’t want to share,” he says.
Cyber expert Sunny Vaghela says that the Indian IT Act allows the cyber crime police to access anybody’s e-mail or check personal details on the Web and mobile phones. “There’s nothing you can do about it, simply because you would never know that you are being watched,” says Vaghela.
Surprisingly, an expose by a weekly magazine showed even our Parliamentarians on the ambit of suspicion. “We are under 24-hour surveillance, but India is not the only country doing it. Terrorists and criminals today are highly sophisticated, so to beat them we have to start as well,” he says. Business technology analyst Tejas Shyam says, “There is confidential material from my clients. It’s not just a breach of my privacy, but also breaching the trust of my clients.”
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