New law will let govt snoop on your PC

[iNFiNiTE]

NEW DELHI: Your email or the personal contents of your computer could soon be under the government’s scrutiny without your knowledge.

With Parliament on Tuesday passing a bill which stipulates life imprisonment for those indulging in cyber terrorism and giving the government endless power to “intercept or monitor any information through any computer resource,” experts fear that “unauthorised interceptions could soon become common”.

Calling for setting up of an independent authority to review complaints of unauthorised interceptions, cyber law expert Pavan Duggal told TOI that the bill was bound to infringe on civil liberties like right to privacy or right to anonymous communication with legitimate purposes, because no safeguards had been put in place to prevent such abuse.

Calling the bill "a hurried reaction", Duggal said, "The potential for misuse of these powers stipulated by the bill for political gains can’t be ruled out."

There also appears to be no effective remedy or mechanism to appeal against unauthorised interception, Duggal said. "Once it becomes law, the government will have sovereign and blanket power to intercept or peep into any electronic communication of even legitimate citizens. Because the bill states that safeguards would be stipulated at a later date, it would clamp down on civil liberties right away. While we are concerned about national security, we don’t want these interception mechanisms to become a handle for misuse," he added.

"There has to be a proper balance between contradictory subjects of interception and privacy. So safeguards are critical," the expert said. The Information Technology (Amendment) Bill 2008 also empowers the government with absolute power to block websites in national interest.

The government’s move to bring in new provisions to tackle cyber terrorism comes after repeated instances of terrorists using the web to propagate mayhem and claim responsibility after every act.

For those indulging in cyber terrorism, the new legislation provides for stiff penalty of life imprisonment. The bill also says that dishonestly receiving stolen computer resource, identity theft, cheating by personation by using computer resource and violation of privacy will result in imprisonment upto three years apart from fine between Rs 1 lakh to Rs 10 lakh.

Transmitting material containing sexually explicit acts in electronic form would be punishable by imprisonment of upto five years along with a fine of upto Rs 10 lakh.

Emphasising on the overriding power given to government, a senior IT official pointed out that Section 69 of the original Act had given the central government the power to intercept and monitor any information through computer systems in national interest, permitting it to monitor any potentially cognisable offence.

Looks like the aftermath of 26/11 is also being reflected in the Tech world.

giving the government endless power to “intercept or monitor any information through any computer resource,”
So now we gonna be monitored by our very own desi Big Brother....

Source

[amitash]

^Oooo thats bad bad bad news....The govts spying on us...i bet the human rights ppl will have something to say about this.

[himadri_sm]

will this new law look into piracy also?

[prateek_san]

i dont think this law will come into existence . becuz this the human rights ppl will start doing danda on the government if this happens.

[gopi_vbboy]

Scrutinity Not possible in India

Live happily

[sibot]

Damn, better get started with deleting!

[Faun]

Snoop Dawg feat Indian Babu...lol

[thewisecrab]

Originally Posted by T159

Snoop Dawg feat Indian Babu...lol

Does this mean intercepting downloads too?
Even so, I doubt whether it will be implemented succesfully.

[Vishal Patil]

i want to work with them to monitor all the politicians...
those corrupt people in India..

[Cool Joe]

Damn this should not happen... Intrusion on our privacy is not fair in a democracy....

[Kl@w-24]

That is a violation of our piracy... err... I mean, privacy!

[naveen_reloaded]

1.) terrorist arent fools to let them in the hands of cyber police ...
2.) as was shown in Wednesday film ... ( i think the title is correct ) our computer , technology are way back or say backwards....
3.) even if its the case , normal people dont have to worry. coz wht are we to hide ?? but if some idiot in the gov tries to look into to gain some p.s files and other stuff.. then it will get dirty.... very dirty... !!!
4.) but if 3 is to be true... at present there are so many idiotic/noobish net users who dont know basic stuffs and get carried awaya with , stupid offer , porn sites , and give out passwords , CC , etc...etc... and dont forget the orkut is place where many loose theirs ids.. privacy etc...
so actually it doesnt matter....
5.) and to gov... terrorist may NEVER or usually not use the common y! , Gmail or other things... and wht if they give thier plan on RAR file with password protected ??
do u have powerful computers to scan , decrypt those files to view inside them ???

or wht if they use tor network ???

6.) and does gov knows about hacking coz innocent people may be mistaken for terrorist or cyber crime individuals.. since there are so many things called mac address spoofers , ip spoofers ... etc...


i dont know how well this law can be effective...

instead of these waste laws .. why cant they increase army strength , invest in R&D for weapons etc

[NucleusKore]

Very repressive law, if it's passed. It just shows how POOR is the understanding of technology by the government. I wonder

What's there to stop terrorists from communicating by email using openpgp or other privacy tools that encrypt email and IM traffic?

What's there to stop terrorists from encrypting volumes in Windows or Linux?

[paroh]

i think 95-99% will be against this law. it is just like that some one enters in your house (To see how much u eat daily seconds, minutes,hrs , days , years )

If u read the below par. what means violation of privacy. Gov. it self violation violation of privacy by this law

For those indulging in cyber terrorism, the new legislation provides for stiff penalty of life imprisonment. The bill also says that dishonestly receiving stolen computer resource, identity theft, cheating by personation by using computer resource and violation of privacy will result in imprisonment upto three years apart from fine between Rs 1 lakh to Rs 10 lakh.

[JojoTheDragon]

Bad law. FTG!

[freshseasons]

Whatever time to now really encrypt all the P. Collection lying on the harddrive.

[gaurav_indian]

Indian govt laws ----->

Indian people reaction ---->

[SunnyChahal]

Violating right to freedom. People,head to the courts!!

[tgpraveen]

http://www.countercurrents.org/karun020109.htm

this is another article which has made it to slashdot

and the controversial part are viewing P0R N is now illegal and police can come anytime to check ur pc activites

ds more like provisions currently being proposed in Australia. the blogger writes, "Around 45 amendments have been made to the original Act, which now treats both publishers of online pornography and its consumers on equal footing. A law so sweeping in its powers that it allows a police officer in the rank of a sub-inspector to walk in or break in to the privacy of your home and see if you were surfing porn or not."

[R2K]

Originally Posted by Kl@w-24

That is a violation of our piracy... err... I mean, privacy!

lol.................nice one

[utsav]

Originally Posted by freshseasons

Whatever time to now really encrypt all the P. Collection lying on the harddrive.

then some guys have to encrypt their entire HDD

[gxsaurav]

Noooooooooooooooo....I won't let any Sarkari Babu read my super secret recipe for Fat loss

[naveen_reloaded]

http://www.countercurrents.org/karun020109.htm

this is another article which has made it to slashdot

and the controversial part are viewing P0R N is now illegal and police can come anytime to check ur pc activites

ds more like provisions currently being proposed in Australia. the blogger writes, "Around 45 amendments have been made to the original Act, which now treats both publishers of online pornography and its consumers on equal footing. A law so sweeping in its powers that it allows a police officer in the rank of a sub-inspector to walk in or break in to the privacy of your home and see if you were surfing porn or not."
__________________

i think it time we start some uproar/// wht say guys????

[NIGHTMARE]

koi kuch nai kare ga koi buss baateye suno sab kaamchor hai yaha pe mostly in gov. sector

[MetalheadGautham]

Thats it. I am thinking of using 256bit encryption using TrueCrypt for ALL my data.

[desiibond]

I would accept this. Yes, to make my country secure, I do have to lose something. If they can snoop my pc for terror related info, I am willing to put my pc in govt. line of sight. No second thought.

[Faun]

^^isn't it violating fundamental rights...lol

[desiibond]

ah. come on. what rights will you lose if someone checks your pc if there is any dangerous content is there are not??

btw, Do you really think that whatever you do not your pc goes unnoticed??

Your ISP will have every bit of detail that you did on your net connection
that application owners will have lot of usage statistics.

[Faun]

^^lol so that means yeah you can snoop into my home too at any time

PC is just not abt pr0ns, there can be any sensitive data which you dont like anyone to access. Remember that someone can blackmail you for other contents. Or even someone can hack into your username and password details.

When you are keeping your PC open to others then ther is inexorable certainty of getting exploited for malicious uses.

Details logged by ISP is another thing, and it surely will make internet a restrictive medium.

I oppose this law anyday, anytime. I dont want someone to barge in like an idiot getting all other extraneous details except for what the law is meant for

[desiibond]

^^ hmm. there is a difference between govt. scanning your pc and govt. letting anyone to scan your pc.

yes. You wan't to keep information safe, keep it safe using required security methods.

Also, there is a difference between govt. scanning your pc whenever they want to and govt. keeping your pc open so that anyone can enter your pc.

If govt. thinks that this is necessary, I don't think there is any way that anyone can stop this.

If it is opposed, they will definitely use their own way to snoop into networks/pc's. Either way,they will do what they want to.

PS: Do you really think that nobody is snooping on your right now??