14 DAY TRIAL // Have you noticed how some laws affect only the poor? Or how law enforcers' actions seldom affect the rich? Well this is just another one of those cases, but it's regarding cyber-security now!
Recently the site of the Bank of India has been hacked (the Russian Business Network is said to have done it). Since that attack, the Mumbai (formerly Bombay) Police has decided to monitor Internet cafes, because that's where they believe hackers lurk. They think that many malicious users in their tries to avoid getting caught, do not do anything illegal from their home computers, but they go to these cyber-cafes instead. They might be on to something, but, let's see now, who else goes to these? That's right, the poor people, the ones who cannot afford to buy a computer or to pay for Internet access.
The city is huge and has a population of more than 11 million people and there are over 500 Internet-cafes in it. In any case, the Police are trying to monitor whatever information is sent or received from these places in order to track down hacker activity. I don't know if this is such a good measure. They will build up piles of information that if hacked into could lead to serious problems. The Police also thinks that this is just since they only monitor "public" computers and not the ones people have in their homes and this is done to improve security. But I think that they're missing the fact that to some people, those machines at the cafes ARE a substitute for personal computers that they don't have at their houses.
If cyber-cafes to not agree with this policy they will get fined. This whole method to track down hackers is intrusive, if you ask me, but I hope that besides all the privacy violation it will do some good...