[Reader-list] A Slightly Late Anniversary Commemoration

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

A Slightly Late Anniversary Commemoration

A year ago, on the 16th of May 2000, the Information Technology Act 2000 
became law in India. This Law criminalized hacking, attacks privacy and 
paves the way for surveillance and  censorship of nternet content

Since then,

The first arrests have been made on the IT act
The first person has been killed because his surfing behaviour was under watch
The first Public Interest Litigation calling for surveillance of web usage 
in Cybercafes has been filed
The first proposal to tag cybercafe users with ID cards has been implemented

Those of us who are in India when we log on to the Internet on the 16th of 
June 2001 - might consider thinking about the fact that for a year and one 
month now, our actions in cyberspace, what we have been surfing, whom we 
have been talking to, what we have downloaded - have (at least 
theoretically) been under the eyes of a very big brother.

On the cards are
Licenses for providing web content
Identity cards for the entire population
and lots of other ways to make online and offline life more interesting....

We do live in interesting times

Cheers (?)

Shuddha





Shuddhabrata Sengupta
SARAI: The New Media Initiative
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
29, Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 052, India
www.sarai.net