[Reader-list] Untouchable Cybershadows
Shuddhabrata Sengupta
shuddha at sarai.net
Fri May 18 13:34:14 IST 2001
UNTOUCHABLE CYBERSHADOWS
This is in response to the postings that have already been made by Pankaj
Kaushal, Ravi Sundaram and Rana Dasgupta on this list alerting us to the
imminent dangers to the 'public domain' of cyberspace in India.
Rana's telling terminal question - "How can you tell when the cybershadow
of an untouchable has fallen across you?" is very pertinent. Following from
Rana's argument, I think that the perceived threat of 'contamination', and
the drawing up of draconian regimes to wipe out such contamination in
cybercafes and in cyberspace is not unlike the great fear of the lower
castes having access to the 'code' of Sanskrit that beset the pundits of
previous times. They would defile the code with the pollution that comes
with being lower caste bodies speaking the code. Similarly, the Indian
corner of 'cspace' needs to be protected from unruly and unpredictable
usage practices and patterns in public spaces. There is every likelihood
that the clinical cyber-ram-rajya-utopia of acres of medical
transcription, html sweatshops and software export processing zones so
beloved of our rulers may be contaminated by 'bad boys and girls looking at
bad websites on the internet in streetcorner cybercafes'.
In a little known story in the Ramayana, Ram in deference to the
consensus of the brahmins in his court(oce he was back in Ayodhya and had
established Rram Rajya) condemned the untouchable Shambuk to death ,
because he had dared to deploy Sanskrit. The impure person speaking the
code of the masters has always been seen in the glorious tradition of high
culture,as nothing less than a capital crime.
Today, Information Technology is the new code of the masters. The Sanskrit
of our times. And just as the language of the gods was always in danger of
being sullied and polluted by the hordes, so too must the whole arena of
Information technology be sanitized. We might consider the global regimes
of surveillance and sanitization that now surround us (viz the pioneering
internet related legislations in Australia, Italy, Singapore and UK) as
instances of a sweeping international pandemic of a peculiarly 'Sanskritic'
paranoia with the purity of code. Purify the code at the places where it
has the greatest traffic (in India - the Cybercafes) and make sure that
only those who wear the sacred thread of a licence can actually use the
code. (the licencing regualtions, of which, more shortly)
The threat to the free space of the public domain of cyberspace comes at
two ends and this posting is an attempt to further discuss the two ends of
the threat.Both ends seem to reflect a state apparatus gone
insane.Unfortunately we all have to deal with this insanity, it is already
begining to deal with us on the streets.In a quickly forgotten incident
that distracted our attention a few months ago, a young man in Okhla was
gunned down in cold blood as he slept by crack commandoes of the Delhi
Police (with you, for you, always) . They had come to the conclusion that
HE was the terrorist who had let off a few rounds in the Red Fort. And how
did they come to this conclusion - he frequented a cybercafe far too
frequently.
The Control over Content : A Law, A Guideline and A Draft Bill (Two and a
Half ways to choke freedome in cyberspace)
Here what we have to alert ourselves to is the immense weight of
legislation that is shortly to be brought to bear on the space of creation
and dissemination of media content. We are talking about An existing and a
would be law and a set of guidelines. First the Law
The Information Technology Act of 2000 (which is now law, and people are
being arrested under its provisions) in its now notorious clauses 66 and 67
criminalized 'hacking' and 'publishing of information which is obscene in
electronic form'.Clause 80 of the same Act empowers police or state
officers or to enter and search a Public Space (read Cybercafes) in
pursuit of cyber criminals or would be cyber criminals. The language of the
state in this regard is chilling , and I quote from the 13th Chapter
(Miscellaneous) of the IT Act 2000
"Section 80. Power of police officer and other officers to enter, search, etc.
(1) Notwithstanding anything contained in the Code of Criminal Procedure,
1973, any police officer, not below the rank of a Deputy Superintendent of
Police, or any other officer of the Central Government or a State
Government authorised by the Central Government in this behalf may enter
any public place and search and arrest without warrant any person found
therein who is reasonably suspected or having committed or of committing or
of being about to commit any offence under this Act"
Explanation.For the purposes of this sub-section, the expression "public
place" includes any public conveyance, any hotel, any shop or any other
place intended for use by, or accessible to the public."
To read the IT Act 2000 online (or to download it) go to -
http://www.mit.gov.in/itbillonline/it_framef.htm
Now the Guideline
After this we have already witnessed the promulgation of the Guidelines and
General Information for the Setting Up of Submarine Cable Landings for
International Gateways for the Internet (issued by the Ministry of
Communications, Government of India) which makes provision for the
interception of all and any messages and routine surveillance of data and
regulations on encryption and limitations to privacy - all in the name of
the national interest, public order, morality and the security of the state.
To view the 'Guidelines' - go to -
http://www.naavi.com/cl_editorial/edit_12aug00_1a.html
Jeebesh Bagchi, in 'A Chronology of the Media and the State in India'
( the Sarai Reader 01 - pgs. 127 - 132 or
(www.sarai.net/journal/pdf/127-132%20(law).pdf)
has drawn a very succint picture of the scenario till here. Examining the
ways in which the various media have been dealt with state in India from
the end of the nineteenth century onwards. With the drawing up of the draft
of the Communications and Convergence Bill we enter a qualitiatively new
scenario.And since this posting has been occasioned
Up till now, the control (in so far as content creation is concerned) has
been retrospective. The IT Act enables prosecution, but only AFTER the
offending website has been published and found by the cyber-informers who
work for the Indian state (zealous and stupid journalists who act as
guardians of public morality and state security, zealous and stupid
cyberwarriors - the growing army of 'counter-hackers', dying to be on the
payroll of the vigilant state, and some zealous and stupid so called
feminist organisations that are more keen on censorship than they are in
any form of human liberation).
However, if the new Communications and Convergence Bill becomes law, then
the control will be excercised PRIOR to the act of actually uploading
anything on to the internet. The new italian cyberlaws require any person
uploading content on to the web to register with the state as a journalist.
This is similar to the system of 'accreditation' of journalists, which is
one way of keeping controls in place over the print medium. But the C & C
Bill goes one step further. It asks that anyone transmitting any media rich
content over any device (read audio or video streaming) now must obtain a
license from the soon to be formed 'Communication Commission of India'. Now
suppose you are running a website and you want to upload streaming audio
content on to the site, and you havent bothered to pay the license fee to
the Communications Commission of India, which means you havent given any
undertaking about the nature of your content. Suppose you have collected
MP3 files from 'free music' sites or have actually gone to the trouble to
record someone making music in their basement or in the open air and are
uploading such files. Now suppose that some of these songs content material
that is objectionable. For instance it could be a Baul Folk song containing
what woud be considered by some 'obscene' and 'scurrilous' lyrics. Then you
are liable to be prosecuted on three counts.
First, for streaming audio ontent without having the license to do so.
Second, for disregarding copyright conventions in your streaming audio content
Third, for communicating 'obscene' content.
In each of these cases you are liable to imprisonment ofr three to five
years, and fines can be levied to the tune of fifty, ten, five or three
crores, depending upon the seriousness of your transgression. This means
that anyone who is happily streaming audio or video, or wants to do so in
the near future, had better be prepared for a spell as a guest of the
Government of India, and have just received a bequest for fifty crores with
which they can pay the fine.
If you think I am joking, take a look at the draft bill (and its wonderful
language) at http://www.mit.gov.in/convergence.htm
I am posting choice and chilling excerpts, in an accompanying post, that
might save you the bother of ploughing through many pages of legales. But I
am sure that are many other lethal provisions whose implications I have not
been able to fathom lurking throughout the draft.
And further, note also that it empowers the state to intercept any message
that may be transmitted on any network anywhere, and that in times of war
of national emergency the state may take over any communication network or
content application provider anywhere.
The draft bill has now been cleared by the GoM (Group of Ministers) and
should hit parliament in the monsoon session.Where it will no doubt receive
unanimous support from right,left and centre. The only way to make a few
semi-comatose MPs to dither before they append their signatures is to make
a sufficient amount of noise in what is nowadays called Civil Society. THe
IT Act is History. No one made any noise at that time. We know what that
has meant. Each piece of draconian legislation learns its draconian way
from its predecessor. And if you thought that the C&C Bill was the end of
the road, think again.Lurking in the corridors of the Ministry of
Information Technology is the Semiconductor Design Bill. Which takes the
regime straight into the hardware, into the question of whether or not the
chips that you are using have the right kind of circuit design. In the near
future, surveillance of what you do will be built into the machines that
you use. All that is required is for the state to mandate that you can only
use a machine which has a certain kind of chip built in, or added to it.
This could mean that the computer that you use will be itself open to
monitoring, by law. This is analogous to the 'registration' and 'licensing'
of typewriters, photocopiers and cyclostyling machines that was once
considered necessary in certain peoples democracies of eastern europe.What
a way to go.
So, we will all soon have
identity cards to enter a cybercafe (which will allow remote digital
monitoring of our individual time online)
licenses to upload web content and stiff punishment if you are an
unlicensed content provider
institutionalized frameworks for surveillance and censorship
mechanisms to block offending sites at the gateways and submarine cable
landing stations
and mandatory chips in our machines
What else do we need?
Meanwhile, a public spirited groups of citizens have filed a Public
Interest Litigation in the Delhi Courts asking for all cybercafes to have
mandatory patrolling and to be fitted by law with filters to ensure that
people cannot access unsavoury sites.The Hindustan Times of May 1, 2001
carried a piece detailing the PIL. I quote from the HT article 'Smut
cookies dont crumble ' by
Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad.(for the full text of this article go to
http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/010501/bigidea.asp)
"...In March, public interest litigation was filed in Delhi High Court
against the cabinet secretary, the police commissioner of
Delhi, the Delhi government, and the union ministries of Communications,
Science and Technology, Home Affairs, Information and Broadcasting, Human
Resources Development, and Social Welfare, Justice and Empowerment. The
petitioners wanted the government to formulate procedures to prevent
Indians, especially minors, from accessing pornographic websites as well as
those advocating drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. They wanted the government to
direct all Indian internet service providers (ISPs) to install filtering
software at their gateways to prevent access to such websites. They also
wanted all cybercafés and educational institutions to compulsorily install
filtering software on their computers to "prevent exposure to inappropriate
material that is sexual, hateful, or violent in nature, or encourages
activities that are dangerous or illegal". They sought
compulsory licensing of cybercafés by the government, and demanded: "At
cybercafés, children below 18 years of age should be allowed to surf the
internet only when they produce a permission letter from their parents,
attested by a gazetted officer". The petitioners also wanted all cybercafés
to maintain complete records of all the websites, chat rooms and bulletin
boards visited by each one of their customers. Admitting the PIL, a
division bench consisting of Chief Justice Arijit Passayat and Justice D.
K. Jain directed the cabinet secretary to "hold a meeting of various
ministries and file an affidavit indicating the definite stand taken by the
government."..."
Surely, this meeting has been held. Measures will be taken.
Meanwhile, No public interest litigations. or campaings, to protect the
privacy, freedom of expression. or right to information of the surfing
citizen are anywhere in sight.Given the sanctimonious zeal of our
judiciary, this censorious argument is likely to be the winning argument,
and the ad-hoc police measures being followed in Bombay will soon become
part of the acceptable, the routine, the everyday. Like the censor
ceritificate before a film screening in the cinema, like the dishwater in
our tv sets, like the boredom in the airwaves.
Meanwhile, we will all be outcastes and untouchables in cyberspace.And the
state will be looking out for our cybershadows.
Shuddhabrata Sengupta
SARAI: The New Media Initiative
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
29, Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 052, India
www.sarai.net
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