[Reader-list] Regulation of the Internet by the Indian State- 3rd Sarai I-Fellowship Post

[Dwaipayan Banerjee]

Hi Raman,

I've been following your posts with interest and
really look forward to your work in the coming months.
The interviews will be an extremely interesting
exercise!

I just thought maybe I'd offer some stray thoughts on
this, purely academic. 

1. One, perhaps would be: what theoretical notion of
State, or Statehood can we work with to understand it
in relationship to the Internet?  Apart from the
censorship angle, which of course you are exactly on
the right track, I think it might be interesting to
look at it in terms of 'Secrecy' and a fetishising of
technology, both working in different ways but
ultimately together to control the flows of
information. In India, I am thinking of Itty Abraham's
theorising of the Indian State in his book on the
atomic bomb.  It might be worthwhile to add that to
your bibliographic list.

2. If one does think of practices of establishing
technological secrecy as a essential tactic of the
state, the special powers that the state takes on
during times of disturbance offer a special insight
into its censoring of the internet.  I am thinking
here of 1998, when the BJP made it mandatory for all
private communications to be made available to
security agencies such as the IB and the RAW.  This
was around the time the Goverment captured high-tech
encryption technologies from Kashmiri terrorists.  I
am also thinking of legal control over electronic
communication in sections 14 through 17 of MCOCA,
those suspending rights to encryption, without any
safeguards at all. I wouldn't be surprised to find
similiar legal control of communication in other
legislation similiar to the MCOCA.

3.  If we are thinking of secrecy, it might also be
interesting to look at the laws on
encryption/decryption and changes in them over the
last decade or so.  I know that in the Information
Technology Bill of 1999-2000, under Section 68 'the
Government is enabled to intercept and decrypt any
information transferred through the computer resource.
 Although wire-tapping is protected against as an
invasion of privacy, section 69 allows for
interception of any information transmitted through a
computer resource and requires that users disclose
encryption keys or face a jail sentence of up to seven
years.  Of course, this direction is only to be given
if the CCA is satisfied that it is necessary or
expedient so to do in the interests of the following:
the sovereignty or integrity of India, the security of
the state, friendly relations with foreign states,
public order, or for preventing incitement to the
commission of any cognizable offence.' 

Of course, I'm sure you're aware of this, and I may
well have missed your posting on this.  What I
basically intend to suggest is in addition to the
legal, perhaps try to additionally unpack the
technological 'black-box' of cryptography and the
internet, to better understand how it has been
constructed, developed and used?  

4. The reason I am thinking of unpacking
'technologies'
that the State uses in its practices of control is
because it offers a new approach, one that involves
the social study of developing technologies to
understand the interpenetrations of the technological
and the social.  This seems to me to be a better way
than to see technology as a 'tool', as something
finished that is then manipulated by the state,
bloggers and so on. This of course is the direction
the 2.0 approach is taking too in a very different
way. 

ALL THIS ACADEMIC DILLY-DALLYING DOES HAVE A PURPOSE,
WHICH IN MY MIND IS TO NUANCE OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE
'STATE' AND ITS PRACTICES OF GOVERNMENTALITY AND
CONTROL.  RATHER THAN SEE IT AS SOMETHING REPRESSIVE
(CENSORING THE INTERNET) IT SEEMS USEFUL TO SEE IT AS
PRODUCING THE INTERNET AND ITS TECHNOLOGY IN SPECIFIC
WAYS, PRODUCING AN ARENA OF CONTROL DISGUISED FAR MORE
EFFECTIVELY THAN IN THE PAST. TO ME, THIS PERHAPS BEST
EPITOMISES THE WORK THAT FOUCAULT AND DELEUZE HAVE
DONE IN REFINING OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE STATE - AWAY
FROM A PURELY REPRESSIVE MECHANISM TO A PRODUCTIVE AND
DIFFUSEDLY CONTROLLING ONE. THROUGH THE INTERNET
PERHAPS, IS THE STATE FINALLY AND MINUTELY LOCAL.

I know your perspective and approach might be
different, and a very valuable one at that, trained as
you are in the legal framework. I thought I'd just
share some random thoughts because I found your posts
of much interest.  I would completely understand and
maybe even agree that it might too early to start
theorising, even before one has done the ground
fieldwork that you intend to do. But since you were
reading around at this stage...

Best of luck with your work!
Dwai.


      Once upon a time there was 1 GB storage on Yahoo! Mail. Go here for happy ending http://in.mail.yahoo.com