Re: India shows the way

You may be right, but I don't agree. There is a common thread that runs from pure colonial rule to a possibly engineered nexus in modern society between the State and business. Actually, in India, the imposition of colonial rule was actually meant to protect us (as Britishers, of course) from the worst of the commercial excesses of the BEIC.

As we all are aware, the introduction of the first IT Act (1875) was in fact to consolidate the till then hazy status of the countrywide telegraph network, documented as one of the important factors that helped save the soldiers of the BEIC from being defeated in the conflict that erupted in 1857, by providing communication between camps of beleaguered troops and helping to achieve strategic gains in some battles.

I referred to nothing more than this in introducing the subject of colonial rule, and colonial laws. 


Let us move to the Internet, now, jumping twelve decades. In its infancy, protocols and standards were developed to aid and ease a communication system whose basic design was not efficiency particularly, but operation with minimal resources, a 'self-healing' network reconfiguring itself when nodes or interconnection points go down. On the one hand, commercial interests have been lobbying to modify standards in order to enable the equivalent of analogue media processes on the Net, thus 'dual-speed' internetworks that would deliver enhanced services at an unspecified higher cost, including 'enhanced' security (which actually only means lowering security for everyone else) and on the other, state players deliberately compromising security standards wherever possible, in dozens of seemingly innocuous ways.

The State also tends to control lawmaking, moreso in countries like India, where institutions of checks and balances are often found wanting. This is not a criticism, it is a simple observation about the rate of adoption of democracy as witnessed by the examples of the countries where it was made constitutionally mandatory decades or centuries before us. 

However, the question is now, without a wrenching breakdown and restart, can it be fixed? But more important than that is, are we even equipped to independently find all those compromises, loopholes and backdoors, and to institute desirable structural changes in such a restarted Internet?

 
Vickram
http://communicall.wordpress.com
http://vvcrishna.wordpress.com


On Monday, 26 May 2014, 12:25, Kiritkumar Lathia <[email protected]> wrote:
 

>
>
>"In India, as we know, recording metadata as well as some kinds of 
communications is the job of the telecom companies already, built right 
into their licenses. No fear of any law to prevent it, as the 
combination of the two IT Acts, the telegraph and the 
telecommunications, spanning 125 years ofcolonial thinking on command 
and control are quite effective on stripping us of most of the rights we might have thought a given."
>
>
>To my knowledge, this has nothing to do with (British) "colonialism" since all "states and businesses", since time immemorial, have used "information" as power and have had "spying".The difference today is the sheer (information) collection capability thanks to the "Information Technology" advances - all the rest remains the same. It would be naive to assume that there can be "laws" to regulate this.
>
>
>Note also the "wars" on where the data is stored. Where is the "cloud" (which physical country)? That country's rule applies! How is the data routed (through which countries)? Those countries can (and do) intercept data flow! Where are the primary DNS? That also provides possibility to monitor!
>
>So to assume that Internet is somehow "safe" is the biggest folly!
>
>
>I do not think, even in his nightmare, did George Orwell envision the Orwellian Big Brother as we have it today and it will get even worse. For those who have not seen the Sci-Fi 2002 movie "Minority Report" should see it from IT capability view-point. In the span of just 10 years, what was Sci-Fi is now fact!
>
>
>Welcome to real world - Edward Snowdon provided the reality check by leaking sensitive documents. Should he be treated as "criminal" (he did do criminal activity according to the laws of his country - USA - where he is treated as a criminal) or should he be treated as a "hero" to make people realise this reality of the snooping powers of USA government agency ?
>
>
>
>
>

_______________________________________________
India-gii mailing list
India-gii-IAPFreCvJWP2/[email protected]
https://lists.india-gii.org/mailman/listinfo/india-gii