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![[When privacy is crime!]](22lead.gif)
Ganesh Nadar
Panickanadar Kudieuruppu is a small village in the Tuticorin district of Tamil Nadu. The village has a bazaar that it shares with 17 other villages. Here, there is a police station, post office, three banks, cloth and steel shops, hotels and numerous schools… But there is no Internet café.
So in 2001, keeping with the times, I started a cyber café. It was an instant success until police harassment made me shut it down last month. Here's my dirge:
One day, in the first week of March 2002, when I was not in, the police turned up at my café. I had left behind Bhoomadevi to run the show. She is physically challenged, afflicted with polio in both legs. Otherwise, Bhooma is as strong as they come.
The police had a lot of questions for Bhooma. They told her that she would have to maintain a register to record the identity of all people coming to the café. Worse, she would have to keep an eye on the Web sites people visited and note down all email IDs to which they sent mail. They wanted my name and address and hers too.
Instead of panicking, Bhooma called me immediately. She told me that what the police was asking for would not be possible. Also the police had threatened that if "there was any mischief" they could arrest her boss and in his absence arrest her. She was in tears. I told her to close down the cyber café. The next day I rushed back to tiny Panickanadar Kudieuruppu, to my pioneering cyber café.
Our café also has an office assistant, Senthil. He told me that the police had asked him to attend a meeting in Tuticorin in the superintendent's office. He had gone there and they told him the same thing that we had earlier heard from our local police.
I went to Tuticorin and visited a couple of cyber cafés there. They too had got the same circular. Now I have only five computers. Some of these people have 10 to 20 computers. For them it is not feasible to appoint people to keep an eye on everybody. They said that they had decided to form an association to take on the police.
I consulted a lawyer, Balaram. He told me that the police had issued the circular under the Information Technology Act. It is another matter that the circular under this new law flies in the face of the Indian Constitution's Article 14. The article says that I can see anything, read anything and write anything as long as it does not disrupt communal harmony, cause caste riots or is a public nuisance.
I decided that I had a good argument in Article 14. Armed with it, I dashed to the superintendent's office in Tuticorin.
Sumeet Sharan, an IPS officer from Bihar, was very polite and gave me the instructions in writing. Among the rules I already knew there was one shocking addition: 'This is to inform you that our sub-inspector and circle-inspector can visit your (Internet) centre any time and ask for records.'
I told Officer Sumeet Sharan, his men need not visit my cyber café for there was no Internet centre anymore. He was surprised. I repeated, "I have closed my centre as off now."
He was upset: "I am following government instructions… See, the basic problem is privacy. You put up small cabins and let them in. They can do whatever they like. If you demolished the cabins then this problem will be solved. And secondly when you take down their address they will be wary."
In all propriety of officiating his duty, this officer was calling privacy a problem!
I pointed out that clients visiting my café could easily give false addresses. He agreed that could happen but not all the time. "And if the man looks suspicious then you can call us," he concluded. I told him that if he thought that I would call him each time I thought somebody was suspicious he had a surprise coming!
I told him what my lawyer had said about Article 14, I also told him that once we formed an association we would close down all cyber cafés in protest and then the Internet surfers would come and meet him. Here we are entering the Information Age and India is supposed to be a software giant. But how far can we go if the Internet is policed like this.
I made my own enquiries and learnt that the sudden police action was sparked because someone had sent a threatening email to our Honourable Chief Minister Manbubhiku Mudalvar Doctor Puratchi Thalaivi Jayalalitha Jayaraman Avargal. I have decided to reopen my centre after we get a brave chief minister.
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