http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,66123,00.html
MUMBAI, India -- India has a split personality. It is the Taj Mahal of outsourcing, the great global back office and one of the largest producers of engineering graduates. On the other hand, its law keepers are poignantly comic enforcers and interpreters of cyberlaws.
Cybersecurity expert Raghu Raman said in 2004, police squads were known to confiscate evidence from some offices, returning with monitors and leaving computers behind. Computing teacher Vijay Mukhi said two years ago cops in Mumbai seized pirated software floppies and stapled them together as though they were documents, destroying the material.
A sleuth from Mumbai's high-profile Cyber Crime Investigation Cell once told Wired News how he planned to tackle hacking: "Let hackers know that some tough people are out here.... I have killed Naxalites (regional terrorists who wage guerrilla warfare against police in some Indian states) in Andhra Pradesh (a state).... We cops have seen such tough situations that we know how to handle boys."
Last month, another incident occurred. Avnish Bajaj, an American citizen of Indian origin who heads Baazee, a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay, was arrested on charges of sale and distribution of pornography. An engineering student had posted a listing on the portal to sell an e-mail with a video attachment of a sexual act involving a schoolgirl. Bajaj began to help the Delhi police, and even assisted in nabbing the boy who had posted the listing. On Dec. 17, Bajaj himself was arrested.
Bajaj's lawyers applied for bail equipped with a printout of the portal's terms and conditions, which included users of Baazee vouching that their items were legal. The engineering student had accepted the terms and conditions by pressing the Accept button. But the court rejected the bail application, according to an executive of the portal, "stating that since there was no ink-based signature, it is void." (Bajaj has subsequently been released on bail).
Mahesh Murthy, a technology investor, is shocked by the court's attitude. "That means, according to the court, all of India's e-commerce is illegal. The Information Technology Act that many industry people worked to put together, so that this country could be competent in the modern world, clearly validates electronic signature. But the court was not aware of it."
Murthy himself has been a victim in the past. When he wanted to register a firm called Pinstorm Online last year, the Registrar of Companies "refused to grant me the name because the government officials out there did not comprehend the word 'online,'" Murthy said. "I had to change the name to Pinstorm Technologies. And, in my detailed application in which I described my company, I had to change the word 'internet' to 'computer network' because the officials did not think (the) internet was a credible medium for business. They told me that."
In July 2001, Mumbai's Cyber Crime Investigation Cell launched its website, and a few days later it was hacked by 23-year-old Anand Khare, who guessed passwords and used readily available hacking tools. He pasted abusive messages about the cops, and invited them to catch him.
He was nabbed, along with Mahesh Mhatre, who owned the cybercafé where Khare had executed the hacking. It was a triumph for the Cyber Crime Investigation Cell after the public embarrassment of having its own website defaced. The cops held a meeting of businessmen to reassure them. A corporate executive who was present recalls a senior cop gnashing his teeth and declaring, "If there is a cybercrime committed in your office, just let us know. We will find him and get the confession out of him."
Soon after his arrest, Mhatre told the media and the National Human Rights Commission that he was hit with belts and that a senior inspector asked him to lick his shoes. Following these allegations -- odd even by Indian standards -- Mumbai police announced they were searching for jobs for the boys. Khare was even placed in the firm of Mahatma Gandhi's great grandson Tushar Gandhi.
Last month, a Mumbai tabloid wanted to demonstrate that the average Indian cop lived in a world far removed from everyday technology. It asked a constable to use his ATM card and photographed his every step. He did not know how to use the card and the machine swallowed it. He was left smiling sheepishly in the final frame.
"The cop who checks your car license does not own a car," said Raghu Raman, who heads an information security firm called Mahindra Special Services Group. "The passport official who checks your passport does not go abroad. The cop to whom you go to register a credit card misuse does not own a credit card. If a cop is in no position to own a computer, how can he fight cybercrime? The field cop (and) the beat constable live in another world."