One of the world's top blogs Gigaom picked up a Tech 2.0 story on the possible blackberry blackout.
One of the commenters Ashwath seemed to think that the Indian tech media is "notorious in presenting Indian regulators as Luddites" (Full comment here). While to some extent I do admit that reporters get their kicks from poking fun at clueless officials, I would have to say that the latter can't particularly claim to have been unfairly targetted.
I thought I'd do a quick jog down memory lane and pick one instance every year in the 21st century, that India's administrators have been pwned!
2001: The tragi-comic case of India's 'first cyber crime' that was 'cracked' by the Mumbai cops. The lunacy of it all is best summed up in this Wired story. (A recounting of my personal experiences for a column is here.)
2002: Delhi Police arrests noted Kashmiri journalist Iftikar Gilani on charges of spying after finding "sensitive information" on his computer. Their case falls apart after it is confirmed that the documents recovered from his computer were freely available on the Internet.
2003: Yahoo Groups gets blacked out in India. Beeb report here. I had a Jt. Secy in the Dept. of IT proudly telling me on camera, that "If it's anti-national, we will ban it!"
2004: Baazee (now eBay India) CEO gets arrested by the same cops whom he offered to fully co-operate with, in a case of pornographic content being uploaded on the site. He later told me how they tricked him into coming to the police station on a Friday so that they could jail him over the weekend without a hearing till Monday.
2005: President APJ Abdul Kalam (followed by others including the National Security Adviser) wags a finger at Google Earth. While some claim it's a legit concern, I think that anyone seriously interested in planning an attack is not going to sit and look at 3-5 year old maps that are being sourced from freely available satellite imagery.
2006: The Government goes into overdrive on internet censorship and knocks off most of the blogosphere in the process of targetting 17 (at first random looking, but clearly politically motivated) sites and blogs. Constitutionally guaranteed freedom of expression indeed!
2007: Cops pick up the wrong guy and keep him in custody for 50 days. Apparently the ISP mapped an incorrect physical address to the IP that was posting the anti-Shivaji content. The cops of course weren't concered with the technical details. Thankfully the poor chap is suing!
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I feel that you are mischaracterize my comment. I did not say that there has been no instance of stupidity on the part of sarkari (as you state in your comment in GigaOm). My original comment was the reporting was flawed. On this point, you do not take issue with me. I stated and continue to maintain that Indian press in general, tech press in particular is shoddy in its reporting. They are more like opinion pieces.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure the significance of these instances. To repeat, the point of contention is not smartness of government officials; instead the point is professionalism of Indian press. My exposure of Indian press is only related to VoIP matters and on that topc, I given them failing grade.
Fair enough, you have a gripe with VoIP coverage though since you seem to be an expert, the rule of thumb is that anything you know well, the mass media’s coverage of it will look poor!
ReplyDeleteAs for your original comment saying that the reporting was flawed, I definitely take issue with it! The original CNBC report to which Tech 2.0 referred said that the MHA was not available for comment.
That was breaking news - a reporter doesn’t hold back a story he’s sure of, waiting for officaldom to respond. Subsequent reports confirm everything mentioned in the report was true!
Nevertheless thanks for taking the time to comment and engage in debate!
Cheers