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Certificate Course in Cyber Laws..at Mysore..to commence shortly

Beware of a Renewed Attempt to Push ITA-2000 Amendments

This report in Times of India suggests that there is a renewed PR exercise to push through the proposed amendments to ITA-2000 as proposed last year. The proposed amendments have been thoroughly analysed on this site and suggested as "A  Conception to protect one offender" which turned out to be a "Gross Dilution of the law in favour of Criminals". It is necessary to revisit some of the aspects of the proposed amendments to understand why it is "Criminal Friendly" and has to be scrapped. It may be reiterated that the proposed changes are "Ultra vires" the Act and can be questioned on procedural grounds...

Now I would like the TOI Editor to give his comments on whether it would be right to consider that the article "Changes in IT Act would've cost Airtel" by Manoj Mitta which appeared today is in fact a planted story to push the amendments to ITA-2000 which are anti-industry, anti-consumer and pro-criminals.  ...Details

Police hold the Key to International perceptions on BPO Security

The fraud recently reported in Bangalore from HSBC in which an employee acted in collusion with external fraudsters is another reminder to BPOs that the threat of frauds from employees within the organization is a risk which technical measures alone cannot mitigate. Such frauds highlight the need for "Techno legal Security measures" through a CyLawCom audit process. In this context, it would be better if BPOs take a leaf out of the employee education programme followed by another leading Banking BPO in Chennai which conducts "Cyber Ethics" training for every incoming employee... Report in DH, Report in timesnow.tv

In yet another fraud recently reported from a HR-BPO in Chennai, fraud was committed by some of the business associates of the Company where also the assistance of local employees has been revealed. Sooner the BPO managements realize the importance of Cyber Law Education in reducing the employee frauds, it is better for them.

It must also be appreciated that Bangalore Cyber Crime Police Station was able to solve the complicated HSBC case. Hopefully Chennai Cyber Crime Police would also prove its ability in solving the HR-BPO case on their hands.

Finally how the cases would be pursued in the Courts would be the real test of the efficiency of the Police in such cases. Hopefully both Bangalore and Chennai Police would successfully prosecute the offenders so that the International BPO industry would feel confident about the security of their operations in India.

Chetan IT Security to Provide Total Forensic Solution

Chetan IT Security Services, Bangalore, has set up a facility in Bangalore to provide a total Cyber Forensic service including Computer Forensics, Phone Forensics and Internet Forensics. Chetan IT securities will also market ICS range of Forensic and IT Products, Paraben range of Phone Forensic Products and other carefully chosen Forensic and Security products. Details at www.chetan24security.com :Photos of President of India at the exhibition

e-Discovery Rules evoke compliance blues

The new E-Discovery rules expected to become effective in December 2006 and non compliance is expected to cost the users heavily. Essentially, according to the proposed rules, any time a business realizes that a lawsuit may be on the horizon, there is a duty to preserve all relevant information  even though the lawsuit has not actually been filed. From that point forward, all relevant e-data records should be kept. A "Notice" of legal action will therefore trigger an enormous responsibility on the company.

It is feared that since the law may give a right to people to demand production of e-records consisting of e-mails, mobile phone records etc including meta data and deleted data, companies would have a hard time in complying with e-data management. The SCO Group Vs Daimler Chrysler case in which meta data in word document was used to defend a case had already caused a flutter in the community on the implications of technology on legal liabilities. e-Discovery rules may put these liabilities on a more formal basis and increase the complications in e-business. Perhaps the law makers are taking too much on their plates and like in the case of IPR, the new law is likely to be an area of eternal friction between technology and laws.

While laws like the "Right to Information" was limited to certain types of committed documents, the e-discovery laws appear to tread the domain of work sheets which are not committed documents. This is unlikely to stand the test of time except in rarest of rare circumstances and in the meantime cause untold havoc in the business community.

Though India does not yet have similar laws, "Due Diligence" under ITA-2000 may imply responsibility for preservation of evidence in a corporate world and any notification of the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology under Section 65 of the Act can bring similar e-evidence management regime in India too.

 Related Articles: E-discovery is a bane to businesses : New e-discovery rules go into effect in December : SCO Group Vs IBM : Sco Group Vs Daimler Chrysler-reg hidden text

Cyber-crime is a key concern in India

According to a  global survey on cyber-crimes and their impact on businesses conducted by IBM, Cyber-crime is perceived to be a critical threat by Indian businesses and its biggest impact is in terms of loss of revenue. Report in Express Computers

Copyright is it a flawed concept?

With changes in technology, the concept of Copyright is often at conflict with the wishes of the majority in the society. While regulators are trying to correct this by changes to the copyright law and introduction of new laws, a more fundamental question if "Copyright" is becoming an outdated concept atleast in the digital medium  needs to be debated. Here are a few interesting articles in this regard. Articles from Blogcritics.org

SMS for NRI Fund Transfer?..A mine field of Risks

It is reported that the Government is considering a proposal to introduce a system of NRI money transfers in the Indian Banking system triggered through SMS messages. While the idea is welcome as a step in the right direction for using technology to meet consumer convenience, it is necessary to address the issues of security of electronic communications in general and mobile communications in particular before such a measure is introduced. It is a good time to start a debate on this subject and collate the security problems that may arise in the process. I hope organizations such as IIIT Law will take the lead in getting the industry views on this matter. Report in BL

Online Medicine Practitioners Warned

Legal practitioners in USA have warned the growing community of online medical practitioners that they should be vary of malpractice suits. Many of the Indian hospitals have also adopted telemedicine and not adopting standard information security practices as required by law. It is necessary that they review their information handling procedures to comply with the regulations as per ITA-2000. Report in law.com

File Sharing Ban to go...in Sweden

The justice minister of Sweden has said that Sweden could introduce a charge on all broadband subscriptions to compensate music and film companies for the downloading of their work, while legalizing the downloading of copyright-protected material. This pragmatic step could lead to a paradigm shift in the way regulatory agencies may view Copyright Laws in future.While US continues in the direction of stricter laws in this domain as indicated by the Digital Music Copyright Bill (Refer report in news.com)introduced in the House of Representatives, the approach of Sweden is refreshing and should be taken note of by India which is planning to enact a new "Optical Disk Protection Act". The US approach appears to  take copyright protection to dangerous proportions and require licenses for every cache, buffer and other "incidental" copy of a song and India needs to steer clear of this trend of over protection.  Report in thelocal.se

Police have a right to tap Internet and VOIP

In a landmark judgment,  the US Court of Appeals for the district of Columbia Circuit   upheld the government's authority to force high-speed Internet service providers to give law enforcement authorities access for surveillance purposes. The court concluded that the FCC requirement was a "reasonable policy choice" even though information services are exempted from the government's wiretapping authority. The ruling may however be restricted to tapping telephone conversations and may not extend to tapping e-mail accounts. Details at Reuter

Bill to prevent RFID usage

Opposition to use of RFID tags in driving license, student ID cards is emerging in USA from Privacy Protection activists. A bill to this effect has been mooted by a senator in California. Report in mercurynews.com

Cyber Crime Accused Gets Bail

Calcutta High Court granted bail to Surojit Pal, a post graduate in IT and a systems developer at a Salt Lake-based firm who is charged under Section 67 of ITA-2000 for  allegedly sending pornographic material to women attached to an NGO. This is one of the first such cases to come for trial in Kolkata. It may be recalled here that in a similar case in Chennai a software professional was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment including an imprisonment of 2 years under Section 67 of ITA-2000. (Suhas Katti case)...Report in TOI

Related information: Some cases in India ..delhihighcourts.nic

"Cyber Laws Demystified".. New Book by Naavi

Naavi's latest book "Cyber Laws Demystified" was soft launched at the Nimhans Convention Center during the Indian Police Congress. The book is a comprehensive coverage on Cyber Laws both ITA-2000 as well as IPR and other issues.

Structured into 24 chapters it also covers the proposed amendments to ITA-2000 in detail as an appendix. A copy of the Information Technology Act 2000 is also appended to the book.

The book also has several individual chapters on the legal issues of Cyber Banking, Cyber Advertising, Cyber Taxation and Cyber Terrorism.

The book is priced at Rs 750/-. A hard cover library version will shortly be released.

ICS-Computer Forensic Products on display at Bangalore

Products from Intelligent Computer Solutions Inc, (ICS) the US Company manufacturing Computer Forensic products are on display at the Indian Police Congress at Nimhans Convention Center, Bangalore. The three day event was inaugurated by the honourable President of India, Mr Abdul Kalam in the presence of the Governor and Chief Minister of Karnataka.

During his keynote address, the President highlighted the need for the Police to take the assistance of ICT for administration of internal security and also urged effective training to meed the demands of the emerging Cyber Crimes and Cyber terrorism.

After inaugurating the connected exhibition, Mr Kalam also visited the stall of Chetan IT Securities and observed the products of ICS on display.

ICS manufactures "Disk Cloning" devices such as Solo3 which can create two cloned hard disks simultaneously on the field.  Cloning ofe a 40 GB hard disk takes hardly  15 minutes and the device comes with a write protect mechanism and MD5 hashing. Image Masster is another device on display which can create eight (or more) simultaneous copies. ICS also has a very useful "Wipe Masster" which is critical for most IT Companies and Banks. The products are on display at the stall of Chetan IT Security and provide an unique opportunity for Police and IT Security personnel to have a first hand knowledge of the product and a demonstration. Mr Sachin Pandey, of Agape Inc, Nagpur, the national distributors for ICS Forensic products would also be available during the exhibition. Some Photos

New IPR Law in India?

The Union Ministry of science, in India is in the process of drafting new laws for the protection of IPR. The Science and Technology minister Kapil Sibal announcedt at Kabour that the objective of the legislation is  for ownership of intellectual property. It is not however clear how this proposed law will relate to the existing Copyright Act and Patent Acts, proposed Optical Disk protection act and the demand for law on domain name ownership.  Article in CIOL.com

Mobile Phone Theft..Mobile Service Providers Violating Law?

Recently a spate of Mobile Phone thefts have raised an issue of what steps the mobile service providers have taken up to prevent such crimes proliferating. The Police have been requesting for real time IMEI tracing facility using appropriate call analyzing software to be installed by the mobile service operators. However there is a reluctance by some of the operators due to cost considerations. However from the point of view of "Due Diligence" for Digital Network operators as envisaged in ITA-2000, the Mobile service providers need to take effective steps in preventing the use of their networks for Cyber Crimes which includes Mobile crimes..failing which there could be vicarious liability on them under section 85 of ITA-2000.   Report in Newstoday

Indian Police Congress..at Bangalore

The Wireless department of the Bangalore Police is coordinating this year's Indian Police Congress which is being held at Nimhans Convention Center, Bangalore between 6th and 8th of June. The event would be inaugurated by the Honourable President of India. The Uninon Home Minister is expected to participate in the valedictory functions. The theme of the event is "Technology" and several lectures are organized for the delegates. An exhibition open to public is being organized as a part of the event in which latest technical equipments are being displayed by various companies. More details would be available at the DGP's office or the Wireless office of the Bangalore Police in Bangalore.

IIIT Law Launched

In a well attended function, IIIT Law was launched at Bangalore today, the 2nd June 2006 by the Hon'ble Chief Justice of Karnataka High Court. The Hon'ble Chief Minsiter Mr Kumaraswamy presided over the function. Mr N R Narayana Murthy of Infosys and Mr K R Ananda, Banking Ombudsman were the guests of honour. Mr Somasekhara spoke about the formation of IIIT Law. Naavi spoke about the plans of IIIT Law....Key Note Address of Naavi  Essence of the Speech captured in the form of a poem in  Kannada composed by Naavi :Murthy calls for New IT Law Institute..tmcnet.com

[P.S: As of now Naavi has withdrawn himself from the activities of IIITLaw due to his other engagements...Naavi]