Across India a wave of fear is spreading amongst Domain Name registrars that they may be arrested by the local police. The fear psychosis has been created by the news item that in Noida, Police have arrested the domain registrar who had provided links to of 36 websites on which pornographic content was uploaded. (See report in TOI: Report in HT)
Though there might have been a justification for penal action against the owners of pornographic sites and also for indirect action against the intermediaries who facilitated the crime, the action of “Arresting” the domain name registrars appear to be an excessive reaction by the Police. This follows the trend where Police appear to be using Cyber Laws as the new weapon of aggression against the society.
So far, we were only worried of politicians misusing the arrest provisions through the subservient police as in the case of Pondicherry and Palghar But now we have the incidence of Police getting intoxicated with the arbitrary power of arrest. Every law provides for such powers as an enabling provision so that the law enforcement does not feel deprived of powers when there is a need to exercise them. But if Police think it is a license to harass public, then it is time to curb the powers of the police. After all “Arrest” is not a “Right” of the police. It is meant to be resorted to only as an extreme measure to deter an accuse from getting away. While the police deliberately let some criminals to get away some time while in custody or while on parole, their penchant for arresting ordinary persons is revolting.
While Naavi.org supports police action against companies who run their business solely for the purpose of committing crimes such as the recent report on BPO for Financial scam indicated, we strongly oppose using arrest of business executives such as domain registrars .
It is necessary that such attitude of the police is resisted by the society. I therefore call for Noida police to offer a public explanation on why the arrest in this case was found necessary.
Simultaneously this is time for Netizens to think of how to protect themselves from the police atrocities in cyber space.
Naavi
