The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : e-filing in court from January

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Nov 18, 2006
ePaper

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

e-filing in court from January

Special Correspondent

Workshop on `digital signatures and cyber crimes' organised

CHENNAI: With computerisation in courts having started, the Madras High Court proposes to introduce e-filing from January, Chief Justice A.P. Shah said on Friday.

Computerisation was slow, but steady. "We are many, many years behind," he said. He expressed the hope that the networking of all courts in Tamil Nadu would be completed in a couple of years.

Delivering the keynote address at a two-day workshop on `Digital signatures and cyber crimes - technological and legal issues', jointly organised by the Indian Society of Criminology (ISC) and the Information Security and Cyber Crime Research Foundation (ISCCRF) here, he said that though a digital signature was a powerful tool the concept has still not been widely accepted in the country, as it had been difficult to move it from theory to reality because of cultural resistance, unequal access to technology, and lack of adequate legal and service infrastructure to support such a major shift. "Even today, paper-based documents continue to be seen as more trustworthy than electronic ones, largely because they are tangible and because people are used to them."

Digital signatures, if properly implemented and utilised, offer promising solutions to problems posed by imposters and message integrity by minimising the risk of undetected message tampering and forgery.

When electronic transactions permeated the government and corporate sectors, digital signatures would be introduced in the country to effect economy of scale in the management of time, resources and space, which would go a long way in increasing the nation's wealth.

Inaugurating the workshop, E.M. Sudarsana Natchiappan, MP and Chairman, Parliamentary Committee for Law and Justice, said the Information Technology Act had been drafted after a comparative study of laws in other countries. The Chairman of Information Security and Cyber Crime Research Foundation, Rama K. Subramaniam, said the workshop would deliberate on topics including digital signatures technology, standards and applications, legal perspectives, and cyber crimes involving digital signatures.

R. Thilagaraj, Chairman, Indian Society of Criminology, Criminology Department, Madras University, said cyber crimes were on the increase, posing a big challenge to the police and the prosecution.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu