The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : On cyber policing and measures for the future

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Sunday, Dec 09, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

On cyber policing and measures for the future

Photo: M. Govarthan

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As Chairman of the Cyber Society of India, R. Ramamurthy takes care of the interests of the common man in the cyber world.

“The organisation,” he says, “is for the netizen, by the netizen and of the netizen.

” That apart, in his capacity as the Chairman he has suggested to the Government to amend the IT Act of 2000 to reflect the realities of the present day as well as to make it relevant in the future.

He talks to Karthik Madhavan about the changes to be made to the Act, training to be provided to the police personnel and how to effectively address cyber crimes.

Sections of the IT Act in this fast changing world are vague and do not talk about types of cyber crimes.

“There is only a generic mention of cyber crimes,” he says and points to Sections 65, 66 and 67 to drive home his point.

For example, there is no mention of the word ‘cyber squatting’, which is a crime. Cyber squatting, according to Wikipedia, is registering, trafficking or using a domain name with bad faith or intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else.

Likewise, an e-commerce company registered online does not come under the purview of the Indian Companies Act and requires no registration from the Registrar of Companies.

“It is things like these that should change,” says Dr. Ramamurthy and adds that a Parliamentary Committee has passed ‘strictures’ against the Government for an Act not reflecting the realities of the day. “Accordingly, the Government with assistance from the IT people has come up with a draft amendment, which is now open to the public for comments,” he says.

Dr. Ramamurthy wants change in policing cyber crimes as well. “Today’s police force is ill-equipped to deal with cyber crimes. While a few top-level officers may have some idea of what it is, the junior level staff at the ground level has no clue as to what it is and how to deal with it.”

His suggestion is for setting up an exclusive All-India cyber police. “What we need is an exclusive police force with competent people, as they would be dealing with the most intelligent and sophisticated criminals,” he says. As a first step towards this his organisation has been training Cyber Cell police personnel in Chennai as well as in Coimbatore.

Lesson

Dr. Ramamurthy also suggests incorporating cyber security lessons to police recruits.

“All police training colleges should have lessons in cyber security, so that when police recruits begin their job they would have a good idea of what they are into.”

His suggestion does not stop with the policing alone. “Like a special police force, we want a separate judiciary to tackle cyber crimes. A judge and jury with good knowledge of the cyber world should deal with the crime.”

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