Investigation into some blasts that occurred in India have led to some evidence that terrorists used cybercafes for communication and coordination. Mumbai police now wants to record the keypresses across all 500 cybercafes in the city.
The Mumbai police are in dialogue with M/s Micro Technologies for procuring a software called CARMS (Cyber Access Remote Monitoring System), a powerful monitoring tool that seeks to curb cyber crime.
CARMS monitors web browsing, file transfers, news, chats, messaging and e-mail, including all encoded attachments. In a sensitive environment, CARMS can also be used to restrict user or group access to only approved external and internal sites, explained a company official.
Which means that it will log everything – logins, credentials, credit card numbers, anything that you type in a cybercafe computer. Concerns of privacy breach have been raised, and as Amit Varma says, the move does not seem rational. It can make sense only if someone on the other end is reading through and analyzing all the logs. Also, collecting data is one aspect, maintaining it in a secure place is another critical concern. It will be a disaster if these fall in hands of the ill-intentioned people. I, for one, think that privacy can be compromised for security, but unless these questions get answered, it is quite possible that the cybercafe business will go down.
September 11th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
[...] iFaceThoughts: Mumbai Police Wants To Monitor Activities In Cybercafes [...]
September 11th, 2007 at 8:03 pm
I doubt it. We (Indians) largely undervalue the loss of privacy especially if we are offered a blanket excuse of national security even when it makes no sense.
September 12th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
I think this might be better than the alternative – ie. requiring the ISPs to monitor and record all internet usage. That would have killed off all privacy.