India's Cops Meet Technology 393
TopherTG writes "Do cops told to seize computers to return only with monitors, stapling pirated floppies together or arresting CEOs for their customer's crimes sound familiar? It would in India. Wired is running a rather humorous article on the minglings between cops and techies."
Familiar? Yep! (Score:5, Insightful)
Do cops [...] arresting CEOs for their customer's crimes sound familiar?
Why yes. It sounds like torrent tracker sites, which host no files, being taken down for the crimes of their users.
This reminds me of the Made in Japan (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, let's laugh at the silly Indians and their computer inexperience, while they start grabbing more and more outsourced IT jobs.
This could pan out to be very interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Siezed Information (Score:3, Insightful)
2. Department computers siezed by Indian government containing US customer info.
3. Indian government now has full access to the detailed financial, demographic and medical information of US citizens.
Not everyone (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Dell Support (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, and we won't bother to tell you that what you're doing will in fact wipe your hard drive.
(not that I've had this problem, but I know people who have)
Humorous? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't find an ignorant police force beating confessions out of people with a belt that humorous.
Michael. [michael-forman.com]
~sarcasam~Those Poor backwareds people~sarcasam~ (Score:5, Insightful)
In other news:
Those goofy Westerns who cant even figure out how to use a non-western toilet in the rest of the world!
Video at 10:00
The issue is not stupidity (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally I think this is just a transient period while the country adjusts. What will happen down the road? Probably even wider economic disparity.
Faked story. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is just a racist jab at "those comical brown fellows".
Glass houses.. (Score:4, Insightful)
It would also be a wise idea to first check the tech horror stories of the 80s in the us and uk before making fun of indian cops..
if you are so much against india and the tech support that we provide then stop using these products and start using "prouly made / supported in the us" products.. don't whine.
- dhawal
Re:Not everyone (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure many people here don't know much about Fine Art or Knitting or something, and that doesn't make them stupid, either.
Their jobs aren't to work with computers, so whilst it is 'okay' to laugh at their mistakes, we mustn't mistake them for stupid.
Re:Sounds like... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:~sarcasam~Those Poor backwareds people~sarcasam (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't irrelevant to them. It is their job to know what they are doing, and they don't.
They are trying to enforce old school rules in a way that doesn't make sense in modern times.
Lots and Lots of wrong. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Faked story. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would you think that? We're talking about a country where the average citizen earns $450 a year. If the average person is able to afford a computer, then it's not going to be a top of the line system.
This is just a racist jab at "those comical brown fellows".
This was a jab not based on racism. Nothing was brought up on their skin color. There was no defamation of their nationality. The article talked about the courts, the police, and the law and nothing else.
If you want to find anything negative, it was a jab at the power structure of a poor country trying to regulate something they know nothing about because they can't afford the equipment. It was a jab at them being poor.
Re:Apple (Score:1, Insightful)
It's funny, Laugh (Score:3, Insightful)
Really, did anyone read the whole article?
Hint: If this had happened in the US or Europe, slashbots would be up in arms. But it happened to "oh, those quaint indians" and suddenly it's funny.
Re:The issue is not stupidity (Score:2, Insightful)
You misspelled 'the United States'.
Re:Sounds like... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This reminds me of the Made in Japan (Score:3, Insightful)
Contrast this to the first-world countries where students have grow up with top of the line systems. Elementary students learn typing at the same time they learn how to write. And where high school students already know programming and contribute to open source projects.
The only thing going in India's favor is the fact that their smartest and brightest get into computer science. So, after four years they are halfway decent. However, that does not necessarily make them equivalent to coders in the first world who get into computer science for the love of programming.
Re:seems like a weak argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Guess what? There's already such a unit in place (at least in Mumbai). Quoth the article:-
"It was a triumph for the Cyber Crime Investigation Cell after the public embarrassment of having its own website defaced."
Recent articles in Indian newspapers have also mentioned some very good successes by the Cyber Crime Cell.
Another thing: The belt-beating sadly is very commonplace and IMHO, is very mild compared to the other police brutality incidents. However, in all fairness, there is a bit of background behind this. Mumbai has always been know as the organized crime capital of India, and with very good reason. In a country where gun related violence is quite rare, Mumbai was going crazy with a spate of shootings.
In response to this, the mayor, police chief, and the top brass decided to wage war on organized crime. Their MO was simple: Catch the buggers, shoot them dead, and call it an "encounter" death. In fact, the "encounter" squad of the Mumbai police was so successful that they completely broke the back of most of the major crime syndicates. My point of this digression being that this official acceptance of police violence does have a trickle down effect.
Another aspect to the excessive violence is that in India, the majority of the crime commited is petty in nature and the thieves are often dirt poor compulsives. Very often, the police simply decide to give the common thief a "sound thrashing", lock them up for a couple of days, and then release them. They don't have much experience with white-collared criminals and don't have a clue of how they should behave with them.
It's easy to ridicule something that seems very quaint or barbaric. A lot of it is justified as well. However, please also realize that social systems in different countries often have a history of their own. Usually, these are borne out of good reasons, and they only seem barbaric today because the reasons have become outdated.
Having said this, i do shudder to get into the wrong side of the law in India, especially in the really backward states like Bihar or UP. Which reminds me, back when i was in high school, a couple of friends of mine were caught drunk driving by the Delhi police. They were made to squat frog-legged with 2 heavy bricks on their backs! All night. Now, that's a backache for you!
Taj simile = Good Thing!? (Score:4, Insightful)
The Taj Mahal is a TOMB!
Search Warrants (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The issue is not stupidity (Score:5, Insightful)
Just in case you werent and are a clueless fuck, then allow me to retort..
I dont think much of the nuclear weapons program but I agree its necessary evil. I am not for another arms race which India cannot afford, but anything to keep its neighbours in arms length aint bad.
As for the space program, you understand you are talking about a program which is homegrown and sustained wholly by solid state boosters which were built in India, using its own technology because US pressured Russia in to saying no when we needed it. So we built our own. So there..
Hitech voting equipment in India is a misnomer. What we have is quite low tech, heck, it doesnt even have a touch screen, but what it has is a low cost solution which more than meets the needs of our election. And you know what, it fucking works. And we have failsafes in place if something goes wrong. What about yours?
As far as the Tsunami is concerned, India was the first one to say no when aid was offered. India had around 500$ million in the Prime Minister's relief fund and told countries offering aid to instead give it to the nations who could cope with the disaster. Now thats what make me proud of who I am. We can take care of our own.
So please, I sincerely hope you were trolling on this fine Thursday afternoon. If you werent.. well ignorance is not curable.
Re:Wrong (Score:1, Insightful)
India today != Japan in the 1960s (Score:5, Insightful)
Japan has been, since the Shogunate, a pretty centralized operation and a land mass about equal to that of California. It has one ethnic group, Okinawans and other tiny minorities aside. Until the arrival of missionaries, the dominant religions (Shintoism and Buddhism) got along ok. By contrast, India is a large nation with many languages, violently opposing religions (Hinduism and Islam).
Americans see the (academically speaking) creme de la creme of India, and sometimes we forget that most of India, both in land mass and population, is third world. Look at a street in Tokyo, then look at one in Calcutta. If that isn't a big enough contrast, just look down. Better yet, just take a deep breath and smell. Japan was able to do what it did, IMHO, because it was able to educate and modernize itself quickly and pervasively. Whether India can do that, or even if it is willing to do that (They throw away their best engineers, who graduated from a massive, publicly-funded university system! Does this sound like a sane government to you?), remains to be seen.
Re:seems like a weak argument (Score:1, Insightful)