India's Cops Meet Technology

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."

seems like a weak argument

[LiquidMind]

"The passport official who checks your passport does not go abroad. The cop to whom you go to register a credit card misuse does not own a credit card. If a cop is in no position to own a computer, how can he fight cybercrime?"

that seems like a pretty weak argument. granted a non-computer user (read: cop) may not be able to tell a harddrive from a computer case (still synonymous to some people), that doesn't mean that he can't be given instructions on it. I doubt cops *always* know what they are dealing with but that's what makes their job interesting.

i don't know how a car works yet i still use it on a daily basis.

Nothing wrong with Stapling Floppies

[texasfight]

...so long as you do it right. 5 1/4 " floppies are square, the media inside is circlular.

The surface area of the floppy is about 27.5 square inches. The circular media is inscribed within the square, and can be no bigger than 21.5 square inches.

That leaves about 6 square inches that is safe for stapling.

Hmmm... about 6 inches... where have I heard that before?

Re:Sounds like...

[skraps]

As long as the staple is in a corner, it wouldn't really matter, right? If it's a 5.25 then I can't see it making any difference. For 3.5's, it should be fine as long as the window still opens.

Re:Humorous?

[WIAKywbfatw]

Hello, Rodney King called. He wants his memories back.

I think I could find examples of ignorant, brutal or corrupt police officers in any country you care to name in less than two minutes. What's your point here, apart from India-bashing?

Re:The issue is not stupidity

[The Bungi]

Yet India is spending billions of dollars on nuclear weapons, a space program of dubious value and high-tech voting equipment that fails to work half the time and is closed to public scrutiny. Yet they have people starving in the streets and deep problems like caste-insipired racism, sectarian violence, a prostitution industry that puts most of Asia to shame and one of the highest AIDS rates in the world. Not to mention the recent tsunami victims.

It's amazing how a society can have such stark contrasts.

Linking != Distributing

[SeanDuggan]

That's a really dangerous road to go down... when you establish a link to a site, you have no guarentee that its content won't change. If I link to a friend's site because I think her poetry is touching, then she starts posting her MP3 collection, am I really expected to be liable? Furthermore, in cases where the link and the site it's linked to are in different jursidictions, the legality gets confusing. Even more so if the person clicking the link is in yet another jurisdiction.
The fact that, since the DeCSS trials, they consider it to be the same, is scary. Fortunately, they're largely being sensible and giving warnings first to people who aren't repeat offenders.

That said, people like SuprNova and LokiTorrents are on shakier ground. Part of the basis of torrents is the veracity of the link. I do not believe it is possible for me to post a bittorrent to a file and then have someone change the file type, as may happen with web links. I would actually say that the case here is closer to, say, providing your office building's security plans to burglars. You know damn well that they're up to no good and therefore you're in collusion. You're not technically stealing anything but you're also not innocent of complicity. That said, I see it as a lesser crime and therefore deserving of a lesser penalty, much like how "aiding and abetting" tends to be less severe than the actual crime.

Re:Wrong

[nolife]

You need some crack? You can get it from a guy with a red hat standing on the corner of 15th and K.
Can I now be charged with distributing also? What amount do you charge me with selling? How ever much he has with him or how ever much he sold since I told you where he was? What if I use different wording to describe the exact same thing.
CAUTION, I saw the idiot with a red hat at the corner of 15th and K selling crack, he must be stopped, please avoid him at all costs and call the cops!!! Can I be charged for that also? I still told you where you could get it.

The law is not as cut and dry as you think it is.

Re:Humorous?

[Michael.Forman]

You are correct.

The slashdot tagline suggests a "humorous" story but if you read the article it talks about an ignorant police force (unable to use ATM machines or a computers) beating confessions out of people with a belt. I do not find this humorous. Also, my remarks have absolutely nothing to do with India.

Michael. [michael-forman.com]

Isn't this true everywhere?

[sckeener]

From the Article "The cop who checks your car license does not own a car," said Raghu Raman, who heads an information security firm called Mahindra Special Services Group. "The passport official who checks your passport does not go abroad. The cop to whom you go to register a credit card misuse does not own a credit card. If a cop is in no position to own a computer, how can he fight cybercrime? The field cop (and) the beat constable live in another world."

'No where USA' has the same problems. I can remember back in the 80s when I had a user on my BBS that crashed the BBS on purpose. He was working on his PHD in Physics at RICE and was bored. I didn't know that at the time though. I tried to get Friendswood, TX Police involved. It took an eternity to get them to understand what the crime was and then they were so happy to have the first computer crime. Long story short the cops didn't know anything about computers and we ended up catching the guy by a plain old wire tapped phone call.

Re:The issue is not stupidity

[northcat]

The west is infusing money into India's economy but the money isn't really spreading to everyone, just the techno-elite.

/me sighs
I live in India. All Indians don't work for US outsourcing tech companies. In fact, a very small minority of us do. And we did have money before the 'west' started 'infusing money' into our 'economy'. And most people dont give a fuck about outsourcing. Most people aren't even aware of the outsourcing inudstry. And outsourcing hasn't made IT workers rich - it has just put them in the upper middle class. And the poor, lower class, lower middle class, middle class, upper middle class and the rich existed in almost the same percentages as now, before IBM created the first PC. Outsourcing is a microscopic part of our economic history.

Or, if you just want to stay in your dream, before the outsourcing industry graced us, we were all snake-charmers riding elephants and we had never seen money or a calculator.

Re:The issue is not stupidity

[xXunderdogXx]

I'm truly sorry if I offended you, I admit I'm not an expert on Indian lifestyles. The intent of my post was to make people consider why police and most people were behaving the way described in the article- Is it because they're stupid (or ignorant) or is it because they don't have the opportunity to become techno-literate due to financial reasons?

Granted some of the things mentioned in the article like politicians not knowing that the internet is a viable business opportunity are laughable, I still believe my point about the extreme economic disparity is valid, even if it has always been the case in India. Just because it is so doesn't make it right.

Lastly, I didn't mean to imply that the west is funding India- but you must admit that before the outsourcing boom technology was much less a part of the legal and social discourse of the country (the topic of the article).

Re:The issue is not stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet India is spending billions of dollars on nuclear weapons, a space program of dubious value and high-tech voting equipment that fails to work half the time and is closed to public scrutiny.

We could substitute "the US" instead of "India" in that sentence and still have it make sense. As for the rest, we have racism instead of casteism, we have an arms industry that puts the entire world to shame, and we have one of the highest cancer levels in the world. Not to mention the hurricane victims in Florida. The only real difference is that poor people starve in India, and poor people die of obesity in the US.

Nice troll, though.

Re:In Backwards India

[Crouchy]

I take it as a joke... bit of sarcasm.

I have had several issues with Sony products, such as a Viao Laptop faulty power supply that Sony wouldn't replace under warranty as they believed my system was owned by Dabs (a online computer store in the UK), Car Stereo that the CDs multi stack kept on getting jammed.

Don't take it just from me, look at other peoples experiences: http://www.my3cents.com/search.cgi?criteria=sony [my3cents.com]

But then again you have to take these complaints with a pinch of salt, sometimes some customers (including myself) expect to much.

It is probably a no brainer to guess which MP3 player out I will buy out of the Apple iPod or Sony NW-HD3 player in the next month.. (hint it's not the Sony)