I call for an “All India Cyber Law Awareness Movement”

In another regrettable incident, a talented young person from Patna who was earlier praised by none other than Dr Abdul Kalam for his technical skills has been arrested now for a criminal activity.

The 25 year old tech genius by name Shivendu Madhav from Bihar had reportedly earlier developed and demonstrated a search engine like Google to Dr Kalam in one of the exhibitions and   received accolades. He had also sold one of his technical blogs to an US professor for Rs 4.5 lakhs. He was therefore neither short of money nor recognition and future career prospects. Yet he decided to use his talents to develop a fake railway recruitment portal www.rrbbpl.org and duped lakhs of jobless youths promising them jobs via RRB Bhopal.

Refer Article in TOI

The youth has since been arrested and some of his accomplices are now being traced. Law will take its course and probably this young genius will be punished. As a routine we can also congratulate the police team and appreciate their work.

However, as information security professionals we need to sit back and reflect why such things happen. I am reminded of an earlier case where a youth was arrested in Bangalore for ATM frauds and it was found that he had a very lucrative employment. It appears that the traditional behavioral science theories are being over turned in the current generation where “Negative Motivation” influenced by unrealistic material expectations in the society over ride the traditional motivators such as “Security”, “Reasonable Money” and “Recognition”. People seem to be greedy for more and more money and are willing to risk their future for immediate gains.

This indicates

a) Lack of Ethical training in our IT education.

b) Lack of fear of the law.

I therefore call upon the Ministry of Information Technology to initiate an all India program of ” Creating an Ethical IT Work Force” as a part of the Cyber Security initiative. Such a program requires Cyber Law Education and  Awareness of the consequences of violation of Cyber Laws right from the XI standard when Compute science knowledge gets imparted to our students. We may call this “Cyber Ethics Education”.

Mr Modi has embarked on a “Clean India” program in memory of Mahatma Gandhi from today. I suppose what Mr Ravi Shankar Prasad has to initiate is a “Cyber Law Compliant Mindset Development Program”.

As regular followers of this site are aware, the undersigned has been pursuing “Karnataka Cyber Law Awareness Movement” or “saibar kanUnu PrajnaaMdOLana” (ಸೈಬರ್ ಕಾನೂನು ಪ್ರಜ್ಞಾಂದೋಳನ) and done several programs across Karnataka in the last decade. During the days when Mr H.K.Patil was the law minister of the state under S.M.Krishna’s regime as CM, the undersigned had also discussed several such initiatives with the then Karnataka Government authorities. KLE Society of educational institutions had provided support for the initiative in a big way. But over the years the interest appears to have waned as agencies other than Naavi’s initiatives failed to sustain the movement and Naavi’s initiatives could not sustain on their own due to lack of resources.

In fact one of the activities that these initiatives highlighted was the celebration of October 17 as the “Digital Society Day” to commemorate the notification of ITA 2000. This year this could be a day which Mr Ravi Shankar Prasad should consider to promote some positive action in improving the Cyber Law Awareness in the country.   “Bangalore Cyber Security Summits” conducted in Bangalore during the days when Mr Ashok Manoli was the IT Secretary were also part of such an effort with the participation of the local Government. They need to be revived.

Unfortunately over the next few years the movement withered out and slowly Karnataka lost the momentum it had gained as a “Cyber Law Capital of India”.

The current incident reminds me once again that the concept of “Cyber law Awareness Movement” retains its relevance and needs to be pursued. IIIT Law (International Institute of Information Technology Law), a trust based in Bangalore, Cyber Society of India (CySi) in Chennai are two surviving institutions co-promoted by the undersigned in the past to address the work related to Cyber Law Awareness in the community. Of these CySi is active and doing some good work in Chennai. IIIT Law has lost steam and efforts are being made to pull it back on rails.

I call upon the Karnataka Government as well as well private educational institutions and other related bodies with necessary resources to take up the cause of rebuilding the Karnataka Cyber Law Awareness Movement and also extend it as an “All India Cyber Law Awareness Movement”  (AICLAM).

Such a movement of this type  is an essential part of “Cyber Security” which Mr Modi stressed during his UN General Assembly address recently and therefore meets the objectives set forth by the current Government at the center.

Will Mr Ravishankar Prasad, the IT Minister in Delhi and the PMO consider this?

Naavi

(I Invite suggestions from the public in this regard. Please also spread this message widely)

About Vijayashankar Na

Naavi is a veteran Cyber Law specialist in India and is presently working from Bangalore as an Information Assurance Consultant. Pioneered concepts such as ITA 2008 compliance, Naavi is also the founder of Cyber Law College, a virtual Cyber Law Education institution. He now has been focusing on the projects such as Secure Digital India and Cyber Insurance
This entry was posted in Cyber Crime, Cyber Law, ITA 2008. Bookmark the permalink.

4 Responses to I call for an “All India Cyber Law Awareness Movement”

  1. V Rajendran says:

    Your concerns are quite genuine. On the one hand, there are lots of training institutes teaching the hacking skills under the fancy name “Ethical Hacking”. It is a moot question how many of those trained professional involve in the crime of hacking. Is it not time the government put an end to such names “Ethical Hacking”. How can the prefix “Ethical” legalise an illegal act? Hope the new Government at the centre, known for its tech-savvy PM and huge dependence on technology for PR and mass communication, will spend some serious time on information security and cyber crimes.

  2. B S Warrier says:

    Ethics to be taught only after a person becomes an adult techie. It should be initiated by parents, more by deeds than by words, right from the time the child is just 3 or 4 years of age. WE have to feed the heart also along with feeding the head. Not even 100 years with maths of physics or chemistry will take you to a word like compassion or honesty.

    • In today’s world Parents are losing the influence to mould the children. Teachers are in a better position. Ethics in general sense can be imparted at an young age. But ethics related to use of IT can be introduced only when IT is introduced to a child. part of inducing ethical behaviour is creating awareness about the adverse consequences of “Not being ethical”. I am focusing only on this aspect as far as the Awareness programs are concerned. Yes it need not convert a die hard unethical person who would like to beat the system any way. But it will still be a step towards reducing mischievous and ignorant crimes.

      • B S Warrier says:

        There is a saying in Malayalam: There is no use in putting manure on the fruit. You may start with the child, and of course go ahead with special help later for cyber or any other domain. “Catch’em young.”

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