Google Assists Arrest of Indian Dissenter

Google Assists Arrest of Indian Dissenter

www.dailytech.com

Google authorities admitted Monday to assisting Indian police in their hunt for 22-year-old Rahul Krishnakumar Vaid, an IT professional from Gurgaon, India, who stands accused of constructing vulgar posts against a top Indian politician.

Indian officials said Vaid violated the country’s Information Technology Act of 2000’s obscenity prohibitions when he posted “insulting images” of a Hindu saint to an Orkut community called “I Hate Sonia Gandhi.”

Authorities responded to a complaint from Indian Congress activist Arnol Bhokare, and cyber-crime police from the city of Pune contacted Orkut owner Google for assistance in identifying the poster. That search soon led police to Vaid, resulting in his arrest last Friday.

During police interrogations, Vaid said he was unaware that he would wind up in jail for his postings -- a fact confirmed by his e-mail address, which includes part of his full name: [email protected].

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I find the topic of internet "privacy" to be an interesting one. Most people here realize that the things we say online under our various identities are not "really" private but we do have at least some hope that our internet and email providers will withold our information from other interested parties.

What I find disturbing is the trend that in many cases a loss of such "privacy" is "a necessary evil of doing business in foreign lands". It is easy for us to say "well, sure thats happening in another country, we have our freedom of speech here".

With some of the new laws we are seeing in the US (HR 1955 for example), it would seem that it is really not so farfetched to imagine this same scenario as in India unfolding here on American soil.

HR 1955
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How long will it be until the comments we make here on this board will be used againt us in a similar fashion? Something we should all be thinking about....






www.dailytech.com
(visit the link for the full news article)