Tuesday, March 21, 2006

The Moral police are at it again

This is almost one month old , but I didn't know the details till I read this post by Badri(Tamil blog). Chennai Police have issued strict guidelines for Internet Browsing centers and are closing down the Internet centers that don't follow these.

The guidelines are straight out of 1984,

1. All browsing centers should be registered with the Police Dept.

2. The centers must maintain a register with details of the customer's name, which PC he is using and for how long.

3. Customer's address details has to be maintained by the browsing center. It is the responsibility of the borwsign center administrator to ensure that the address is correct, in other words he has to check with some photo ID card and only then allow the customer to browse.

4. Each PC should have spyware, collecting details of all the sites visited by the custimer. This should be handed over to the Police whenever they ask for it.

5. No closed cabins allowed.

6. No "banned sites" should be seen. There is no clear specification of "banned sites", but they seem to include porn sites.

All this is because somebody sent a threatening mail to the President of India from a browsing center in Tirunelveli.

This is not a Government Order covering the entire state, but issued by the Police Commissioner for the city of Chennai only. Makes me wonder what would happen if a Larry Flynt type entrepreneur sets shop in Chennai.

9 comments:

Nilu said...

where are the lawsuits?

Anonymous said...

Chen

Can you doublecheck if it was issued by tamilnadu police or by the KGB?

Anonymous said...

I was asked a photo ID at a browsing centre. I wasn't aware of all this and gave them all a blank look!!! I thought it must be because of the Palayamkottai Browsing centre-Parliament-Bomb scare thing. Didn't know it was for because Mr.President was sent a threatening e-mail.

Chenthil said...

Krithika, so be careful. The big brother knows you now :-). And through you, they know this blog too. Aah.

I think it was the same incident, let me check whether the mail was sent to the Parliament or the President.

ashok said...

crazy...
chen,i think its the parliment bomb scare from p'kottai...

I said...

Tamil nadu police can trace the IP address, vootu address and everything else, Anniyan style, even without such laws.

The Talkative Man said...

Removing closed cabins is good. Will reduce the chances of browsing centers being a place to 'release frustration' :) It might drastically affect the cafe's revenues though.
Despite the penetration of PCs and internet I think browsing centers will hold out for another 10 years.

inlivenout said...

Woh! What do we call it? Absurdity or Mossad intelligence?! Neither I guess. It must be mere belief that there is no Google in Chn to fight for its customers' privacy.

PS: RH, Lawsuits?!? What for? To hear the judge's lecture on "How to make this world a secure place to live?"?! You must be kidding.

Unknown said...

AFAIK these restrictions have been there for quite sometime in bangalore.you go to any prominent sify booth and you are asked to fill up your details.cops had issued a circular to that effect sometime in jan 2005 i think.