Why India can not have its WikiLeaks?
Don't expect a Julian Assangne clone to start a desi version of WikiLeaks on Indian soil anytime soon. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out the reasons. The government can instantly block such a site.
And the penalties are gargantuan. Supreme Court advocate Pavan Duggal, who specialises in cyber law, points out that starting a site like WikiLeaks could make you liable to paying a fine of up to Rs 5 crore per contravention under the IT (Amendment) Act, 2008.
You can also attract criminal liability of three to ten years in jail under various statutes and the Indian Penal Code. If that doesn’t kill your urge to blow the whistle online, you should also consider the burden of liability you could attract. Or the possible raids on your home and office premises, besides the likelihood of the state agencies restraining the distribution and transmission of a potential leak.
Theoretically, though, it is possible for someone from India to set up a WikiLeaks-inspired site. “The Internet allows you to host content anywhere and view it in India. It will have to be hosted elsewhere in the world, and out of reach of the Indian law and political pressure,” says Nikhil Pahwa, editor, MediaNama, a website that analyses the digital media space in India. Trouble can erupt the moment you want to fulfil the website’s raison d’etre — getting hits.
“You would get into trouble the instant you start publicising yourself as the owner of such a site,” says web pioneer and technology blogger Rajesh Jain. Agrees Aniruddha Bahal, who runs the investigative online journal Cobra- Post.com. “It is difficult but not impossible to run such a site in India. But half your time will probably be spent in battling the home ministry,” he says.
Jain suggests that it is easier to use an already existing platform like WikiLeaks than to set up one of your own. But not all are convinced with the WikiLeaks format. “It’s interesting. It’s also the first time in world history that such a quantum of information is being released in one go. But I believe too much in editorial filtering to go for something as raw as WikiLeaks,” says Bahal.
Government sites also keep getting breached. The more such chinks get exposed, the stronger will be the voices demanding close scrutiny and preventive actions against the growing tribe of hacktivists.
[Source: Yahoo News]
And the penalties are gargantuan. Supreme Court advocate Pavan Duggal, who specialises in cyber law, points out that starting a site like WikiLeaks could make you liable to paying a fine of up to Rs 5 crore per contravention under the IT (Amendment) Act, 2008.
You can also attract criminal liability of three to ten years in jail under various statutes and the Indian Penal Code. If that doesn’t kill your urge to blow the whistle online, you should also consider the burden of liability you could attract. Or the possible raids on your home and office premises, besides the likelihood of the state agencies restraining the distribution and transmission of a potential leak.
Theoretically, though, it is possible for someone from India to set up a WikiLeaks-inspired site. “The Internet allows you to host content anywhere and view it in India. It will have to be hosted elsewhere in the world, and out of reach of the Indian law and political pressure,” says Nikhil Pahwa, editor, MediaNama, a website that analyses the digital media space in India. Trouble can erupt the moment you want to fulfil the website’s raison d’etre — getting hits.
“You would get into trouble the instant you start publicising yourself as the owner of such a site,” says web pioneer and technology blogger Rajesh Jain. Agrees Aniruddha Bahal, who runs the investigative online journal Cobra- Post.com. “It is difficult but not impossible to run such a site in India. But half your time will probably be spent in battling the home ministry,” he says.
Jain suggests that it is easier to use an already existing platform like WikiLeaks than to set up one of your own. But not all are convinced with the WikiLeaks format. “It’s interesting. It’s also the first time in world history that such a quantum of information is being released in one go. But I believe too much in editorial filtering to go for something as raw as WikiLeaks,” says Bahal.
Government sites also keep getting breached. The more such chinks get exposed, the stronger will be the voices demanding close scrutiny and preventive actions against the growing tribe of hacktivists.
[Source: Yahoo News]
Replies
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Ashraf HZCEleaks.. *ahem* -
vinod12345madhui dont think its a big problem in india to start wikileaks one can bribe the govt and keep running it
and if a case is registered and brought to court then it would take years to prove it till then he would be free on a bail. -
sluggerone of the reasons why it was so relatively easy for the guy [some say its Bradley Manning] to handover those cables to Wikileaks was because the data was all digitised - TBs of data in matchbox sized container
while in India things still exist a lot in (paper/triplicate copy/attested copy)-form
all archives stored in huge steel cupboards guarded by actual non-PGP keys & locks
our archaic practices protects the govt and Babus
still, you get news channels doing Exclusives - contacts in govt offices who photo-copy stuff for them
But Wikileaks scale operation in India would be difficult IMO -
optimystixbut India does have the Whistleblower's Protection Bill passed in 2010 to protect the ones exposing the irregularities and corruption. And its not a difficult job to open such a website. All one needs to do is register a website in some other country where such things get legal protection. Something similar happened with the owner of savitabhabi website. Even though the govt banned the site, they couldnt arrest the owner as the site was registered in the USA where pornography wasnt illegal. All our govt could do was to ban the site but people managed to visit the site for long using proxies. I guess something similar can be done as there are a lot of gaping loop holes in our IT Act that one can manipulate with.
opening a Wikileaks type site is not a big problem i guess but that such an act will have no result on the country. We have already seen that nothing happens to the criminals and big scamsters in India(read Satyam's Raju, Telgi, Kalmadi, Raja etc).
The main thing is that a huge majority of Indians are corrupt and selfish and therefore such acts are useless in our country. Its a sheer waste of time.
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