Violation of Personal Space

Samina, a nice article!

In this day and age, privacy is (for all practical purposes) a myth. It is a price that the society has knowingly chosen to pay to take advantage of more efficient business transactions. We get some benefits, but our life story is out there for anybody who wishes to probe, for whatever reasons. Most information stays safe (since there is so much out there) but no information is absolutely safe.

Increased monitoring does not necessarily translate into increased security, only perhaps an increased sense of security. As in any system, people, and not the machines, are the weakest links in the chain!

In the South Asian context, an expectation of privacy has always been an alien concept. In most cases, there is no individuality worth speaking of. Our families and the local society is involved into (and many times controls) the most private of our affairs, including sometimes even who we marry!

Let’s not blame the internet; snooping has been around since long before the internet came into being!

im all for the scrutiny measures.
though i dont quite like someone rummaging thru my stuff
but i do know that amongst us are people who plan and kill and for the effort to catch and punish such ppl, i trust the govt to go thru my online activities if it deems necessary.

kill the killers..! ;)

g-mail rocks...
g-mail fan forever...
happy googling...

Samina:

you`ve posted a nice and informative piece. This ia very appropriate for the cyber-world in which we are living now.

Any government which intends to monitor e-mails can identify the types of people whom it is targetting and wants to monitor. For instance, if it`s security against terrorism, some suitable buzzwords need to be identified which the terrorists are most likely to use. Instead of monitoring all the e-mails for this purpose, it may be sufficient to screen which e-mails have used these words and then monitor such e-mails comprehensively. In the list of buzzwords, some code words which the terrorists are most likely to use, can also be included.

I had given an example of two school teen agers who were conversing with each other using e-mails, in my article ``Brouha`ha on the da Vinci Code``, (chowk.com, March 28, 2005). One of them had commented ``that he was so mad at the current (1995) political situation that he was ready to kill President Clinton.`` He was immediately picked up by the Secret Service.

Another category of targetted people may be sex offenders. Those people who are propositioning, on the internet, the minors and children for sexual favors. Suitable buzzwords can be used for such people.

Monitoring all the e-mails may be waste of valuable resoucres. The author`s comments, ``So what if they are doing it? My e-mails aren`t particularly exciting, you know,`` will fall through the screen and such e-mails will not be closely looked into. The government agency(ies) which is responsible for this task might most certainly be already using this screening method to sift the `tainted` e-mails from those which are innocent.

Mohammad Gill

samina:

welcome!

The parameters are blurred and there is no method to this madness.

if ad-hocism is a method then the government excels;)

did`nt they try to block south asian tribune once?

lve

t