Privacy Rights In India

Enforcement of privacy right in the ICT era is an important part of protection of human rights in cyberspace. Privacy rights must be analysed along with some allied rights like data protection rights, data security rights, right to information, etc.

As far as India is concerned, we have no dedicated privacy laws in India and privacy rights in India, data protection laws in India, data security laws in India, cyber security laws in India, etc.  Privacy rights and laws in India are required for protecting human rights in cyberspace that are presently missing in India.

The matter is already pending in Supreme Court of India. The Supreme Court of India must expand privacy rights in India as Indian Parliament has failed to provide privacy laws in India despite pressing needs. Further, the Supreme Court of India must also clear the relationship between national security and right to information in India.  

Instead of providing privacy rights to Indian citizens, the Indian parliament has curtailed the same through bringing amendments in the information technology act, 2000 (IT Act 2000) of India. The IT Act, 2000 is the sole cyber law of India that urgently requires to be repealed.

Indian government is suppressing privacy rights in India for its own purposes. Even the right to information act has been diluted to a great extent to keep many governmental functions out of its ambit. Intelligence agencies of India are operating without any parliamentary oversight and diluting right to information in such a situation is complete endorsement to growing e-surveillance in India.

It is high time for Supreme Court of India to prevent further mutilations of almost non existing privacy rights in India.

Electronic Delivery Of Services In India

Electronic Delivery of Services in India has been in news for years but its actual implementation is still to happen. Despite many rounds of legislative drafting and governmental discussions, the Indian electronic delivery of services bill 2011 could not see the light of the day. The natural result is that e-delivery of services in India is missing.

While rejecting the latest draft of the EDS bill, the parliamentary standing committee on information and technology gave few reasons like lack of resources, amendments must be made to the information technology act, 2000 to accommodate electronic delivery of services, inadequate time to ensure electronic delivery of services by states, etc. All these apprehensions have no merit and they deserve to be ignored.

However, the rejection of the EDS bill by the committee is also blessing in disguise as the proposed bill was highly deficient on many counts. Even the committee has given some very good suggestions that can strengthen the new EDS bill that can be passed by the Indian parliament.

It would be a good idea to involve techno legal experts while formulating the next EDS bill so that various deficiencies can be taken care of. A holistic EDS bill must be formulated that takes care of all the aspects pertaining to electronic delivery of services in India.

E-Delivery Of Services In India Missing

Electronic delivery of services in India (e-delivery of services in India) is in really bad shape thanks to the myopic attitude of our Indian government and its committees. As on date we have no mandatory framework for e-governance services in India.

This is a clear case of denial of digital empowerment of Indian citizens by the Indian government. The information technology act 2000 (IT Act 2000), which is the sole cyber law of India, carries few provisions pertaining to e-governance in India. However, the IT Act 2000 expressly put an embargo upon mandatory e-governance services in India.

It is really surprising that after more than 12 years of enactment of IT Act, 2000 the parliamentary standing committee on information and technology still believes that states would not be able to meet the e-governance needs of India. If a country cannot put in place e-governance services for 12 years and is still insisting upon more years, it puts a question mark upon the capabilities of that nation.

No doubt India is really poor at e-readiness and e-governance in India is dying. Indian government is presently facing a “technology bankruptcy” and “ICT emergency” vis-à-vis cyber crimes, cyber attacks, cyber security and other related issues.

There is nothing wrong in enacting a good law in this regard but there is everything wrong when we make excuses for not enactment of such law at all. We need time bound enactment exercises and by allowing unlimited time to enact such laws, we are doing no good to India. It is high time for us to ensure e-delivery of services in India.

Skills Development In India And The Vocational Education And Training System Of India

We are facing a very serious situation in the fields of employment and education in India. A vast majority of our educated youths are still unemployed. The primary reason for this is the defective education system of India that is primarily academic in nature.

We do not pay much attention to professional, vocational and training based education in India. All we do is teaching of age old academic concepts which have no significance in real life. The natural result is that the already strained employment sector is further constrained to employ the ill trained and ill equipped young generation.

This is a serious issue as unemployed young generation is not producing any productive results for our economy and they are also engaging in illegal and unsocial methods to survive. If the situation continues for long, we may face a serious law and order problem in India.

Indian government has also realised the perils of this situation. The Indian government is planning to sanction around Rs 40,000 crore in over five years to provide skill to around 3 crore people during the period. The government will also partner with private sector to implement the ambitious scheme. This is a good step in the right direction and Perry4Law and Perry4Law Techno Legal Base (PTLB) welcome this move of Indian government.

As a matter of fact, skills development in India is urgently needed to manage these issues. A special emphasis must be given techno legal skills development in India that is presently missing. Till our educational systems are able to cope up with these qualitative demands, we must stress upon use of distance learning for skills development in India.

Further, virtual campuses in India can also fill the skill gaps that we are currently facing. PTLB e-learning platform is providing techno legal courses and trainings in India that aims at inculcating skills among the masses.

Some of the areas where PTLB is providing techno legal trainings and courses include cyber law, cyber security, cyber forensics, ethical hacking, clod computing, malware analysis, etc.

We hope that Indian government would do the best to strengthen the professional, vocational and training based education in India as soon as possible.  

BackTrack 5 R3 Released For Download

Backtrack is one of the highest rated and acclaimed Linux security distribution of the world. It is used by numerous security professionals and companies to perform various security and penetration testing related tasks.

The best part about Backtrack is that you can install it on a DVD, USB drive or any other media of your choice that supports Backtrack installation. Once installed, backtrack can be booted from the media and there is no requirement to install it on the hard disk of your computer. Of course, you can also install it on the hard drive of your computer if you wish to do so.

If you are using a Backtrack 5R2 version you can also upgrade it to Backtrack 5R3 as BackTrack 5 R3 has been released on 13th of August, 2012 for download.

Perry4Law Techno Legal Base (PTLB) strongly recommend you to download a copy of backtrack 5R3 for your pen testing and cyber security arsenal.

Backtrack versions are also part of techno legal software repositories of Perry4Law and PTLB that are used to provide various techno legal trainings in India and abroad. These include skills development in India in the fields of cyber law, cyber security, cyber forensics, penetration testing, malware analysis, etc.

We thank the Backtrack community in general and Linux community and open source community in particular for their hard work and commitment to strengthen cyber security, cyber forensics, pen testing, malware analysis and such similar capabilities.