The last post discussed an important issue regarding life at Kashmir and how the basic human rights are being denied everyday. The issue I intend to discuss today is not one where people's lives are at stake and certainly not the most important issue of recent time.But this issue is just another instance where the basic human rights are being denied once again by the government and I feel something should be done about it.
Yes,I am talking about the recent turmoil regarding the BLACKBERRY phones. Government of India (as well as some other countries) is worried that terrorists may use the blackberry and the government won't have any clue about what they intend to do because they found the encryption system of blackberry is hard to decipher. And govt. is trying to pursue RIM(Research In Motion),the manufacturer of blackberry in India to hand them over the encryption details so that they can snoop on our phones, SMSs emails and god knows what else. That means we will have to say good bye to 'Privacy' very soon.
But there are 600 million people in India who uses mobile phones in India according to the telecom companies(and among them 1 million are Blackberry user). What surprises me is how is it possible to watch over all those 600 million peoples and what the speak over the phone,what they right in there SMSs,and their emails!!! Well,certainly they will have to snoop extensively without any exception. :D How else can they be sure of our security of which they are so much worried about. :P So they are gonna need a huge number of employee who will do the job for them. Apparently govt. has found a way to solve large unemployment problem of our country. ;)
Coming back to the point, if RIM gives in to govt. arm twisting, there won't be any difference between the blackberry and other phones available in the market. In that case, terrorists most probably won't use it for communication. In fact they used Satellite phones during Mumbai attack. And there are many other communication tools available as well that can be used by the terrorists as an alternatives of blackberry. Govt. is so much concerned about our security, still they couldn't do anything about the maoists attacks. Surely they were not using the Blackberries. What makes them think that they will get some ground breaking success just by listening to all the phone communications in India. There are more pressing security issues that need attentions. The sooner they understand this,the better for them,and of course for us.
But it's not about the terrorists. When I started this blog what was in mind was our basic right of privacy. Surprisingly when I googled it to know the details & I was shocked to find that our constitution doesn't have any explicit law that protects our right to privacy. Only the article no. 21 of Part III of the constitution which tells about right to life and liberty mentions loosely about privacy. That means legally there is nothing could be done about the snooping whether you like it or not. And that's where I object. Frankly,one has the right not to share something with someone and no way to a stranger if it is not a public information. That's a right I expect to be there in a free country.
We certainly don't like to be monitored by anyone and share our each and every thoughts to someone totally unrelated to my personal sphere,even if our security is the issue. May be their logic is right in small scale but it is down right impractical at large scale. So we are putting our privacy in public just for nothing. This doesn't ensure our safety. Just makes our life open to all. and it's high time we do something about it.
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