The southern Indian state of Karnataka may be cracking down on porn and computer crime in cybercafes, with laws proposed to make cybercafe users carry photo identification and enter personal details into address books kept at the cybercafes' counters. Without the photo IDS, the laws propose, they would be photographed by Web cameras with the images stored for a year in cafes' computers.
"The main aim is to prevent the misuse of cybercafés," said Karnataka secretary of information technology and biotechnology M.K. Shankaralinge Gowda to Agence France Presse. "It is meant to fight cybercrimes and pornography. A bit of regulation is necessary and we do not want freedom to be misused." Gowda added he expects the laws to be passed "soon."
The laws are not likely to be very popular with computer and cybercafe users, information technologists, and computer industry observers, many of whom have slammed the proposals as infringements of individual rights that might cripple a cybercafe industry trying to bring the Internet to the poor, AFP said.
Business management student K. Kartik told AFP outside a downtown Bangalore cybercafe hopes the government dumps the idea. "This is not an appropriate way to tackle cybercrimes, terrorists or pornography viewers," he told AFP." I will object to being photographed. It is an absurd solution."
"It is not a good idea at all," said National Association of Software and Service Companies president Kiran Karnik, whose group estimates 13 million Netizens in India last year, growing from under a million in 1998. "We understand that there are security compulsions but this step will not be useful or good to tackle it as the system can still be abused either by the café owner or by customers."
