Anti-Gandhi site self-censors
By Techgirl

It all started when twenty two year old Gurgaon-based techie Rahul Vaid posted a vulgar message about Congress supremo Sonia Gandhi on Google’s social networking website Orkut community ‘I Hate Sonia Gandhi’.   Even in the worst nightmares, he would not have imagined what would happen to him.  He was arrested in Gurgaon, North India and taken to Pune, Maharashtra and put in jail.  If convicted, Vaid could be punished with a Rs. 1 lakh fine and/or 5 years jail.

Later it came to light that the Congress worker in Pune had not even filed a written complaint protesting the vulgar comment about Sonia Gandhi, but had merely asked the local police if such a message on Orkut was a crime.  Obviously the Pune police thought it important enough to arrest and prosecute the perpetrators of such anti-national crimes.

Techgoss was intrigued at all the energy and money invested in prosecuting Vaid.  While one cannot condone anonymous, personal, foul comments against anyone, surely there are gentler ways to tell a young man that the message is best sent by reasoned argument and civil dissent.  The punishment seemed like overkill.

To investigate further, I logged on to the hotbed of extreme, political views ‘I Hate Sonia Gandhi’ on Google’s Orkut.   The forum has a picture of Sonia Gandhi is a blood splattered white sari.  The anti-Gandhi image said a thousand words.  But what would the burning, searing comments on the website be like?  None.  The forum ‘I Hate Sonia Gandhi’ does not have a single comment against the Gandhi family matriarch.  After the police case,   every comment has been removed.

How big is ‘I Hate Sonia Gandhi’ now?  Only 7 members.   It is run anonymously by ‘Badarinath now in Chennai’ since Nov, 2006 who despite (because of?) the police case has got only seven members.  Perhaps all the BJP types were campaigning in Karnataka. And why did not the young Congress workers ‘spontaneously’ send in thousands of emails and messages to support their leader?

Forum founder ‘Badarinath now in Chennai’ seems like a guy more interesting in partying than politics.  His Google profile describes himself as “I am a very hot guy.  Got it”.  And that he “single’ and is on Orkut for “friends and dating”.   ‘Badarinath now in Chennai’ is originally from Mangalore but now lives in Chennai.  Like many boys from good families in Tamil Nadu, he does not “drink or smoke”

The police seemed to have put the fear of God (politicians?) in both ‘Badarinath now in Chennai’ and Rahul Vaid.  None of them wanted to give their views to techgoss.com.

All this would seem like a bad dream but for the fact that tens of thousand of rupees, and hours of public servant time have been spent punishing a young man when the same message could have been given by a stern warning from authorized officials. For all you know Sonia Gandhi is immune to such petty criticism from an immature young man.  After all, you have to have a very thick skin to be in Indian politics.

(Techgoss had run the following article on May 21, 2008)

Joint operation tracks techie
By Nitin Paul 

The software engineer Rahul Krishankuamr Vaid who was arrested by Maharashtra police on May 19 on the charges of uploading derogatory and vulgar comments about Congress President and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi on social networking website Orkut was remanded into police custody till May 21 by a court in Maharashtra.

The techie was picked up by Maharashtra police with the help of Gurgaon police from his Housing Board apartment in Chakarpur, MG Road on May 19.  DCP (East) Satheesh Balan said that Gurgaon police had merely assisted the Maharashtra police in locating the address of the techie who lived in village Chakarpur.  "Maharashtra police officials filed the necessary documentation and carried out basic formalities at DLF Police Station to take the arrested techie back to Maharashtra. We are neither concerned about the case nor are we investing into the incident," the DCP said. 

The matter came to the fore in Pune where a Congress worker noticed the remarks posted by the techie on Orkut and lodged a complaint with the local police in December 2007 under the Information Technology Act. The police had approached Google (the owners of Orkut website), who provided the police with the computer IP address of the techie that was pin pointed to Gurgaon.  Immediately after reaching Gurgaon, Maharashtra police contacted Gurgaon police as part of the protocol as well for confirmation of the address of the techie in Gurgaon. Gurgaon police at DLF police station worked hard to locate the residential address of the techie who lived in Chakarpur which flanks DLF City. The techie worked with PC Solutions, Gurgaon and had reportedly posted his remarks on Orkut using his work computers.

(Techgoss had run the following story on May 20, 2008)

Techie jailed for comments
By Suneetha.B

Here’s another techie booked for behaving badly on Orkut, Google’s networking site. Rahul Krishnakumar Vaid was booked this month under section 292 of Indian Penal Code and section 67 of the Information Technology Act for posting vulgarity in a community called ‘I hate Sonia Gandhi’. Google is said to have cooperated whole heartedly with the Indian police in nabbing the offender by providing information on the email id from which the mail was sent. Now if found guilty, Vaid would have to pay a hefty fine of about US$ 2500 or a five year stint in jail. His crime is not posting a comment but ‘vulgar’ comments on Orkut, and the owner of the community in this case is not considered guilty for hating anyone in public.

Barely a few months back, another techie Lakshmana Kailas was booked similarly in an Orkut defamation case on the Marathi icon Sivaji and later found to be innocent. The techie’s IP address was wrongly conveyed by the ISP to Indian police, and the techie is waging a damages war with Bharti Airtel, the ISP.

These cases are not peculiar to India alone. In Morocco, a man was arrested in February because he impersonated the King’s brother on Facebook. Facebook cooperated fully too and the man’s identity was out to the police in hours. The man was released later in mid-March on royal pardon, but in India cases like these can drag on and in the case of the innocent techie, he had to spend nearly two months in jail in pitiable conditions before his innocence was proved and he came out of jail.

In China, Yahoo has helped out with email ids of the ‘dissident’ elements leading to arrests. Google and Microsoft have a heavy censoring agenda in the Chinese jurisdiction as well. Human rights groups and Chinese ‘dissidents’ have led Yahoo to court on these cases and lobbied heavily in the US on these policies. Yahoo always does condemn repressive policies but continue to aid it by helping out with these address issues. In fact last year, during a hearing session with the US Congress, Yahoo promised that it would do better to protect the rights of such dissidents.

Internet companies are now under heavy discussion across the web on whether the action of providing the identity of users is legitimate or not and violating privacy concerns. Google has come out defending its stand saying that while it still has a committed stand on privacy, local laws of the countries in which they operate have to be obeyed. So obviously there is a fine line somewhere between whether a company can afford to irk local authorities and hope to carry on business in the country. What is contradictory here is something that is legitimate in Europe or the US may be an extreme case of crime in some parts of the world.

The embarrassment of the US government over the Chinese issue has prompted House Representative Chris Smith(R-NJ) to propose a bill to push a Global Online Freedom Act in the US. This bill if passed would crack down on US based companies in other nations providing help to censor the Internet in operating areas. The reason to provide such information would have to be ‘legitimate foreign law enforcement purposes’. Up to $2 million in penalties and possibilities of punitive damages await the companies.

That clause covers what’s happening in India, where offending a celebrity dead or alive is something one can commit involuntarily, in sleep or in art. The digital providers are definitely on a tight rope walk now having to please a whole lot of people to operate in a geographic area. But ultimately if business is to boom, the customer would have to be comfortable about his privacy being protected and not have the police knocking at his doors when relatively minor offenses are committed.

Anyway the writing on the wall is, just think twice before you post!