Jailed Techie wants millions
By Yashmin Ahmed

Finally he has demanded that he be compensated for the injustice meted out to him! The illegally accused and detained techie in the Chatrapati Shivaji defamation picture case on Orkut, Lakshmana Kailas K, has slapped a ten page legal notice on Telecom giant Bharti Airtel, the Principal Secretary (Home) of the state government in Maharashtra, India and the Assistant Commissioner of Police (Financial & Cyber crime unit) demanding that an amount of 20 crores be paid as damages.

The software engineer has also sent a copy of the legal notice to the National Human rights commission. Lakshmana had spent a harrowing 50 days in police custody accused of a crime he had never committed just because an IP address sought by the police was wrongly supplied by Bharti Airtel. The legal notice smacks of his anger with the police and judiciary making a mockery of the rights of an individual and the pitiable conditions of the Yerwada jail where he was detained with a number of hardened criminals. He is reported to have been beaten by a lathi and asked to use the same bowl to eat and to use in the toilet.

(Techgoss had run the following story in Nov, 2007)

Airtel: compensation for IP mix-up?
By Bala Shah

An Indian posts ‘insulting images’ of respected warrior-saint Shivaji on Google’s Orkut.  Indian police come knocking at Google’s gilded door demanding the IP address (IP uniquely identifies every computer in the world) which is the source of this negative image.  Google, India hands over the IP address.

No such incident in India would be complete without a few administrative slip-ups.  The computer with that IP address is using Airtel, India as the ISP to connect to the internet and Orkut.  An Airtel techie makes a grave error and gives police the name of an innocent person using a different IP address. 

An innocent man is jailed due to the mistake of one Airtel employee.   Even though it was only one person’s fault,   the whole of Airtel runs the risk of being tarred by the mistake of one person.

How does it Airtel react to rectify its mistake?

Firstly, with an immediate, unqualified apology.   In itself, a positive first step.

Techgoss had heard rumors about Airtel also offering monetary compensation to the person wrongly jailed.   But Airtel is being coy about possible financial compensation.  An Airtel spokesperson issued the following statement to techgoss.com

“Airtel are aware of this incident and deeply distressed by the severe inconvenience caused to the customer. We are fully cooperating with the authorities to provide all information in this regard and we are in touch with the customer. We have robust internal processes, which we review frequently to make them more stringent. We have conducted a thorough investigation of the matter and will take appropriate action”.

Does this mean the customer will get compensation?  It is not clear either way.  Let’s wait and see.  It is interesting to see that despite the arrest he is still with Airtel.  Now that’s loyalty to your telecom company.

(Techgoss ran the following article earlier in the week)

Google, India:  Not all answers
By Bala Shah

An Indian posts ‘insulting images’ of respected warrior-saint Shivaji on Google’s Orkut.  Indian police come knocking at Google’s gilded door demanding the IP address (IP uniquely identifies every computer in the world) which is the source of this negative image.  Google, India hands over the IP address.

No such incident in India would be complete without a few administrative slip-ups.  The computer with that IP address is using Airtel, India as the ISP to connect to the internet and Orkut.  Airtel gives police the name of an innocent person using a different IP address.  How two IP addresses could be mixed-up in a sensitive police case is anyone’s guess.

An innocent Indian, Lakshmana Kailash K, is arrested in Bangalore and thrown in jail for 3 weeks.  Eventually, his innocence is proved and he is released in Oct, 2007.

A number of  news media report this incident.  American citizen and India lover Christopher Soghoian (home page http://www.dubfire.net/chris/) studies Informatics at Indiana University and researches/writes about security, privacy and computer crime.  Christopher does an excellent article on this topic for the blogs at respected tech media group CNET. 

Like all good writers, Christopher Soghoian, gives Google, India a list of questions so that he can give a balanced perspective to the millions of CNET readers.

How does Google, India respond?   The only comment was:  "Google has very high standards for user privacy and a clear privacy policy, and authorities are required to follow legal process to get information. In compliance with Indian legal process, we provided Indian law enforcement authorities with IP address information of an Orkut user."

Not surprisingly, Google is a keen to play this down as Yahoo is being hauled over the coals by US Congress for handing over an IP addresses and emails to the Chinese Government which resulted in a Chinese democracy activist being jailed.

Techgoss contacted Christopher and asked him for a list of  the questions he had put to Google. The following were the questions that Christopher put to Google which were never answered.  Sometimes what you do not say says more about what you have done.

1. Can Google speak at all to the specifics of this incident?

2. If so, can Google confirm if they released ip addresses or any other log information to the Indian police regarding this incident.

3. If Google did hand over log information, did the Indian police have a warrant/court order, or did they merely request it?

4. Does Google feel in any way responsible for the man's accidental arrest and jailing?

5. Speaking more generally, without going into the specifics of this incident...Has Google ever in the past handed over user information (including logs) to Indian law enforcement/authorities without a court order/search warrant?

6. In this case, the crime the man was accused of (defaming a 300 year old historical figure)  does not exist in the US. Will Google conform to the laws of each country it does business in, or will it defer to American concepts of freedom of speech and the press?

7. Does Google reveal information to other countries for "crimes" that would not normally be an illegal in the US? For example, the ip addresses of people in Saudi Arabia and other conservative Muslim countries who search for adult, consensual pornography?

8. Is the log data for Orkut stored in India, or is it stored elsewhere? If the data is not stored in India, is Google still responsible for giving it to the Indian authorities?