Terror Invades India: demanding legal amendments
Today, terrorism is not restricted at striking and damaging the physical targets of the Government. Striking at “Economic Targets” and undermining the economy of the country is also considered an important terrorist strategy. Also, many vital Information assets are today owned by non Government sector and excluding them from being considered as potential terrorist targets under POTA could be an oversight.
India may be the most vulnerable place in the world now for physical terror attacks, but our country is equally vulnerable to cyber terrorism.
The terrorist propaganda using the Internet is intense, and encompasses not only websites but also blogs, social networking sites like the Orkut — and other areas of the cyberspace, including email groups and even recorded messages left as voice mails.
The other problem with regard to these websites is that, these sites are hosted from developed countries in the EU like Germany, Spain, Italy, France and the likes, where such websites are not under close scrutiny of the respective governments. Terrorist keep on changing their web interfaces, fearing imminent ban by the authorities. The clever use of cyberspace then, makes tracking of propaganda all the more difficult.
Passive ideological war is not the only form of cyber terrorism India suffers from; the country is also attacked routinely by terrorist hackers who snoop into government owned websites and personal computers for monetary gains. That is why, besides ramping up the country physical security infrastructure, the government also needs to ramp up the country’s cyber security infrastructure to prevent cyber attacks. India needs a well planned Anti Cyber Terrorism Action Plan to prevent the country being devastated through the invisible Cyber space attacks. Presently there are established laws that govern the Terrorism. However, there are no special laws governing Cyber Terrorism.
Special laws governing Cyber Crimes became effective in India with the passage of Information Technology Act 2000. Subsequently, the special act for Terrorism, POTA was also enacted. We need to therefore look at the laws governing Cyber Terrorism within these laws and any other associated legislation that may come into effect by cross reference including the IPC. Information Technology Act-2000 addresses some issues of Cyber Crimes but does not adequately address the issues of Cyber Terrorism.
Cyber Terrorism is a growing menace in the Cyber space and poses, many challenges to the Law Enforcement Agencies. In order to assist the Indian law enforcement agencies in improving their capabilities to handle Cyber Terrorism, it is necessary to make appropriate legal changes to include Cyber Terrorism under POTA, create a public support system for Ethical Hacking and Cyber Patrolling and also accept Counter Attacks as one of the effective strategies for curbing Cyber Terrorism.
Adnan Patel
Executive: Fraud Management Services
