Mandatory Keyloggers in Mumbai's Cyber Cafes

YIAAL writes "Indian journalist Amit Varma reports that Mumbai's police are requiring the city's 500 Internet cafes to install keystroke loggers, which will capture every keystroke by users and turn that information over to the government — nearly in realtime by the sound of it. Buy things online, and the underpaid Indian police will have your credit card number. 'Will these end up getting sold in a black market somewhere? Not unlikely.'"

But why?

[edlinfan]

Mumbai's motives are unclear. Do they fear that these computers are being used by criminals, do they want to closely monitor the activity of random people, or are they simply after your credit card numbers? Hmmmmm. I must know more.

The issue comes up again...

[ddcc]

Will it work on Linux?

Re:lets go after the innocent

[CheeseTroll]

That may not help, depending on the sophistication of the keylogging software. Here's an interesting article I found on the subject... http://www.pcmag.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=18129 0,00.asp [pcmag.com]

Using something like Password Safe (http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net) on a USB key would be helpful, as it gives you the option to copy individual usernames & passwords without even viewing them.

Fiddle the cursor

[EmbeddedJanitor]

This technology is very easily fooled anyway... so long as you know about it. Just move the cursor around a bit with your mouse as you type. For example, if your credit card is 12345678, type 18 then set the cursor between the 1 and the 8 and type 34567 then set the cursor before the 3 and type 2. It looks like you typed 18345672.

And if you're being a political rabble rouser you can type "Bush is a wally" so that it looks like "wish us a Bally".

Re:It's Time For A Global Revolution

[TheLink]

Usually when a government gets violently overthrown, what replaces it is a Dictatorship that's willing and capable of the most violence.

Violent revolutions should only be reserved for "last resort" - there absolutely is no other choice[1]. Given that India is a democracy, they have a choice, and if you don't like the candidates, get others to stand for election then.

That's why Karl Marx was either an idiot or an evil person because he recommended violence as normal standard procedure.

[1] Even if you're already stuck in a dictatorship, sometimes it's just better to wait till the next generation takes over. See China - things actually got better and most steps after Mao's time, whereas if you had another violent revolution, you'd probably get another Mao in charge.

Violent revolutions are like playing russian roulette with 5 out of 6 bullets loaded in your revolver. You're hoping you get a benevolent dictator who'd set things up properly then peacefully and orderly hand over power to the citizens. This does happen sometimes, but never bet on it.

Would you give up 1 billion dollars if you found it in your bank account due to someone _else_ doing illegal stuff AND you know you can get away with it due to some loophole? There are a few people who'd say "sure, because it is just wrong to keep it". The Dictators you'd want are an even smaller _subset_ of those people (you need them to be competent dictators as well ;) ).

It never happened.!! look at freedom of expression

[Anonymous Coward]

Better story to be slashdotted with lot of background research done would be http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEP200 70902113325&Title=Nation&rLink=0 [newindpress.com]
Do you think a country which provides such an extreme freedom of expression can ever implement keyboard logging ?

The keyboard story is mis-sensationalized. I am from mumbai and I can't even imagine that this kind of thing can happen anywhere in india.The statement might be from a police officer who is computer savvy in his office just to show windows screensaver floating around.The journalist himself just seemed to have gotten his new PC after working for 40 years on his typewriter.
It never happenend here....and to the best of my experience with the country it never will.A old story by a reporter of a genre who can't stop flooding indian channels with stories of rebirth of american scientists in india."Pappu falling in a 30 feet well or Reshma running away with her neighbour are things I don't care." reflects the suffering of commons at hands of them. Then they come up with stories which makes you look up and even gets slashdotted !!! without doing any background check. If we discuss each and every statement of f***g beaurocrates and politicians from "caste reservations
in private sector" to "communist thoughts of nationalizing each and every economic activity".

 

One word solution!

[John Jamieson]

Knoppix

Insert Knoppix in the drive and reboot the PC before you do anything. I bet it would work at most Cafe's.

Because one might add

[Sycraft-fu]

That George Washington could have been king, had he wanted. He was loved enough and had enough clout that he essentially could have done as he pleased. Had he been a power hungry man, the US republic would not have taken off as it did. Might not have gone the way of absolute dictatorship, but it sure as hell wouldn't have existed as it does. Fortunately, he was a man that really cared about the ideals of freedom and set the standard of a chief executive with limited power and a good deal of accountability. However counting on that to happen isn't a good idea. Anyone care to wager if it were a man like George Bush who had lead the colonies to victory rather than Washington? You think it all would have gone the same?

As was noted: History is full of revolutions that do not end in a nice, happy government. They usually promise that, and sometimes the revolutionaries themselves really are idealists with good intentions, but power corrupts. Have a look at Zimbabwe some time and tell me how well that revolution went.

Re:Fiddle the cursor

[speaker of the truth]

Another trick is to type in the field as well as out of the field. So you type 12167423457831642741211141853900 and they'll know you've typed too many numbers, but won't have any idea which of those numbers is your credit card number.

Hoax?

[XchristX]

A preliminary google search of two sets of keywords

http://www.google.com/search?as_q=Mumbai+Police+ke yloggers&num=10&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=&as_oq=& as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt =any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=active&ie=UTF-8&o e=UTF-8 [google.com]

http://www.google.com/search?q=Mumbai+Police+keyst roke+loggers&hl=en&lr=&safe=active&as_qdr=all&star t=10&sa=N [google.com]

reveals no reliable mainstream media source for this allegation. The only one I could find was this article from mid-day:

http://www.mid-day.com/news/city/2007/august/16316 5.htm [mid-day.com]

For those who don't know, "Mid-Day" is basically Mumbai's version of the National Enquirer, rants on about conspiracy theories and local celebrity gossip, hardly a reliable source. All the blog entries about this are based on this one mid-day article.

Of course, it could mean that I'm not searching correctly. I'd appreciate it if somebody posted any (and I mean any) information from any mainstream media outlet (and not dubious blogs). Until then, I remain skeptical and maintain that this is probably a hoax circulated by some sub-par journalist as a means to get fame, and the "Outsource victims" moaning on slashdot lapped it up swiftly, of course...

Keep in mind that the Indian media is dangerously moonbatty and very anti-establishment (borderline third-world paranoid anarchist actually). Therefore if this actually happened then the media would pounce upon it like a pack of hungry wolves. They haven't ... yet.

Has slashdot been trolled, again?

Re:It's Time For A Global Revolution

[VJ42]

The way I see it, and from what I've seen through history, violent revolution is inevitable.

Really? You the last time my country had a real violent revolution was in 1066 when we were invaded by the Normans (if that counts as a revolution), since then governments have come and gone, political parties have been founded and disbanded. Our system of government has changed from an absolute monarchy to a parliamentary democracy, we gained an empire and then lost it.

We even tried to have a revolution, but it was more of a civil war, and despite the king getting his head cut off, we decided that a monarchy was preferable to a republic and crowned his son king after the intervening military dictator died. We call our revolution bloodless [wikipedia.org]. I think near on a thousand years without a violent revolution, but instead a series of evolutions, sometimes bloody, at others not proves that it's not "inevitable".