DailyPost 2936
DIGITAL ARRESTS – ‘THE ADVISORY RESPONSE’
Take a hypothetical crime scenario of gunpoint robberies happening all across the country, with the same modus operandi, similar gangs, and being publicised as well. In which manner the police and government would have reacted? Did it not call for immediate and effective action? Take the next step of the scenario, if in the gunpoint robberies, the robbers fled away with crores of cash, what should have been the expected response? Or would the government have been able to get away with it? If the movement of victims was completely constricted and were kept under surveillance for days together, the nature of concern would reach another level.
You can term it as a hostage situation for the lack of a better professional word. Then money is transferred and laundered in the most professional way, finding its way to mule accounts in no time. Is it the failure of core banking itself or only of the KYC mechanism. All this and much more has happened in undefined crime of Digital Arrests, where people have lost from a few lakhs to a few crores. At least two of the known victims have been retired senior IAS and IPS officers. Large number of them come from IT, healthcare and various professions, including a CEO.
Think of a situation if the same crimes were to happen at the physical level and the money looted was cash. Notwithstanding that, the trauma has been the same and the money lost for sure remains the same amount. The only difference is lack of physical presence or violence. The same MO digital arrests have been happening for quite sometime and there are no chances of it stopping anytime in the near future. Treating this as mere cyber crime is missing the woods for the trees. State governments and their police have barely reacted to it, while hard earned money is being swindled. Presumably, it has been left to the cyber depts, cyber cells and cyber crime police stations to stem the tide in whichever manner they deem fit and with whatever little resources they have at their command.
What is intriguing is how a simple advisory can become a panacea in this messed up scenario? Even that was too delayed beyond reason. The Indian Cyber Coordination Centre on Saturday issued a public advisory in the context of the raging cyber-crime fire of Digital Arrests and Ransom Payments. It is made clear through the advisory that law enforcement agencies do not conduct arrests through video and caution the people against it. So, there is no need to panic. The logos of WhatsApp and Skype are added to better identify the platforms most used for the purpose. It is said that these platforms are collaborating with government cyber security agencies to enhance user safety. Where do we go from here? Back to square one.
CAN ADVISORIES ABSOLVE GOVERNMENTS?
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.