An article by Reuters provides us a contrasting perspective on all the phone tapping and data mining that has been causing many of us here in the U.S. heartburn of late. India, where civil liberties may not be as pressing a concern when compared to terrorism, has found tapping quite useful:
Minutes after a bomb exploded recently in Kashmir and wounded Indian soldiers, a senior member of an Islamist rebel group called local newspaper offices to claim responsibility for the blast.
A few hours later, troops smashed the door of his hideout and arrested the militant “commander” after a brief gun battle.
Indian intelligence officers credited the bust in south Kashmir to the tracking of his mobile phone.
Until a few years ago, intelligence officials resisted attempts by the federal government to lift a ban on cell phone services in the region, fearing mobile phones would aid militants in planning attacks.
Now they know better and security officials say troops have eliminated many militants by tracking their mobile phones and tapping conservations, citing the example in south Kashmir.“Such a quick strike operation was just impossible three years ago,” a senior intelligence official told Reuters.[Link]
Not only is India using wiretapping to capture terrorists and prevent terrorism, it is also disseminating cell phones in order to help win the hearts and minds of those who they may eventually end up tapping. Huh?
In 2003, New Delhi allowed mobile services, eight years after the rest of India, now the world’s fastest-growing market for cellular services.At that time, India said it was a move to win the hearts and minds of Kashmiris, weary and alienated after years of conflict in India’s only Muslim-majority state which is also claimed by neighbor Pakistan.
After three years, there are now more than 850,000 mobile phone users in a state of 10 million people. And the spin-off for anti-insurgency operations has enthused security officials.
“So far, we have arrested or eliminated dozens of them (militants) including many senior commanders through mobile-tracking,” the intelligence officer said. [Link]
I do not support the wiretapping and data mining policies of the Bush administration at all. I am a Civil Libertarian who does not want the government monitoring my activities. Still, here is an example they can point to in defending their decision to not reveal the existence of any such programs. In Sri Lanka, once the Tamil Tigers found out that their cell phone communications could/would be tracked, they banned them in Tiger-controlled territories:
In Sri Lanka, which is teetering on the brink of a return to civil war, Tamil Tiger rebels do not allow mobile phone services in areas held by them.
“We do not allow mobile telephones because of security concerns,” said rebel media coordinator Daya Master. The Tigers fear they could be tracked and targeted through mobile signals. So they use satellite phones instead. [Link]
So it seems the government of India was slow to roll-out cell phone service because they feared it would help terrorists better coordinate attacks. Instead it turns out that cell phones help to prevent attacks.
Having close relatives serving in the military in Kashmir, I have known of this before it hit the news. While armchair civil libertarians everywhere will be frothing at the mouth, the reality on the battlefield is that any edge you can get is the difference between life and death. Something to keep in mind before gulping down that Mylanta.
There is a qualitative difference between the India and U.S. examples – the monitoring and wiretapping in India seems to be relegated to Kashmir – a region of active terrorism. The NSA’s monitoring program, focusing on domestic callers, would not yield the same results. Nor is it clear that the Indians are engaged in “data mining” – that is, trying to identify patterns in calls. It is much more basic – after an attack occurs, they identify what calls are placed to where, which they hope will give them a jump on catching perpetrators.
Indian abilities in telecom espionage have been noted for years. During the Cold War, the U.S. sometimes used Indian eavesdropping abilities to monitor Chinese activities in Tibet. During Kargil, the Indians broke Pakistani communication links, and intercepted a conversation between Musharaff and his deputies, bragging about how they had complete control of the Kashmiri militancy.
I hope this means both India and Pakistan will ease restrictions on telecommunications between the 2. Its ridiculous that it costs 5 rs a minute to call the US from a cellphone, and 25rs for India.
Abhi writes:
I find this condescending (even though you may not have meant it that way) – it’s as if “those runts” are lesser deserving of privacy and liberties than us.
Indian notion of privacy and civil liberties is completely different from that of the America’s. I asked all of my relatives and friends in India (during my last trip) if they had a problem with the government knowing what calls they make, what library books they borrow, what TV they watch and how they spend their money. None had any problem with it. This is true even of my relatives who live in places where there has been no effect of terrorism. However, all of them had a problem when the government tried to tell them how to live. Allow me to elaborate…
Indian culture is chaotic. There are people everywhere. Unless you are very rich, you cannot give your children a room of their own. When we studied for our exams, the TV would be on, there would be loudspeakers down the street blaring movie songs, kids would be playing cricket on the street, neighbours would be arguing loudly, toddlers would be crying. All at the same time. Yet, we would be able to concentrate on our studies. Not at any point would we have the audacity to ask others to keep it quiet. Your brother would not lower the TV volume. Your mother will not stop talking loudly with the neighbour’s wife. Your sister will not stop crying while reading her novel.
Any American student will go insane under these conditions.
In the street, there are people everywhere. You get unsolicited advice and questions all the time. When a husband and wife go to a shop to buy say, jewellery, the folks in the shop will ask them how long they have been married. “Four years? You should have children by now.” When you have a problem with your spouse, fifty people will give you seventy suggestions, of which you will find only four useful. But you are expected to smile and tell all of them that their suggestions were great. People ask a newly wed couple how their wedding night was (men ask men, women ask women).
An American couple will die a thousand deaths under these conditions.
Indian culture, by it’s very nature, allows for free flow of information. Whether the recepient of this information is your nosy neighbour or the government is immaterial.
However, Indian culture does not allow for anyone to tell anybody else what to do – not your relative, not the government. So you cannot tell your brother to lower the TV – if you do, he will increase it. You are expected to increase your concentration and block out the TV. The government cannot ask the people to dump garbage in the streets – if it does, it will be ignored or worse, people will dump more garbage. A relative of mine slapped a cop because when he went to the police station to invite the policemen to his daughter’s marriage (a common practice in small towns), the cop asked him if his daughter was at least eighteen (legal age of marriage). The other cops did not arrest my relative – they apologised on behalf of the errant cop. Indian culture does not allow the government to tell when people can marry or not.
Indian culture, by it’s very nature, does not allow for anybody(including the government) to restrict anybody’s actions. There is enormous emphasis on self-change, self-control, self-realisation. When you go to religious places where men and women take their holy-bath (almost) nude, you know not to look (Western tourist simply stare). Indians look inward, where no government can peek.
American/Western culture, on the other hand, is based on looking outward. They try to change others, control others and “save other’s souls”. Those who clamor for privacy and civil liberties will not have the courage to stand up to their township rule that the grass has to be mowed every week. They will not have the guts to slap a cop who cites them for playing music loudly. They will not have the guts to get married without first getting a marriage licence from the state.
Americans are more subservient to the State than Indians, without even realising it. (How much does your portfolio swing when the Fed changes interest rates?) When they protest the State looking at their phone calls, they are barking up the wrong tree. There are far more harmful state interventions that merit attention and protest.
Is it because it’s the Bush adminisation? Would you have said the same of the Gore/Kerry administration?
For all those who don’t agree with the way terrorism is being controlled, let me ask you a question: Which of the two is more dangerous for America – Islamic terrorism or White racist terrorism? If you answered Islamic, you are wrong. Muslim terrorism has only a marginal affect on America. It’s white racist terrorism that’s a huge problem, which is lying dormant for the last few decades.
There are enough indications that most fundamentalist Protestant churches have gone underground. They are bringing up a whole new generation of home-schooled, bible-thumping white kids who are taught to hate everyone and everything that are not like them. The number runs into hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
When the Reagan/Clinton administration suppressed WASP fundamentalists, they violated privacy left, right and center. If you delivered pizza to the dotbusters, your phone was tapped. If you were a dotbusters’ second cousin, they listened to your conversations.They picked people up with scant evidence, sometimes even cooked up evidence. Did people’s civil rights get violated? Hell yeah. Do I care? Hell no. Could I walk on the streets of Jersey City safely? Heck yeah.
Those of you who are against collection of intelligence which violate privacy ought to consider this: Every lawsuit by ACLU is bringing another smile to the WASP fundamentalists. They are watching, sharpening their knives, polishing their guns. One of these days, another incident of Islamic terrorism may happen. This may coincide with other economic disasters (oil shock, US dollar collapse etc). The US unemployment may hit 15%. Then, there will be a general hatred of “people who don’t look like us”. WASP terrorism will raise it’s ugly head. The government agencies will be unable to deal with hundreds of thousands of home-grown terrorists, because their intelligence gathering capabilities would have been hampered by ACLU sponsored lawsuits. It will be too late to change laws, and even if you try, WASPs will start filing lawsuits (How come you have one rule for WASP terrorism and another one for Islamic terrorism?). All of our sorry brown asses will be fried because we did not foresee the bigger problem which was out of sight (and hence out of mind). You will have to go back to your Surats, Amritsars and Chennais with nothing but the shirts on your backs.
It’s better to tune yourself to the Indian notions of personal privacy and civil liberties, while at the same time enjoying the American implementation of the same(garbage free streets). When you have the best of both worlds, why work on ruining it?
M. Nam
Hey, if it works, do anything you need to.
R2K
They will not have the guts to slap a cop who cites them for playing music loudly. They will not have the guts to get married without first getting a marriage licence from the state.
Why is that gutsy?
One thing should be noticed here, that, India has a much higher terrorist activities on a daily basis than the US. The public in India has to live with the constant threat of terrorism. Even deep southern areas arent excluded from terrorist activities anymore, as seen by the brazen attack on Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. So people would care less for privacy when security is such a big concern.
The recent Bush administration revelation about the NSA activities do not include listening in on calls. The reason is that to listen in on a cell phone conversation they would have to use a feature called CALEA which was passed into law long time back and all Telecom equipment mfr. in US have to implement it. But since there is a process in place to turn on surveillance by CALEA, govt. has to do it via a court order. Even VoIP providers have to comply with CALEA.
So rest assured that no converstions are being listened in on by the govt.
MoorNam writes:
Ahh…good ole’ culture. The explanation and answer to all of life’s queries!
Our culture has been cell phone free flow for 179,000 years. Abrahamics cannot be compared to us.
Re-dial Mogambo!
To expand on Al_M_f_D’s brief question, I think this is less a question of “guts” and more a case of arrogance, along with lack of self-discipline and consideration for others.
Jai:
MoorNam:
Jai:
sigh…No, Jai. Impossible. Not having the guts to slap a cop and getting married without first getting a marriage license from the state is just engrained in our Indian culture.
I think this is less a question of “guts” and more a case of arrogance, along with lack of self-discipline and consideration for others.
I’d say it was a typical reaction in small-town India. As long as you are earning more than the policeman, that is. To put it simply, in a patriarchal, semi-feudal set up, you do not ask questions about the girl. You accept the invitation, or don’t, and that is it. Any personal questions about the girl herself are a sign of disrespect. And the policeman in question would have known that.
You are free to inquire about the groom though.
RCK,
Possibly, although the rest of MoorNam’s post was in relation to Indian society as a whole and my response was therefore referring to the same. I don’t think it’s a good idea for someone to glorify the kind of faux-macho, insensitive immaturity which is the cause of many behavioural/social problems within Indian society, along with lack of respect for the rule of law.
Quite a controversial statement, considering the economic impact of 9/11 on the United States (and the rest of world’s financial markets as a whole). The on-going effect of Islamic terrorism against the West has had huge ramifications on all of us who work in the business arena, regardless of what happened when the dot-com bubble burst. It’s taken several years for the markets (and the associated economy) to recover and stabilise, notwithstanding the current turbulence over the past week or so.
The impact on South Asians in the US has already been extensively discussed on SM, and those of us here in the UK have also had to face the consequences post-9/11 and 7/7. It hasn’t been anywhere near as bad as it could have been (certainly compared to what would have happened if similar atrocities by jihadists had occurred in major Indian cities), but there has definitely been an effect on desi life here.
What? No critical xxx theory? No analysis of the effects of brownness?
Jai,
I take it you’ve never lived in India.
What I’ve been trying to say is that Indian culture, by the very nature of its philosophy of looking inwards for answers, insulates man from State intrustion. His behaviour is attuned to freely share any information with anybody, but ossfies when anyone tells him/her what to do.
So when your brother is watching TV while you study and upon you asking him to lower your volume when he actually increases it – he’s doing you a favor. He is forcing you to improve your concentration, and this will help you in becoming impervious to external stimuli. (The same brother will loan you half his savings without blinking an eyelid – try that in the American scenario!) The relative of mine who slapped the cop is telling him: Tell the government that they have no right to tell me or my daughter when/whom/where she can marry.
Indian culture reduces the role of State to a minimal, and it warms the heart of a Libertarian like me. It does not recognise the Government’s power to tell him to do/not do anything, unless the Government provides an alternative. So it’s not enough when the Government tells you not to throw garbage on the street – it has to provide a viable alternative. For the last 3-4 years, many cities have private garbage collectors who are doing an excellent job. It was the local governments who started this initiative.
M. Nam
…all that being said, potential re-emergence of “WASP terrorism” is an interesting topic. gotta give M.Nam that.
Moornam,
Quite a forceful argument on possibility of WASP terrorism. I have been under the impression that even if WASPs attack ‘others’ on American soil, it may not be called ‘terrorism’. It will probably be categorised as ‘racial attacks’ and federal grants will be given to improve race relations in affected areas.
May be if what you predict becomes a reality ( I know we all wish it doesn’t; but you seem to be pretty convinced that things are headed that way.), the very definition of ‘terrorism’ will need to be looked at.
Coming to Abhi’s post, the very term ‘civil liberty’ connotes some thing very different in the Indian context. For the aam Indian, a civil liberty activist is some one who fights for the rights of naxalites, Islamic terrorists, and the like. Not some one who fights for the rights of the law abiding citizens of India. Your average Indian citizen is quite bewildered by the moral duplicity of ‘civil libertarians’. And the average citizen is also confused about the criteria followed by Amnesty International and other such orgs, in ranking countries on human rights record.
moornam… your core points are interesting insofar as you hypothesize the essential ‘indian’ character as being tolerant of intrusion… it is an original thought and i would like to understand your rationale… but you dont really give discussion a chance … it gets weird when you bang the drum that india(n)=good and american(n)=bad and downright loopy when you stretch it to i/us=great and you/them=crap… relax buddy – do you need a hug – here let me give you a big japphi…
Kumar,
What’s in a name, when they start blowing up Desi restaurants and Chinese grocery stores..?
Dhaavak,
hug back
By no means did I say that Indian=Good/American=Bad. I was trying to elucidate what part of each culture is good. As a Hindu in America, I get the best of both worlds, and I don’t want folks with half-baked notions of civil liberties to destroy it.
M. Nam
MoorNam:
Kudos on one of the most interesting and eccentric posts I’ve ever read on SM. I’m not sure if it was meant to be sociology or poetry. Either way it works. I like the eclectic topic mix, from “WASP terrorism” to India being a natural libertarian society (I’ve never thought about it that way, but it’s something I’ve observed personally from participating in India’s economic revolution; which in it’s origins is quite bottom up.
So Bottoms Up to you.
So-called ‘civil liberties’ is a Vedic invention. Americans are too inclined in their culture immature to handle them properly. I want the best of both worlds, the inherent greatness and libetarianism of Hindus, where we are tolerant and can slap a policeman doing his job, as compared to Amreekan not slapping policeman or turning TV volume down. I am also worried about WASP terrorism, but from an ancient great recipe of 18,002 years ago from the Gangetic plain have a cure for wasp terrorism.
Don’t worry! We are Hindus.
Buzzzz Mogambo!
Yes, becasue the heir-archical and feudal system provides the “rules”. Besides its a shame based society !!! Yes, its due to India’s great culture, people dont give a shit about laws 🙂
SpoorLam:
Man, you are everywhere. Leave it to SpoorLam to put a Vedic twist onto everything.
Curious: is there any topic where it is not possible to put a Vedic slant on?
Oh, here’s a topic: global warming. What do you have to say about global warming?
Re: comment #23, I’ve realized that I am engaging in two prohibitive no no’s: feeding the trolls and threadjacking.
Sorry.
Jai
9/11 was used to cover up a lot of sins. The market and the economy was going down before 9/11 and would have ended up a lot worse as all the excess of 1999/2000 had to be wrung off the economy. But 9/11 gave a good excuse to pump more money thru’ tax cuts, easy money by the Feds and security/defense spending. This basically transferred into the real estate bubble in the US and also UK. So IMHO, 9/11 didn’t negatively impact in the short term (less than 5 years) and may even had a positive impact (not the event itself or the other political/social consequences inclduing the impact on personal freedoms, but just the pump priming part actions due to 9/11).
I don’t think it’s a good idea for someone to glorify the kind of faux-macho, insensitive immaturity which is the cause of many behavioural/social problems within Indian society, along with lack of respect for the rule of law.
This I agree with. Also, have never quite understood why one feels dishonoured/disrespected by questions. IT is simpler to answer most questions than to get offended by them. And if the question is really offensive, it is simpler to give a dirty look and not dignify the question with an answer.
I just wanted to note that there’s a new ‘Kumar’ in sepia-town. Not that there isn’t room for more Kumars, he ain’t me!
Regards, Kumar [the non-asian KP; cerified non-sand-n***** by Razib The Atheist 😉 ]
America, or liberal democracy for that matter, is about freedom primarily–not meritocracy. Freedom of speech does not guarantee the best works of literature will be the best sellers, but what is the alternative to this…for the government to decide which books are best? Obviously the children of the wealthy have an advantage in college admissions (though not has much as the children of those who value education) but again, what is the alternative…for the government to regulate how parents spend their money?
The free market does not guarantee that institutions like Harvard or Yale will be fair (after all, they have institutionalized such anti-meritocracy practices as racial preferences and legacies); but it does put constraints on how far they can go lest they lose the respect of the public, and thus their prestige.
This is not an American problem but a human nature one…life is unfair; and those who want to legislate this unfairness away are just trying to impose their morality on the rest of us.
“Democracy is the worst system of government ever devised, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.”
oops. disregard # 28. it was meant for another thread.
By what I understand all the thought of civil liberties related to Indian culture are meaningless. All those self-policing and self-diswciple are a mere smokescreen to hide the ingorance of our countrymen most of them are not aware of the inconvenciences that can happen to other while enjoying their own freedom.They should first learn to abide by civil etiquettes and laws of the land.