Column

Cops are still in the nursery when it comes to deciphering emails

Shrapnel that gouges out the eyes is an ancient weapon; but these days, when terror is sprayed and scattered across our cities, gloating follows, from the dark side, on an everyday platform—cyberspace.

Indeed, the dark side is so confident of the blurring anonymity of cyberspace that it even taunts us about impending attacks. That tendency demonstrated recently by Indian Mujahideen, woke common citizens up to the perils of WiFi networks and the menacing cargo that whizzes past them as they search for Kareena’s pictures or book airline tickets.

In that context, it is reassuring that Home Ministry is training very select senior officers from national level to discern and destroy terror hubs on the information superhighway. But the sensible initiative is undercut by the feudal Indian mentality.

The training, being imparted (one such six-day course was held at IIT-Bombay last week for 30 officers) always excludes the foot soldiers and the young men of the force from classes on e-warfare against terrorists.

Terrorism works because it is, in its perverse way, democratic. Maybe the site of an attack is carefully chosen, but once the button to set off the bomb is activated, terrorists do not bother about a sudden change in the demographic profile of the site.

For example, if a strike is aimed at the middleclass in a market place, terrorists do not worry too much about the unanticipated appearance of a Cartier-wearing socialite or a crippled beggar.

Therefore when Mumbai confronts terror, our troops of justice and democracy must not be arrayed on the lines of privilege and rank, but on pragmatism and efficiency.

If a cop is investigating, let us say, a potential sleeper cell is empowered by only the hazy assurance that he can at some stage use torture, we would be pitting an ancient weapon against a modern scourge.

In the end he would be banging his own head against the cold walls of his conscience — because half a threat of torture can produce confessions. And though Mumbai streets would be swept clean off a purse-snatching junkie, who claims to be a mass-murderer, the real cold killers would be plotting the next round of slaughter.

To fight terror, Mumbai police must create ace units whose every member must be able to:
Tell an improvised bomb from a harmless radio
Spot communication trends on cyberspace and anticipate mischief. For example, the FBI was able to bust Ku Klux Klan — a white supremacist group — cells by looking up its pamphlets-distributing hubs. When one part of KKK’s propaganda organ was disrupted — so were its operations
Trawl chat-rooms and networking sites and identify trouble makers. It is well known that law keepers in the West hunt down child molesters on the Web
Crack basic codes
Send an email – For God’s sake, it is a must now.
raghu@dnaindia.net