Mr. Vijay Mukhi is intelligent enough to realize that terrorists wont be using their home machines, but does he think that they dont have an alternative ? Like a wi-fi hot spot ? Or tapping into somebody else’s connection ? Or just crack the monitoring software ?
“The question we need to ask ourselves is whether a breach of privacy is more important or the security of the nation. I do not think the above question needs an answer,” said Mukhi.
Mukhi won’t be so enthusiastic if his personal computer is monitored too.
“The police needs to install programs that will capture every key stroke at regular interval screen shots, which will be sent back to a server that will log all the data.
The police can then keep track of all communication between terrorists no matter, which part of the world they operate from.This is the only way to patrol the net and this is how the police informer is going to look in the e-age,” added Mukhi.
I just cringe.
“The question we need to ask ourselves is whether a breach of privacy is more important or the security of the nation. I do not think the above question needs an answer,” said Mukhi.
This is the worst form of arm twisting I have started to notice lately. The rhetoric suggests that privacy and security of the nation are mutually exclusive. And once the argument is framed this way, any opposition to it is tarnished as “unpatriotic”.
I still am unclear about the pros and cons of the proposed move. But framing an argument this way is a very bad start from Mukhi. That makes me suspect that Mukhi is not very confident about the intrinsic merits of his argument.