Anonymous India strikes again against corruption
thehackernews.com
thehackernews.com
Can we please get beyond the script kiddie phase and actually start bringing to light some of the deeply corrupt politicians and bureaucrats ala Wikileaks style?
Even that I am not hopeful about. Corruption is so pervasive in India that Indians glaze over them except when something of the scale of 2G Scam hits. Accusations fly back and forth, and then its relegated to Page 10 and everyone moves on. Judiciary, Legislature, there is hardly any aspect that remains untarnished.
There is a moral tug of war today waged for the heart of India, a tug of war between Technology and Transparency against corruption. Once that is won, there still remains a task of punishing the offenders and ensuring the frameworks are in place to prevent it from happening. Neither the Legislature, nor the Judiciary is vested enough to ensure that.
He is an opportunistic god peddler who wants to turn this circus in to an attempt at politics and further power play. Some people can see through his shell game, but in the end this wouldnt have solved anything for the country.
But I'm inclined to think some action is better than no action, when it comes to fixing things.
So, as a (presumably) professional coder, you believe this? I'm inclined to STRONGLY disagree. There's a time for decisiveness of action , sure, but it usually follows once you've established a strategy. "Some act is better than no act" is false without lots of caveats.
B) politics != programming
C) Think you could write out the caveats for me? If you do it quick I can still edit them into my original post. Thanks.
A guy who believes he can uproot a government because he has "the power of the people" and "220 million".
I dont think thats the face you want on the front of an anti-corruption crusade. Anna Hazare on the other hand is much more believable and ethical.
I am not apologizing for anyone. I dont think the Prime Minister is corrupt, but everything below is scarred by corruption.
But there was a country wide agitation a while back demanding for an Ombudsman bill (against corruption) which is now being worked out by a joint committee. It will most likely get passed in the parliament within two months. If it happens it'll be the first major step taken against corruption in the independent India.
The problem is that bringing these people to light is useless if you can't reach your audience. Internet access in India is still not really that great, and free-roaming Internet access -- the sort that drives people to use informational sources recreationally, a la Wikipedia and reddit -- has a long way to go before it becomes common. Facebook's penetration into India is basically nil, and Orkut isn't doing much better -- 40 million is a vanishingly small fraction of India's population. If hackers expose a bunch of corrupt politicians on Wikileaks India, it will hardly matter when nobody sees it.
The gazillion newspapers and TV channels of India will do a nice job in highlighting Wikileaks expositions of Indian politicians if it is released. (recently Julian Assange promised to release the list of Indian black money holders in Swiss banks)
You know what could change things? Here's one idea. A lot of corruption happens in pushing files (as in, paper files) in the bureaucracy. What if you could come up with a secure, Wiki-like system where files were bits instead of atoms; each change, each access, each transfer, each signature was tracked (just like in Wikipedia); and using a web interface, a citizen could keep track of his/her file. Couple this with a secure biometric-based system which allowed fine-grained control on who has access to the file.
The scourge of corruption in India is nourished by the dark bureaucracy of UDCs, LDCs and myriad clerks whose sole purpose is to shuffle files around. Get rid of them and shine some light there.
Any "hackers" willing to take up this challenge?