Cyber terrorism

Posted on August 18, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

The method, discipline, and the singular purpose evident in the messaging and texting of dire warnings against Indians from the Northeast in southern India does not seem to be the work of local “miscreants” gone viral, but rather a well-defined cyber offensive to unsettle social and communal peace. This is another brand of terrorism and how adversary states will be laid low in the future — not by wars but by such cyber campaigns to attack the soft core of societal peace in composite societies such as ours. Those who initiated this campaign are in-country and should be hunted down and given exemplary punishment. Such as life imprsonment. It is not difficult to trace them and, assuming the National Intelligence Agency is already on the job, and the NTRO is not too busy doing nothing, the instigators should be collared fairly easily. Electronic footmarks aren’t easy to eraze. The trouble will be that once these people are caught there will always be those from “secular” parties demanding lenient treatment. Govt of India is nowhere in tune with the cyber potential for mayhem.

About Bharat Karnad

Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, he was Member of the (1st) National Security Advisory Board and the Nuclear Doctrine-drafting Group, and author, among other books of, 'Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security: The Realist Foundations of Strategy', 'India's Nuclear Policy' and most recently, 'Why India is Not a Great Power (Yet)'. Educated at the University of California (undergrad and grad), he was Visiting Scholar at Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania, the Shanghai Institutes of International Studies, and Henry L. Stimson Center, Washington, DC.
This entry was posted in Cyber & Space, Indian Politics, Internal Security, Terrorism. Bookmark the permalink.

8 Responses to Cyber terrorism

  1. Krishnakanth says:
    August 19, 2012 at 10:13 am

    Sir,
    Dont u think it is better to ban social networking sites(Facebook,twitter,etc) and also YouTube,bulk SMSes altogether as done by China keeping the larger interests and concerns of our National Security in mind.As it is the Indians(particularly the elite and well heeled Indians/liberals/leftists/Seculars) are callous,insensitive regarding the National Security.Also cant India seal the Bangladesh border once for all (similar to that of Pakistan Border). Isn’t it the time ripe for the government to act tough ?

    Reply
    • Kfir says:
      August 19, 2012 at 11:24 am

      Sir, that is a good idea for starters. But wouldn’t such measures infuriate the carefully cultivated vote bank of the Congress party?

      Reply
      • Bharat Karnad says:
        August 19, 2012 at 1:20 pm

        Vote bank politics is the bane of the Indian system and the root of many of our problems. It amounts to national and regional politics being reduced to mollycoddling groups of people because of their religious affiliation. What can be less secular?

    • Bharat Karnad says:
      August 19, 2012 at 1:15 pm

      Closing off social networking sites is too extreme, authoritarian, and unnecessary. What’s required is better policing/montoring of social sites traffic and preemptive action.

      And, no, the B’desh border cannot be sealed because good parts of it are riverine.

      Reply
  2. Kfir says:
    August 19, 2012 at 11:12 am

    This will be a recurring and growing problem unless and until the GoI: (1) bans all foreign funds to evangelical sects and madrassas (especially the ones influenced by wahabi and salafist ideologies) and related NGO’s with immediate effect, and, (2) identify all illegal Bangladeshi immigrants and kick them out.

    These funds are not only used for illegal conversion, but also employed to wage war against the State. Regardless of where the SMS’s and MMS’s emanated from, it is these criminal foot soldiers of foreign vested interests who carried out the recent of mayhem, which constitutes war against the Indian State.

    India is the only Nation where evangelical and Islamic elements sometimes even collaborate in subversive activities against the State. The situation has reached alarming proportions over the past decade. I don’t subscribe to the saffron ideology as some may suspect, but am merely stating a matter of fact.

    Reply
    • Bharat Karnad says:
      August 19, 2012 at 1:17 pm

      True, internal policing is the real problem here. As is our profession of secularism that’s taken to extremes that even the more advanced liberal societies don’t do.

      Reply
      • Kfir says:
        August 19, 2012 at 6:30 pm

        There is an Aurangzeb Rd. in New Delhi. I do not recall having seen an Eichmann or Hitler Rd. in Israel, or a Reinhard Heydrich Rd. in the Czech Republic. Indian pseudo secularists have reached the lowest depths of moral leprosy, and they are still digging.

  3. Bharat Karnad says:
    August 19, 2012 at 10:40 pm

    You have a point about Aurangzeb Road!

    Reply

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