The what, why and how of #StopICMS

Note: Take part in the Twitter storm to raise awareness for #StopICMS.
Introduction

Indian Central Monitoring System(ICMS) is being implemented by the Government of India(GoI) this year. GoI started implementation from April 2013.[1] #StopICMS is a campaign against the implementation of ICMS in India.

What is ICMS?

Though the main reason of ICMS is unclear to the public, we believe after the recent rise in civil society threats and other protests originating from the internet, we believe, GoI wants to have a peek into the working and plans for the next event, as soon as possible. Though, we also infer that this can be widely used against terror attacks and other violent events. But according to security expert Bruce Schneier, searching for a terrorist through data mining is like looking for a needle in a haystack.[2]

GoI mainly asks Google to remove defamatory content. Why is that? Security for themselves, in the name of safety of citizens? Content removal requests have increased by 90% from the GoI. 33% of the requests from the GoI are about either hate speech, defamation or government criticism.[3] Therefore, we can conclude that after implementation of ICMS GoI will primarily use it against “hate speeches” and government criticism. So, it could happen so the next time when you speak something really bad about GoI, which they dislike, you might get detained, like what happened to Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga (house arrest).

CMS, which costs approximately 4 billion rupees (US$73 million) to build, will be linked to the Telephone Call Interception System (TCIS) setup to monitor voice calls, SMS and MMS, GPRS, Fax Communications on landlines, CDMA, GSM and 3G networks, and video calls.[7]

Stopicms