Net Neutrality: But Who will Guard the Guardians?

There is an old latin quote “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” by Roman poet Juvenal which roughly translates to “But who will guard the guardians?” This quote seems to be tailor made for TRAI’s (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India). After getting an overwhelming response from the netizens over net neutrality, the policy maker of tele communications in India drew severe flak from the same netizens. It was found that TRAI had released the email id’s of the people of had sent in their responses for freedom of the internet. The pdf document was any spammers and email marketing company’s dream document as it contained over a million email id’s. They even posted a love letter which they had received among the millions of responses over net neutrality.

Netizens Strike Back

TRAI’s disclosure of the email id’s didn’t go down well among the netizens and some of them decided to act against it. The end result was TRAI’s official website trai.gov.in was inaccessible due to DDoS attack. Anonymous India claimed that they were the reason behind the attack.

The hacking of TRAI’s website sheds light into the poor cyber security standards in India. It is a matter of serious concern at a time when the government is busy announcing its intentions of making a “Digital India?”. If TRAI’s website isn’t safe then how can one expect freedom of the internet? After all “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”