Transformation of Community : A shift from Real to Virtual

                                                                                                                                  Anindya Datta

The traditional notion of ‘Community’ has gradually become outdated in today’s contexts, and thus it needs to be redefined and updated in order to meet the present challenge of our society. The traditional community was often exclusive, inflexible, isolated and unchanging, monolithic, and homogeneous. With such attributes the old and traditional community does not satisfactorily explain at full length all the functions of present society. Douglas Schuler (New Community Networks,1997 ) states, “ a new community – one that is fundamentally devoted to democratic problem solving – needs to be fashioned from the remnants of the old “,  and he emphasises on the role of computer network in strengthening organizations, providing local information, and developing the bonds of civic life and conviviality that lead to social capital. Thus, according to him the new form of interconnected (wired) community with hardware and software resources surpasses the limit of time and space ,and allows new forms of democratic discourse and participation.

Steven G. Jones in his book ‘Cybersociety’ endeavours to portray this "new forms of community"- or "social formations in cyberspace" as the direct outcomes of Computer-Mediated-Communication or CMC which runs through the Super Information Highway. Tracing the genesis of this ‘new social formations he finds that “the emergence of community from a complex set of social formations in a space enacted by mediating technology”. This newly formed social space is popularly branded as ‘virtual reality’ (VR) or ‘cyberspace’ (Gibson 1984; Benedikt 1991; Rheingold 1991, 1993).

The debate regarding whether the term, community, can be applied in cyberspace have been persisting for long ,until Matthew Williams  takes “the stance arguing despite the lack of physicality, communities can be formed and maintained in cyberspace”. (Quoted from Papers: Ethnography and Data Reuse: Issues of Context and Hypertext ... Virtually Criminal: Crime, Deviance and Regulation Online)

               It, however, took considerably a long time (till early 90s) for CMC researchers to institute the claim that cyber-communities, to be more specific, cybersocieties even exist (Benedikt 1991; Rheingold 1991, 1993; Reid 1991, 1995; Curtis 1992; MacKinnon 1992, 1996; Hauben 1993; Heim  1993; Derry 1994; Jones 1995) only after these researchers were able to establish cybersociety's fundamental existence they might possibly begin to study in-depth the burgeoning communities of which Jones speaks.

Culture is that phrase which is intimately embraced by every community, because it is the way of community life. Similarly every cyber-community has its own culture – “cyberculture” - a culture endemic to online and offline communities.  

           Oxford English Dictionary made an early attempt to record the usage of the term "cyberculture" in 1963, as “the social conditions brought about by automation and computerization." The American Heritage Dictionary widens the term “Cyberculture” which states, "The culture arising from the use of computer networks, as for communication, entertainment, work, and business". However, what both the OED and the American Heritage Dictionary fail to notice is that cyberculture is the culture within and among users of computer networks. This cyberculture may be purely an online culture or it may span over both virtual and physical worlds.

Thus it is not just the culture that results from the use of networked PCs, but culture that is directly mediated by the PCs through Social-Medias specifically by newly developed Social Networking Sites (SNS). Such as FaceBook, Linkedin, Twitter, MySpace, Web 2.0 etc. Online Communities are the electronically-enabled linkages of like-minded, but potentially geographically disparate persons.

“Who we are when we are online ?” (Jones ; CyberSociety, 1995 ; Virtual Culture ,1997). Jones seeks answer of the above question through his orientation towards commonality and the social relationship we seek to foster via internet. He examines the emerging social formations on-line and determines whether they provide some of the humanly attributes we desire off-line - “Friendship , commonality, interaction and public life to determine whether the moral ideals we seek among one another, community, are realized online”.

Revival of a great good place.

According to Jones internet has dual potentialities. First it can recreate and rebuilt community as we have once known it being a great good place (Oldenberg, 1991;Rheingold, 1993), second, it would not merely “get us altogether” it would do so without much effort, since it would overcome space and time for us”

 Thus, Jones believes that internet makes community better integrated since it tends to free a community from the constraints of space and time and encourages us to engage with fellow human beings irrespective of geographical proximity and time. Through internet it is possible to construct a community from communication, “ rather than inhabitance and being , which do not guarantee communication”.

The prophecy

Dates back to 1968 Licklider and Tylor were perhaps the first among early cyber theorists who had most interestingly predicted the carefree atmosphere of the future online community as under :

“Life will be happier for the online individual because the people with whom one interacts most strongly will be selected more by commonality of interests and goals than by accidents of proximity ------------ communication will be more effective and productive and therefore more enjoyable”.(P-31).

  The prophecy comes to be true but the question remains why do we want the community back in our lives again? Jones tends to relate the answer with  C. Wright Mill’s (1956) critique of “Mass Man”, people sunk in their routines, ’who’ do not transcend, “even by discussion’, their lives”. The possible way out as Mill suggested, is “the small scale discussion ---------- the chance for the reasonable and leisurely and human interchange of opinion”.

 The constraints of time and space thus make people “unsocial” and “isolated”. Day by day they seem to sink deep into their routine and are disentangled from the community. It may, however, be congenial for them to maintain a strong relational tie if they find community within their environment. Hence the solution we seek via internet, to the fragmentation of life along the lines of time is to commune with each other”.

   A Silent world of narratives

Does the online community fulfil all the desires of human interaction? Can virtually it satisfy human feelings ? even face to face ,verbal communication ? Answer if yes , how ? Because, as Barlow suggests, it is a silent world --- where all conversations are typed (though presently we have facilities of voice chat, video chat and conference). To enter this world one forsakes both body and place and becomes a things of word only (Ruskoff, 1994).

According to Jones narratives, however, are not communities. They may be artifacts of community and may represent a good portion of what communities do to maintain and reproduce themselves over times and we may imagine ourselves to be a part of the community based on our reading of a narrative.

“no longer do we, as  members of the group, belong to community ,rather community belong to us. Our sense of community is not only derived from our identification with the group, it is derived from our understanding of the group identity.” Internet follows the same trend which been initiated by the development of “Printing Press”, and it continues to create, What Beniger (1987) termed as ,”Pseudo Communities” which are maintained through the process of integration of differing groups by the means of “mass integration” and “mass production”.

To certain extent these narratives may act and feel like community, but they cannot be termed as community since community depends on inhabitancy and the newer community formed by narratives relies more on recognition than inhabitancy. It is the very recognition of understanding that , first, there are others like us, and other know we exist. Thus whatever community – virtual or real – may we want to construct we must require “human occupancy, commitment, interaction and living among and with others”.

“Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity / genuineness”, Anderson noted in Imagined Communities(P 6),” but by their style in which they are imagined”. The on-line communities are thus conceived in two ways inimical to real communities.”First, they thrive on the “meanwhile”, they are forged from the sense that they exist, but we rarely directly apprehend them, and we see them only out of the corner of our eye”. The online community is ,therefore, more an imagined phenomena which does not possess much louder entity and hence it is indirectly conceivable. We only apprehend their presence in our life that goes along with the direction of virtuality. Second “they are imagined as parallel, rather serial, groupings of people. This is to say that they are not composed of people who are necessarily connected, even by interest, but rather groupings of people headed in the same direction”. The above collective of individuals may be compared with a bus of people traversing with different motives or interests whose destinations and routes are same but they do not know each other. Thus they are connected not necessarily by their interests but rather by goals (though they are unconscious of other’s goal/s) . The ‘net people’ thus read the same page or enter into the same chat-room or browse the same site with being conscious about each other. Hence “being online is a time to be alone and yet be with others” – Bennahum (1994, 23)  

Ananda Mitra, in his article ,”Virtual Commonality[1]” wrote that “the term  “ Internet” has become a generic label that refers to the electronic system and space where many people can present their ideas to produce a new computer “reality” which is sum of the various options, ideas , practices and ideologies represented by the texts “ . Though he admits the primacy of texts for the formation of online community, he never ignores the fact that pictures videos and sounds are increasingly becoming significant. Thus to him “internet information is primarily textual, although increasingly there is a movement towards the use of images and sound to supplement text based information. Ananda Mitra, like Jones, acknowledges that the texts exchanged on the internet are the artifacts which enable the online communities to hold together and make the communities cohesive, and these are also the indicators of the direction in which community is headed.

According to Prof. Mitra much of our research efforts are directed towards understanding of the dyadic interactions in arena of computer mediated communication, but we should now move beyond the question of dyadic or small group interactions and explore the pattern of interactions of community as a large collection of users of the internet.   

The most important component for the online community formation is individual identities. Such identities within these online communities are shaped primarily by the way in which the participants introduce themselves into the discourse. Consequently, the question of authenticity is much vital to online interactions and texting. “The question of authenticity is connected with the interpersonal / impersonal debate in which the textual form of internet is criticised for lacking the “touch” that traditional communities would share1 “ However , Rheingold (1993) strongly disagreed with the fact that online community presupposes any physical proximity ,and assumed  that, as mentioned earlier , “virtual communities” are free from the constraints of place and space and able to “emerge as global communities separated only by time zone”. But however strong the denial is, it is not to be ignored that the overwhelming textual dependence of the internet is detrimental to the existence of online communities. Thus excessive text dependency of online community leads to its most interesting characteristics - ephemerality. Internet has always been an ever shifting place where specific texts remain available for a limited period of time. Resultantly the images created by these texts are non permanent in nature. Therefore, to become a member of the community one must maintain the element of the continuity, and access the boards and newsgroups on a regular basis to follow the discourse. Thus “the image produced by the texts exchanged in the electronic community is thus unstable and predicted upon prior knowledge”

          The capacity to produce texts and becoming a part of discourse has often been considered to be the “Interactive” nature of the internet. While some scholars have drawn similarities between the interactive nature of online community and the “face-to-face” attribute of the traditional community, “others have questioned the need to find the congruence between face-to-face situations and electronic contexts” because face-to-face situation should not be considered as “primary or standard”. This is particularly  true , according to Prof. Mitra , in the case of building national image because one can hardly conceive of constructing national image through face-to-face community building attribute. Prof. Mitra believes that in the context of national image production the electronic community needs to be compared with traditional media of mass communication. Indeed the internet’s text based system provides the “High Touch” that is lacking in the mass mediated situation , as well as developing the Gemeinschaft associated  with face-to-face situation. To him the key empowerment that the internet makes available across a much larger forum than the face-to-face situation can provide. ”The user audience can much more decisively determine how specific images will be produced at any moment either by posting responses or by posting original texts to produce new image”

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[1] Mitra Ananda ; Virtual Commonality:  Pg 58 ,Virtual Culture, edited by Steven ,G.Jones.

By  Anindya Datta, Lecturer, Department of sociology  , Maharani Kasiswari College.

(E-mail : aninda70@rediffmail.com)

And

Dr. Anirban Banerjee, Professor and Head of the Department of Sociology,

the University of Burdwan.

                                             (E-mail : anirban_2banerjee1961@yahoo.co.in

Abstract 

Interaction through Internet and other CMC (Computer Mediated Communication) technologies have fostered a significant change in the cultural dimension of society. The distinct cult of virtual interaction has made possible a prolific emergence of object-specific global community. This new global community operates on the basis of virtual reality and thus, this virtual community poses significant theoretical and socio-political challenges attributable to a social space populated by "body-less" beings. Claims are made about the positive and transformative impacts of cyberspace on sexism and racism as individuals are able to leave their identities behind and interact on the computer free from prejudicial constraints.  While there is no doubt these positive traits are part of the cyberspace revolution, numerous scholars have also focused upon the darker side of new communications technologies and the ways in which the Internet can be used to commit criminal acts and perpetuate deviant behaviours.       

The intention of this article is to assess, extend, and improve our understanding of 'deviant' behaviours on the Internet. Across the globe, there are increasing legislative, technological and surveillance efforts - all seemingly aimed at deviant (and sometime benign) Internet use. Not only does the Internet pose novel challenges in affording new forms of 'deviance' that need to be understood, but it also poses a unique opportunity for social scientists to influence policy aimed at such 'deviance', investigate specific cases of 'deviant' behaviour, as well as theoretical work that discusses the notion of deviance as applied to the Internet, policy and legal implications and methodologies. 

 Deviance and cyber deviance.

Deviance is any behaviour that violates social  as well as cultural norms including formally-enacted rules (e.g., crime) as well as informal violations of social norms (e.g., rejecting folkways and mores)., and is usually of sufficient severity to warrant disapproval from the majority of society. Alcoholism, excessive gambling, being nude in public places, playing with fire, stealing, lying, refusing to bathe, purchasing the services of prostitutes, and cross-dressing—to name only a few—as deviant. People who engage in deviant behaviour are referred to as deviants. Viewing deviance as a violation of social norms, sociologists have characterized it as "any thought, feeling or action that members of a social group judge to be a violation of their values or rules"; "violation of the norms of a society or group"; "conduct that violates definitions of appropriate and inappropriate conduct shared by the members of a social system"; "the departure of certain types of behaviour from the norms of a particular society at a particular time"; and "violation of certain types of group norms [... where] behaviour is in a disapproved direction and of sufficient degree to exceed the tolerance limit of the community.

Thus, deviance may better be described as a violation of social norms which are the specific behavioural standards, ways in which people are supposed to act, paradigms for predictable behaviour in society. This definition can ,however, be interpreted in different ways for the reason that social norms are different in one culture as opposed to another ; because, they are “rules of conduct, not neutral or universal, but ever changing; shifting as society shifts; mutable, emergent, loose, reflective of inherent biases and interests, and highly selfish and one-sided. They vary from class to class, and in the generational "gap." They are, in other words, contextual”. Thus, a deviant act can be committed in one society or culture that breaks a social norm there, but may be considered normal for another culture and society. Some acts of deviance may be criminal acts, but also, according to the society or culture, deviance can be strictly breaking social norms that are intact.

Cyberdeviance is an action that breaks Internet rules and norms; including, but not necessarily, committing illegal acts, ranging from destroying files to netiquette( Netiquette is the mores and norms that regulate considerate and appropriate behaviour on the Internet.) The deviant acts commonly found in the cyber community include profanity, harassment, vandalism, and obscenity. Perpetrators are less committed to maintain their online reputation and less attached to the online community. Hence, they are less likely to be involved in conventional activity and less likely to believe and follow community rules. Moreover, anonymity and the liminal (i.e., a quality that contributes to disinhibition in the online community) aspects of cyber community facilitate antisocial behaviour.  In short, people who are subject to weak social bonds and whose self-control is reduced by liminality and anonymity are more likely to commit deviant acts in cyber community. Nevertheless, these people also are unlikely to commit more serious acts, for the weak bonds do not allow them to be familiarized with the environment and potential victims, which in turn confine the scale of their deviance.

Insinuations for Radicalization

The Internet is well suited to support deviant lifestyles and behaviours because it is unregulated, information is privately posted and can be obtained freely and anonymously, and it connects individuals with others who practice the same deviant behaviour. What is less known is the extent to which any of these types of Web sites serve as gateways or catalysts into more active participation of a particular deviant impulse or tendency. Cyber culture perpetuates and encourages the idea that deviance is a social construction and what constitutes deviant behaviour may shift, as like-minded people are able to share their experiences.  It would seem that sexual deviance, as defined in the mainstream world, is especially up for seizing on the Internet. The availability of websites where men can rate prostitutes serves to construct “countercultures, in which ignominious practices are accepted as the norm and are entirely without stigma, in which one may participate without threat to one’s ‘normal’ identity”.  In their view, the Internet has perpetuated and perhaps even enhanced the empowerment of men who pay for sex while at the same time creating a discursive space that perpetuates the more traditional relationship of power between the punter and the prostitute.

            Internet allows for the construction of spaces where individuals can explore otherwise sexually deviant behaviours. The evidence suggests that many women and men are willing to explore the possibilities of bisexuality within an Internet environment, behaviour they would be less likely to consider in the “real” world .Thus, not only do these behaviours tell us something about the way the Internet allows individuals to experiment with identity, but also support the idea that identities are complex, multifaceted, and with the help of the Internet, not completely linked to a corporeal body.³

       Various micro level and macro level factors should be considered in the context of online deviance. The self-harm and sexual deviance literature shows how individual characteristics (e.g., loneliness, psychoticism, low self-control, poor social ties) are risk factors for online deviance, ranging from viewing soft-core pornography to engaging in self-injury. The online hate group literature suggests that macro-level contexts that make groups of individuals vulnerable socially, economically, and psychologically could provide a breeding ground for recruiting individuals into potentially violent movements, particularly for young people. This would be especially salient in areas where there is abject, widespread poverty, war, or some catastrophic event with long-lasting devastating effects . As fringe groups gain more traction in terms of numbers of Web sites and contacts made through these Web sites, individuals who would otherwise be disinhibited by their proclivities (e.g., cutters, white supremacists) may begin to feel even more empowered to act on their impulses and beliefs. Insofar as the Internet serves as a forum for groups to discuss goals, disagreements, and compromises, the open format of the Internet also permits law enforcement to monitor key changes and divergences within groups that are suspected of illegal or violent behaviours (Weimann, 2006). Although the Internet is a powerful tool for connecting people and rapidly spreading information, it is doubtful that most groups would rely solely on the Internet for communication and organization efforts. This may be particularly true for those groups that are set up for violent ends, given the risks for outside monitoring and sabotage. It is probable that groups are increasingly embracing other technologies, such as text messaging through cellular phones and Twitter. As a result, monitoring these emerging networks in real time—in addition to Internet monitoring—may be the most effective means for preventing extreme deviant (i.e., criminal) acts.⁸

                   A recent literature review of the Internet’s impact on sexuality in general concluded that “sexually related online activities have become routine in recent years for large segments of the population in the Western world” (Dohring, 2009, p. 1089). The impact of the Internet on the pornography industry alone is staggering. Quinn and Forsyth (2005, p. 192) cite that in a given year, Internet pornography is a $3 billion industry, with about 4.5 million Web sites containing pornographic content, encompassing 25% of total search engine requests, and with more than 75 million people accessing pornographic sites. A recent experiment yielded the conclusion that many casual Web surfers are easily tempted by hardcore pornography. Specifically, Demetriou and Silke (2003) developed a dummy Web site which was advertised on other sites as having free software downloads. The goal was to see how many visitors tried to access the illegal or deviant materials linked on the Web site (which did not work). In an 88- day period, more than half of the Web site’s visitors (457 of the 803) tried to access the hardcore pornographic images, although they originally entered the Web site for other reasons.

Other studies have attempted to understand the correlates of online consumers of pornography in general. For example, some sociological research suggests associations of online pornography with unhappy marriages and weak ties to religion among adults (Stack,Wasserman, & Kern, 2004) and poor social ties to family, school, and society among adolescents (Mesch, 2009). A psychologically based study found that adolescent participants scoring high in psychoticism used the Internet in deviant and defiant ways, including viewing pornography (Amiel & Sargent, 2004). For those on the far end of the sexual deviance spectrum, the versatility, speed, and visual medium offered by the Internet are well suited for consumers who reach new extremes quickly (Durkin, Forsyth, & Quinn, 2006; Quinn & Forsyth, 2005). One of the most provocative and well-researched areas within the online sexual deviance literature is pedophilia.Typologies of online pedophiles (e.g., Beech, Elliott, Birgden, & Findlater, 2008; Krone, 2004;Lanning, 2001) and theories to explain the etiology of online pedophilia (Elliott & Beech, 2009)have been proposed, while others have examined how the Internet domain is used among communities of pedophiles (e.g., Durkin, 1997). It is generally agreed that the Internet connects pedophiles such that they can rapidly exchange images, locate and groom victims,and maintain and develop networks (Beech, Elliott, Birgden, & Findlater, 2008; Durkin, Forsyth,& Quinn, 2006). Durkin and colleagues (2006, p. 599) note the prominent role the Internet plays in affirming and validating identities of pedophiles, and in serving as a platform to recruit those who have a proclivity toward pedophilia. The vast proliferation of online child pornography indicates a fairly substantial group of consumers who are increasingly becoming more extreme in their tastes (Beech, Elliott, Birgden, & Findlater, 2008).

Surveillance:

Several efforts are now directed towards the surveillance of deviant activities of members of cyber society. Governments are very much sensitive about the issues of cyber deviance  and much of their endeavours are directed towards bringing such issues under the purview of law. Consequently, a bunch of Cyber laws have been enacted. The main function of Net dogs is to vigil carefully that any such incidents should not inspire cyber people to commit such crimes.

     The surveillance primarily involves the monitoring of data and traffic on the Internet. Under the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act in US, all phone calls and broadband internet traffic (emails, web traffic, instant messaging, etc.) are accessible for unimpeded real-time monitoring by Federal law enforcement agencies. Billions of dollars per year are spent, by agencies such as the Information Awareness Office, NSA, and the FBI, to develop, purchase, implement, and operate systems which intercept and analyze all of these data, and extract only the information which is useful to law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

    As per the latest information available from Wiki, “Google, the world's most popular search engine, stores identifying information for each web search. An IP address and the search phrase used are stored in a database for up to 18 months. Google also scans the content of emails of users of its Gmail webmail service, in order to create targeted advertising based on what people are talking about in their personal email correspondences. Google is, by far, the largest Internet advertising agency—millions of sites place Google's advertising banners and links on their websites, in order to earn money from visitors who click on the ads. Each page containing Google advertisements adds, reads, and modifies "cookies" on each visitor's computer. These cookies track the user across all of these sites, and gather information about their web surfing habits, keeping track of which sites they visit, and what they do when they are on these sites. This information, along with the information from their email accounts, and search engine histories, is stored by Google to use for build a profile of the user to deliver better-targeted advertising.

The United States government often gains access to these databases, either by producing a warrant for it, or by simply asking. The Department of Homeland Security has openly stated that it uses data collected from consumer credit and direct marketing agencies for augmenting the profiles of individuals that it is monitoring.” 

Wiki further provides helpful information on the process of surveillance which may be noteworthy that “ One common form of surveillance is to create maps of social networks based on data from social networking sites as well as from traffic analysis information from phone call records such as those in the NSA call database, and internet traffic data gathered under CALEA. These social network "maps" are then data mined to extract useful information such as personal interests, friendships & affiliations, wants, beliefs, thoughts, and activities.

Many U.S. government agencies such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are currently investing heavily in research involving social network analysis. The intelligence community believes that the biggest threat to the U.S. comes from decentralized, leaderless, geographically dispersed groups. These types of threats are most easily countered by finding important nodes in the network, and removing them.

                                   India ranks fifth in the world for cyber crime, according to a report last year by the U.S.-based Internet Crime Complaint Center, a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National White Collar Crime Center. In fact, the report said that as India became home to the fourth highest number of Internet users in the world, cyber crime has been rising at more than 50 percent per year. A striking example of such crime was the attack on computers in the Indian prime minister's office by Chinese hackers, December 2009.

Investigators are still coming to terms with the extent of damage caused by that attack, as the hackers had targeted the cream of India's national security setup: National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan, Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandrasekhar, the prime minister’s special envoy Shyam Saran and deputy National Security Advisor Shekhar Dutt. In addition, 26 others were also squarely in the crosshairs of the hacking attempt.

The timing of the espionage attempt led investigators to suspect the Chinese hackers of desperately trying to access any available data on India's position at the Copenhagen Climate Summit being held at the time. It may be noted that until Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh arrived in Copenhagen on Dec. 17, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh and Saran were singing different tunes.

But what has disturbed investigators most is that the Chinese hackers possibly had inside help. The possibility of a mole within the Indian establishment helping a foreign adversary is staring investigators in the face.

In March 2009, a China-based cyber spy network hacked into government and private systems in 103 countries, including many Indian embassies and the headquarters of the Dalai Lama. In May 2008, hackers from China attacked the website of India’s Ministry of External Affairs. Despite official denials, at least one website reported that hackers had stolen the identities and passwords of several Indian diplomats.

In the past three years, over 9,000 Indian websites have been at the mercy of an anti-India community. Hackers based beyond India’s borders have become a threat for the government.

Cyber attacks from across the border are not new to India. This happened for the first time when India was conducting nuclear tests at Pokhran in 1998 and hackers based in Pakistan attacked the websites of Zee News and India Today. GForce Pakistan and Pakistani Hackerz Club took responsibility for the intrusions and left behind threatening messages demanding that the nuclear tests be stopped.

After the terror attacks on the Indian Parliament in December 2001 and a massive troop standoff between India and Pakistan several hacking incidents were reported.

Pakistani hackers also targeted the Indian website www.armyinkashmir.com, which was providing factual information about daily events in the Kashmir Valley in 1999. Hackers posted photographs showing Indian security forces allegedly killing Kashmiri people and blamed the Indian government for “atrocities” there. Obviously, this had the intended impact in the valley.

In December 2008, the Indian Eastern Railways portal was hacked by Whackerz-Pakistan. The official website www.easternrailway.gov.in bore a strange look. When opened, the top scroll on the site, which normally consists of official announcements, had unusual notes. The first note read: “Cyber war has been declared on Indian cyberspace by Whackerz-Pakistan (24 Dec-2008).”

The scene became grimmer after the terror attacks on Mumbai on Nov. 26, 2008. The Pakistan Cyber Army hacked into the websites of the Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, the Center for Transportation Research and Management, the Kendriya Vidyalaya of Ratlam – a chain of schools run by the Indian Army – and the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation of India. The damage took a long time to repair.

Even at the individual level cyber attacks are on the rise in India. According to the New Delhi police, in 2009 email hacking and cheating cases went up by 150 percent. It is said that Nigerian gangs are very active in India, particularly during festive seasons when massive purchases are transacted online, thanks to the system of credit cards and online bank accounts.

The severity and magnitude of Indian cybercrime can be anticipated from the data provided by National Crime Record Bureau 2009 under the heading “Incidence Of Cases Registered And Number Of Persons Arrested Under Cyber Crimes (IT Act + IPC Section) During 2009 (All-India)” which illustrates a wide variety of Criminal activities  such as Tampering computer source documents ,Hacking with Computer Systems, Loss/damage to computer source/utility ,Hacking ,obscene publication/transmission in electronic form , Failure of compliance/orders of certifying Authority, To assist in decrypting the information intercepted by Govt. Agency, Un-authorized access/attempt to access of protected Computer system, Obtaining License or Digital Signature Certificate by misrepresentation/suppression of fact ,Publishing false digital Signature Certificate , Fraud Digital Signature Certificate , Breach of confidentiality/privacy, Destruction of electronic  evidence and many other Cyber Crimes. Most of such crimes are committed, as per record, by the age group between 18-30 years (see tables appended below )

Indian teenagers are no less ahead than the foreign counterparts in adopting the recent global trend which has a positive leaning towards the subtle acts of cyber crime such as fraudulency, making false profile/identity in such Social Networking sites as Facebook, Tweeter , LinkedIn etc. One of such incident may be exemplified from an article by Karitha Shanmugam in The Telegraph, Calcutta Sunday 28^th August 2011 “ in which the young teenage girl from a small town of Rajasthan was stunned “when a relative questioned her two months ago about the links to pornographic sites she had ostensibly posted on her Facebook(FB) account.

        It was her profile all right ,complete with her photograph and her authentic Rajsamand address, but the problem was she has never seen the links…… or the site ….. before . Her concerned father went to the police and with the help of cyber security experts tracked down two former schoolmates.

   The boys had created a fake profile of hers to put her in awkward spot since she had stopped talking to them. The boys ,now in college, were booked under section 67 and 67A of the Information Technology Act ,which can lead to a jail term of three to five years and a fine of Rs.5 lakhs. “

In India cyber crime comes under both the traditional Indian penal code and the Information Technology Act, 2000, which was amended in 2008. And here lies the confusion. Since policing is a matter of the state, and complaints have to be lodged with the local police, it all depends under which law the police register a case; it so happens that for the most part they prefer the age-hold penal code.

Local police are not conversant with the intricacies of the nationally legislated IT Act. But once a case is filed under the penal code, the method of investigation must follow certain guidelines that make it extremely difficult to prove most cyber crimes, experts say.

Even under the IT Act, investigations in India are not easy. This is mainly due to the lack of what is called “cyber forensics.” We know that forensic evidence is important in normal criminal investigations. But the collection and presentation of electronic evidence to prove cyber crimes have posed a challenge to investigation and prosecution agencies and the judiciary.

Cyber-related techno-legal acumen and knowledge are not well developed in India. These require a sound working and practical knowledge of information technology as well as relevant legal knowledge. Cyber laws, international telecommunications laws, cyber forensics, digital evidencing and cyber security pose difficult and sometimes hard to understand legal challenges to the courts. This explains why there are almost no convictions of cyber criminals in India. Judges in India must fill in this legal gap.

 Internet content control and Net-Freedom Movement :

The internet control mechanisms are functioning much effectively and strictly to some extent in China and Soudi Arabia where governments play very sensitive roles in checking the contents of the websites and routinely censor and redirect search requests to error pages if anything found objectionable. In Vietnam bloggers who criticise the govt are, in some cases, even arrested, and in Cuba strategies are made to delimit internet to its national boundary.

             Over the past few years, the govt. of India has also been gradually building censorship muscle over the internet. In 2006 it blocked “Type Pad”, the blog-hosting service and a bulk sms site.

      A Right to Information plea filed by the Bangalore based centre for internet and society leaves that the govt blocked 11 sites between 2008 and 2011. This range from sites hosting the predictable girl-wall paper and “Kamasutra” to blog discussing freedom of speech .

   Recently a growing dissatisfaction resulting from the action of Indian govt. towards blocking internet contents which it “ deems objectionable led to internet freedom activists to raise their voice against this new set of rules claimed to have violated the right to freedom of speech and expression.

In a written reply, Minister of states, information and Technology, Sachi Pilot told the Loksabha that the recently notified rules under the Information Technology Act to regulate the use of Internet, “don’t give any power to the govt. to regulate the content”.

Pilot added the rules did not raise issues “pertaining to privacy and violation of freedom of speech and expression “.

The new rules demand that the intermediary must notify user not to publish or use information ,that is derogatory, abusive, insulting or which violates intellectual property rights or impacts the sovereignty of nation. The country that has 81 million internet users, this can never be easy. ------ Source : India Super Cops now patrol the www.highway by Aashees Sharma, Hindustan Times , Tues Day August 9.2011.

Future Directions in Research

Researchers face numerous theoretical and methodological challenges in trying to assess the influence of the Internet on deviant behaviour. A common denominator across many of these studies is the fear that the Internet will generate a critical mass of deviants, which would foster justification for socially unacceptable forms of behaviour, strengthen the development of pathological disorders, or encourage criminal behaviours. This could include some causal relationship between online activity and deviant behaviour among persons who had not engaged in these behaviours before. The challenges and gaps identified in previous studies suggest several possible directions for future research within this topic area. First, longitudinal research is needed to explore the potential causal relationships between passive online behaviours leading to engage in criminal acts. Second, identifying potential risk factors (i.e., individual, environmental, social, and psychological characteristics) associated with online offenders, third, ethical concerns surround researching vulnerable populations (e.g., children) and emotionally fragile populations (e.g., self-harmer). Ethical standards are particularly salient in light of the deception used by many studies in this field and because so many of them lack an informed consent process, the ability to verify mental competency, and a debriefing session. Fourth, more theoretical work is needed across each of the areas summarized above to situate these deviant behaviours in a larger context and to guide more rigorous empirical research. Durkin and colleagues (2006, p. 600) have called forth Goffman’s (1963) work on stigma to draw parallels between the Internet and what he described as “back places,” or places where people are open about their peculiar inclinations and depend on one another for support. Other work has questioned the extent to which the Internet is different when it comes to influencing sexuality, or whether the Internet is merely one of a long line of technologies representing cyclical shifts in sexual media (Stern & Handel, 2001). Stern and Handel (2001) concluded that although the Internet is relatively new, the concerns about its power and ability to influence social mores and behaviours have been applied to nearly all of its technological precursors. Lastly, as stated earlier, most of the work in these areas is located in the province of qualitative methods so many of the studies described above are not generalizeable. Future work in these areas will profit from advances in Internet methods in general, which may address the issues concerning representative populations, response rates, and identity issues.

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