A good friend in Mumbai and close to this subject on the ground suggests some efforts are somewhat misguided. He writes:

The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) has been unusually proactive in trying to push for “Secure wifi” connections in Mumbai (all aboard the anti-terrorism bandwagon). There has previously been a plan in place for deploying free wireless internet access in Mumbai before the recent terrorist email menace and since this has come up, FICCI (it’s not really their business to be talking about these things), have really begun evangelizing secure wi-fi. I suspect they would benefit in some manner by this?

Anyway, they are linking up securing Internet access to stopping terrorism – which is hilarious. Are they really suggesting that because terrorists won’t have access to free internet they will lose interest in bombing people???

He sends me this interesting news from Mumbai, reported on Page 9 of the October 14 edition of the Mumbai Mirror:

State Govt plans punitive action against home users, housing societies and offices if they do not secure Internet connections against ‘misuse’ with fines and possibly jail sentences.

This initiative is of course spear-headed by our very helpful friends at FICCI. Mr Sushil Jiwarajka, chairman of FICCI says “We believe that unless there is a strong deterrence mechanism in place, people will not secure their Wifi”.

[Mental note: True. However, they are promoting this as a means to end terrorism?!? And what if I don't want to secure it? As a democracy I suspect i have the right to decide whether I wish to lock my house or not, and hence whether I wish to lock my Internet access or not. I may wish to provide free internet as a favour to passer by's in good faith fully accepting the consequences of their misuse.]

Why don’t we go and pay Mr Jiwarajka a visit and interview him on his plans for securing the From address on postal mail..after all, surely terrorists would have the option to send letters to the police and newspapers using (spoofing) our address in the From.

We also need to secure telephone booths. So many hoax calls are made from them. We should have a national registry of all public telephone booth users linked to their PAN card number. (lets not worry about the specifics of safeguaring that information for now).

Fax machines.. imagine all those paid fax services. 100s of them in a few sq km area. We should put in place some mechanism where all the fax operators have to be educated in English as well as every local language. This should become a mandatory requirement (especially they should know how to read Urdu I suppose, since it’s the terrorists favourite language). This will ensure that the content of the fax is not terroristy before transmitting it. Any operators found guilty of not employing the people with the right skill sets should be penalised.

And what about carrier pigeons? We should train all of them not to fly to any media office.

Lastly, we should make a public statement banning all “terrorists” from knocking on the front door of media companies. And while we are at this interview lets also scan Mr Jiwarajka’s residence for open access points.

Related post at ZDNet.