Click to play videoBangalore: Recent arrests for the Mumbai blasts hint at the involvement of not uneducated fanatics, but of suave, smooth operating professionals.
And after a Bangalore technician was taken into custody as well, the police have stepped up security.
For Aslam Mubeen - the owner of a Cyber café in Bangalore, life has changed drastically. All Cyber cafés are now under sharp police scrutiny for being used by suspected terrorists. Mubeen now has to check identity cards of every visitor.
Mubeen, the owner of Saba Internet services says, "Few will give, few will not want to give it… we are losing business because of this. They don't want to share information, females especially. They feel their name can be misused."
Syed Imran Ahmed, who runs another Cyber café called Cyber Den echoes Mubeen’s anguish. "Business has come down… very few people come. Some want to give ID proof, others don't, as they fear it will be misused."
Checking photo ID cards, registering addresses and watching login and logout times have been the law for a year now. But the city police, this week, held a special meeting with owners of Cyber cafés to tighten security after the Mumbai blasts.
Gopal B Hosur, Joint Commissioner of Police, Bangalore says, "Cyber cafés must maintain records… time of coming and going, addresses. That's needed because a lot of anti-social individuals, terrorists use Cyber cafés for communication.
In a city with over 800 Cyber cafés, privacy of customers is at stake. But the police are not willing to entertain that argument. Terrorists "visit cyber cafes, have well-knit networks, protocols among themselves… and they communicate among themselves by using encryptions, coded messages. They are dependent on Internet communication for carrying out terrorist activities," adds the Joint Commissioner.
Bangalore is a city where there's a Cyber café in almost every nook and are frequented largely by people who've come in from other cities, especially student migrants.
The rule over checking IDs has never been actually followed all this while, but that will have to change.
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