Kerala media should show restraint, says Chandy 
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM Two days after media reports alleged that Kerala Police were snooping on emails of some Muslim leaders, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on Wednesday said the press had “distorted” the issue.
“It is with a lot of hard feelings that I have to state the wrong manner in which a section of the media here dealt with the particular news item,” Chandy said after the weekly cabinet meeting.
“The sad part is that the list, when published, was distorted to appear
in such a manner that a particular community was being targeted.”
He said the Madhyamam weekly, which published the news, had not put out the full list. Instead, it put out the list after removing the emails of people belonging to other religions.
Chandy said the weekly must come clear why it was done.
Separately, the state cabinet has unanimously decided to take legal action against the weekly.
Alleging that it was an attempt at religious profiling, the magazine claimed that 268 email accounts have been subjected to surveillance, out of which 258 belongs to Muslims. None among them had any previous criminal backgrounds and so there is no clarity as to why they were put under surveillance, it added.
Chandy said investigating officers got 268 mail IDs from a person and they were handed over to the Hi-Tech Cell of the police to obtain the addresses of the persons who had created the IDs.
The attempt was made only to know the identity of persons in whose names the mail IDs were created and there was no effort made to hack the password or contents in these mail IDs, he said.
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM Two days after media reports alleged that Kerala Police were snooping on emails of some Muslim leaders, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on Wednesday said the press had “distorted” the issue.“It is with a lot of hard feelings that I have to state the wrong manner in which a section of the media here dealt with the particular news item,” Chandy said after the weekly cabinet meeting.
“The sad part is that the list, when published, was distorted to appear
in such a manner that a particular community was being targeted.”
He said the Madhyamam weekly, which published the news, had not put out the full list. Instead, it put out the list after removing the emails of people belonging to other religions.
Chandy said the weekly must come clear why it was done.
Separately, the state cabinet has unanimously decided to take legal action against the weekly.
Alleging that it was an attempt at religious profiling, the magazine claimed that 268 email accounts have been subjected to surveillance, out of which 258 belongs to Muslims. None among them had any previous criminal backgrounds and so there is no clarity as to why they were put under surveillance, it added.
Chandy said investigating officers got 268 mail IDs from a person and they were handed over to the Hi-Tech Cell of the police to obtain the addresses of the persons who had created the IDs.
The attempt was made only to know the identity of persons in whose names the mail IDs were created and there was no effort made to hack the password or contents in these mail IDs, he said.
From Madhyamam Weekly
Big Brother is tracking you
Published on Fri, 01/20/2012 - 11:44 ( 1 day 9 hours ago)
(Adapted from the original story by Viju V Nair, published in Madhyamam Weekly http://www.madhyamam.com/news/146184/120116)& (http://www.madhyamam.com/news/147079/120120)
Technology has rapidly revolutionised the way we communicate. On the web, every click and jiggle of the mouse helps you to communicate easily. But, did you ever imagine someone is tracking you? Yes, it’s true! Big Brother is watching you! If you thought it’s just an imagination of a writer like George Orwell who portrayed it in his novel in 1984 or that it happens only abroad where citizens are under scrutiny or that there could be no seed of communalism in a secular-democratic country, think again. It’s a moment for our media, who have been celebrating Kerala as a land of beauty and peace to re-think.
Irrespective of their social status, the Government is peeping into the personal lives of around 258 citizens including politicians, parliamentarians, journalists, professionals, eminent personalities and students – an authoritarian surveillance breaching the barriers of privacy and civil rights. These “suspects” under cyber surveillance include eminent Muslim politicians and journalists. Oommen Chandy, Congress leader and Chief Minister of the present UDF government in Kerala, is handling home affairs.
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