Southern States - Tamil Nadu-Chennai   

Police guidelines for browsing centres

By K.Manikandan

CHENNAI JUNE 27. As a fall out of the recent incident of a youth robbing an ATM at T.Nagar, using internet to download information required for his `operation', the police have, with immediate effect, issued guidelines for the internet browsing centres in the city. This follows a recent meeting between police officials and owners and administrators of such centres at T.Nagar.

Though the culprit did not browse from an internet centre and used his own laptop instead, there have been instances of miscreants operating from such centres, it is claimed. The guidelines also come in the wake of alleged anonymous e-mail threats to VVIPs, including those in New Delhi. While the source of the e-mail had been traced to browsing centres, it was not possible to pin down the culprit, causing embarrassment and at times making owners and administrators of browsing centres liable to be prosecuted.

The guidelines are expected to evolve into statutory norms once the centres are brought under the purview of licensing. They state that details of the users need to be meticulously maintained, including the complete address and the duration of usage of the internet. In a bid to prevent the easy downloading of data by users, only CPUs at the administrator's desk would be permitted to have floppy and CD drives.

The browsing centres have been asked to instruct users not to browse through objectionable pornographic sites and they should put up a warning sign in every terminal to this effect. Further, users should be permitted just minimum privacy and the cubicles should not completely cover the user and his terminal. Moreover, owners of the browsing centres should produce relevant documents whenever police personnel seek them during inspection.

The browsing centres should also ensure that there is adequate parking space for vehicles of their customers, ensure provision of emergency lights inside the premises, ban smoking inside and provide identity cards to regular browsers.

Officials of a leading chain of browsing centres welcomed the proposal stating they would have little to change. "We have been following most of the proposed guidelines ever since we started the chain", they remarked and said it included the hours of functioning, arrangement of cubicles and provision of ID cards to regular users.

The proposals also throw light on facilities of several browsing centres that have come up in cramped dingy places.

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