Mahir Haneef
Kochi
When Kochi police tried their hand in welcoming IT revolution by launching a website, they soon learned that even law enforcement departments are preyed upon in the world of Internet. The official website of Kochi police was set up in 2002 by the then Commissioner Y Anil Kumar by the web address http://www.cochincitypolice.com.
The website changed hands from Mr Kumar to Shaik Darvesh Sahib, who was the Commissioner of Police from April to July in 2002. One fine day, Kochi police realised that their site was ‘hijacked’ by a foreigner and they had no control over it.
The ‘traditional’ lack of funds might have prompted Kochi police set up a domain website unlike their Thiruvananthapuram wing, which set up a server of its own. Thus, the help of an Internet solution provider with the name of Planet Earth Net Solutions (PENS) was sought to build and maintain the site at their server.
Though the district police officials were well-versed in the laws of the country, little did they know about the rules of the Internet world. It turned out that PENS had its head office at Ontario in Canada and their Kochi office was its ‘offshore development center’. Strangely, PenSolutions.com, the website of PENS is currently (Aug 21 4.00 pm) put up for sale at www.buydomains.com.
Within a few months of the ‘kidnapping’, Vinod Thomas became the Commissioner. Realising that the previous web address is lost forever, he began a new site in the address http://www.kochicitypolice.org. This time, the Internet solutions provider is Millenimum Consultants Inc, a company based at New Jersey, USA with an ‘offshore development centre’ at Kochi.
Fortunately for Kochi police, the new site has been running without any trouble for the past one-and-a-half years now. But the site, put up mainly for the benefit of the public, continues to confuse them by announcing in their flash news that P Vijayan “will assume office on Friday” and stating in the Commissioner’s page that Dinendra Kashyap is still in charge of the city. The flash news that states “will assume office on Friday” on Sunday evening itself is evidently more than three days old by the time your read this.
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By registering a domain with Canada-based company, Kochi police facilitated the ‘kidnapping’ of their website. Another ‘kidnapping’ is waiting to happen as the current website of Kochi police is also registered in a foreign country (USA), rather than setting up own server and consulting native companies.
While the Kochi police website exists in fear of being ‘kidnapped’, Thiruvananthapuram police displays their web portal as an example of self-reliance. They set up a web portal (www.tvmcitypolice.org) in 1997, seeking the help of Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management – Kerala (IIITM-K).
Satheesh Chand, Assistant Commissioner of Computerisation, said “We decided to set up a portal instead of a domain considering the security needed. Now we have gone beyond providing basic information and are using our portal for intra-departmental communication also. We have a special login system whereby police officers from the level of Sub Inspectors to DGP can communicate with each other. The total cost of maintaining this doesn’t even come anywhere closer to running a single motorcycle from office to office.”
