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Indian Techie Strong Armed By Israeli Firm For Exposing Airtel’s Spy Tactics
On Jun 8 an Indian coder known as Thejesh GN on Twitter received a cease-and-desist order by an Israeli firm Flash Networks ltd. a company based out of Herzliya, Israel, via their attorneys in Mumbai. Thejesh was being targeted for exposing the Israeli company for malpractice. He found that the company had been spying and collecting personal data and browsing information and selling it to Airtel India.
A few days later he received the cease-and-desist order. The order required him to remove the description of Anchor.js he had uploaded to GitHub because Flash Networks has a copyright over the content. His ‘act’ was alleged to be a criminal offence under the IPC 1860 and Information and Technology Act, 2000.
So I got cease and desist letter for exposing JS injection by big a telco for publishing JS code & screenshots. I will probably remove it :(
— Thejesh GN (@thej) June 8, 2015And here, an Israeli co. inserting code surrepticiously into Indian's browsers, threatening Indians under IPC. pic.twitter.com/JrPNJV9iUL
— Rohin Dharmakumar (@r0h1n) June 9, 2015
The following day the company posted a takedown notice on GitHub (under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the US). After this Thejesh's files became inaccessible to anyone who visited the website.
For an Israeli co. to sue Indian users for merely reporting an unethical (and possibly illegal) practice is intimidation.
— Rohin Dharmakumar (@r0h1n) June 9, 2015The following day the company posted a takedown notice on GitHub (under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the US). After this Thejesh's files became inaccessible to anyone who visited the website.
However, since Thejesh did not intend any commercial use of Anchor.js, it is unclear how Flash's copyright was infringed. Also his act of uploading his experience of Anchor.js onto GitHub was protected by Section 52(1)(ac) of the Indian Copyright Act 1957.
Net Neutrality
This incident has also re-energised the debate on net neutrality. Flash Networks has violated net neutrality by only choosing Airtel. This is because, a user on Airtel broadband will have a different view of a website than a user on a BSNL network.
If the same incident were to have happened in the Western world, it is very likely that the company would have been sued for millions.
Airtel hasn’t yet spoken up on the issue. It remains unclear if it is aware that an Israeli company is injecting code into Indian browsers via an Indian ISP (Airtel). If Airtel’s complicity is established, on the other hand, it is likely to face legal action for violating user privacy. Because the script could also have been injected when people viewed Thejesh’s website via Airtel’s network, the ISP is liable to have misrepresented his content to his audience.
This incident has also re-energised the debate on net neutrality. Flash Networks has violated net neutrality by only choosing Airtel. This is because, a user on Airtel broadband will have a different view of a website than a user on a BSNL network.
If the same incident were to have happened in the Western world, it is very likely that the company would have been sued for millions.
Airtel hasn’t yet spoken up on the issue. It remains unclear if it is aware that an Israeli company is injecting code into Indian browsers via an Indian ISP (Airtel). If Airtel’s complicity is established, on the other hand, it is likely to face legal action for violating user privacy. Because the script could also have been injected when people viewed Thejesh’s website via Airtel’s network, the ISP is liable to have misrepresented his content to his audience.
