Net Neutrality debate: After public outrage and website hacking, Trai has not taken off the email ids

Update: The  comments page no 23 with the responses gives a 404 error.

Either members at Trai aren’t on social media or they are so naive that they don’t quite get how dangerous it is to put out personal email IDs in public.

The regulator had received an overwhelming response with over 11 lakh emails in support of net neutrality, which were put out in public along with the email addresses, making it a gold mine for spammers and marketers. After massive public outrage on social media and its website taken down by Anonymous , the hacking group that stands for Internet freedom, it is strange to see that Trai still hasn’t taken off the email IDs.

Yes, the main reason behind taking the site down, displaying the email IDs of over 11 lakh netizens, is not yet resolved. You can still go to the comments  page and see the personal email IDs intact. In fact, there is no official word from Trai yet.

https://twitter.com/opindia_revenge/status/592636535352238080

https://twitter.com/opindia_revenge/status/592645452631252992

Anonymous India has taken responsibility for the attack. Even if Trai is trying to be transparent, looks like it just doesn’t really understand how things on the Internet work. By putting out your personal details online, it has now put your confidential data at risk. All it had to do is simply blur the email addresses. After such recklessness, how will we possibly rely on them to frame a policy for the country. Anonymous is already getting public support, while Trai becomes the butt of jokes on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/Jyothisthaliath/status/592680181527138304

The last couple of weeks have been exciting as netizens protested against platforms violating net neutrality and wrote back to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India in response to their consultation paper in favour of preserving it. Trai received an overwhelming response with more than 11 lakh emails.

On the net neutrality front, we are now awaiting for Trai to respond to the emails sent.

Trai is expected to put out the responses on its website in the near future. “Now its up to Trai. Once they put out the responses to public on their website, depending upon the responses, we can counter it,” Kiran Jonnalagadda, one of the volunteers at Savetheinternet Coalition had told Firstpost.

“Though Trai is expected to put out the responses soon, the time frame isn’t fixed,” he had further added.

Given the overwhelming response Trai has received, it may be forgiven for taking a bit longer than anticipated. But this is probably taking things a bit too far.

“With more than 11.8 lakh responses, Trai might take till June or July what with its current chairman set to retire on May 13th,” Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MP and net neutrality supporter told The Times of India .

The report adds that looking at the million responses, a Colombo-based think-tank LIRNEasia has offered Trai solutions like ‘word clouds, opinion mining and semantic analysis, all based on natural language processing’.