Afternoon Daily, Mumbai STAFF REPORTER made a survey of various Mumbai city cyber cafes & is happy to note a wide compliance of the recent Mumbai police order on maintaining the registers although not everybody visiting a cyber café wants to share personal information to use the facility.

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Cyber cafes in the city have started keeping logbooks and recording all the details of the visitors who visit them. The Mumbai police had issued a notification on August 15, for a 15-day trail, asking cyber cafes to maintain such a logbook in addition to asking for photo identity cards of visitors before allowing them to use the cyber cafe. Another similar notification was issued on August 31, and cyber café owners put these up at their cafes. In it, Police Commissioner A. N. Roy had said that anti-social elements may take advantage of cyber cafes in Mumbai and there are chances of breach of peace and disturbance of public tranquillity, and there was grave danger to human lives as well as loss to the public property. On the condition of anonymity, a cyber café owner at Churchgate said, “Many of our visitors have understood the issue and are cooperating with us. In the initial stage some hesitated, but later they also started cooperating. As far as identifying any person who is involved in criminal activity, it should be very simple for us as their population in society is only one per cent and they should be able to be identified by their face only!” He added, “This order has brought our businesses down by about 15-20 per cent as some visitors argue and then go in search of other cafes where they might be allowed to use the facilities without identity cards. The police’s notification has become unaffordable for us as we have to keep one employee just to fill up the logbook. But this order is not followed by all cyber cafes in Mumbai as they do not want to lose their customers by inconveniencing them with personal details.” Khalique Batliwala of Cyberzone in Flora Fountain said, “After implementation of this rule you can be sure that terrorists will opt for something else, they will never use the same method for their plans. But as far as the checking is concerned, we have been doing this from earlier also, and in the initial stages visitors were not happy. But now that they understand why we have to do this, they started cooperating with us.” He further said, “As the Internet has become an important part of our lives, we get a lot of regular visitors and are familiar with them, but whenever we find anyone suspicious then we ask for identity cards or deny them entry.” Deputy Commissioner of Police R. N. Tadvi (Operations), said, “After the order most cyber café owners have started maintaining logbooks and are also allowing only those to enter who have valid identity cards. We are getting a good response from the cyber café owners as they understand our situation. As far as continuation of this order is concerned, until or unless the dust of security threats doesn’t settle down, this order will continue.”

Source cybernoon.com