Jammu cyber cafe owners not keeping users’ records

Jammu cyber cafe owners not keeping users’ records
Archit Watts
Tribune News Service

Jammu, September 10
The state police has directed the cyber cafe owners in Jammu to maintain the records of Internet users after an e-mail claiming responsibility for the Delhi High Court blast was traced to Kishtwar. However, the cyber cafe owners here do not care two hoots for the orders.

The SPs of the district held meetings with the cyber cafe owners in their respective areas last evening and told them to maintain the records of their customers. However, The Tribune found today that the majority of cyber cafe owners were not following the directions.

It was also decided at the meetings that no one should be allowed to use Internet at the cyber cafes without producing an identity proof. Besides, the contact details with signatures should also be recorded in a register, which the police could check at anytime. However, the situation was not much different.

A cyber cafe owner at Gandhi Nagar said, “Yes, the SP directed us yesterday to record all the information about the Internet users with copies of their identity proofs. But it is not possible to implement the orders in such a short period. It will take some time.”

The owner of another cyber cafe at Panjtirthi here said though he had pasted the instructions at the shop, most of the Internet users were refusing to produce identity cards. “How can we stop our regular customers or force them to produce identity cards? The directions are good but it will take sometime to implement them, as earlier we were not following any norms,” he added.

On the other hand, the Internet users questioned the police directions, which had barred schoolchildren from using the facility unless they were accompanied by their parents. “In this modern era, Internet is a simple facility. Hence, the rules should be confined only to producing identity proofs and maintaining a record of users,” said an Internet user.

However, the SSP, Jammu, Anand Jain, said they had not issued any new direction. “We are just trying to implement the rules applicable to the cyber cafe owners in other states and there is nothing new in it. All the cyber café owners have been directed to maintain a record of Internet users and anybody found disobeying the orders would be penalised.”