How to microblog in high heels

How quickly people jump to attack the internet and shovel the blame for all societies ills on to its weary shoulders.

Yesterday the Times reported that Amit Karkhanis had urged Bombay High Court to blur images on Google Earth of sensitive areas in the country. The petition allegedly said that Google Earth “aids terrorist attacks.” 

One thing is true about the Internet: it makes things easy. It’s easier to browse, easier to research, easier to resource, easier to find information. But with this general surge of ease into our daily lives has come the virulent criticism that with easiness comes a whole lot of difficulties. Easier online communities meant loss of genuine social interaction. Easier sourcing of information meant loss of digging for true facts. Easier shopping online meant less security. The Internet has been blamed time and time again for problems which would probably have arose anyway.

And this last attack is just another example of trying find an online culprit for current problems. We now learn that the Internet is to blame for Mumbai’s terrorist attacks. Google Earth, it seems, allowed terrorists to view Mumbai from a detailed bird’s eye perspective and decipher just how to penetrate the city. Terrorists could familiarise themselves with Mumbai’s streets, and now security agencies want material on Google Earth to be blurred and even limited in some areas. 

Of course, it easily argued that certain military and air bases and so forth should not really be put across the Internet for all to see how they can be accessed. But do not the security agencies realise that terrorists could just as easily send people in to walk around Mumbai with cameras, or even to look at a bog standard ordinance survey map of the city to work out how to get where and through which entrances to the buildings? 

Early reports of the shootings noted that the gunmen used a ‘1960s style approach’ in their terrorist attack. No highly technological strategic plans, no use of ultra-digital bomb devices and detonators – but a bunch of guns and a ‘point and shoot’ formula. 

Security agencies seem to suggest that without Google Earth the attack would not have happened, or would have been incredibly difficult to prepare for. But they forget that some people, with evil in their minds and fire in their stomach will do whatever it takes to carry out their plan for disaster, and will use daily tools and practises to carry out their plan where possible.