Is Anonymous India right in hacking the TRAI website?

MUMBAI, INDIA: Moments after the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) released the email ids of people who responded to its consultation paper on Net Neutrality, it paid a heavy price for the wrong doing.

The TRAI website crashed after a group of hackers named Anonymous India injected a distributed denial of service (DdoS). The hacker group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

It must be recalled that TRAI had received more than one million responses to its consultation paper. It had categorized the responses into Comments from Service Provider Associations, Comments from Service Providers and Other stakeholders. It later released the names, email IDs and the contents of the responses in a downloadable PDF format on its website for public viewing.

Although TRAI has been making public similar information on all its consultation papers, what has angered the netizens is the possible exploitation by spammers and marketeers. They have accused TRAI of blatant violation of privacy and trust.

For TRAI, which has been in the eye of the storm over Net Neutrality, each action  t takes has been translating into inverse reaction. As a practice, and in a bid to retain transparency, the authority has released similar information even in the past.

We believe that the reaction was extreme, and uncalled for. As a government body, TRAI did its duty. Had it not made the information public, the nay sayers would have accused it of hiding information. Plus this information was no secret. Flip through any of the social media sites and we see thousands of comments and shares on this very issue.

Our take on Net Neutrality aside, we believe that the hacker group has punished TRAI for doing its job right!!!