...

...

The reports say of how the terrorists used these same digital maps to plan their actions and reduced the requirement of having to stay in Mumbai and do a proper reconnaissance. At this time, you will not find many people favouring update of digital maps.

Any technology/instrument can be used by people bent on destruction. If positive effects of something outweigh its negative effects, then we allow it to be used by the society. One such example is Mumbai's rail network. Everyday over half-a-dozen people die on the railway tracks of Mumbai, but we continue to use our local trains without banning them. Same is true for the knives used to chop vegetables. One can kill someone with it. But can we ban them?

Now general public is getting a chance to use digital maps which were only available to government agencies, a few years back. It would be pretty sad if we are forced to give up this technology just because some terrorists and their masters used digital maps. By the way, there were terrorist attacks in India, even before Google or OSM came into existence.

...

The Issue goes a little further, In a place like Mumbai with nearly 2 Crore population, the terrorists killed about 200, hardly a nudge in the yearly death rate,

WOW ! The attitude is interesting. I am sure for the people who lost family and friends in the attack will appreciate that its hardly a nudge in the death rate. Good thing people like you are not in control of the country. Or Wait ! They are actually.

I think what he said was technically correct but emotionally offensive. If we mix facts with emotions, we don't reach anywhere in a public discourse. It should be noted that the family and friends of Indian citizens are not suffering for the first time. Every week we see many people dying in terrorist attacks in different parts of our country. The Mumbai offensive was a high decibel one and hence it got higher visibility in public. This has shaken the establishment. The government could have lived with multiple low decibel terror strikes spread over a longer period of time, even if their cumulative score of victims were more than 200. For example, just count the number of such victims in different parts of our country in last five years.

Regarding loss of life of near and dear ones; if one dies in terror attack or in the hands of workers of some political party, the loss is the same. While looking at the issue of rights of citizens being usurped by our government, we need to look at hard facts, sans any emotions. Are we supposed to give up our right to privacy just because terrorists are striking us whenever they want? We also need to look at the experience of people in other countries like US, UK etc. where citizens have lost a lot of their privacy after 9/11. In US, there are some draconian laws in place in the name of homeland security. Is US safe just because of these measures? What are the views of experts residing in those countries on these issues? These are the questions one should be asking and discussing in detail. Well, being a mailing list for GNU/Linux, it is not be the appropriate forum for it.

...

politicians use this as a chance to pass regulations that will harass rest of the population for a lifetime,

There is a real danger of it to happen. It is necessary to be vigilant against terrorists as well as the government itself. Democracy doesn't come cheap. If citizens in general don't care, then we would be enslaved by people in power on one pretext or other.

this is a cause worth fighting for, freedom is a precious thing.

Very true.

Raghu