Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words are given in bold to help you answer some of the questions.
At the heart of what makes India a better regime than China is a healthy respect for the civil rights and liberties of its citizens. There are checks and balances in our government. But India?s new surveillance programme, the Central Monitoring system (CMS), resembles a dystopian society akin to George Orwell?s 1984.
According to several news reports, the CMS gives the government, Indian security agencies and income tax (IT) officials the authority to listen to, and tape phone conversions, read emails and text messages, monitor Posts on Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin and track searches on Google of selected targets, without oversight by the courts or parliament. To call it sweeping is an understatement.
Typically, Indian Security agencies need a court order for surveillance, or depend on Internet/telephone service providers for data, provided they supply a warrant. CMS allows the government to bypass the court. Milind Deora, India?s Minister of State for Information Technology says the new system will actually improve citizens? privacy because telecommunication agencies would no longer be directly involved in the surveillance; only government officials would have these details ? missing the point that in a democracy, there has to be freedom from government surveillance. This is hardly comforting in a nation riddled with governmental corruption.
India does not have a privacy law. CMS will operate under the Indian Telegraph Act (ITA). The ITA is a relic of the British Raj from 1885, and gives the government the freedom to monitor private conversations. News reports quote anonymous telecommunications ministry officials as saying that CMS has been introduced for security purposes, and ?this is to protect you and your country?.
That is irrational. For one, there are no ?security purposes? that prevent the government from having a rational debate on this programme and getting approval from our elected representatives before authorizing such wide-reaching surveillance. If the government is worried that a public debate in a paralysed parliament would half the programme?s progress, then it can convene a committee of individuals or an individual body such as CAG to oversee the programme. It can seek judicial approval from the Supreme Court, and have a judge sign off on surveillance requests without making these requests public.
As of now, the top bureaucrat in the interior ministry and his/her state level deputies will have the power to approve surveillance requests. Even the recently revealed US surveillance Programme, had ?behind the doors? bipartisan surveillance approval. Furthermore, US investigation agencies such as the CIA and NSA are not the ruling party?s marionettes; in India, that the CBI is an arm of the government is a fait accompli. Even the Supreme Court recently lambasted the CBI and asked it to guarantee its independence from government influences after it was proved that it shared unreleased investigation reports with the government.
There is no guarantee that this top bureaucrat will be judicious or not use this as a tool to pursue political and personal vendettas against opposition parties or open critics of the government. Security purposes hardly justify monitoring an individual?s social media usage. No terrorist announces plans to bomb a building on Facebook. Neither do Maoists espouse Twitter as their preferred form of communication.
Presumably, security purposes could be defined as the government?s need to intercept terrorist plans. How does giving the IT department the same sweeping surveillance powers justify security purposes? The IT office already has expansive powers to conduct investigations, summon individuals or company executives, and raid premises to catch tax evaders. In a world where most financial details are discussed and transferred online, allowing the IT departments to snoop on these without any reasonable cause is akin to airport authorities strip searching everyone who boards a flight.
What happened on 26/11 or what happens regularly in Naxal ? affected areas is extremely sad and should ideally, never take place again. But targeting terrorists means targeting people who show such inclinations, or those who arouse suspicions, either by their travels or heir associations with militant or extremist groups. And in a country where a teenager has been arrested for posting an innocent comment questioning the need for a bandh on the death of a political leader, gives us reason to believe that this law is most likely to be misused, if not abused.
Five friends A,B,C,D,E have different heights and different weights. D is taller than only E. Only one person is taller than B and only one person is heavier than E.If five persons are arranged in a row from heaviest to lightest, then C lies in the middle.A is taller than C. D is heavier than A who is not the lightest among five friends.
Read the following passage and answer the questions below.
Consider your average morning routine. Most of us begin taking in the day's news as soon as the clock radio wakes us up. Then there is the morning news brief from the television while eating breakfast followed by a local radio station during our commute. Throughout the day people continue to glean important events from news sites on the internet. Now consider what your day would look like if all of these resources fell silent.
There are continual reminders that our nation's power grid is much more fragile than we would like to admit. Such threats do exist not only as foreign or domestic, but extra-worldly as well. Modern power grids are managed by computer networks and the potential exists for hacking into those networks to interrupt the power supply. Another less sinister, but just as hazardous threat comes from outside our own planet. The very sun that we rely upon every day occasionally ejects powerful solar flares known as coronal mass ejections or CMEs. These powerful electromagnetic fields can wreak havoc on sensitive electronic components and have already caused major power outages in recent history and scientists continue to predict that the sun is primed for another such event.
The technology for electromagnetic bombs, developed over the past 30 years, is now available to download from on the internet! Googling it demonstrates the ease with which a would-be enemy could devastate society, creating an enormous blackout with mass panic and havoc. Such powerful electronic pulses pose a significant threat to breakdown all traditional communication including satellites that control every aspect of transportation, commerce and ultimately life.
Other potential problems with national and regional grids are not posed by external threats, but by the continued and rapid growth of our own cities. While such power demands are on the rise, the capacity to provide power to them is not keeping pace. The battle between environmental groups and political decision makers only seems to be maintaining the status quo and not improving the reliability of our energy needs.
If any one of these events transpires and our power grid fails, where would we get our news and information? While we could certainly continue to live day-to-day without a sizable amount of the information we take in, there is some information that we simply would find hard to live without. In the case of a regional or national disaster, reliable and accurate information can be the biggest factor in safety and survival.
How fortunate we are that there are trained amateur radio operators scattered across the country who are poised to fill this important gap if ever needed. With an emergency generator and communication tools, these operators have the equipment and coding skills necessary to process and relay important information at a moment?s notice. Many of these operators utilize an assortment of methods, but among them Morse code gets through when other methods fail. As we have seen in so many movies, confirmed by actual real life experiences, the effectual transmission of dahs and dits between trained operators is a very useful method of communicating both securely and accurately. Why not join this family of ham radio operators and enjoy the fun and lifelong friendships that result?
If you prepare by learning Morse code, you will be on the front lines of the vital communication network and could be responsible for bringing peace, comfort and safety information to friends and family. Some things may be better left to others, but wouldn't you feel safer knowing that you have done everything you could do in an emergency? Morse code continues to be a valuable survival skill for you, your family and for the nation.
- By Gerald Wheeler Ed.D.
Observe the following series and answer the questions that follow:
PQORTSSOSTQOQQRORSTOPPS?SQOTRP?RRSOTQ
For each of the following five questions, the prices of various items are shown by inequalities. The statement in each question is followed by 2 conclusions. Based on the information in the statement, which of the conclusions are implied?