Nation first, self second

Hacker

Scene one: The Courtroom.

“Yes, he hacked my facebook account.” said the girl standing in the witness box.

“And how did you come to know about it?” asked the attorney.

“He sent me a mail saying my facebook account was now under his control” replied the girl reluctantly.

“Thank you. You may now take your seat” ordered the attorney.

A few moments later, a 17 year old boy was handcuffed and escorted to the police van. Tears rolled down his cheek, when a policeman held his collar and whispered, “You’re screwed.” He was shoved into the back of the van. The door closed and everything went blank.

Scene two: Bench, the park.

“Excuse me?” a faint female voice interrupted. A few seconds later, the voice repeated itself in the same monotone, “Excuse me?” He opened his eyes and saw a girl standing in front of him.


Bench, the park

Like every other day, Rohan sat on the bench after an early morning jog. Among the chill of the breeze, the rustling of the leaves and the chirping birds, he had fallen asleep. His eyes were closed and hands spread across the bench. Instances from the past flashed before his eyes when he realized that someone was waking him up. He looked at her unable to recognize.

“May I have a seat here?” she asked as politely as it could get. “Oh yeah, Please” he gathered himself. She took her seat, introduced herself as Vidya and struck a conversation claiming to be new to the area.

A few weeks passed. They knew each other now. Sometimes they would jog together and sit and chat in the park. Everything was fine until she asked him about his work. He had been dodging the question for days, but she wouldn’t let go. It was time he confessed.

Scene three: Under the tree, the park.

“I’ve been searching for a good corporate job since last year, but nobody is willing to hire me.” Rohan started.

“Because of recession, I guess”, she tried to console.

“Prison!” he replied. “After five years of imprisonment, who would want to hire you?”

She was dumbstruck. For a moment, she couldn’t utter a word. While she wondered what to say, Rohan continued his story.

“I was a hacker once. I used to hack facebook profiles just for fun. Never intended anyone any harm though. Hacking fascinated me. I learnt new techniques and executed them on random people on facebook. By seventeen, I could crack through any firewall in the world with ease. I was one of the best hackers in India.”

She listened intently, still quite unable to make out the connection between hacking and his prison sentence.



Government of India

“One day I came across the website of the Govt. of India. I noticed loopholes in the website. Hacking it was not very difficult. Terabytes of top priority confidential data was lying around in the open. In the wrong hands, the data could have wreaked havoc across the globe. To leave it as it is, was a huge risk I was not willing to take. So I set out to fix it.”

“And then!?” she exclaimed. “And then”, he replied “fifteen days later, I hacked the official website of the Govt. of India.”

“What? You’re kidding me right?” she blurted out in utter disbelief. “No, I’m not” he continued, “I operated the website for months without them having a single clue about this. I had fixed the firewalls and blocked the American, German, Chinese and Pakistani hackers from stealing any kind of data. But it was not a one man job. I couldn’t handle the load of work.”

“What did you do then?” she interrupted. “I created a fake Govt. of India website and directed the hackers to the fake website” he continued.

“Wait. What? You are not serious, are you?” she interrupted again. “Just listen” he shot back, “It went on, but I couldn’t have continued this for long. The cyber police warned me thrice, but I was not one to listen. Finally, they arrested me and sentenced me to five years in prison.”

“So you are telling me you were punished for trying to save your own country?” she inquired in shock. “Nation first, self second”, he smiled.

Her questions were not going to end soon. “But you never did anything wrong”, she sounded confused. Unable to make out whether it was a question or a statement, he smiled again in reply.

“Why didn’t you fight your case?” Vidya asked a genuine question this time. “Look”, he explained “to fix all the loopholes of the website, it would have taken another year for the Govt. officials. If I had come out of the prison winning my case, nobody would have known about it and the enemy hackers would have had a year to screw with the data. Hence, I chose to surrender and sensationalize the issue, so the security would be tightened and make the hackers think twice before doing anything silly.”

“Oh God! That’s so unfair. You sacrificed your career for your country and all you get is a prison sentence? That’s so damn unfair.” Vidya almost cried and Rohan sat there smiling. She couldn’t believe he had done that. In a world of malice, cheating and deceit, Rohan had pulled off one of the most selfless acts one could ever imagine. He had put his country ahead of himself. Respect for him increased manifold in Vidya’s eyes. He was her hero.

Scene four: Rohan’s place.

The man handed Rohan his visiting card and disappeared with a smile. Rohan closed the door and looked at the card one last time. The next moment he threw the card away, punched the walls, kicked his bed, broke the vases, shoved the books away, slammed his laptop on the ground, jumped in the air and screamed to the maximum decibel he could reach. The five years of pain, agony and frustration finally showed up. Never did he expect that something like this could happen to him; not in these five years at least. Obviously, he could not handle all of it coming at once. Ten minutes of havoc later, he sat down quiet on his bed; his heart still pumping fast and tears struggling to plunge out of his eyes. His room was a complete mess.

It was the end of his troubles. Facebook Inc. had hired him for forty grand a month. The guy, who had just handed him his card, was Vidya’s cousin, Chief Recruitment Officer, Facebook Hyderabad. He didn’t want to waste a minute when he heard about Rohan from Vidya. “Welcome to Facebook, Mr. Rohan” he greeted Rohan when he next met him. And that was the beginning of the rest of his life.