Who has jurisdiction over me ?

The principle of jurisdiction is a basic tenet in law. Jurisdiction refers to the  law, the court, the authority that is applicable to you . You are then required to follow that law and be subject to  oversight by that authority and that court. In the good old days, jurisdiction was simple - where you were decided who had jurisdiction over you.  I live in India and so the laws of India apply to me. The government of India is the authority that has jurisdiction over me and the courts in India  are the forum I can go to. Simple.

As the world started to globalise, the issue of jurisdiction started to become more complicated. If I did a commercial transaction with say an Australian company - who would have jurisdiction ?  Australia ? India ? That is why in contracts involving multiple countries it is always stated which law would apply and which courts would have jurisdiction. But physical presence or assets always enables that country to have jurisdiction . Although I am an Indian citizen, when I travel to say Burkina Faso, the laws of that country shall prevail - If the law there says that I have to yell Abracadabra loudly three times at 4.27 AM, I better do so.

The arrival of the internet completely destroyed the fundamental principles of jurisdiction and unfortunately there are no legal treaties or conventions that seem to have decided this. Which is why jurisdiction has been "usurped" by the country that is powerful - the US of A. I am an unapologetic Americophile and have great admiration for that country;  yet I find the behaviour of the United States utterly deplorable and downright repulsive in this matter.

I am referring to the famous NSA and the spying it is doing on the world. All the hullabaloo in the US has been about spying on American citizens. But what about foreigners like me - the US has no jurisdiction over me and yet it intercepts every email of mine and reads it, if it wishes to. Forget a non entity like me; the US has been hacking   Dilma Rousseff, the President of Brazil. Now, it is fairly certain that she is no security threat to the US and yet the NSA has hacked her, simply because it could. Brazil is furious and she has cancelled her visit to the US triggering a diplomatic row.

It all boils down to jurisdiction. Google, Microsoft, et al - virtually every internet company of any note is headquartered in the United States and its servers where data is stored is physically based in the United States.  The NSA is therefore claiming jurisdiction and forcing these companies to turn over every data to it - of you and me as well, although we may have nothing to do with the United States.

The danger of balkanisation of the internet is obvious. Brazil is the first to respond (it is really pissed off that they hacked Dilma Rousseff). Brazil is contemplating a law that will force the likes of Google and Microsoft to store any data that originates from Brazil in servers in Brazil itself. Then the likes of the NSA have no jurisdiction and can be told loudly to %$#^ off.

It is easy to turn a blind eye to the NSA's shenanigans and argue that they are welcome to pore every inch over my boring life and inane communication. But that misses the point on civil liberties - a prize that over the centuries, generations have fought and guarded zealously.  If I decide to post my mug shot publicly on Facebook, then I have no right to claim privacy. But if I send a private email to a friend in India, then it is none of the NSA's business to snoop into it. I have no problems if the government of India wants to read it (although I would vigorously oppose that without a court warrant), but I will not tolerate the government of the United States reading it under any circumstance.

What about the NSA argument that this is necessary to combat terrorism and is for security considerations. Bullshit. That may have been how it started, but it has gone way beyond that now. Is Dilma Rousseff or the German embassy in Brussels remotely connected with terrorism - and yet both have been hacked into.  The sanctimonious nonsense of the US objecting to organised Chinese hacking is now exposed - they are no better than the Chinese and even the Chinese did not go far enough to hack Dilma Rousseff.

Why this post in a politics free business blog ? Simply because I am amazed that the fury over the NSA actions is not greater around the world. I may be an insignificant individual but I must speak my mind that the US has absolutely no jurisdiction over me.

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Knock Knock ; Who's there ? Nobody !

By any reckoning, this should be an extremely successful business. You have a fantastic distribution set up - reaching every nook and corner of your geography that nobody else can - in what is essentially a distribution business. You have an envious relationship with the consumers. In many places your representative was a trusted friend and confidante. People looked forward to his arrival. You had a state sanctioned monopoly. You have a significant price advantage. You enjoy innumerable fiscal benefits that no competitor enjoys. You have a great brand , so great that collection of your merchandise was a major hobby with an English word specifically only for this. Songs have been written about you that have reached the top of the charts - here (this is the first version - the Beatles and the Carpenters came later) , in case you are musically inclined. 

With such advantages. you should be roaring away to glory, shouldn't you ? And yet you are a colossal failure and a sitting duck in almost every country. I am referring to the business of postal services. Everywhere in the world, the Post Office is a massive white elephant and a complete dinosaur, if you'll pardon the mixed metaphors. When was the last time you licked a stamp and sent something by post  ?

Popular perception is that the business has been made obsolete because of technology. The advent of E Mail and then subsequently, the mobile phone has made postal services. fit only for a museum. Nobody writes a letter any more. So goes the wisdom. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The postal services have failed because they have a been a government monopoly, have never considered themselves as a business and have been the best example of the worst management in history. That's why they have failed. If you need any further proof of it, simply consider the number of courier companies, who essentially offer the same services and who are thriving.

There is actually a colossal increase in the volume of physical mail. The amount of commercial mail is massive - just consider the amount of stuff, you may consider as junk mail, but which still arrives at your doorstep. Just as the advent of computers actually increased the amount of paper consumed, the advent of email has done nothing to reduce the volume of snail mail. Yes, you may have never written an inland letter for a decade or more, but consider how many times you have couriered something. 

Postal services in every country, and especially so in India, have been subjected to such bad management that it must be considered almost a crime. There is a bloated workforce. There is very poor management talent working in the organisation.  There has been no modernisation and investment whatsoever - just peep into the local post office, in case you can find it, and you will be looking at the 18th century. Governments have contributed by keeping prices of some products ridiculously low - for example to send a post card anywhere in India costs 50 paise (provided you can find a 50p coin which is almost not legal tender nowadays).  If ever there was an example required of the grossest inefficiency of the public sector and a shameful case of a proud organisation brought to its knees, this has to be it.

Why is this so. There have been other government monopolies which have been threatened by technology, but which have still done reasonably well. Why is the Post Office an universal failure ? I can postulate, but I shall leave it to Distinguished Academics (at least two members of this species are readers of this blog) to perhaps present their research findings.

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The beginning of the end ?

It was a long time coming. In retrospect its actually surprising that the backlash is starting only now. The backlash against email, I mean. A few days ago Atos Origin, a French IT company, started the ball rolling by announcing that it would ban email in the company by 2014. Now Volkswagen unions have struck a deal with the company that emails to their unionised employees would be switched off after office hours.

This had to happen. E Mail addiction is an extremely serious epidemic as this blogger observed here. It is a global pandemic of epic proportions. Walk into any office or meeting - you would see rows and rows of people peering into their screens or thumbing away at their Blackberries. Eerie scenes more suited for George Orwell's 1984.

Its well known that more than half the emails you get are completely useless. And you get a LOT of emails. For some reason your genes are so programmed that you have to see each and every one of them 15 nanoseconds after they arrive. The greatest attraction to mankind, even more than a gorgeous topless woman, is a blinking light on the Blackberry. Social norms still hold you back from pawing at the aforesaid lady. Nothing in the world - not even an earthquake - can keep you from grabbing the Blackberry.

This is what most of us do in offices. Either tap out or read useless stuff 50% of the time. And for years now, it has extended out of the office into our homes. We do the same inane stuff in bed, in the car, even in the loo. Absolutely waste of our lives.

Email, when it arrived, dramatically increased office productivity. Now I am willing to bet (and some distinguished academic has no doubt done research on this) that it has actually lowered productivity back to pre email days.

Consider this. Would you think it appropriate to talk all the time in the office and at home ? Why then is it OK to be emailing all the time ?? Shut the $%#@ thing off and do some real work.

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E Mail Addiction

Try this today. Count how many times you look at your e mail , either on your PC or on your Blackberry. If you've looked into your mailbox more than at 15 different times, you're addicted !!

E Mail addiction is an under recognised problem. Yes E Mail has been an integral part of life for some time. But it has crept in slowly and virtually taken over the life of the addicts. There was indeed a time before E Mail. In a company that I worked for, the week closed on a Thursday. Nobody could really tell me why such an odd day was chosen. When I read the history of the company, I gathered that in the good old days, weekly reports had to be sent by ship to the headquarters in London. The weekly steamer sailed on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, I forget what. So in order to catch the ship, the week had to be closed on a Thursday for the sales to be collated and mailed from the field on a Friday and then the weekly report be ready in time before the ship sailed. Yes, there was a time before E Mails.

Back to E Mail addiction. You see symptoms of it everywhere.

Walk into any office and look around. You'll probably see rows of people peering into their computers. Granted that some of them may be playing games or browsing the Net. But a majority of them would be busily occupied with Microsoft Outlook. Clear evidence that the most often done activity in any company is reading and answering E Mail. Is that what a company is for ?

Take any meeting. More than 50% of the attendees are typing away on the laptop or on their Blackberry. Its impossible to hold a sensible meeting these days; people are busy E Mailing. Its amazing how people who are incredibly polite and sensitive in real life, turn into rude E Mail monsters in a meeting ; why come to the meeting and be rude to the meeting host, if all you are going to do is to watch your Inbox. Their excuse is that they are "multitasking", which I completely debunk, as its just jargon to say they are addicted to E Mail. For some tips on how to run "Topless Meetings" click here.

Worse are presentations to be made to the Board or Executive Committee or some senior executive. They are all E Mailing away and scarcely listening to you. Why travel 15 hours (in first class) to visit a country and review the business, if most of the time you are E Mailing ? The worst situation I have had was when I had to present to this guy who didn't listen to one word of what I was saying and was openly punching away at his Blackberry. I had half a mind to slip in a sentence in my presentation that he was a dumb idiot and I would have gotten away with it because he wasn't listening !

What is it about E mails that make them so addictive. Almost none of us can resist the sight of an unopened E Mail. Why ? There's almost nothing in business that's so incredibly urgent that it has to be seen in the next 20 seconds. If there was something really that urgent, we'll get a call. And yet we are hopelessly addicted. I think its got to do with a primordial instinct of wanting to know everything. And yet this seems to have been accentuated when mail became electronic. I have worked in the medieval ages before E Mail. The pile of unopened correspondence in the In Tray was a common business occurrence. Very few people were addicted to the In Tray !

The addiction is at the very least a threat to your effectiveness as a manager. At worst it can take over your life. I know of a manager who set alarms to wake up three times in the night to check on his Blackberry !

A detox programme for E Mail addiction would take the form of firstly disconnecting your Blackberry (horror of horrors). And then setting up a discipline that you'll open your inbox on the PC only once in an hour and deal with the mails that are pending in one go, after which you'll shut your mailbox and do something else. Use the time to uninterruptedly do your work for which you are paid for - set strategy, implement strategy, talk to people, read, analyse, whatever. In an 18 hour day when you are usually awake, don't open the mailbox more than 15 times. Join Emailaholics Anonymous.

A google search on E Mail addiction yields 18.2 million responses. There's lots of stuff out there on the dangers and how to kick the habit.

In the prehistoric days , when there was a whole generation of managers ,uncomfortable with E Mail, there was a venerable gentleman I knew, who was terrified of getting on to the computer. His routine was that his secretary would print all his emails, which he would take home in the evening. He would then scribble a response on them which his secretary would then type out and send as e mails the next morning. As young computer savvy kids, we used to mock at and deride this old fossil. Now I am not so sure if he was not the wiser man !

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