India Internet Filtering Headlines

Here are some of the most important clippings of the last 48 hours related to India Internet filtering from India news sources and English-language media. At the bottom are a list of links to interesting related sites.

The Times of India (19 July)

The Department of Telecom has asked 150 Internet Service Providers to block out 18 websites which could be used by terror groups to communicate and spread provocative messages.

Two websites www.dalitstan.org and hinduunity.org figure among the blocked sites. It’s not immediately clear till what time period this blockade will be in force.

The Hindu (19 July)

What has enraged most bloggers is that public service blogs like `Mumbaihelp,’ part of Blogspot, which had done sterling service by acting as a clearing house for anxious friends trying to trace missing persons in Mumbai, has also been rendered inaccessible.

Speaking to The Hindu from Delhi, Prasanto K. Roy, President and Chief Editor of the Dataquest Group and the doyen of the Indian Information Technology media, said the Government’s attempt was “stupid and ill advised.” “Such gags never work. People in the IT Ministry who seemed to have set this in motion have worked in a half-baked way, without understanding the technical issues. In any case, we are not China and should not even be trying to police the Internet.”

The Financial Express (18 July)

CEO of Praja Foundation and owner of yazadjal. blogspot. com Yazad Jal said, “The ban will instead hurt intelligence agencies who could have taken cues from communication between terrorists, if any, through blogs. It is an attack on free speech and i think i am going to file a PIL against it.” Users can still access blogs from pkblogs.com, savemyass.com etc, which is instead increasing hits on banned blogs many fold.

“Instead of banning the whole site – the owner of Blogspot – Google India could have been contacted to shut down certain domains which seemed objectionable to the government,” Pavan Duggal said. In 2003, the ISPs were asked to block one Yahoo e-group (relating to a Naga militant group) due to which the entire Yahoo e-groups was blocked, which was revoked a week later.

Editor of JAM Magazine and owner of Youthcurry.blogspot.com Rashmi Bansal ask, “Would it not be easier to simply contact Google, which owns blogspot and has a ‘flag’ system to mark out objectionable content?”

A government source that is also an avid blogger said, “IP numbers are being physically located and identified. All should come back to normal once this operation is over.address.” “This operation is limited to certain parts of India. Bloggers in Andaman, Nicobar and Lakhsadeep islands are not affected,” he adds.

Hindustan Times (18 July)

THE LATEST attempt by the department of telecom to block access to 17 websites on grounds of national security has gone spectacularly wrong.

First, it has ended up blocking not 17 but thousands of sites or weblogs (or blogs) hosted by popular hosting services like Google’s Blogspot and Yahoo’s Geocities. Second, the ban has been effected in a manner that can be skirted with ease. So anyone who wants to access them can still do so…

Dr Gulshan Rai, director of the Computer Emergency Response Team, the apex organisation under the IT Ministry responsible for the nation’s cyber-security, told HT: “There’s no attempt to block www.blogspot.com from our side. The order issued by the DoT has four blogs hosted on Blogspot.com. The order didn’t ask the whole site to be banned.“

Then why isn’t any Blogspot site opening on most computers? The answer lies in the way our internet service providers — like Tata, Airtel, Sify and Reliance — have implemented the order.

“Indian ISPs don’t have the technology to block individual name servers — say a particular blog hosted on Blogspot. So they had no choice but to block the root servers of major blogging networks — blogspot, geocities and typepad,” said a senior official in the IT Ministry. A senior official from an ISP confirmed this.

Sarbajit Roy, a cyber-law expert, said: “This block is a mindless exercise and shows that our bureaucrats don’t understand technology at all.”

Infoworld Netherlands (19 July)

A group of bloggers, called the BloggersCollective (http://groups.google.com/group/BloggersCollective) has been formed to monitor the block on the Web sites and blogs, and influence opinion against the move by the Indian government.

Under India’s Information Technology Act 2000, Web sites can be blocked if they are found to be promoting hate, violence, terrorism, and pornography including child pornography. Although the communication from the DOT to ISPs lists specific pages and Web sites, several ISPs have blocked some key blogs altogether because they were not equipped to filter specific pages, Maheshwari said.

rediff news (17 July)

“Such sites may be blocked within the provisions of the Fundamental Right to free speech and expression, granted in India’s Constitution,” said cyber-law expert Praveen Dalal, adding, “If, however, the blocking is arbitrary, unreasonable and unfair, it would be in violation of Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution of India.”

Wall Street Journal (19 July, via Washington Post)

Several telecom operators confirmed that they were directed to block more than 15 Web sites. Close to a third of those are home to blogs, or personalized Web logs, such as Blogger.com and Geocities.com. Included on a list seen by the Wall Street Journal are sites that showcase views of an Islamic holy man; conservative Hindus; and dalits, the low caste in India pejoratively referred to as untouchables.

The trouble is bloggers don’t even know which sites the DoT wants blocked. To make matters worse, ISPs seem to be blocking entire domains on which these blogs are hosted.

Global Voices

I find it particularly interesting that one of the ways of accessing blogs is to go to http://pkblogs.com, which was set up by Pakistani bloggers to help them circumvent the block in their country.

Some notable sites

• http://indiacensored.com/ - Tracking censorship efforts and tools
• http://censorship.wikia.com/wiki/Bloggers_Against_Censorship – Wiki to track censorship efforts
• http://www.boingboing.net/censorroute.html – anti-censor techniques
• http://www.opennetinitiative.org/ – collaborative research on Internet filtering worldwide

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 18th, 2006 at 9:04 pm and is filed under Asia, GFW, India, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.