Indian blogs forced offline
p2p news / p2pnet: Indian bloggers and Net users found themselves offline shortly after explosions in crowded trains killed 200 people in Mumbai, formerly Bombay.
But, “Shock turned to anger when it became apparent there was a government order to Internet service providers (ISPs) behind the censorship – although the move was a response to hate messages on websites and blogs that could have spread enmity between India’s majority Hindus and minority Muslims,” says the Asia Times Online.
The sites were blocked on the orders of the department of telecommunications and were meant to shut down 17 blogs, “which carried material from religious and political extremists,” says The Guardian Unlimited, “But service providers were forced to cut all major sites, including the popular Geocities, Typepad and Google’s Blogspot.”
Inquiries, “led to a little-known organization under the Department of Electronics in India’s Ministry of Information Technology called the Computer Emergency Response Team – India (CERT-IN), which had been set up under the Information Technology Act of 2000,” says the Asia Times Online.
“Flexing its muscles, CERT-IN had issued a letter of recommendation to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), which then issued a notification on Saturday to various ISPs in the country, ordering them to block access to 18 selected websites.”
But, “Although CERT-IN is meant to be primarily concerned with Internet security, it often oversees ‘censorship’ under a legal clause that seeks to ensure ‘balanced flow of information’,” blogger and freelance journalist Shivam Vij is quoted as saying.
“Amitabh Singhal, a member of the executive council of the ISP Association of India, representing 45 ISPs, acknowledged that ‘certain ISPs, not all, had blocked the Internet protocol addresses that led to the blocking of entire websites’,” says the story.
"We are confident that the problem would be sorted out in the next 48 hours," he said.
Also See:
Asia Times Online – Bloggers blocked after Indian blasts, July 21, 2006
The Guardian Unlimited – Backlash from bloggers as Indian censors shut websites, July 20, 2006
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