Bloggers blocked after Indian
blasts By Paranjoy Guha
Thakurta
NEW DELHI - India's fast-growing
community of bloggers and Internet users was in
for a rude shock when it found favorite sites
blocked in the wake of the serial blasts in
crowded trains that killed 200 commuters in the
western port city of Mumbai last week.
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.
A blog, short for
weblog, is a type of website in which entries are
made as in a journal and displayed in a reverse
chronological
order. Blogs carry comments
on various issues, serve as personal diaries and
may carry photographs, audio tracks, videos and
links to other blogs or websites.
On the
weekend, Mridula Dwivedi, a teacher of management
studies based in Gurgaon, on the outskirts of
India's capital, discovered that visiting any blog
or blogspot resulted in a message stating "site
blocked". On contacting her ISP, Spectranet, she
was told that access to certain websites had been
blocked on government instructions.
Other
Internet users soon discovered they were unable to
reach their favorite blogs hosted on sites such as
Geocities, Blogspot and Typepad, which used to be
independent websites, but have now been acquired
by search-engine majors such as Yahoo and Google.
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.
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.
A number of these
websites are believed to be affiliated with
extremist organizations and publish material
considered inimical to communal harmony.
"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',"
explained Shivam Vij, a blogger and freelance
journalist.
A government department
seeking to block access to a website can ask
CERT-IN to issue a gag order after confirming the
authenticity of the complaint.
"The
blocking of thousands of blogs is the result of,
on the one hand, an indifferent government, which
couldn't care less if people are able to read
blogs, and on the other, incompetent ISPs who
acted overzealously and blocked hundreds of
thousands of sites when they were asked to block
merely 18 sites," Vij said.
Gulshan Rai,
who heads CERT-IN, was not available for comment
and would not take calls. Vij said that when he
asked Rai why so many websites were inaccessible,
he remarked: "Somebody must have blocked some
sites. What is your problem?"
"The problem
essentially arose out of the fact that the ISPs,
instead of blocking access to specific blogs,
ended up blocking access to entire websites
because it is technically easier and less
expensive to do so," said Ravi Visvesvaraya
Prasad, a New Delhi-based expert on cyber-security
and technology used by terrorists. "Instead of
particular blogs, entire websites are easier to
block - it can be done quickly and by deploying
relatively few people."
Another expert on
cyber-security, Subimal Bhattacharya, said the
government's move had opened up a "Pandora's box
of complaints about curbs on freedom of
expression".
"Even if blocking access to
specific blogs is more expensive, technically
challenging and time-consuming, I would have
preferred a more selective and nuanced approach to
the problem," he said. "It's a bit like swatting a
fly with a sledgehammer."
The Indian
government had unfairly penalized "serious
bloggers" for the alleged misdemeanors of a few
errant users of the Internet, said Bhattacharya,
who is with the Center for Security Studies in
Zurich, which prepared a detailed report on the
status of cyber-security in 20 countries this
year. "You can't curb freedom of expression in a
democracy."
Another cyber-law expert,
Praveen Dalal, said the "government decision could
be in violation of provisions in the Indian
constitution that upholds the fundamental right to
free speech and expression, if it is found to be
arbitrary, unreasonable and unfair".
Indian law allows the government to block
access to websites if these are found to contain
pornography, hate speeches, contempt, slander and
defamation or if these promote racism, violence or
terrorism, Dalal said. "These legal provisions
have, however, been infrequently used."
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".
"We are confident that the
problem would be sorted out in the next 48 hours,"
he said Wednesday evening.
One of the
first actions initiated by CERT-IN was in 2003
when it approved the blocking of an obscure
mailing list run by a banned militant outfit, the
Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council of the
Khasi tribe in Meghalaya in northeastern India.
"Ironically, the popularity and visibility
of the list went up by leaps and bounds, despite
it being blocked by all ISPs - many could see the
list via e-mail or proxy surfing," Vij said.
Prasad recalled that "a number of reputed
organizations in the United States had refused to
host a website sponsored by a militant Hindu
group, the Bajrang Dal, on the grounds that it was
filled with hate speech." This website
(Hinduunity.org) had even called for the
"assassination" of leading public figures such as
the pope, Sonia Gandhi (head of the ruling
Congress party), Mulayam Singh Yadav (chief
minister of India's largest state, Uttar Pradesh)
and federal Railways Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav.
The same website even published a list of
journalists who were ''born to Hindu parents, but
had become anti-Hindu". It provided addresses and
phone numbers of individuals, including prominent
Muslim Indians in the United States, calling for
their "elimination". The sole official word on
the weekend action came from the Indian Embassy in
Washington.
"A two-page write-up
containing extremely derogatory references to
Islam and the Holy Prophet, which had the
potential to inflame religious sensitivities in
India and create serious law-and-order problems in
the country, appeared in a blog facilitated by
well-known search engines," said deputy consul
general A R Ghanshyam in a written response to a
query on Wednesday.
"Department of
Telecommunications have now clarified the issue
and the error is being rectified and it is
expected that normalcy in respect of blogs will
soon be restored."
China recently has been
accused of not allowing its Internet users to
access websites that may contain views not
acceptable to the current government in Beijing -
for instance, comments about the 1989 protests at
Tiananmen Square or the activities of the banned
Falungong spiritual movement, regarded as a cult
by the government.
"Google and Microsoft
both gave in to the demands of the Chinese
government by installing technology that allowed
for constant surveillance of all Internet users in
that country and also blocked access to specific
websites, including the sites of American news
organizations like CNN and Fox News," Prasad said.
He added that certain monarchies in the
Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and some
conservative regimes in the United Arab Emirates,
also ensure that ISPs use technological tools at
their command to block access to pornographic
sites.
Bloggers in India, including Vij,
who have organized themselves into a group called
Bloggers Against Censorship, are hoping that India
would not join countries that regularly censor
access to the World Wide Web.
