Centre for Internet and Society

How ISPs block websites and why it doesn’t help

praskrishna — 2012-08-25T06:56:41Z

Banning websites is ineffective against malicious users as workarounds are easy and well known.

Gopal Sathe's article was published by LiveMint on August 24, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

India blocked 245 web pages for provocative content on Monday in an effort to prevent the spread of hate messages and lessen communal tensions in the country, and suggested via an official release on the website of the Press Information Bureau that more could follow.

As was widely reported in the days that followed, most websites blocked were not related to the ethnic clashes in Assam.

Pranesh Prakash, programme manager with the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, analysed the sites which were listed by the government. In his analysis, 33% of all blocked addresses were on Facebook, 27.8% on YouTube, 9.7% on Twitter and the rest were spread over a number of different websites including Wikipedia, Firspost.com and TimesofIndia.Indiatimes.com.

Prakash says, “I don’t believe that the decision to block sites was politically motivated, but I do believe that in trying to prevent harm, the government has gone overboard.”

He also writes in his analysis, “Even though many of the items on that list do deserve (in my opinion) to be removed [...] the people and companies hosting the material should have been asked to remove it, instead of ordering the ISPs to block them.”

Prakash also pointed out, “There are numerous egregious mistakes. Even people and posts debunking rumours have been blocked, and it is clear that the list was not compiled with sufficient care.”

Of course, India’s overall record on Internet censorship isn’t great, with the current laws encouraging Internet service providers (ISPs) to take down content without investigating individual cases properly. And that is not even taking into consideration official government orders, such as this decision to block websites.

The process of blocking content for an ISP is very simple. After all, any content that is coming from a website to your computer has to travel through the ISP, giving it ample opportunity to observe and censor banned content.

Think of it like this—you’re on an island, with no way to reach the mainland (Internet) where all the websites are. The ISP builds a bridge connecting you to the mainland, and charges you to let cars (data) from the sites come to you, by opening the road. Each web page has a unique ID, like a licence plate. If the government tells the ISP to block a specific page, it’s added to the blacklist, and isn’t allowed on the bridge. The government could also block a full domain, such as Facebook.com, which would be like blocking all cars with DL plates, instead of specific numbers.

New Delhi based cyber security consultant Dominic K. says, “The content is still there and can be accessed from outside India, so these measures are really very ineffective. People can use proxies or a virtual private network (VPN) to circumvent these measures with ease, by appearing to be a different site; so banning sites does nothing to deter malicious users.”

Proxies are websites that load blocked sites for you—if the proxy is not using the ISP doing the block, they can still load the content from the blocked site and present it to the users, since the blocklists simply block websites, and not their content.

VPNs work in a similar fashion, creating a virtual presence for the user outside of their own country. This can be done to circumvent blocks and access region-specific content, but is also a perfectly legitimate tool, and can increase your security greatly.

It’s a pretty crude system but it’s used around the world. In Australia, for example, the government has a page that directly lists their web censorship activities. It wants to block material that includes child sexual abuse imagery, bestiality, sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act. However, as noted on the same page, these measures can be easily circumvented. Since the content remains on the Internet, and is only blocked, it can be accessed by “any technically competent user”.

China, meanwhile, is frequently criticized for what is called, tongue-in-cheek, “the great firewall of China”. Reporters without Borders, a French organization that works for freedom of the press, has a list of countries that are “enemies of the Internet”. China, Iran, North Korea and Burma are some of the worst offenders, but Australia, India, Egypt, France and South Korea are also on the watchlist as “countries under surveillance”.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE publish detailed information on their filtering practices but other countries such as China return connection errors, and fake “file not found” errors.

There is a long history of Internet censorhip in India, and a perception that the laws have been used for political ends. Net censorship has been around for a while—in 1999, VSNL blocked access to Pakistani newspapers. Later, in 2006 the government wanted to block certain separatist groups of the Yahoo! Groups platform. While the government issued specific pages for the ban, initially, the whole Yahoo! Groups domain was blocked by ISPs. In 2007, Orkut was told to remove “defamatory” pages created by users.

Cartoon pornography website Savitabhabi.com was also blocked in 2009, while several blogging services such as Typepad were blocked last year for a few weeks, and then the block was lifted, with no explanations.

Like Australia, in the UK too, child pornography is filtered by the government, though users there have to opt-in for this filtering. Other countries such as Denmark, Norway and Sweden also see such content being filtered. The Indian IT Act also notes various kinds of illegal content which is not permissible, such as child pornography and hate speech.

Other countries, such as the US, also have aggressive Internet censorship of copyrighted content. Prakash says, “Internet censorship is not restricted to India alone. Every country in the world has been doing this in different ways. The United States, for example, has even seized domains in copyright cases, which were legally hosted in other countries. With regards to political censorship, which some feel is a concern now, I don’t think that the Indian government is doing that. I believe that they are sincerely trying to address a serious issue, but people are going overboard.”

He adds, “The biggest concern is that there is no transparency about what is being blocked, or why, and this leaves things open for active misuse in the future.”

In Google’s 2011 Transparency Report, released in June this year, India did not feature very favourably. According to Google, the number of content removal requests the company received increased by 49% from 2010. There were five court orders from India ordering the Internet giant to remove content and there were 96 other requests by Indian government agencies for 246 individual items.

In comparison, the US made only 77 requests in the same period. They also revealed that 70% of the content removal requests from India were related to defamation. National security and religious offence attracted far fewer removal requests. Google received only one request from Indian agencies from July to December 2011 for removal of pornographic content.

Our government might not be politically motivated in this instance—however, the possibility for abuse is high, and what’s more, the measures that are being taken are limited at best. Instead of ordering ISPs to block content directly, the government should be working with the content owners and platforms offering the content to have it taken down properly. Instead, we get crude measures which do nothing to deter malicious users, and only serve to inconvenience the general users.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-livemint-com-aug-24-2012-gopal-sathe-how-isps-block-websites-and-why-it-doesnt-help

Internet expert criticizes Indian cyber blockades

praskrishna — 2012-08-28T10:11:44Z

The Indian government's attempts to block social media accounts and websites that it blames for spreading panic have been inept and possibly illegal, a top Internet expert said Friday.

Written by Muneeza Naqvi, this was originally published in Associated Press on August 24, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Earlier this month, thousands of people from the country's remote northeast began fleeing cities in southern and western India, as rumors swirled that they would be attacked in retaliation for ethnic violence against Muslims in their home state.

Last weekend, the government said the rumors were fed by gory images — said to be of murdered Muslims — that were actually manipulated photos of people killed in cyclones and earthquakes. Officials said the images were spread to sow fear of revenge attacks.

After that, the government began interfering with hundreds of websites, including some Twitter accounts, blogs and links to certain news stories. The government also ordered telephone companies to sharply restrict mass text messages.

It is unclear who has been spreading the inflammatory material. Experts say that despite the government's electronic interference, there are many ways to access the blocked sites.

"The government has gone overboard and many of its efforts are legally questionable," said Pranesh Prakash, who studies Internet governance and freedom of speech at The Center for Internet and Society, a research organization in the southern city of Bangalore.

The center has published a list of more than 300 Internet links blocked in the last two weeks. These include some pages on Facebook, YouTube and news items on the sites of Al Jazeera, Australia's ABC, and a handful of Indian and Pakistani news sites.

On Friday, the Twitter account of Milind Deora, India's junior communications minister, appeared blocked. A message at his (at)milinddeora account said "the profile you are trying to view has been suspended."

Deora told the Press Trust of India news agency that his account was being verified and was only temporarily suspended. PTI said Deora had been tweeting in defense of the government blocking efforts before the account was suspended.

The exodus of people from the northeast followed clashes in Assam state over the last several weeks between ethnic Bodos and Muslims settlers. At least 80 people were killed in that violence and 400,000 were displaced. Most of those who fled were living in Bangalore, where text messages spread quickly threatening retaliatory attacks by Muslims.

The Bodos and the Muslim settlers — most of whom arrived years ago from what was then East Pakistan, and which is now Bangladesh — have clashed repeatedly over the decades. But the recent violence was the worst since the mid-1990s.

"The government's highest priority should have been to counter the rumors and it did a really bad job of that," said Prakash, adding that the government should have at least tried to counter the panic through the same social media sites that it was blocking.

The government's actions have sparked outrage on social networking sites, with hashtags critical of the government quickly becoming top trending topics on Twitter's India site.

But Prakash was as dismissive of that reaction as he was of the government attempts at censorship.

The government's actions reek of "the kind of incompetence one has come to expect," he said, "but the hashtags (hash)Emergency2012 etc. suffer from a lack of perspective, too."

Kapil Sibal, the senior minister of communications and information technology, said in a statement that Facebook and Google were cooperating with the government and shutting down some sites that the government had pointed out as objectionable. Sibal said Twitter had also said it was ready to talk with the government.

But he said that "the accusations that we are aggressively targeting someone's account or websites are incorrect."

On Thursday, Victoria Nuland, spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, had told reporters that it was urging the Indian government "to take into account the importance of freedom of expression in the online world" while addressing its security concerns. She said the U.S. was ready to help India's efforts to talk to social networks regarding the issue."

The above was carried in the following places:

Bloomberg Businessweek (August 24, 2012)
Khaleej Times (August 24, 2012)
ABC News (August 24, 2012)
Seattle Times (August 24, 2012)
Vancouver Sun (August 24, 2012)
Kansas City. (August 24, 2012)
Times Colonist (August 24, 2012)
Merced Sun-Star (August 24, 2012)
Yahoo News (August 24, 2012)
SanLuisObispo.com (August 24, 2012)
Terrorism Watch (August 25, 2012)
Sci-Tech Today (August 26, 2012)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/hosted-2-ap-org-aug-24-2012-internet-expert-criticizes-indian-cyber-blockades

India's social media crackdown reveals clumsy govt machinery

praskrishna — 2012-08-25T06:11:30Z

"High-handed" and "reckless" are some of the words used in the media to describe the government's online crackdown.

Published in Reuters on August 24, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Add clumsy and incompetent to the list.

The government blocked access to more than 300 web pages after mobile phone text messages and doctored website images fuelled rumours that Muslims were planning revenge attacks for violence in Assam.

Much has been said and debated on the legal and moral legitimacy of the ban. But it's also important to study how officials went about deciding what to ban.

In his analysis of leaked government directives listing web pages to be banned, Pranesh Prakash of the Centre for Internet and Society said the list consists of people and pages who are actually debunking hateful rumours.

Twitter accounts of mainstream journalists and YouTube videos containing news clips from news channels like TimesNow, NDTV and Britain's Channel4 were included.

A glance at the list also shows that the banned pages include a Google Plus search page aggregating news stories posted on the topic "Assam riots." The government might as well ban Google.com, where anyone can do the same thing and much more.

It seems the government had no set procedure in trying to trace abusive content on the web. We don't know how they drew up the lists of sites to target, but it may have happened like this:

As northeast Indians began their exodus from cities fearing attacks, ministers and top bureaucrats went into a huddle and decided in all sincerity they must stop the spread of false information.

The task of quickly identifying malicious online content was given to lower ranking officials. Since there are no set procedures on how to scour the vast virtual universe and choose which offending pages to ban, the most likely step they took was to open Google and start typing in words related to the recent unrest, apart from trawling popular social sites.

The resulting list tells us that the official who vetted the selected pages was not too committed or had minimal online skills. Some of the pages are not even web addresses.

On Friday, the Times of India newspaper website (Read here) reported that the Twitter account of junior Communications and IT minister Milind Deora was blocked instead of the Deora imposter the government was trying to target.

Such amateurishness is not restricted to technology issues alone. There are many examples of clueless officials left red-faced in the face of public scrutiny.

Last year, the country's premier investigating agency, the CBI, had to withdraw a version of its list of India's 50 Most Wanted fugitives after it was revealed that one was already in jail and another living with his family after getting bail. The Central Statistics Office made a goof-up with the index of industrial production for January 2012, revising growth to 1.14 percent after initially putting it at 6.8 percent, a huge gap.

One of the most baffling gaffes happened in 2010 when the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity issued a full-page ad on the occasion of National Girl Child Day featuring the photograph of a male former Pakistan Air Chief Marshal who appeared alongside Indian cricketers Kapil Dev and Virender Sehwag.

But the cake must go to External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna. He read out his Portuguese counterpart's speech while addressing the United Nations Security Council.

(David Lalmalsawma is a Reuters journalist. The opinions expressed here are his own and not of Reuters. You can follow him on Twitter @david_reuters)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/in-reuters-com-david-lalmalsawma-aug-24-2012-indias-social-media-crackdown-reveals-clumsy-govt-machinery

Govt in line of fire over web censorship

praskrishna — 2012-08-25T03:13:19Z

Social media abuzz with allegations of government gagging free speech in the garb of curbing hate messages.

This article by Surabhi Agarwal was published in LiveMint on August 24, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The government is once again in the line of fire over web censorship, with allegations rampant on social media Thursday that it was gagging free speech in the garb of containing hate messages that had led to communal violence and a panic exodus by people from the north-eastern states in some cities.

According to a list first published on its website by The Economic Times, Twitter accounts of some journalists including Kanchan Gupta, a former columnist of the Pioneer newspaper, Shiv Aroor, deputy editor at the Headlines Today news channel, and those of some individuals associated with and sympathetic to right-wing causes have been blocked.

The block wasn’t in place for some of the accounts late Thursday, although this could have been because some internet service providers were slow to follow the government’s orders.

There was outrage on social media, especially on Twitter where #Emergency2012 and #GOIBlocks quickly became top trending topics on the micro-blogging website for India.

“Was it wrong to seek help of Indians for the victims of Assam Riots? Is it a crime in India if you help your fellow citizens in need?” tweeted Anil Kohli, whose account Twitanic is also on the list of blocked Twitter accounts.

Pravin Togadia, international working president of the right-wing Vishwa Hindu Parishad, tweeted: “Some say Gvt blocked my twitter account, some say this, some say that! It is my REAL twitter account. Block TRUTH & there will be 1000M Togadias!”

The government has issued four orders over the last one week to block over 300 web pages. According to a post by Pranesh Prakash of the Centre for Internet and Society, 33% of them were on Facebook, 28% on Google Inc.’s YouTube and around 10% on Twitter.com.

Prakash told Mint that there may be a case of excessive censorship in the damage-control exercise following the communal violence and the scaremongering that followed but the motives do not seem political. “Both Kanchan Gupta and Swapan Dasgupta seem to be having a right wing ideology, but while the former’s account is blocked the latter’s is not,” Prakash said. “The difference is on the kind of content which has been posted.”

While he would accuse the government of not taking sufficient care while drawing up the list, he couldn’t accuse it of trying to curb media freedom. “It is too far (fetched) an accusation and I am not making it.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-livemint-com-aug-24-2012-surabhi-agarwal-govt-in-line-of-fire-over-web-censorship

India seeks a tighter grip on social media

praskrishna — 2012-08-25T03:02:35Z

India, with the world's third largest number of Facebook users, is clamping down on social media after recent posting of inflammatory videos on Web sites.

Published in United Press International on August 24, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

But the United States urged New Delhi to find the right balance between freedom of speech and the need to maintain law and order, a report by The Times of India said.

The government's move to block sites it deems unacceptable comes after doctored videos showing apparent violence against Muslims in Assam created violent panic.

While officials say they believe the videos originated on Pakistani blogs, the issue highlighted the uneasy relationship between freedom of speech on the Internet and the government's need to damp down inter-ethnic tensions.

Union Home Secretary R.K. Singh said New Delhi will be raising the issue with Pakistani officials.

"I am sure they (Pakistan) will deny it but we have fairly accurate technical evidence to show that the images originated and were circulated from their territory," he said.

Last week Indian federal and state ministers as well as police authorities watched closely as Assamese Muslims living and working in Bangalore engulfed the train station seeking train ticket home after rumors of the Web site information swept through their community.

Rail authorities and train companies in Bangalore, in the southwest state of Karnataka, put on extra trains to Assam in the northeast to cope with the influx of people who said they feared an outbreak of ethnic violence.

Twitter promised to cooperate with the government after the Prime Minister's Office complained to it about objectionable content on six accounts resembling the PMO's official account, a Press Trust of India report said.

Twitter said it was "actively reviewing" the request and will seek information from the Ministry of Communication and IT "to locate the unlawful content and the specific unlawful tweet," the PTI report said.

Facebook said it will comply with requests from Indian authorities but only where posts broke its existing rules that apply in all countries, a report by the BBC said.

"We have received requests from Indian authorities and agencies and are working through those requests and responding to the agencies," Facebook said. "Content or individuals can be removed from Facebook for a variety of reasons including issuing direct calls for violence or perpetuating hate speech."

At stake for many Internet service providers, site developers and proxy servers is a slice of one of the world's potentially most lucrative advertising markets.

A report by Businessweek in May said India will have more users of Facebook -- which opened an office in India in 2010 -- than any other country by 2015.

India has around 46,300,000 Facebook users,Socialbakers, a social media analytics firm in London, says. This makes India the third-biggest Facebook market behind second-place Brazil with just more than 48 million users and first-place United States with nearly 157 million.

The growth of users in India is around 22 percent a month and will match the United States by the end of 2014, each having around 175 million users, Socialbakers said.

However, the United States has voiced concern that India may overstep a censorship mark in its attempt to stamp out offensive Web sites.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Washington has been monitoring the situation of Assamese Indians flooding back to Assam from southern India because of concerns about their personal safety.

The U.S. government is "going to obviously watch and see how that process goes forward."

"We are always on the side of full freedom of the Internet," Nuland said in a report by The Times of India.

"But as the Indian government continues to investigate these instances and preserve security, we also always urge the government to maintain its own commitment to human rights, fundamental freedoms, rule of law."

Nuland also said the U.S. government maintained "open lines to our own companies in India, as we do around the world, and we are obviously open to consultation with them if they need it from us."

The weight of the law may be against most of Internet intermediaries, Pranesh Prakash, a lawyer at the Bangalore-based Center for Internet and Society, said.

"The rules are very onerous on intermediaries, since they require them to act within 36 hours to disable access to any information that they receive a complaint about," Prakash wrote in an article The Indian Express newspaper in May 2011.

Any "affected person" according to technology laws can complain about issues including defamation, blasphemy, trademark infringement, threatening the integrity of India, disparaging speech or the blanket "in violation of any law."

It isn't mandatory to give the violator an opportunity to be heard before taking down their content.

"Since intermediaries would lose protection from the law if they didn't take down content, they have no incentives to uphold freedom of speech," Prakash said.

"They instead have been provided incentives to take down all content about which they receive complaints without a considered evaluation of the content."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-upi-com-aug-24-2012-india-seeks-a-tighter-grip-on-social-media

Twitter users hit back at government ban

praskrishna — 2012-08-25T02:51:18Z

The government faced an angry backlash from Twitter users on Thursday after ordering Internet service providers to block about 20 accounts that officials said had spread scare-mongering material that threatened national security.

Published in the Hindustan Times on August 24, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The backlash came as New Delhi turned up the heat on Twitter, threatening "appropriate and suitable action" if it failed to remove the accounts as soon as possible. Several Indian newspapers said this could mean a total ban on access to Twitter in India but government officials would not confirm to Reuters that such a drastic step was being considered.

Twitter, which does not have an office in India, declined to comment. There are about 16 million Twitter users in the South Asian country.

The government has found itself on the defensive this week over what critics see as a clumsy clampdown on social media websites - including Google (GOOG.O), YouTube and Facebook - that has raised questions about freedom of information in the world's largest democracy.

"Dear GOI (Government of India), Keep your Hands Off My Internet. Else face protest" tweeted one user, @Old_Monk60.

India blocked access to more than 300 Web pages after threatening mobile phone text messages and doctored website images fuelled rumours that Muslims, a large minority in the predominantly Hindu country, were planning revenge attacks for violence in Assam, where 80 people have been killed and 300,000 have been displaced since July.

Fearing for their lives, tens of thousands of migrants fled Mumbai, Bangalore and other cities last week. The exodus highlighted underlying tensions in a country with a history of ethnic and religious violence.

According to documents obtained by Reuters, the government has targeted Indian journalists, Britain's Daily Telegraph, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Al Jazeera television in its clampdown on Internet postings it says could inflame communal tensions.

The directives to Internet service providers listed dozens of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter pages. A random sampling of the YouTube postings revealed genuine news footage spliced together with fear-mongering propaganda.

In Washington, the State Department urged New Delhi to balance its security push with respect for basic rights including freedom of speech.

"As the Indian government seeks to preserve security we are urging them also to take into account the importance of freedom of expression in the online world," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

Nuland said Washington stood ready to consult with US companies as they discuss the issue with the Indian government, although it was not now directly involved.

"The unique characteristics of the online environment need to be respected even as they work through whether there are things these companies can do to help calm the environment," she said.

Indian journalists targeted

The government says Google and Facebook have largely cooperated while Twitter has been much slower to respond.

"Every company, whether it's an entertainment company, or a construction company, or a social media company, has to operate within the laws of the given country," said Sachin Pilot, minister of state in the Ministry of Communications.

Twitter has been instructed to remove 28 pages containing "objectionable content," an interior ministry official said.

"If they do not remove the pages, the Indian government will take appropriate and suitable action," he added.

The government has ordered Internet service providers to block the Twitter accounts of veteran journalist Kanchan Gupta and television anchor Shiv Aroor. Some appeared to have begun complying with the order on Thursday as Twitter users reported difficulties in accessing their pages.

"It is a political decision, because of my criticism of the government," said Gupta, who was an official in the previous government led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

The government's actions triggered a storm of criticism from Twitter users, with the hashtags #Emergency2012 and #GOIBlocks among the top trending topics on Twitter in India on Thursday. Some compared the situation with the state of emergency imposed by the government in 1975, when some journalists were jailed.

The Centre for Internet and Society, which analysed the 300 banning orders, found that they contained "numerous mistakes and inconsistencies." Some of the banned websites belonged to people trying to debunk the rumours, for example, it said.

"This isn't about political censorship. This is about the government not knowing how to do online regulation properly," said CIS programme manager Pranesh Prakash.

Parliament last year passed a law that obliges Internet companies to remove a range of objectionable content when requested to do so, a move criticised at the time by rights groups and social media companies.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-hindustantimes-com-aug-24-2012-twitter-users-hit-back-at-govt-ban

Govt cracks down on Twitter

praskrishna — 2012-08-25T02:09:42Z

India’s crackdown on social media platforms for hosting “inflammatory” content — following the violence in Assam and the exodus of northeastern people from several cities — seems to have been a little reckless.

Published in the Hindustan Times on August 24, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The government’s order to internet service providers to block 310 webpages between August 18-21 goes beyond blocking doctored images and videos uploaded to incite passions. Instead, it seeks to block 16 Twitter handles, including those of VHP leader Pravin Togadia and two journalists and even reportage of sectarian violence in international and domestic news websites.

“Block TRUTH & there will be 1000M Togadias!” Togadia tweeted, as the virtual world erupted in protests.

The home ministry insisted it had not asked for individual Twitter handles to be blocked, only for removal of malicious content.

Earlier in the day, the micro-blogging site opened dialogue with the government but sought clarifications before taking a call on blocking content.

"Twitter has promised to cooperate on handles resembling the PMO's," said communications adviser to the PM Pankaj Pachouri, emphasising that the PMO's only demand is that Twitter handle the case in accordance with its rules.

Also on the government's block list are blogs in India and Pakistan that tried to educate web surfers about the morphed photos. One was apparently written by a government officer in Mumbai.

Critics slammed the government for its "ham-handed" and "artless" handling of the situation, which they said came after the morphed images and videos had already done damage.

The Bangalore-headquartered Centre for Internet & Society said the "goodness of the government's intentions seems unquestionable" but it appears to have gone overboard and not by the book.

"The blocking was done without due process of law," Pranesh Prakash at CIS observed. He argued that the government should have engaged with the social media platforms since a majority —217 out of 310 —of the block orders were aimed at Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-hindustantimes-com-aug-24-2012-govt-cracks-down-on-twitter

NE exodus: List containing 309 blocked URLs leaks online

praskrishna — 2012-08-24T13:37:21Z

Latest reports coming in have confirmed that a list containing 309 URLs, whose ban the government had sought in light of the Assam violence and the subsequent NE exodus, has been leaked online.

Published in tech2. Pranesh Prakash's analysis is quoted.

The aforementioned URLs comprise URLs, Twitter accounts, img tags, blog posts, blogs and a handful of websites, and were blocked between August 18, 2012 till August 21, 2012. In an analysis that Pranesh Prakash, programme manager at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), carried of the leaked items, among other things in his post, he wrote that, "It is clear that the list was not compiled with sufficient care."

In his post, he further noted that the censorship process itself has been riddled with egregious mistakes. Giving instances of the egregious mistakes, he added that even some people and posts debunking the rumours were blocked as part of the censorship. Further, he wrote that some of the items that were blocked were not even web addresses (e.g., a few HTML img tags were included). In his findings, Prakash also found that despite there having been a clear warning issued by the DIT pertaining to the blocking of "above URLs only" and not that of main websites, like www.facebook.com, www.youtube.com, some ISPs (like Airtel) went "overboard in their blocking". This incident, in particular pertains to yesterday's reports, wherein it had been revealed that Airtel had blocked the entire YouTube short URL youtu.be in some cities.

On account of the sensitivity of the issue, he writes that it "would be premature to share the whole list." He, however, writes that CIS plans to make the entire list public soon. The list that CIS has released, however includes -

ABC.net.au
AlJazeera.com
AllVoices.com
WN.com
AtjehCyber.net
BDCBurma.org
Bhaskar.com
Blogspot.com
Blogspot.in
Catholic.org
CentreRight.in
ColumnPK.com
Defence.pk
EthioMuslimsMedia.com
Facebook.com
Farazahmed.com
Firstpost.com
HaindavaKerelam.com
HiddenHarmonies.org
HinduJagruti.org
Hotklix.com
HumanRights-Iran.ir
Intichat.com
Irrawady.org
IslamabadTimesOnline.com
Issuu.com
JafriaNews.com
JihadWatch.org
KavkazCenter
MwmJawan.com
My.Opera.com
Njuice.com
OnIslam.net
PakAlertPress.com
Plus.Google.com
Reddit.com
Rina.in
SandeepWeb.com
SEAYouthSaySo.com
Sheikyermami.com
StormFront.org
Telegraph.co.uk
TheDailyNewsEgypt.com
TheFaultLines.com
ThePetitionSite.com
TheUnity.org
TimesofIndia.Indiatimes.com
TimesOfUmmah.com
Tribune.com.pk
Twitter.com
TwoCircles.net
Typepad.com
Vidiov.info
Wikipedia.org
Wordpress.com
YouTube.com
YouTu.be

Further, in response to the question - as to why some items could still be accessed that were supposed to be blocked, he wrote that there are several errors in the list, making it difficult to apply. And the order has to be put into action by hundreds of ISPs. He adds that some ISPs may not have begun enforcing the blocks yet. "This analysis is based on the orders sent around to ISPs, and not on the basis of actual testing of how many of these have actually been blocked by Airtel, BSNL, Tata, etc. Additionally, if you are using Twitter through a client (on your desktop, mobile, etc.) instead of the web interface, you will not notice any of the Twitter-related blocks," he elaborated further.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/tech-2-in-com-ne-exodus

Govt orders blocking of 300 specific URLs including 16 Twitter accounts

praskrishna — 2012-08-24T13:29:40Z

The government stepped up its efforts to stop what it feels is an online campaign of misinformation and rumour mongering in the wake of lower Assam riots and ordered blocking of 16 Twitter accounts, including two belonging to journalists, considered sympathetic to the right in India.

Published in the Times of India on August 24, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The department of telecommunications (DoT) ordered blocking of the accounts on August 20. The blocked accounts include those maintained by a columnist and a journalist working for a TV channel. Twitter accounts @sanghparivar, @drpraveentogadia and @i_panchajanya are also mentioned.

The 16 Twitter accounts are part of a list containing over 300 specific URLs that internet service providers (ISPs) in India have been told to block. The list is dominated by URLs belonging to Facebook and Youtube. Indian government allegedly found 102 URLs on Facebook and 85 URLs on YouTube where communally sensitive content was posted. According to a blogpost at Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a non-profit organization that got hold of the list on Wednesday, almost "all of the blocked items have content that are related to communal issues and rioting".

At the same time, Pranesh Paraksh, a CIS official, noted on the blog that it was unclear if the government exercised its powers responsibly in this case. "The blocking of many of the items on the list are legally questionable and morally indefensible, even while a large number of the items ought to be removed," he wrote.

According to the leaked list, Indian government also blocked 30 Twitter URLs, 3 Wikipedia URLs, 11 Blogger URLs and 8 Wordpress URLs. Some URLs belong to Pakistani websites. The list also contained URLs belonging to several mainstream media websites, including The Telegraph and Al Jazeera.

The blocking of Twitter accounts was partial due to technical challenges. The accounts have been blocked with the help of ISPs and not Twitter. Accessing them from India shows web users a message, saying "This website/URL has been blocked until further notice either pursuant to Court orders or on the Directions issued by the Department of Telecommunications". Also, the block works only if the accounts are accessed using HTTP and not HTTPS protocol. Twitter allows users to force HTTPS, which is a secure protocol and doesn't let ISPs see the content that a user is accessing.

Due to the partial block, accounts remained active. When Nirupama Rao, India's ambassador to the US, talked on Twitter about a discussion on a news channel on the subject of social media and government's current policy, one of the "blocked" accounts tweeted back to her saying, "@NMenonRao Is that why UPA Govt has blocked my Twitter handle? Is that the reason? A reply would help." Following the Twitter profile ban, which was reported around midnight on Wednesday, several Twitter users in India started hashtag #Emergency2012. A few hours later, #Emergency2012 and #GOIBlocks were among the top trending topics on Twitter for India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-aug-24-2012-govt-orders-blocking-of-300-specific-urls-including-16-twitter-accounts

New Delhi Expands Curbs on Web Content

praskrishna — 2012-08-24T13:16:22Z

India on Thursday broadened recent efforts to regulate the Internet with moves to block Twitter accounts of some prominent journalists and content from mainstream news organizations, sparking a backlash across social media in the country.

This article by R Jai Krishna and Rumman Ahmed was published in the Wall Street Journal on August 23, 2012. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Since last week, the government has blocked content that it claims has fueled continuing communal violence in the northeast of the country. That fighting, between Muslim settlers and members of an indigenous group in the state of Assam, has left more than 80 people dead and sent ripples of tension across India.

The government confirms it has blocked around 250 Web pages it says were inciting Muslims to attack northeasterners, including sites carrying doctored photos purporting to show Muslim victims of fighting in Assam. Officials say these images on the sites, coupled with mass SMS phone messages threatening reprisals, have caused panicked northeasterners to flee their homes in a number of large Indian cities.

In recent days, though, the government has quietly widened its offensive, drawing up lists of journalists' Twitter accounts and news stories by local and foreign media organizations to be blocked. The lists, some of which were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and confirmed by two telecom operators, include Twitter handles of journalists who have been critical of the government and some who have parodied Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The government didn't respond to requests for comment.

The government's actions caused an uproar on Twitter, where hashtags such as #GOIBlocks and #Emergency2012 were trending Thursday. "The Emergency" refers to a period in the 1970s when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi cracked down on media freedoms and civil liberties.

"The government's move to block several Twitter handles is a clear case of administrative overreach," said Sunil Abraham, executive director at the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society. "This action means citizens are less likely to believe that the government can use its powers responsibly."

Government officials said Internet curbs are necessary to maintain harmony in a multicultural nation of 1.2 billion people.

Pankaj Pachauri, a spokesman for Mr. Singh, acknowledged the government had asked for Twitter's help to block six accounts that impersonate the prime minister. One of those accounts appeared on the government's lists. Twitter, based in San Francisco, has agreed to review the requests, he said. A Twitter spokeswoman declined to comment. Mr. Pachauri said earlier this week that Indian cyber authorities unilaterally blocked those six accounts.

Those six Twitter accounts faced government scrutiny because they made remarks that could have increased tensions, not because they poked fun at the prime minister, Mr. Pachauri said. "We're all for media freedom and encourage criticism by the media," he added. "But when it comes to inciting trouble between communities then we have to take firm action."

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said on Tuesday that "we are always on the side of full freedom of the Internet." She added that "we also always urge the government to maintain its own commitment to human rights, fundamental freedoms, rule of law."

India's Constitution allows restrictions on free speech for a number of reasons, including defense of "the sovereignty and integrity" of the country and in order to maintain "public order, decency or morality." Critics say the government has used the vague framing of the Constitution to clamp down on a widening array of Internet material, threatening India's democratic traditions.

Last year, the government framed new rules that require Internet companies to remove within 36 hours material that falls into a range of subjective categories—for instance, anything "ethnically objectionable," "grossly harmful," "defamatory" or "blasphemous."

India's telecoms minister, Kapil Sibal, in December urged Google Inc., and other Internet companies to screen derogatory material from their sites. The requests came amid anger over content that parodied Mr. Singh and Sonia Gandhi, president of the ruling Congress party, as well as other leading politicians.

"One always wonders if the government is using the garb of hate speech and communalism to…limit political criticism online," said Apar Gupta, a cyberlaw expert at Advani & Co., a Delhi-based law firm.

Google and Facebook executives are facing criminal charges in a New Delhi court for allegedly hosting objectionable material on their sites. If found guilty, the executives could face jail time or fines. The companies have petitioned to have the charges dropped, arguing that they shouldn't be held liable for material posted by users. Both firms have said they will remove material that contravenes their own standards or local laws.

Google, Facebook and Twitter again came under fire from India this week amid violence in Assam. Google and Facebook said Tuesday that they were complying with Indian government requests to remove content. Twitter hasn't commented.

Kanchan Gupta, a columnist who has been a fierce critic of the Congress party-led government, said his Twitter account had been temporarily blocked Wednesday night and Thursday. His name was on the government lists. "They thought they could do this slyly," he said. "They didn't anticipate the backlash on Twitter."

Raghavan Jagannathan, editor in chief of FirstPost.com, an Indian news portal that was on the lists, said some of its stories had been blocked.

"We understand that the government wants to stop the circulation of incendiary material that may inflame passions, but should it be blocking news and opinions on the subject?" he said. "I am not sure the decisions are well-thought-out."

Doha, Qatar-based Al Jazeera, an international cable-news organization, was also on the list. An Al Jazeera spokesman said the company was seeking a response from the government on reports of media restrictions affecting it and other outlets.

The government appeared unmoved. "Every company whether it's a construction company or an entertainment company or a social media company, it has to operate within the laws of the given country," Junior Minister for Communications Sachin Pilot told reporters on Wednesday.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/wsj-com-jai-krishna-and-rumman-ahmed-aug-23-2012-new-delhi-expands-curbs-on-web-content

Internet expert Pranesh Prakash criticizes Indian cyber blockades

praskrishna — 2012-08-24T12:58:02Z

The government's attempts to block social media accounts and websites that it blames for spreading panic have been inept and possibly illegal, a top internet expert said on Friday.

Published in the Economic Times on August 24, 2012.

Last weekend, the government said the rumors were fed by gory images - said to be of murdered Muslims - that were actually manipulated photos of people killed in cyclones and earthquakes. Officials said the images were spread to sow fear of revenge attacks.

It is unclear who has been spreading the inflammatory material. Experts say that despite the government's electronic interference, there are many ways to access the blocked sites.

"The government has gone overboard and many of its efforts are legally questionable,'' said Pranesh Prakash, who studies internet governance and freedom of speech at The Center for Internet and Society, a research organization in the southern city of Bangalore.

The center has published a list of over 300 internet links blocked in the last two weeks. These include some pages on Facebook, YouTube and news items on the sites of Al Jazeera, Australia's ABC, and a handful of Indian and Pakistani news sites.

The Bodos and the Muslim settlers - most of whom arrived years ago from what was then East Pakistan, and which is now Bangladesh_have clashed repeatedly over the decades. But the recent violence was the worst since the mid-1990s.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/economic-times-aug-24-2012-internet-expert-pranesh-prakash-criticizes-indian-cyber-blockades

Northeast exodus: Is there a mechanism to pre-screen social media content?

praskrishna — 2012-09-04T04:06:46Z

The government has passed the blame buck on social media and blocked hundreds of websites, which it claims, hosted hate speech and inflammatory content, enough to incite violence. But is it feasible to pre-screen objectionable or provocative content, and reject it before posting so that there is no chance of such rumours?

The article by Wahid Bukhari was published in merinews on August 23, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The government took the action after Home Minister RK Singh alleged that the exodus of northeastern people from southern states such as Bangalore, Mumbai and Pune was a result of the panic and rumours created because of the content uploaded on these websites, many according to him were created by elements across the border in Pakistan. Though many suspected that Mr Singh's claim was an excuse to save the government from its inefficiency in controlling the riots, and the exodus of the northeastern people who were seen boarding the trains to their home states with their belongings amid fears of reprisal attacks.

Was the action meant to pass on the inefficiency buck or not - the government has, at least, managed to shift the focus of the media from exodus to the debate - as to whether social networking sites or websites promoting hatred should be blocked or not - given the democratic rights of every citizen to freedom of speech and expression.

Around a hundred more websites have been reported promoting hate speech and Google, Facebook and other social networking sites like Twitter have been asked to remove such content as soon as possible but in this whole debate one question remains unanswered: How does removing a post from Twitter or Facebook make a difference, several hours after it was published? One might argue even an hour is enough for an inflammatory picture or comment to incite violence or hatred. As a consequence, one might demand that a comment is screened before it is posted on a website, otherwise it doesn't serve any purpose.

Whether pre-screening is technically possible, Pranesh Prakash maintains: "Given the amount of content uploaded on the larger social networks, pre-screening content is just not possible, while removal upon complaint is. They don't have editors like newspapers do; importantly, they shouldn't."

Perhaps, a mid way is to intervene prior to registration on social media websites. All those who register should be made aware of the content that's not permissible, and make them aware of relevant laws and repercussions of breaking them if their complicity is proved. Similarly, these sites can be asked by the Indian government to continuously remind registered users as well as general public, through mass media advertizing, about what kind of content is not permissible. The government, from its side, can strengthen cyber laws to empower sites such as Facebook and Twitter to curb posting of provocative content due to presence of these stringent laws.

Terming the government action unfortunate, Mr Prakash who is a programme manager with the Bangalore-based research and advocacy group, The Centre for Internet and Society believes that government botched up at so many levels. “I don't think the government should be going after Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter. It should be going to them, to work with them on removing content,” Mr Prakash suggests. "The larger social networks have dedicated complaints mechanisms, which the government could have asked them to run 24x7 for a few days, and to expedite that process, and both complained itself and asked the public to use the complaints process,” he adds.

Though Pakistan has rubbished the claims that it has any role in fomenting trouble, but it has also asked the Indian government to provide it with evidence so that it could nab the accused. Whether or not there is any evidence is a secondary question, the primary blame will always rest with both the state and central governments who failed to stop the exodus of fear-stricken people from the northeast.

Experts like Mr Prakash are wondering why the government didn't pay back in the same coin by using the social media to dispel the rumours. “It is a pity that they notified a new policy to encourage governmental use of social media only today; they sorely needed it this last week,” Mr Prakash rues.

The government has blocked content related to thirty Twitter accounts but another surprising thing is that only accounts using the web interface have been blocked, and such accounts can still be accessed on BlackBerrys or other smartphones.

The only visible thing government did on ground when the exodus started taking place in Bangalore was the setting up of helplines but did they help in preventing the exodus - there are enough reasons to believe against it. "There were some complaints that the people attending some of these helplines could only speak in Kannada, and not the English or Hindi that people calling for help were expecting. Even such positive steps were executed badly." Mr Prakash informs.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-merinews-com-wahid-bukhari-august-23-2012-northeast-exodus

India Debates Misuse of Social Media

praskrishna — 2012-09-04T12:13:21Z

India has blocked more than 250 websites after provocative online content spread panic among people from the country's northeast, prompting some of them to flee Indian cities. The crackdown has sparked a debate about how the country will cope with misuse of social media.

Anjana Pasricha's article was originally published by Voice of America on August 21, 2012 and re-posted in the Chosunilbo on September 4, 2012. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Officials say the websites that were blocked had posted edited images and videos of victims of earthquakes and claimed they were those of Muslim victims caught in recent ethnic strife in India's northeastern Assam state and Burma.

As the images went viral, rumors began about reprisal attacks against Hindu migrants from the northeast working in other parts of India. Hate text messages warning of violence circulated widely. Worried about their safety, thousands of the migrants fled Indian cities last week to return to Assam.

Taken aback by the mass exodus, the government says the "unity and integrity of the country is at stake."

Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde says that "elements" had used social networking sites to whip up communal sentiments. Shinde says a number of the sites had been uploaded from Pakistan. Shinde adds that the government has gathered a lot of evidence through the investigation, whether from Facebook communication or text messaging.

Officials have also blamed social networking sites such as Twitter, Yahoo and Facebook for not screening objectionable content.

Cyber specialists say the government needs to go beyond the blame game and learn how to manage misuse of social media on the massive scale witnessed last week. About 100 million people in India use the Internet, the third-largest number of net users in the world. About 700 million people have mobile phones.

Cyber law expert, lawyer Pawan Duggal says this is the first time the Internet and mobile-phone technology have been used to incite fear in a community.

"India has to wake up to the need of putting cyber security as the number-one priority for the nation," Duggal noted. "Unfortunately, India does not even have a cyber-security policy. The nation does not have any plan of action, should such an emergency happen again. India needs to have its own cyber army of cyber warriors."

The government has been involved in a dispute with web companies such as Google and Facebook for several months and has called for them to devise a voluntary framework to keep offensive material off the web. India routinely asks these companies to remove what it calls "objectionable content," which has led to fears India may be diluting web freedom.

Sunil Abraham heads the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore, an advocacy group for net freedom. He says the government's recent crackdown on hundreds of websites is warranted, but says it needs to be more sophisticated and aggressive in handling threats and rumors emanating from the internet.

"Social media websites and other Internet intermediaries should have been asked by the government to run banner advertising or some other form of messaging that revealed the lack of truth in the rumors that were circulating," Abraham explained. "The best way to deal with misinformation is to produce more accurate and more credible information. By just blocking access to fraudulent information, you do not fully undermine the power of rumors because by the time the government had decided to act the photographs and videos had already gone viral. And even though the websites are blocked these images will continue to circulate."

The exodus of northeast migrants from Indian cities has slowed in recent days as India has moved to block multimedia and bulk text messaging, and panic has subsided after repeated assurances of safety by the government.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-voanews-com-aug-21-2012-anjana-pasricha-india-debates-misuse-of-social-media

India limits social media after civil unrest

praskrishna — 2012-09-04T11:59:01Z

Indian officials have gone too far in limiting text messages and pressuring local Internet firms as well as Twitter and others to block accounts, critics say.

This article by Mark Magnier was published in Los Angeles Times on August 23, 2012 and re-posted in Channel 6 News on August 24, 2012. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Has the Indian government lost its sense of humor?

That's what some in India were asking as word spread that authorities had pressured Twitter into blocking several accounts parodying the prime minister after civil unrest that saw dozens of people from northeastern India killed and thousands flee in panic.

This week, the government also imposed a two-week limit of five text messages a day — raised Thursday to 20 — potentially affecting hundreds of millions of people, and pressured local Internet companies as well as Facebook, Twitter and Google to block hundreds of websites and user accounts.

Although journalists, free speech advocates and bloggers said the effort to squelch rumors may be justified, several criticized the actions as excessive.

"You cannot burn the entire house to kill one mischievous mouse," said Gyana Ranjan Swain, a senior editor at Voice & Data, a networking trade magazine. "You're in the 21st century. Their thinking is still 50 years old. It's just 'kill the messenger.'"

Comedians said Indian political humor is evolving and there's more leeway to make fun of politicians than a decade ago, but the nation's mores still call for greater respect than in the West.

"If I tried something like South Park, I'd be put behind bars tomorrow," said Rahul Roushan, founder of Faking News website, which satirizes Indian current events.

Faking News has lampooned the recent corruption scandals, including specious stories about theme restaurants (where customers must bribe waiters or go hungry); and a tongue-in-cheek report that India has banned the zero because too many of them appear nowadays in auditors' reports, after recent coal and telecommunications scandals each allegedly involving more than $30 billion.

Roushan, whose site isn't blocked, said he hopes low-level officials misinterpreted government directives.

"I'm still in a state of disbelief," he said. "I don't think the government is so stupid that it can ask that parody accounts get taken down. If they did, God help this country."

A spokesman for the prime minister's office said the blocking of six fake Twitter accounts attributed to the prime minister has been in the works for months and wasn't related to the recent crisis. He said the move was in response to tweets containing hate language and caste insults that readers could easily mistake as the Indian leader's. A dozen Twitter accounts and about 300 websites were blocked, according to news reports.

"We have not lost our sense of humor," said Pankaj Pachauri, the prime minister's spokesman. "We started a procedure to take action against people misrepresenting themselves."

But some Twitter users whose accounts are frozen, including media consultant Kanchan Gupta, counter that the government may be using the crisis to muzzle critics.

"I'm very clear in my mind this is a political decision," said Gupta, who has been critical of corruption and the government's policy drift. "If they were openly confrontational of me, they'd go nowhere, so they're trying this."

Attempts to access his Twitter page Thursday were met with the message: "This website/URL has been blocked until further notice either pursuant to Court orders or on the Directions issued by the Department of Telecommunications."

Even Britain's Queen Elizabeth II has numerous parody accounts so India needs to lighten up, consultant Gupta said.

He's received several messages from worried Pakistani friends since the news broke. "They ask if I'm all right, say they hope they haven't frog-marched you to jail," he said. "What irony."

The restrictions are the latest chapter of a crisis that started in July when Muslims and members of the Bodo tribal community in northeastern India clashed over land, jobs and politics. The result: 75 people killed and 300,000 displaced.

Muslims in Mumbai, formerly Bombay, staged a sympathy demonstration last week; two more people were killed and dozens injured.

Rumors, hate messages and altered photos of supposed atrocities against Muslims soon spread on social media sites, and several people from northeastern India were beaten in Bangalore and other cities, prompting the crackdown.

New Delhi has accused Pakistani websites of fanning the online rumors. (Islamabad said it would investigate if there's any proof.) But Indian news media also reported that 20% of the websites blocked contained inflammatory material uploaded by Hindu nationalist groups in India that were apparently trying to stir up sectarian trouble.

The Twitter community has responded with derision and humor to limits on text messages on prepaid cellphones.

"Feeling deeply insulted that I still have not been blocked," tweeted user @abhijitmajumder. "Victim of govt apathy."

Sunil Abraham, head of the Bangalore civic group Center for Internet and Society, said this week's restrictions are the latest in a series of regulations and recommendations aimed at tightening Internet control.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/articles-latimes-com-mark-magnier-aug-23-2012-india-limits-social-media-after-civil-unrest

Haphazard censorship? Leaked list of blocked websites in India

praskrishna — 2012-08-23T06:18:45Z

An analysis of a leaked list of the websites blocked by Indian Internet Service Providers (ISPs) on directions from the Department of Telecom bring to light the inconsistencies in India's online censorship efforts.

Published in IBNLive on August 23, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Pranesh Prakash, programme manager at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), analysed the 309 specific items that were asked to be censored from August 18, till August 21, 2012 by the Indian government following the recent incidents of communal violence and the mass exodus of North East Indians from Bangalore.

"It is clear that the list was not compiled with sufficient care," Prakash writes in a post on the CIS website that reveals several egregious errors in the censorship process.

While the government put on its censor gear to apparently stop rumours from spreading, Prakash discovered that "people and posts debunking rumours have been blocked." Also there are some items on the list that do not even exist online.

The 309 items that were ordered to be blocked include URLs, Twitter accounts, img tags, blog posts, blogs, and a few websites.

Prakash, a graduate of the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, also raises the questions on the legal standing of the government's actions. "The blocking of many of the items on that list are legally questionable and morally indefensible, even while a some of the items ought, in my estimation, to be removed," he says.

Indian ISPs are also known to go overboard in their efforts to comply with any government order. There have been numerous incidents in the past when ISPs were asked to block a specific URL and they ended up blocking entire domains. The latest round of censorship is also no different. There have been reports of Airtel blocking the entire YouTube short URL youtu.be in some cities.

CIS hasn't published the complete list of the blocked items given "the sensitivity of the issue" but has posted a list of domains from which specific items have been asked to be blocked. The list follows:

ABC.net.au
AlJazeera.com
AllVoices.com
WN.com
AtjehCyber.net
BDCBurma.org
Bhaskar.com
Blogspot.com
Blogspot.in
Catholic.org
CentreRight.in
ColumnPK.com
Defence.pk
EthioMuslimsMedia.com
Facebook.com
Farazahmed.com
Firstpost.com
HaindavaKerelam.com
HiddenHarmonies.org
HinduJagruti.org
Hotklix.com
HumanRights-Iran.ir
Intichat.com
Irrawady.org
IslamabadTimesOnline.com
Issuu.com
JafriaNews.com
JihadWatch.org
KavkazCenter
MwmJawan.com
My.Opera.com
Njuice.com
OnIslam.net
PakAlertPress.com
Plus.Google.com
Reddit.com
Rina.in
SandeepWeb.com
SEAYouthSaySo.com
Sheikyermami.com
StormFront.org
Telegraph.co.uk
TheDailyNewsEgypt.com
TheFaultLines.com
ThePetitionSite.com
TheUnity.org
TimesofIndia.Indiatimes.com
TimesOfUmmah.com
Tribune.com.pk
Twitter.com
TwoCircles.net
Typepad.com
Vidiov.info
Wikipedia.org
Wordpress.com
YouTube.com
YouTu.be

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-ibnlive-in-com-haphazard-censorship-leaked-list-of-blocked-sites