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

What lurks beneath the Network

nishant — 2012-08-25T07:10:38Z

There is a series of buzzwords that have become a naturalised part of discussions around digital social media—participation, collaboration, peer-2-peer, mobilisation, etc. Especially in the post Arab Spring world (and our own home-grown Anna Hazare spectacles), there is this increasing belief in the innate possibilities of social media as providing ways by which the world as we know it shall change for the better. Young people are getting on to the streets and demanding their rights to the future.

Nishant Shah's column on the North East exodus and digital networks was published in Down to Earth magazine on August 24, 2012

Citizens are mobilising themselves to overthrow authoritarian governments. Socio-economically disadvantaged people, who have always been an alternative to the mainstream, are finding ways of expressing themselves through collaborative practices. Older boundaries of nation, region and body are quickly collapsing as we all become avatars of our biological selves, occupying futures that were once available only to science fiction heroes.

To this list of very diverse phenomena, I want to add the recent tragic and alarming exodus of people from the north eastern states, from the city of Bengaluru, where I live. There might not be many connections between this state of fear which instigated thousands of people, fearing their safety and security, to leave Bengaluru and return home and the global spectacles of political change that I listed earlier. And yet, there is something about the digital networks, the social web and the ways in which they shape our information societies, that needs to be thought through. In the Arab Spring like events, which are events of global spectacle, there is a certain imagination of digital technologies and its circuits that gets overturned.

These events challenge the idea that digital networks are always outward looking—connecting us to somebody and someplace ‘out there’ in a world that is quickly getting flat—and show how these networks actually create new local and specific communities around information production, consumption and sharing. These networks that connect people in their information practices, often make themselves simultaneously ubiquitous and invisible. So that the interfaces that we operate through—laptops, cellphones and other portable computing devices—become such a part of our everyday life, that we stop noticing them. They are a natural element of our everyday mechanics of urban survival, and in their omnipresence, become invisible.

This invisibility or naturalisation of the digital technologies, often make us forget the intricate and inextricable way in which they are woven into our basic survival strategies. Especially with the younger generation that has ‘grown up digital’, the interface, the gadget and the network is the default space that they turn to for their everyday needs. We develop intimate relationships with these technologised circuits, making them such a part of our quotidian existence that we often forget that these technologies are external to us. Which is why we come across articulations like, “I love my computer because my friends live in it,” or “I feel amputated when you take away my cell-phone”. These are ways in which we naturalise and internalise the digital technologies that we live in and live with. However, in times of crises, we suddenly realise the separation, as the technologies make themselves present, unable to sustain the new conditions of crises. It would be fruitful to see then that the eruption in our seamless connection with the digital technologies is a sign of an external crisis –something that we have seen in the Arab Spring or the Anna Hazare campaign, where these networks became visible to signal towards an external crisis. The emergence of networks into public view is a symptom that there is something that has gone wrong and so we see the separation of the digital ecosystem from its external reality and context.

The unexpected visibility of the network indicates that the regular information ecologies have been disrupted, the contexts which support community interaction at the local level have been changed, and those changes need to be accounted for and addressed in order for the network to become the transparent infrastructure of new urban communities again. In many ways, it resonates with the science fiction logic of the Matrix Trilogy where, if you can see the matrix, it means that something has gone wrong in the fabric of reality and it needs to be fixed.

The exodus of the north eastern people also needs to be examined in this context. In an immigrant city like Bengaluru, the sense of belonging and community is often deeply mediated by the digital ecologies of information sharing. Beneath the veneer of a global city that is to connect with the external world, there is also a huge network of local, specific and invisible practices that do not become a part of the global spectacle of digital technologies, and operate in a condition of relative invisibility. However, when the logic of a migrant city gets disrupted because the conditions of its work force get threatened, these networks go into an overdrive. They become gossip and rumour mills. They become visible and suddenly create conditions of fear, danger and crisis that were unexpected. And so, without a warning, over-night, a huge number of people, who were a part of these networks, decided to abandon their lives and head home, because the larger social, cultural and political threats transmitted through these local networks before they could become global spectacles that we could consume.

A large part of the people fleeing the city had already crowded the trains and left their lives behind, before any attempt at regulation or control could be made. All kinds of post-facto theories about the real or perceived nature of the threat, the actual cases of violence, and the conditions of life in the IT City have emerged since then. However, in all these theories is a recognition that the crisis which led to this phenomenon lingers on and cannot be addressed. There is no particular person to hold responsible. The few scattered incidents of attacks, violence or intimidation have been recognised as strategic and opportunistic interventions by local regressive groups. All in all, we have a condition where something drastic and dramatic has happened and there is no real or material person or group of people who can be blamed for it. And so, instead of addressing the crisis and the conditions which led to the exodus, we have committed an ellipsis, where we have made technology the scape-goat of our problems.

And we have done this repeatedly in the history of technology and crises in India. In the early days, when the notorious Delhi Public School MMS clip that captured two under-age students in sexual activity, became hugely visible, instead of addressing the problem at hand, we eventually set up a committee to regulate the conditions of cultural production and distribution online. During the horrifying bomb-attacks in the trains in Mumbai, we tried to block Blogspot and curtail information online as if technology was the reason that these acts were made possible. Last year, Dr. Sibal’s attempts at establishing a pre-censorship regime on information on the social web, because he encountered material that was disrespectful to the Congress party leader Mrs. Gandhi, sought to regulate the web rather than look at the political discontent and dissent that was being established through those articulations. Because there was no way by which the local situation could be controlled or contained, technology became the only site of regulation, inspiring draconian measures that limit the volume of text messaging and try and censor the web for lingering traces of the information mill that catalysed and facilitated this exodus.

This is a remarkable ellipsis where the actual problem – the conditions of life and safety in our global cities – is hidden under a perceived problem, which is the sudden visibility of a digital information ecosystem which was not apparent to us hitherto. And while there is no denying that at the level of tactics, for immediate fire-fighting this kind of regulation is important, nay, necessary, we also need to realise that at the level of strategy, these kinds of knee-jerk regulatory mechanisms are not a resolution of the problem. These laws and attempts at censorship are neither going to correct what has happened, nor are they going to be potent enough to curb such networked information sharing in the future. They are symbolic tactics that are trying to correct the crisis – the feeling of fear and danger – and in that, they do their job well in establishing some sense of control over the quickly collapsing world. However, we need to look beyond the visibility of this network, and realise that the crisis is not its emergence or its functioning but at something else that lurks behind the facade of the network.

Nishant Shah is director (research), Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/down-to-earth-org-nishant-shah-aug-24-2012-what-lurks-beneath-the-network

Tweets and twits

praskrishna — 2012-08-25T07:45:43Z

The orders issued by the Ministry of Communication and IT to block more than 300 items on the Internet, including Twitter handles, Facebook pages, YouTube videos, blogposts, pages of certain websites, and in some cases entire websites, tell a revealing story of a government that has simply not applied its mind to the issue of how to deal with hate speech, both cyber and traditional.

Published in the Hindu on August 25, 2012. Pranesh Prakash's blog post is quoted.

There can be no argument against taking down material that can incite violence, and some of the targeted content rightly needed to be blocked. But this should have been done transparently, with judicial oversight. In the present case, it is not clear what laws have been invoked to block the items specified in the four orders issued from August 18 to 21. Certainly, the orders themselves do not make reference to any law. As pointed out by the Centre for Internet and Society (http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/analysing-blocked-sites-riots-communalism), if the government had acted under the Information Technology Act, the host servers of the affected sites should have been notified and given 48 hours to respond under the IT Rules of 2009; and if it used the emergency provision in the Rules, which are themselves opaque, the orders should have come up before an ‘examination of request’ committee within 48 hours. Another serious problem is that the orders do not mention the duration of the blocks.

Especially disturbing is the decision to block the Twitter handles of right-wing agitators and one pro-Hindutva journalist. Bad taste, warped logic and chauvinist comment do not, by themselves, add up to hate speech or criminal incitement. If an individual is really spreading hate through speech, print or the Internet, let the government proceed against him or her under the Indian Penal Code — where the courts will have the final word — rather than indulging in censorship that is pre-emptive and arbitrary. And mindless too: among the sites blocked is an anti-hate page on a Pakistani website which was one of the first to expose how fake photographs had been used to whip up Islamist passion on the Rakhine clashes in Myanmar. A London School of Economics-Guardian study of the 2011 London riots documents how Twitter was used extensively in a positive way, to organise community clean-up operations after the riots. On the other hand, their analysis of 2.5 million tweets showed, the response to messages inciting riots was ‘overwhelmingly negative’. The lesson from this is that it is possible to counter hate on social media through the same platform. This is really what the government should be doing, instead of the Sisyphean task of trying to block noxious content that will always find other ways of bubbling to the surface.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-thehindu-com-opinion-editorial-aug-25-2012-tweets-and-twits

Regulating the Internet by fiat

praskrishna — 2012-08-26T10:13:03Z

The Union government’s move to ban or block 310 online entities is worrisome.

This article by V Sridhar was published in the Hindu on August 26, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The unprecedented spike in the velocity of hateful, offensive and blatantly communal online content earlier this month, which reinforced rumour mongering on the ground that resulted in the exodus of people from the northeast from several Indian cities has been a classic example of how new technologies can be harnessed for old vices. But just as disturbing has been the manner in which the government yielded to the old itch of censoring, banning or blocking content. Between August 18 and August 21, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), in four separate directives issued to all Internet service licensees, asked them to “block access” to a total of 310 URLs (Unique Resource Locators).

Directing ISPs

The number of URLs blocked does not quite convey the extent of the banned content because the list includes instances of entire websites, a single Web page in some cases, videos posted on YouTube, Twitter handles, Facebook entries, or even instances of links that would take the browser to an img tag (an individual image that is linked to an HTML page). Although the directives clearly stated that the service providers should block only the specific URLs leading to the main sites such as YouTube, Facebook or Twitter.

Airtel, the leading telecom and Internet service provider, blocked youtu.be, the short URL that Twitter and Facebook users normally use for sharing images and videos. A perusal of the four orders clearly shows that Airtel overreacted. Although the service provider subsequently corrected the error, worries about arbitrary disruptions remain.

Pranesh Prakash, Programme Manager, Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), who did the first analysis of the resources that were pulled out of the Web, said the list was only partial, because they related only to the URLs that ISPs were asked to block, not what action would have been initiated against those offering Web services.

A ragtag list

Net activists, even those who do not have an absolutist notion of the right to free speech, have expressed deep reservations about the manner in which the government has blocked 310 URLs. Although Mr. Prakash, who is also a lawyer, believes that “temporary curbs” of freedom of expression, in situations such as the unprecedented situation earlier this month may be necessary, he argued that the government acted carelessly and in a kneejerk manner. “It is a ragtag list, prepared in a haphazard manner,” he told The Hindu.

Logically, the rules applicable to hate content ought to be the same whether the offence is in print or whether it appears as online content. Mr. Prakash pointed to the fact that official agencies such as the police have not gone after those responsible for the content posted in the blocked URLs, which shows that the government’s approach is not backed by a resolve to bring to book those responsible for spreading hate.

The ban-first, examine-later approach is wrong for three sets of reasons, argued Mr. Prakash. First, because there are what he characterises as “egregious mistakes”. Second, he doubts whether regulations prescribing due process of enforcing and reviewing the ban were indeed followed. Third, the government ought to have acted smarter, by using the same media to debunk the rumours that were swirling in several Indian cities but also in the northeast. Mr. Prakash pointed to the case of a Canadian intern working at the CIS who received an SMS from a Canadian government agency that asked her not to heed the rumours. Although the Bangalore police did issue an SMS asking people not to heed such rumours, it came well after the rumour mongering had passed its peak.

“I generally believe that the government must exercise utmost caution in censoring,” said Mr. Prakash. He pointed out that in the list were sites and people who had done nothing to promote hate. He refered to the case of Amit Paranjpe, whose twitter handles were blocked. “If you go through his timeline, you will not find anything that is communal at all,” Mr. Prakash says. “I do not think the government acted responsibly by going after material that is not directly inflammatory, or contributes to the state of panic,” he argued. “I do not doubt the motives of the government, because I see that the overwhelming majority of the material it has blocked is stuff that has something to do with communalism or rioting, whether it is as reportage or as material that contributes to tension,” he observed. He also did not think the government used the crisis as an excuse to put down politically dissenting voices, which was what happened last October (critical references to Sonia Gandhi were removed then).

Cyber terror?

Significantly, the list of blocked domains did not match the government’s claim that a lot of the hate content were in the form of images with misleading captions, most of which came from Pakistan. Mr. Prakash pointed out that many of these images had “been floating around” in Pakistan for at least a month before the rumours hit their peak in mid-August. He noted that within Pakistan there had been debates about the authenticity of these images. “In fact, the reportage and the countering of the reportage in the Pakistani media has been much more sophisticated than in India,” he observed. Significantly, the debate was not even targeted at the Indian audience, but to Pakistani or a global audience. “This debunks the notion some sections of the media have propagated, that this is about cyber war or cyber terrorism,” he says. “I have not seen evidence that India has been targeted from Pakistan,” he observed.

Lack of transparency

It has also been done without abiding by the procedures that are clearly laid down. Mr. Prakash pointed out, the provisions of the Information Technology Act require that “persons or intermediaries” blocked ought to have been given an opportunity to explain their position within 48 hours. He doubted that this had been followed. Moreover, he argued that the people or companies hosting the offensive content, not the ISPs, ought to have been asked to remove them. After all, most of the large and popular intermediaries have clearly laid down conditions of usage, he said.

The lack of transparency in the manner in which the government blocked these websites — even if it is accepted that the content was hateful, abhorrent and aimed at stirring social tension — is worrisome because it sets a precedent for unchecked use of power, without proper sanction. Nor was it a smart way of addressing an innovatively virulent way of spreading chaos. While the government’s use of the sledgehammer may have got it out of the immediate crisis it found itself in, it may have fewer friends when faced with a similar outbreak later.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-the-hindu-aug-26-v-sridhar-regulating-the-internet-by-fiat

Inde: la tentative de contrôler l'internet est "illégale"

praskrishna — 2012-08-26T10:50:54Z

Des spécialistes de l'internet ont qualifié vendredi de "complètement illégale" la tentative du gouvernement indien de bloquer des messages et des vidéos soupçonnés d'avoir contribué à attiser de récentes tensions interethniques.

Published by AFP. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

"Les responsables qui ont été chargés de cela ne connaissent pas suffisamment bien la loi et la technologie moderne", a tancé Pranesh Prakash, un gestionnaire de programmes au sein du Centre de recherche sur l'internet (Centre for Internet and Society), dont le siège est à Bangalore (sud).

"C'est contre-productif. Je les accuse d'incompétence monumentale, le principal problème étant qu'ils sont très mal conseillés", a-t-il ajouté, interrogé par l'AFP.

Le gouvernement a demandé aux fournisseurs indiens de services internet de bloquer 309 pages, images et liens présentant un caractère "malfaisant", postés sur des sites tels que Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, la chaîne de télévision du Qatar, Al-Jazeera ou la chaîne australienne, ABC.

Des dizaines de milliers de personnes ont récemment fui les villes de Bangalore et de Bombay pour rentrer dans l'Etat de l'Assam (nord-est).

Cet exode a été déclenché par l'envoi de menaces sur les téléphones portables et l'internet affirmant que les Assamais seraient attaqués par des musulmans après la fin du ramadan, en représailles à de récentes violences interethniques qui ont opposé les deux communautés dans cet Etat reculé de l'Inde.

Dans un communiqué, la chaîne de télévision ABC s'est dit "surprise" des mesures gouvernementales après la demande de retrait d'un de ses reportages sur les violences entre musulmans et bouddhistes en Birmanie.

Vivek Sood, avocat auprès de la Cour suprême et auteur d'une loi sur l'internet, a pour sa part jugé que la démarche du gouvernement était illégale.

"C'est complètement illégal en vertu de de la loi indienne sur les hautes technologies. C'est un abus de pouvoir", a-t-il dit au quotidien The Economic Times.

Le gouvernement a toutefois assuré vendredi que son but n'était pas de restreindre les échanges sur internet.

"C'est un succès. Ces pages étaient une menace à la sécurité nationale de l'Inde et nous avons demandé leur suppression immédiate", a commenté auprès de l'AFP un porte-parole du ministère de l'Intérieur, Kuldeep Singh Dhatwalia.

"La propagation de rumeurs encourageant la violence ou provoquant des tensions ne sera pas tolérée. L'idée n'est pas de restreindre la communication", a-t-il assuré.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/http-www-google-com-hostednews-afp-inde-la-tentative-de-controler-i-internet-est-illegale

India: Social Media Censorship to Contain ‘Cyber-Terrorism'?

praskrishna — 2012-08-27T03:36:37Z

This is the second post in the 2-part series about the perceived role of social media in the wake of the Assam clashes that spilled across the country and threatened to upset the nation's peace.

Written by Aparna Ray. This post was published in GlobalVoices on August 24, 2012. Pranesh Prakash's analysis is quoted in this. The first post can be found here.

As the Indian government sought to block bulk SMS, MMS, webpages and specific social media urls, justifying its step as an attempt to control viral rumor-mongering and “cyber-terrorism”, there was a lot of discussion on the mainstream media (MSM) about how social media was fast becoming a “double-edged sword” and how the recent events brought out the “mischief potential of social media in full play“. These MSM opinions, some of which offered tacit support the idea of reigning in social media, did not go unnoticed by netizens. For example, Media Crooks asked:

So what’s with the rant against the Twitterati and social media by these media celebs?

Blogger Amrit Hallan at Writing Cave wondered if the MSM had an underlying motive for creating a hype around the ‘dangers' of social media. He wrote:

People in the mainstream media have always been at loggerheads with the free spirit of social networking websites that empowers everybody to express opinions and spread ideas…(they) have been gleefully recommending the curtailment (of social media). Social networking and blogging continuously make their job hard. The moment they try to spread some misinformation, it is countered by Twitter or blogs with factually correct information, often posted by people close to the ground.

Tweets too expressed similar concerns and sentiments:

Priya James (@james_priya): I think by now, MSM coverage volumes of 'social media terrorism' has now surpassed even their basic coverage of Assam situation!

Gaurav Sabnis (@gauravsabnis): Politician-MSM nexus in India so blatantly clear with blame for NE rumors laid squarely at social media's doors.

Rajeev Nagpal (@rajeevnagpal): In #India the #MSM can't tolerate any one challenging their hold. No wonder they support censoring social media #HandsOffTwitter

Things have been moving very quickly. The ISPs have been sent official communication to block webpages and twitter handles, including those ofsome journalists plus fake profiles created with the purpose of lampooning the Indian Prime Minister. Curiously, the Pakistani blogger Faraz Ahmed Siddiqui, who was the first to break the news about the morphed photos being used to incite communal tensions, also came under the ambit of censorship and his post was inaccessible on some ISPs.

AEIdeas, a blog from the American Enterprise Institute commented on the issue:

The Indian government ought to have given Mr. Siddiqui a medal for his investigative work. Instead it has blocked his post.

Social media users in India have been following the government actions closely and there is muchdebate and discussion about whether the crack down on social media is censorship of free speech in the guise of rumor control.

Some have termed the government's action as Orwellian/dystopian. Others have seen merit in the government's ‘intent' to curb inflammatory content but have been disappointed with the ineffective way the government went about the task - acting as “Net nannies” and “blocking communications, curbing speech, and banning websites”.

At CIS India, Pranesh Prakash did an analysis of the social media content blocked in India since August 18, 2012. Here are the results:

Strong reactions are pouring in on Twitter via trending hashtags such as #GOIBlocks, #IndiaBlocks,#Emergency2012 etc. [There is some debate over the use of the word ‘Emergency' and the attempt to draw parallels between the present block and the state of emergency of 1975, which saw suspension of civil liberties and persecution of journalists in the name of battling threat to national security].

Indian Rebellion (@reBel1857): today they r blocking ur twitter account, tomorrow ur bank account and then will lock u in ur home … #GOIBlocks #Emergency2012

Pranesh Prakash (@pranesh_prakash): If you oppose #censorship, more power to you! I do too. But calling this #Emergency2012 is ridiculous! #IndiaBlocks #netfreedom

Madhavan Narayanan @madversity): Social media is a modern challenge and a modern opportunity. Government attempts to police it smacks of outdated feudal style #GOIblocks

Raheel Khursheed(@Raheelk): Everything ██ is █████ ████ ████ fine ███ █ ████ love. ████ █████ the ███ UPA ███ ████ Government ██ #GOIBlocks #Twitter

Sunanda Vashisht (@sunandavashisht): First they ignored us, then they argued with us, then they blocked us #emergency2012

Babar (@6a6ar): The only thing left for us to do is block all media and Govt. handles in protest. Let's start a #VirtualRevolution #IndiaBlocks

Abhijit Majumdar (@abhijitmajumder): Govt of #India is just testing #socialmedia waters by blocking spoof PMO accounts. Prepare for greater censorship on #Twitter and #Facebook

Amit Agarwal (@labnol): The Indian govt can force ISPs to block individual Twitter profiles but everything will still be available through web apps like Tweetdeck

Humour and sarcasm too weren't in short supply. For example:

Mahesh Murthy (@maheshmurthy): Now that Govt has solved North East crisis by limiting SMS, it will fight malnutrition by banning food pics on Instagram

Kalyan Varadarajan (@itzkallyhere): My nose blocked. But I didn't poke my nose in Govt matters! My nose isnt a handle. Damn! #GOI

Ramesh Srivats (@rameshsrivats): I've a few SMSs to spare from today's quota. If you mail me recipient's number, message & a cheque, I can send an SMS for you.#BusinessIdea

However, not everyone is amused. Amrit Hallan asks:

Are we going to follow the footsteps of Pakistan and China and turn into a Blockistan? No matter how much it makes some of the English-speaking mainstream journalists happy, blocking isn’t possible, at least sustained blocking. The Internet has empowered the silent majority and there is going to be a big backlash if the government, or another agency tries to take this power back. In what form this backlash is going to manifest? It remains to be seen.

In a guest post on Trak.In, blogger Prasant Naidu suggests how the government could use social media positively. He says:

instead of banning social media, the government can use it in its favor controlling the crisis of NE. The virality feature that our politicians are scared of can be used for killing rumors. Can’t the government get in touch with Facebook and Google India to find out ways to use social media in a better way? Can’t the Government start a social media campaign to “Save NE and Save India”?

Twitter is one of the tools that the government can use. A brilliant example is how Nirupama Rao, India’s Foreign Secretary used Twitter during the evacuation of Indians at the time of the Libyan crisis.

Social Media is not rocket science; it is about communicating with humans and for that you need to have the will to evolve and change. Banning social networks is not a solution to combat rumors but it is a half backed measure to cover the lid on the growing tensions.

The government, on it's part, issued social media guidelines to be followed by government agencies. It remains to be seen how the situation develops on the ground and what impact the current stand-off between government and social media has on cyber-control policies in the days to come.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/global-voices-online-org-aparna-ray-aug-24-2012india-social-media-censorship-to-contain-cyber-terrorism

Delhi defends Internet blocking

praskrishna — 2012-08-27T04:13:10Z

India on Friday defended itself against accusations of heavy-handed online censorship, saying it had been successful in blocking content blamed for fuelling ethnic tensions.

Published in Gulf Today on August 25, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The government over the past week has ordered Internet service providers to block 309 webpages, images and links on sites including Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, news channel ABC of Australia and Qatar-based Al Jazeera.

The orders were an effort to halt the spread of “hateful” material and rumours that Muslims planned to attack students and workers who have migrated from the northeast region to live in Bangalore and other southern cities.

“We have met with success. These pages were a threat to India’s national security and we demanded their immediate deletion,” Kuldeep Singh Dhatwalia, a spokesman for India’s home ministry said.

“Spreading rumours to encourage violence or cause tension will not be tolerated. The idea is not to restrict communication.” But Twitter users, legal experts and analysts criticised the government’s approach, which appeared to have resulted in only partial blocking of material, much of which was still accessible.

“The officials who are trusted with this don’t know the law or modern technology well enough,” Pranesh Prakash, programme manager at the Centre for Internet and Society research group, told AFP.

“It is counter-productive. I accuse them of monumental incompetence, given that the main problem is that they are getting really bad advice.

“I hope that this fiasco shows the folly of excessive censorship and encourages the government to make better use of social networks and technology to reach out to people.”

In a strange irony, account of none other than Minister of State for Communication and Information Technology Milind Deora was suspended by Twitter.

But at the same time, a fake account similar to Deora’s remained active.

The followers of Deora on Twitter were in for a surprise when they found a search for his name showed “No people results for Milind Deora.”

Deora’s tweets gave the government’s version on the crackdown on the microblogging site and other social networking websites.

Deora in his tweet on Thursday night had defended the government’s efforts to block hate content on the Internet.

“Ironically, let me clarify on Twitter that there is absolutely no intent of the government to curb freedom of social media platforms,” Deora’s tweet read.

“Account suspended. The profile you are trying to view has been suspended...,” was the automated message that was seen on the Twitter.

The news of Deora’s account suspension spread like wild fire on the microblogging site with some making sarcastic comments.

“Communication Minister Milind Deora’s Twitter Account ‘Suspended.’ It’s like the home minister losing his house key,” read one of the tweets, while another user’s tweet read: “Ah! I know what happened. Milind Deora sent Twitter a list of people to (be) banned and signed his name under it.”

The government has asked Internet service providers to block select 16 Twitter accounts, including that of some journalists.

Twitter has also removed six accounts, which resembled that of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) amid government’s assertion that action would be taken against those allowing objectionable content.

In a communication to the PMO, Twitter has said it has “removed the reported profile(s) from circulation due to violation of our Terms of Service regarding impersonation.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/gulf-today-aug-25-2012-delhi-defends-internet-blocking

Internet clamp outrage

praskrishna — 2012-08-27T05:13:31Z

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 yesterday.

Published in the Gulf Daily News on August 25, 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 rumours swirled that they would be attacked in retaliation for ethnic violence against Muslims in their home state.

Last weekend, the government said the rumours 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 organisation in the southern city of Bangalore.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-gulf-daily-news-com-aug-25-2012-internet-clamp-outrage

Criticism mounts over India censorship

praskrishna — 2012-08-27T06:38:51Z

India’s government is facing fierce criticism from privacy groups, political opponents and irate internet users accusing it of an excessive and poorly targeted censorship drive as it seeks to contain social alarm triggered by communal unrest.

This article written by James Crabtree in Mumbai and Tim Bradshaw in San Francisco was published in Financial Times on August 24, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Following panicked scenes among groups from the nation’s troubled north-east and fearing an escalation of urban violence between Muslim and Hindu groups, the administration this week instructed internet companies, including Facebook and Google, to block more than 300 web pages and more than a dozen Twitter accounts it claimed were inflaming communal tensions.

But by Friday the order was being assailed as an example of administrative incompetence, as internet analysts revealed that many of the pages contained seemingly harmless material from foreign media organisations, political columnists and critics of India’s government.

Pranesh Prakash, a legal expert at the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, said: “I am not questioning their original motives, but I do think this is excessive and incompetent censorship.”

Political opponents also accused the government of over-reach, including Narendra Modi, the controversial chief minister of the state Gujarat and a member of the Hindu nationalist BJP party, who on Friday used a Twitter post to call the moves a “crackdown on freedom of speech”.

The government denies it is being heavy handed. “We are only taking strict action against those accounts or people which are causing damage or spreading rumours,” said Kuldeep Dhatwalia, an Indian home ministry spokesman. “We are not taking action against other accounts, be it on Facebook, Twitter or even SMSes.”

Twitter found itself at the centre of the growing controversy, as government spokespeople accused the US-based social networking site of failing to respond to requests to block users, some of which involved accounts appearing to impersonate Manmohan Singh, the prime minister.

Twitter responded by suspending a number of impersonator accounts and is now in discussions with the prime minister’s office in an attempt to defuse the row, according to people familiar with the matter. A spokesperson for Twitter declined to comment.

Angry users also used the site to attack the restrictions using the hashtags #GOIblocks and #Emergency2012, the latter a highly charged reference to prime minister Indira Gandhi’s two-year period of rule by decree in the late 1970s.

India has a long history of censorship measures designed to prevent communal violence, ranging from restrictions introduced under the British Raj in the early 20th century to more recent edicts banning Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses and restricting derogatory portrayals of religious figures in Bollywood movies.

“Blocking content to help mitigate a volatile situation involving civilian security could be justified,” says Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “But when the government expresses equal concern about fake Twitter handles or criticism of political leaders, it begins to look like censorship.”

The online restrictions followed related measures restricting to five the number of text messages that could be sent from most Indian mobile phones, although this was lifted to 20 on Thursday.

They also came during a week of deepening political crisis in the world’s largest democracy, as opposition leaders repeatedly halted parliamentary proceedings and called for Mr Singh’s resignation in the aftermath of a critical report from India’s government auditor.

“These threats to social harmony are real, but like almost everything the Indian state is doing at present, the restrictions incompetently deal with a few symptoms rather than addressing causes,” says Pratap Bhanu Mehta of the Centre for Policy Research, a think tank in New Delhi. “They are simply exacerbating a crisis of trust, not solving it.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-ft-com-aug-24-2012-james-crabtree-tim-bradshaw-criticism-mounts-over-india-censorship

Tata Photon unblocks Wordpress.com

praskrishna — 2012-09-03T01:53:47Z

As of yesterday, the Tata Photon service of the Internet service provider (ISP) Tata Teleservices seems to have lifted the block it had put on the Wordpress.com domain for over a week.

The post was published in tech2 on August 30, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted in it.

Tech2 had reported on Saturday that the free platform of Wordpress was put under a blanket ban across India by the ISP following government orders to block around 309 URLs carrying disruptive or inflammatory content. Directives issued by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to ISPs between August 18 and 21 state that only the URLs mentioned be blocked, not entire domains. Users could neither view Wordpress blogs nor edit or post new content on them, the first instance of which was noticed by us on August 20.

Our repeated efforts to contact Tata Teleservices' officials drew a blank. Numerous users who contacted customer service did not receive any replies or resolution. Through the course of the blockade, the ISP did not even display any message to Wordpress visitors that the domain was blocked, nor did it notify the owners of Wordpress blogs about it. Puzzled users tried resetting their Internet connections, clearing DNS caches, and calling the customer service helpline only to realise that they were experiencing an ISP-level block.

The reactions of Wordpress users ranged from annoyance to distress. Human rights activist and lawyer Kamayani Bali Mahabal commented on Tech2, "Yes, my wordpress blog is blocked and I have 4 blogs...have also written to TATA. I can access through [an] anonymous browser but I cannot log in, edit and do admin functions, I can do about 50 percent work on my blog. Dashboard not accessible[,] barely manage to post, will be suing TATA soon". In a blog post, she has described her experience of the block.

Blogger Shantanu Adhicary who goes by the nom de blog Tantanoo says, "My blogs are self-hosted [on Wordpress] so I was not affected. But it was annoying that I was unable to access, read or comment on other Wordpress blogs, especially in the absence of any message whatsoever that this site has been blocked".

The move by Tata Teleservices is being seen as ham handed; around 25 million Wordpress blogs were made inaccessible to deal with a few rotten eggs. Blogger and social media consultant Prateek Shah opines, "Blanket bans on domains because content on some of their pages is objectionable are akin to jailing a certain section of society just because some people from the community broke the law. Wordpress plays an extremely important role on the Internet and if such a site were to go down even for a few hours, it would mean mayhem for bloggers as well as readers who count on the platform to get the latest updates and information. ISPs need to mature and grow up to the fact that one can't put millions of people in jeopardy when apparently trying to protect the interests of some".

In June, the Madras High Court had granted relief to netizens in India by urging that there be no more John Doe orders. “The order of interim injunction dated 25/04/2012 is hereby clarified that the interim injunction is granted only in respect of a particular URL where the infringing movie is kept and not in respect of the entire website. Further, the applicant is directed to inform about the particulars of URL where the interim movie is kept within 48 hours.”

Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director at Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), agrees the move was wrong but shares insights about the position of the ISPs. He says, "It was obviously wrong. It contravenes the government's orders to not block the base URL but individual pages. Action should be taken against them for causing inconvenience to users. This is not the first time an ISP has gone overboard in implementing censorship, be it copyright issues, piracy or inflammatory content. In 2006, the government had chastised ISPs for over-censoring content and blocking unintended websites and pages. Having said that, ISPs have numerous grouses against the government. They do not possess the technical capabilities to implement the government's orders, at times, whether about surveillance or censorship".

ISPs that are also telecom services providers, find themselves unable to decipher government notifications about shutting off content on the Internet or introducing curbs on mobile communication. Prakash's analysis of the 300-odd URLs blocked by the Indian government reveals glaring mistakes in the government directives "that made blocking pointless and effectual". When asked to opine about what ISPs and telcos should do when the orders from the government were not crystal clear, Prakash said, "They should ask for clarifications from the government. The operators sought clarifications from the Ministry of Telecommunications about the recent orders to ban bulk text messages and MMSes. The ministry was unable to resolve them, and in turn, sought further clarifications from the Home Ministry. The government should coordinate better".

Tata Teleservices was not the only ISP guilty of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Sify too reportedly imposed a blanket block on the Wordpress domain. Airtel went overboard by temporarily blocking Youtu.be URLs last week citing orders by the court or the DoT.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/tech-2-in-com-aug-30-2012-tata-photon-unblocks-wordpress

Internet Analysts Question India’s Efforts to Stem Panic

praskrishna — 2012-09-04T11:46:03Z

The Indian government’s efforts to stem a weeklong panic among some ethnic minorities has again put it at odds with Internet companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter.

This article by Vikas Bajaj was published by New York Times on August 21, 2012. Sunil Abraham is quoted. This was reposted in NDTV on August 22, 2012.

Officials in New Delhi, who have had disagreements with the companies over restrictions on free speech, say the sites are not responding quickly enough to their requests to delete and trace the origins of doctored photos and incendiary posts aimed at people from northeastern India. After receiving threats online and on their phones, tens of thousands of students and migrants from the northeast have left cities like Bangalore, Pune and Chennai in the last week.

The government has blocked 245 Web pages since Friday, but still many sites are said to contain fabricated images of violence against Muslims in the northeast and in neighboring Myanmar meant to incite Muslims in cities like Bangalore and Mumbai to attack people from the northeast. India also restricted cellphone users to five text messages a day each for 15 days in an effort to limit the spread of rumors.

Officials from Google and industry associations said they were cooperating fully with the authorities. Some industry executives and analysts added that some requests had not been heeded because they were overly broad or violated internal policies and the rights of users.

The government, used to exerting significant control over media like newspapers, films and television, has in recent months been frustrated in its effort to extend similar and greater regulations to Web sites, most of which are based in the United States. Late last year, an Indian minister tried to get social media sites to prescreen content created by their users before it was posted. The companies refused and the attempt failed under withering public criticism.

While just 100 million of India’s 1.2 billion people use the Internet regularly, the numbers are growing fast among people younger than 25, who make up about half the country’s population. For instance, there were an estimated 46 million active Indian users on Facebook at the end of 2011, up 132 percent from a year earlier.

Sunil Abraham, an analyst who has closely followed India’s battles with Internet companies, said last week’s effort to tackle hate speech was justified but poorly managed. He said the first directive from the government was impractically broad, asking all Internet “intermediaries” — a category that includes small cybercafes, Internet service providers and companies like Google and Facebook — to disable all content that was “inflammatory, hateful and inciting violence.”

“The Internet intermediaries are responding slowly because now they have to trawl through their networks and identify hate speech,” said Mr. Abraham, executive director of the Center for Internet and Society, a research and advocacy group based in Bangalore. “The government acted appropriately, but without sufficient sophistication.”

In the days since the first advisory went out on Aug. 17, government officials have asked companies to delete dozens of specific Web pages. Most of them have been blocked, but officials have not publicly identified them or specified the sites on which they were hosted. Ministers have blamed groups in Pakistan, a neighbor with which India has tense relations, for creating and uploading many of the hateful pages and doctored images.

A minister in the Indian government, Milind Deora, acknowledged that officials had received assistance from social media sites but said officials were hoping that the companies would move faster.

“There is a sense of importance and urgency, and that’s why the government has taken these out-of-the-way decisions with regards to even curtailing communications,” Mr. Deora, a junior minister of communications and information technology, said in a telephone interview. “And we are hoping for cooperation from the platforms and companies to help us as quickly as possible.”

Indian officials have long been concerned about the power of modern communications to exacerbate strife and tension among the nation’s many ethnic and religious groups. While communal violence has broadly declined in the last decade, in part because of faster economic growth, many grievances simmer under the surface. Most recently, fighting between the Bodo tribe and Muslims in the northeastern state of Assam has displaced about half a million people and, through text messages and online posts, affected thousands more across India.

Officials at social media companies, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid offending political leaders, said that they were moving as fast as they could but that policy makers must realize that the company officials have to follow their own internal procedures before deleting content and revealing information like the Internet protocol addresses of users.

“Content intended to incite violence, such as hate speech, is prohibited on Google products where we host content, including YouTube, Google Plus and Blogger,” Google said in a statement. “We act quickly to remove such material flagged by our users. We also comply with valid legal requests from authorities wherever possible.”

Facebook said in a statement that it also restricts hate speech and “direct calls for violence” and added that it was “working through” requests to remove content. Twitter declined to comment on the Indian government’s request.

Telecommunications company executives criticized the government’s response to the crisis as being excessive and clumsy. There was no need to limit text messages to just five a day across the country when problems were concentrated in a handful of big cities, said Rajan Mathews, director general of the Cellular Operators Association of India.

“It could have been handled much more tactically,” he said.

Others said the government could have been more effective had it quickly countered hateful and threatening speech by sending out its own messages, which it was slow to do when migrants from the northeast began leaving Bangalore on Aug. 15.

“It has to also reach out on social networking and Internet platforms and dismantle these rumors,” Mr. Abraham said, “and demonstrate that they are false.”

A version of this article appeared in print on August 22, 2012, on page B4 of the New York edition with the headline: Internet Moves by India to Stem Rumors and Panic Raise Questions.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-nytimes-vikas-bajaj-aug-21-2012-internet-analysts-question-indias-efforts-to-stem-panic

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

Counter-proposal by the Centre for Internet and Society: Draft Information Technology (Intermediary Due Diligence and Information Removal) Rules, 2012

pranesh — 2016-04-24T11:48:49Z

Any restriction on freedom of speech should embody and be guided by the following principles, as identified by the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/counter-proposal-by-cis-draft-it-intermediary-due-diligence-and-information-removal-rules-2012.pdf

Rebuttal of DIT's Misleading Statements on New Internet Rules

pranesh — 2012-07-11T13:18:04Z

The press statement issued on May 11 by the Department of Information Technology (DIT) on the furore over the newly-issued rules on 'intermediary due diligence' is misleading and is, in places, plainly false. We are presenting a point-by-point rebuttal of the DIT's claims.

In its press release on Wednesday, May 11, 2011, the DIT stated:

The attention of Government has been drawn to news items in a section of media on certain aspects of the Rules notified under Section 79 pertaining to liability of intermediaries under the Information Technology Act, 2000. These items have raised two broad issues. One is that words used in Rules for objectionable content are broad and could be interpreted subjectively. Secondly, there is an apprehension that the Rules enable the Government to regulate content in a highly subjective and possibly arbitrary manner.

There are actually more issues than merely "subjective interpretation" and "arbitrary governmental regulation".

The Indian Constitution limits how much the government can regulate citizens’ fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression. Any measure afoul of the constitution is invalid.
Several portions of the rules are beyond the limited powers that Parliament had granted the Department of IT to create interpretive rules under the Information Technology Act. Parliament directed the Government to merely define what “due diligence” requirements an intermediary would have to follow in order to claim the qualified protection against liability that Section 79 of the Information Technology Act provides; these current rules have gone dangerously far beyond that, by framing rules that insist that intermediaries, without investigation, has to remove content within 36-hours of receipt of a complaint, keep records of a users' details and provide them to law enforcement officials.

The Department of Information Technology (DIT), Ministry of Communications & IT has clarified that the Intermediaries Guidelines Rules, 2011 prescribe that due diligence need to be observed by the Intermediaries to enjoy exemption from liability for hosting any third party information under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000. These due diligence practices are the best practices followed internationally by well-known mega corporations operating on the Internet. The terms specified in the Rules are in accordance with the terms used by most of the Intermediaries as part of their existing practices, policies and terms of service which they have published on their website.

We are not aware of any country that actually goes to the extent of deciding what Internet-wide ‘best practices’ are and actually converting those ‘best practices’ into law by prescribing a universal terms of service that all Internet services, websites, and products should enforce.
The Rules require all intermediaries to include the government-prescribed terms in an agreement, no matter what services they provide. It is one thing for a company to choose the terms of its terms of service agreement, and completely another for the government to dictate those terms of service. As long as the terms of service of an intermediary are not unlawful or bring up issues of users’ rights (such as the right to privacy), there is no reason for the government to jump in and dictate what the terms of service should or should not be.
The DIT has not offered any proof to back up its assertion that 'most' intermediaries already have such terms. Google, a ‘mega corporation’ which is an intermediary, does not have such an overarching policy. Indiatimes, another ‘mega corporation’ intermediary, does not either. Just because a company like Rediff and Blizzard's World of Warcraft have some of those terms does not mean a) that they should have all of those terms, nor that b) everyone else should as well.

In attempting to take different terms of service from different Internet services and products—the very fact of which indicate the differing needs felt across varying online communities—the Department has put in place a one-size-fits-all approach. How can this be possible on the Internet, when we wouldn't regulate the post-office and a book publisher under the same rules of liability for, say, defamatory speech.
There is also a significant difference between the effect of those terms of service and that of these Rules. An intermediary-framed terms of service suggest that the intermediary may investigate and boot someone off a service for violation, while the Rules insist that the intermediary simply has to mandatorily remove content, keep records of users' details and provide them to law enforcement officials, else be subject to crippling legal liability.

So to equate the effect of these Rules to merely following ‘existing practices’ is plainly wrong. An intermediary—like the CIS website—should have the freedom to choose not to have terms of service agreements. We now don’t.“In case any issue arises concerning the interpretation of the terms used by the Intermediary, which is not agreed to by the user or affected person, the same can only be adjudicated by a Court of Law. The Government or any of its agencies have no power to intervene or even interpret. DIT has reiterated that there is no intention of the Government to acquire regulatory jurisdiction over content under these Rules. It has categorically said that these rules do not provide for any regulation or control of content by the Government.”

The Rules are based on the presumption that all complaints (and resultant mandatory taking down of the content) are correct, and that the incorrectness of the take-downs can be disputed in court. Why not just invert that, and presume that all complaints need to be proven first, and the correctness of the complaints (instead of the take-downs) be disputed in court?

Indeed, the courts have insisted that presumption of validity is the only constitutional way of dealing with speech. (See, for instance, Karthikeyan R. v. Union of India, a 2010 Madras High Court judgment.)

Further, only constitutional courts (namely High Courts and the Supreme Court) can go into the question of the validity of a law. Other courts have to apply the law, even if it the judge believes it is constitutionally invalid. So, most courts will be forced to apply this law of highly questionable constitutionality until a High Court or the Supreme Court strikes it down.

What the Department has in fact done is to explicitly open up the floodgates for increased liability claims and litigation - which runs exactly counter to the purpose behind the amendment of Section 79 by Parliament in 2008.

“The Government adopted a very transparent process for formulation of the Rules under the Information Technology Act. The draft Rules were published on the Department of Information Technology website for comments and were widely covered by the media. None of the Industry Associations and other stakeholders objected to the formulation which is now being cited in some section of media.”

This is a blatant lie.

Civil society voices, including CIS, Software Freedom Law Centre, and individual experts (such as the lawyer and published author Apar Gupta) sent in comments. Companies such as Google, E2E Networks, and others had apparently raised concerns as well. The press has published many a cautionary note, including editorials, op-ed and articles in the Hindu, the Hoot, Medianama.com, and Kafila.com, well before the new rules were notified. We at CIS even received a 'read notification' from the email account of the Group Coordinator of the DIT’s Cyber Laws Division—Dr. Gulshan Rai—on Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 12:04 PM (we had sent the mail to Dr. Rai on Monday, February 28, 2011). We never received any acknowledgement, though, not even after we made an express request for acknowledgement (and an offer to meet them in person to explain our concerns) on Tuesday, April 5, 2011 in an e-mail sent to Mr. Prafulla Kumar and Dr. Gulshan Rai of DIT.

The process can hardly be called 'transparent' when the replies received from 'industry associations and other stakeholders' have not been made public by the DIT. Those comments which are public all indicate that serious concerns were raised as to the constitutionality of the Rules.

The Government has been forward looking to create a conducive environment for the Internet medium to catapult itself onto a different plane with the evolution of the Internet. The Government remains fully committed to freedom of speech and expression and the citizen’s rights in this regard.

The DIT has limited this statement to the rules on intermediary due diligence, and has not spoken about the controversial new rules that stifle cybercafes, and restrict users' privacy and freedom to receive information.

If the government is serious about creating a conducive environment for innovation, privacy and free expression on the Internet, then it wouldn’t be passing Rules that curb down on them, and it definitely will not be doing so in such a non-transparent fashion.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/rebuttal-dit-press-release-intermediaries

The Present — and Future — Dangers of India's Draconian New Internet Regulations

anja — 2011-08-02T07:22:24Z

The uproar surrounding India's Internet Control Rules makes clear that in the Internet age, as before, the active chilling of freedom of expression by the state is unacceptable in a democracy. Yet if India's old censorship regimes are to be maintained in this new context, the state will have little choice but to do just that. Are we ready to rethink the ways in which we deal with free speech and censorship as a society? Asks Anja Kovacs in this article, published in Caravan, 1 June 2011.

WHAT ACTUALLY DEFINES A DEMOCRACY? It is a trickier question than it first seems, and yet it is worthwhile, at least every now and then, to remind ourselves of what constitutes the political system we hold so dear. Free and fair elections; an independent legislative, executive and judiciary; and freedom of the press—these are all vital ingredients. But what may be democracy’s defining element, or at least its sine qua non, is the right to freedom of opinion and expression: without this equal right to “seek, receive and impart information”, as the universal declaration of Human Rights frames it, a system of governance of the people, for the people and by the people simply remains meaningless. Without a free flow of information, democracy does not exist.

It is with good reason, then, that bloggers, tech enthusiasts and watchdogs from civil society have been up in arms over two new sets of rules, notified in April 2011, that will impact every Indian’s Internet use. Formulated by the Central Government under powers conferred to it by the IT (Amendment) Act 2008, one set governs what is known as the liability of intermediaries. This determines in which cases, and to what extent, companies ranging from Google and Facebook to local Internet service providers (ISPs) are legally responsible for the content that you upload.

The second set of rules pertains to cybercafes. In a manner reminiscent of the licence Raj, there are new registration standards for these establishments, which go beyond the usual requirements for commercial enterprises and include detailed procedures to identify all users. Cybercafes will be required to maintain and submit, on a monthly basis, logs that detail the use of all computers in the cafe and to keep backups of all users’ browser histories, to be maintained for at least one year.

There is much that is wrong with these rules, but what makes them such a particular threat to freedom of expression? Some effects are likely to be indirect: for example, the Internet has the potential to emerge as an important avenue for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to express and discuss concerns so rarely taken into account by the mainstream media. But by putting into place stringent identification requirements for cybercafe users, who are likely to be less well-off, the access of underprivileged users in particular will be further constrained. Moreover, the combination of the need for identification with the requirement for cybercafes to keep a log of every user’s browser history means that anonymity online is now effectively made impossible in India. For whistleblowers, artists, writers or anyone desiring anonymity, there is no longer a place in Indian cyberspace.

But the most troubling impact on freedom of expression of the new mandates remains direct: in their attempt to delineate the liability of Internet providers and websites, the new rules for “intermediary due diligence” actually add important new curbs on freedom of expression to Indian law. India’s Constitution recognises a fairly extensive list of so-called “reasonable restrictions” and these are more or less replicated in the Rules: “the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence”. But the Rules, which were never vetted by Parliament, do not limit themselves to these Constitutional provisions. Rather surprisingly, they add a whole new slew of qualifications, many of which are so vague, moreover, that they leave the door wide open to abuse. Thus, for example, the Rules impose a blanket ban on impersonation and make it illegal to share any information that is “grossly harmful”, “harassing”, “blasphemous”, “disparaging” or “insulting any other nation”. None of these terms have been explained or defined.

Lacking the precision that would allow citizens to precisely regulate their behaviour in line with the law, overly broad regulations such as these are widely believed to have a chilling effect: in order not to violate the law, people begin to censor themselves—to keep quiet rather than protesting or engaging. But in this particular case, the effects are likely to be particularly pernicious because of a second provision made by the Rules: wherever an intermediary receives a complaint claiming that any information they store, host or publish contravenes the provisions of the Rules, the intermediary is required to take down this information within 36 hours. Censorship, in other words, will effectively be privatised.

The prospect is all the more depressing because the intermediaries have little incentive to resist participating in such censorship. Given the restrictions on free speech that are effectively enforced within Indian society by vigilante groups, especially in the last two decades, the possible impact of these rules is even more frightening. If Facebook has little reason to uphold your right to maintain a page that is critical of say, Gandhiji, what prevents vigilante groups from policing our lives online even more than they do offline? The only recourse available to the owner of the confiscated information will be going to court—meaning that defending one’s own freedom of speech online will require endless litigation.

These are worrying omens, in other words, for those who believe that freedom of expression is the cornerstone of democracy. But to what extent do these new provisions represent a radical break with India’s existing restrictions on free speech? Since its founding, the independent Indian nation-state has wielded censorship as a tool to both contain the conflicts that emanate from India’s tremendous diversity and to ensure its homogeneous social, moral and political development. If the list of reasonable restrictions in the Constitution is fairly long, this is because the country’s lawmakers were clear at the time of Independence that freedom of expression would need to be subordinated to the social reforms necessary to put the country on Nehru’s path to development. India’s far-reaching anti-hate speech laws, too, derive from the desire to combat ill will and disharmony. Since the Internet now makes it so much easier to publish opinions that are hurtful, or indeed “grossly harmful” or “disparaging”, the new Rules can in many ways be seen as an attempt to continue this strategy in the Internet age.

The problem, however, is that irrespective of the merits of such a strategy in the past, within the radically altered communicative context of the Internet, it is simply no longer feasible. As the Internet guru Clay Shirky has argued, earlier systems of media and communication worked on a “filter, then publish” principle. Because publishing a newspaper, for example, is expensive, editors and journalists take upon themselves the role of filtering out the “worthwhile” from the “not-so-worthwhile”. Without them making that vital differentiation between “news” and “information” on the one hand and “drivel” on the other, newspapers would simply not be viable. In the Internet age, however, this principle has been reversed. The arrival of social media especially has made it so easy and cheap for anyone to share their opinions that the mantra now is: first publish, then filter. The gatekeeper role of the traditional media stands much reduced.

For the Indian government’s strategy of using censorship as a tool to mitigate social conflict, this shift has two important consequences. The first one is quantitative: it means that there are now far more speech acts to police. That undoubtedly has made the state’s task much more difficult. But there is also a second, qualitative difference: it also means that whether the government approves of this or not, there will now be a far wider range of people who will make their voices heard, and thus, a far wider range of opinions that will be expressed in the public sphere. And it is precisely to stop such a diversity from emerging that much censorship in India has been justified over the years. As a 1980 report of the Working Group on National Film Policy argued: “if the overall objective of censorship is to safeguard generally accepted standards of morality and decency, in addition to the well recognised interests of the State, the standards of censorship applicable to freedom of expression cannot be very much ahead of the standards of behaviour commonly accepted in society. Censorship can become liberal only to the extent society itself becomes genuinely liberal”.

What such statements conveniently elide, of course, is the enormous diversity within Indian society itself. Whose standards of behaviour are they thinking of? Kashmiri, Manipuri, Chhattisgarhi? Gandhian, feminist, communist? Adivasi, Muslim, Dalit? Who represents this community of the nation? Censorship always benefits the status quo, and the Indian case has been no different. The rise of the Internet has merely revealed, with increasing frequency, cracks in the supposedly uniform moral, social and political development of India that the government envisioned. If the old censorship regime is to nevertheless be maintained in this new context, it will therefore increasingly require the active chilling of freedom of expression on the part of the state. What the uproar surrounding the Internet Control Rules makes clear is that in the Internet age, as before, this is an unacceptable route for a modern democracy. A new model to deal with diversity and dissent is urgently required.

What makes our democracy? With the undeniable challenges that the Internet throws to our established ways of operating, it is time to reopen this debate as a society, rather than leaving it to politicians and bureaucrats. The open forum of the Internet may often offend, or rattle our sensibilities and beliefs, but it also presents new possibilities for engagement and debate. Will we take this opportunity?

Read the original here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-present-and-future-dangers-of-indias-draconian-new-internet-regulations