Centre for Internet and Society

Views | Why the Left may for once be right

praskrishna — 2012-04-25T11:48:50Z

The article by Pramit Bhattacharya was published in LiveMint on April 23, 2012.

India’s information technology (IT) minister, Kapil Sibal appears to be running into rough weather over IT rules framed last year, which curb freedom of expression on the internet. The rules have incensed India’s growing blogging community and piqued at least a few of his fellow parliamentarians.

On the opening day of the upcoming parliamentary session on Tuesday, the Rajya Sabha is set to vote on an annulment motion against the IT rules, moved by P. Rajeeve of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a rediff.com report said. Ironically, the party that still treats Stalin as a hero (quoting him unfailingly in its political resolutions) has become the first to stand up for internet freedom.
Rajeeve is of course not the only parliamentarian to take exception to the rules. Jayant Choudhry, a member of parliament (MP) from the Rashtriya Lok Dal, was the first to draw attention to the draconian rules late last year, and MPs from other regional parties such as the Samajwadi Party and the Asom Gana Parishad criticized the rules in a parliamentary discussion in December.

Two sets of rules, one governing cyber cafes and the other relating to intermediaries have attracted most criticism. The rules relating to intermediaries such as internet service providers, search engines or interactive websites such as Twitter and Facebook are the most disturbing. Intermediaries are required under the current rules to remove content that anyone objects to, within 36 hours of receiving the complaint, without allowing content creators any scope of defence.

The criteria for deciding objectionable content, laid down in the rules, are subjective and vague. For instance, intermediaries are mandated to remove among other things, ‘grossly harmful’ content, whatever that may mean.

This is a unique form of ‘private censorship’ that will endanger almost all online content. In this age of easily offended sensibilities, it is virtually impossible to write anything that does not “offend” anyone. For instance, even this piece may be termed ‘grossly harmful’ to the CPI(M) party.

However far-fetched this may sound, this has already become a reality. A researcher working with the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) tried out such a strategy with several different intermediaries, and was successful in six out of seven times, always with frivolous and flawed complaints, Pranesh Prakash of CIS wrote in a January blog-post. It has become much easier in India to ban an e-book than a book, Prakash pointed out.

The rules regulating cyber cafes are no better. Cyber cafes are required to keep a log detailing the identity of users and their internet usage, which has negative implications for privacy and personal safety of users, analysis of the rules by PRS legislative research said.

Internet freedom in India has declined over time and is only ‘partly free’, a 2011 report on internet freedom by US-based think tank, Freedom House said. India has joined a growing club of developing nations where, “internet freedom is increasingly undermined by legal harassment, opaque censorship procedures, or expanding surveillance,” the report noted.

The only saving grace is that some of the IT rules are drafted in a language so arcane that anyone will find it hard to decipher them, leave alone implementing them. Sample this: “The intermediary shall not knowingly deploy or install or modify the technical configuration of computer resource or become party to any such act which may change or has the potential to change the normal course of operation of the computer resource than what it is supposed to perform thereby circumventing any law for the time being in force: provided that the intermediary may develop, produce, distribute or employ technological means for the sole purpose of performing the acts of securing the computer resource and information contained therein.”

The first task at hand for Sibal may be to explain to fellow lawmakers what the above rule is supposed to mean, before he defends such rules.

Click for the original, Pranesh Prakash is quoted in this article.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/left-may-for-once-be-right

Intermediary Liability in India: Chilling Effects on Free Expression on the Internet

Rishabh Dara — 2012-12-14T10:22:24Z

The Centre for Internet & Society in partnership with Google India conducted the Google Policy Fellowship 2011. This was offered for the first time in Asia Pacific as well as in India. Rishabh Dara was selected as a Fellow and researched upon issues relating to freedom of expression. The results of the paper demonstrate that the ‘Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules 2011’ notified by the Government of India on April 11, 2011 have a chilling effect on free expression.

Intermediaries are widely recognised as essential cogs in the wheel of exercising the right to freedom of expression on the Internet. Most major jurisdictions around the world have introduced legislations for limiting intermediary liability in order to ensure that this wheel does not stop spinning. With the 2008 amendment of the Information Technology Act 2000, India joined the bandwagon and established a ‘notice and takedown’ regime for limiting intermediary liability.

On the 11th of April 2011, the Government of India notified the ‘Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules 2011’ that prescribe, amongst other things, guidelines for administration of takedowns by intermediaries. The Rules have been criticised extensively by both the national and the international media. The media has projected that the Rules, contrary to the objective of promoting free expression, seem to encourage privately administered injunctions to censor and chill free expression. On the other hand, the Government has responded through press releases and assured that the Rules in their current form do not violate the principle of freedom of expression or allow the government to regulate content.

This study has been conducted with the objective of determining whether the criteria, procedure and safeguards for administration of the takedowns as prescribed by the Rules lead to a chilling effect on online free expression. In the course of the study, takedown notices were sent to a sample comprising of 7 prominent intermediaries and their response to the notices was documented. Different policy factors were permuted in the takedown notices in order to understand at what points in the process of takedown, free expression is being chilled.

The results of the paper clearly demonstrate that the Rules indeed have a chilling effect on free expression. Specifically, the Rules create uncertainty in the criteria and procedure for administering the takedown thereby inducing the intermediaries to err on the side of caution and over-comply with takedown notices in order to limit their liability; and as a result suppress legitimate expressions. Additionally, the Rules do not establish sufficient safeguards to prevent misuse and abuse of the takedown process to suppress legitimate expressions.

Of the 7 intermediaries to which takedown notices were sent, 6 intermediaries over-complied with the notices, despite the apparent flaws in them. From the responses to the takedown notices, it can be reasonably presumed that not all intermediaries have sufficient legal competence or resources to deliberate on the legality of an expression. Even if such intermediary has sufficient legal competence, it has a tendency to prioritize the allocation of its legal resources according to the commercial importance of impugned expressions. Further, if such subjective determination is required to be done in a limited timeframe and in the absence of adequate facts and circumstances, the intermediary mechanically (without application of mind or proper judgement) complies with the takedown notice.

The results also demonstrate that the Rules are procedurally flawed as they ignore all elements of natural justice. The third party provider of information whose expression is censored is not informed about the takedown, let alone given an opportunity to be heard before or after the takedown. There is also no recourse to have the removed information put-back or restored. The intermediary is under no obligation to provide a reasoned decision for rejecting or accepting a takedown notice.

The Rules in their current form clearly tilt the takedown mechanism in favour of the complainant and adversely against the creator of expression.

The research highlights the need to:

increase the safeguards against misuse of the privately administered takedown regime

reduce the uncertainty in the criteria for administering the takedown

reduce the uncertainty in the procedure for administering the takedown

include various elements of natural justice in the procedure for administering the takedown

replace the requirement for subjective legal determination by intermediaries with an objective test

Click to download the report [PDF, 406 Kb]

Appendix 2

The above documents have been sent to:

Shri Kapil Sibal, Minister of Human Resource Development and Minister of Communications and Information Technology
Shri Milind Murli Deora, Minister of State of Communications and Information Technology
Shri Sachin Pilot, Minister of State, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology
Dr. Anita Bhatnagar, Joint Secretary, Department of Electronics & Information Technology, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology
Dr. Ajay Kumar, Joint Secretary, Department of Electronics & Information Technology, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology
Dr. Gulshan Rai, Scientist G & Group Coordinator, Director General, ICERT, Controller Of Certifying, Authorities and Head of Division, Cyber Appellate Tribunal

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/chilling-effects-on-free-expression-on-internet

Workshop on Media Law & Policy Curriculum Development

praskrishna — 2014-02-17T10:25:54Z

Centre for Communication Governance, National Law University, Delhi and University of Oxford in support with the International Higher Education-Knowledge Economy Partnerships Programme of the British Council is organizing this workshop on February 16 at National Law University in Delhi.

Chinmayi Arun is a speaker and Bhairav Acharya will be speaking at this event.

Timing	Programme
10.00 10.10	Welcome Address Prof. (Dr.) Srikrishna Deva Rao, Registrar & Professor of Law, National Law University, Delhi
10.10 10.15	Introduction to the Project Chinmayi Arun, Research Director, Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University, Delhi
10.15 10.45	Session 1: Introductory Material The Media Landscape, Media & Democracy Lead discussants: Aloke Thakore, Kanamma Raman, Sukumar Muralidharan and Vibodh Parthasarathi Freedom of Expression & Freedom of Press Lead discussants: Arudra Burra, Bhairav Acharya, Manav Kapur and Sukumar Muralidharan
10.45 11.30	Session 2: Media Law The State and the Media (Sedition, Contempt of Court, Parliamentary Privilege and Reporting Court Proceedings) Geeta Seshu, Jawahar Raja, Manav Kapur, Praveen and Sukumar Muralidharan Citizen, Society and the Media (Defamation, Obscenity, Public Order & Communal Harmony and Privacy) Arudra Burra, Bhairav Acharya, Jawahar Raja, Praveen and Saurav Datta
11.30 11.45	Tea
11.45 12.15	Session 3: Media Content & Regulatory Mechanism and Public Service Broadcasting Media Carriage, Pluralism, Ownership & Cross Ownership Lead discussants: Aloke Thakore, Geeta Seshu, Saurav Datta and Vibodh Parthasarathi
12.15 12.45	Session 4: Converged Media, Globalised Media and the Internet Lead discussants: Aloke Thakore, Abhinav Srivastava, Geeta Seshu Kanamma Raman and Sukumar Muralidharan
12.45 13.30	General Feedback about accessibility, structure and other miscellaneous factors

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/workshop-media-law-and-policy-curriculum-development

Analyzing the Latest List of Blocked URLs by Department of Telecommunications (IIPM Edition)

snehashish — 2013-02-17T07:35:25Z

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) in its order dated February 14, 2013 has issued directions to the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block seventy eight URLs. The block order has been issued as a result of a court order. Snehashish Ghosh does a preliminary analysis of the list of websites blocked as per the DoT order.

Medianama has published the DoT order, dated February 14, 2013, on its website.

What has been blocked?

The block order contains seventy eight URLs. Seventy three URLs are related to the Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM). The other five URLs contain the term “highcourt”. The order also contains links from reputed news websites and news blogs including The Indian Express, Firstpost, Outlook, Times of India, Economic Times, Kafila and Caravan Magazine, and satire news websites Faking News and Unreal Times. The order also directs blocking of a public notice issued by the University Grants Commission (UGC).

The block order does not contain links to any social media website. However, some content related to IIPM has been removed but it finds no mention in the block order. Pursuant to which order or direction such content has been removed remains unclear. For example, Google has removed search results for the terms <Fake IIPM> pursuant to Court orders and it carries the following notice:

"In response to a legal request submitted to Google, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read more about the request at ChillingEffects.org."

Are there any mistakes in the order?

The direction issued by the DoT is once again inaccurate and mired with errors. In effect, the DoT has blocked sixty one unique URLs and the block order contains numerous repetitions. By its order the DoT has directed the ISPs to block an entire blog [http://iipmexposed.blogspot.in] along with URLs to various posts in the same blog.

Reasons for Blocking Websites

According to news reports, the main reason for blocking of websites by the DoT is a Court order issued by a Court in Gwalior. The reason for issuing such a block order might have been a court proceeding with respect to defamation and removal of defamatory content thereof. However, the reasons for blocking of domain names containing the term ‘high court’, which is not at all related to the IIPM Court case is unclear. The DoT by its order has also blocked a link in the website of a internet domain registrar which carried advertisement for the domain name [www.highcourt.com].

Are the blocks legitimate?

The block order may have been issued by the DoT under Rule 10 of the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009.

The Court order seems to be an interim injunction in a defamation suit. Generally, Courts exercise utmost caution while granting interim injunction in defamation cases. According to the Bonnard Rule (Bonnard v. Perryman, [1891] 2 Ch 269) in a defamation case, “interim injunction should not be awarded unless a defence of justification by the defendant was certain to fail at trial level.” Moreover, in the case of Woodward and Frasier, Lord Denning noted “that it would be unjust to fetter the freedom of expression, when actually a full trial had not taken place, and that if during trial it is proved that the defendant had defamed the plaintiff, then should they be liable to pay the damages.” The Delhi High Court in Tata Sons Ltd. v. Green Peace International followed the Bonnard Rule and the Lord Denning’s judgements and ruled against the award of interim injunction for removal of defamatory content and stated:

“The Court notes that the rule in Bonnard is as applicable in regulating grant of injunctions in claims against defamation, as it was when the judgment was rendered more than a century ago. This is because the Courts, the world over, have set a great value to free speech and its salutary catalyzing effect on public debate and discussion on issues that concern people at large. The issue, which the defendant’s game seeks to address, is also one of public concern. The Court cannot also sit in value judgment over the medium (of expression) chosen by the defendant since in a democracy, speech can include forms such as caricature, lampoon, mime parody and other manifestations of wit.”

Therefore, it appears that the Court order has moved away from the settled principles of law while awarding an interim injunction for blocking of content related to IIPM. It is also interesting to note that in Green Peace International, the Court also answered the question as to whether there should be different standard for posting or publication of defamatory content on the internet. It was observed by the Court that publication is a comprehensive term, ‘embracing all forms and medium – including the Internet’.

Blocking a Public Notice issued by a Statutory Body of Government of India

The block order mentions a URL which contains a public notice issued by University Grants Commission (UGC) related to the derecognition of IIPM as a University. The blocking of a public notice issued by the statutory body of the Government of India is unprecedented. A public notice issued by a statutory body is a function of the State. It can only be blocked or removed by a writ order issued by the High Court or the Supreme Court and only if it offends the Constitution. However, so far, ISPs such as BSNL have not enforced the blocking of this URL.

Implementation of the order by the ISPs

As pointed out in my previous blog post on blocking of websites, the ISPs have again failed to notify their consumers the reasons for the blocking of the URLs. This lack of transparency in the implementation of the block order has a chilling effect on freedom of speech.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/analyzing-latest-list-of-blocked-urls-by-dot

Why was the Gwalior court in such a hurry to block IIPM URLs?

praskrishna — 2013-02-19T11:51:43Z

Is it really that easy to get courts to block online content as it appears from the latest case of the blocking of 73 URLs related to IIPM? Legally speaking, yes.

The article by Danish Raza was published in FirstPost on February 19, 2013. Snehashish Ghosh's analysis on blocked sites is quoted.

In cases of defamation, violations of copyright and trademark law and threats to national security, courts can direct the government agency (CERT-in or Computer Emergency Response Team- India) to take down the offending content. And these can be ex-parte orders. Meaning the person or organisation posting the content online is not intimated every time the material is blocked.

Legality aside however, advocates of free speech say that such court orders should be exceptions and not the rule. There is a perception that the process in its current form – right from the filing of court case to the content being taken offline- is opaque.

Traditionally the Internet has been viewed as a more liberal, open and democratic platform as compared to traditional media. Through such orders, says Delhi based advocate and expert on cyber law Apar Gupta, courts seem to give out a warning that online content is not outside the purview of the law.

The problem in this case however, is not the ‘warning’ itself. It is the way that the warning is being given that is setting the wrong precedent.

The blocks on IIPM related URLs is based on an interim order passed by a Gwalior court. The head of the institute, Arindam Chaudhuri in an exclusive interview with Firstpost, said that the case was filed last year by one his ‘channel partners’. He added that the court had made him a party in the case only in January and he would soon respond to court orders.

Three of the affected parties (Careers 360, Caravan and Kafila), however, said that they were never informed about the blocks, reported Mint.

After the block orders, Shivam Vij, founder of the blog, Kafila, told Firstpost, “This is against the principle of natural justice. The court blocked the URL of my blog without giving me a chance to defend myself.

While there are occasions warranting the urgent removal of content, experts say similar exigency need not be shown in cases of defamatory content.

In his analysis of blocked URLs related to IIPM, Snehashish Ghosh from the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a Bangalore based organisation, notes that according to the Bonnard Rule, in a defamation case, interim injunction should not be awarded unless a defence of justification by the defendant was certain to fail at trial level. “Therefore, it appears that the (Gwalior) Court order has moved away from the settled principles of law while awarding an interim injunction for blocking of content related to IIPM”, says the report.

Commenting on court ordered blocks, Parminder Jeet Singh, executive director of IT for change, a Bangalore based organisation which works on internet governance issues, says, “When there is clear imminent danger or threat to the society, as in case of possible rioting, immediate removal of content without notifying and hearing the other party is understandable. But defamatory content does not fall in this category. Decisions on such largely civil matter should be taken with due deep consideration, after listening to all parties. And by far the considerations of free speech should have overwhelming weight in making decisions.”

Singh adds that “Even if it is considered necessary to remove any content, a fully transparent process has to be followed.”

The most common reason cited for not sending notices before removing the content is the tiresome process of zeroing in on the one person or authority responsible for posting the content, says Prabir Purkayastha of Knowledge Commons, an organisation which promotes open source information. “If you approach intermediaries such as Google or Yahoo, they will rightly say that they can provide details only if they are allowed to do as per international treaties,” says Purkayastha. But when there is clarity on who put the content online, like in the IIPM case, he says, “DoT cannot absolve itself from the responsibility of writing at least an email to these entities.”

In the case of Tata Sons Ltd. vs Green Peace International, cited by Ghosh of CIS, the Delhi High Court addressed the question whether posting or publishing of libelous material on the Internet calls for a different standard. Ghosh writes, “The court decided that there cannot be a separate standard for the Internet while awarding temporary injunction in defamation cases. The wider viewership or accessibility compared to other medium does not alter the fact that it is a medium.”

Purkayastha agrees. “Freedom of speech and expression and the restraints on it, as enshrined in the constitution, should not depend on the medium of expression. But due to the haste shown by courts in blocking online content, it appears that courts seem be applying two sets of standards with respect to Internet and traditional media,” he says.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/first-post-feb-19-2013-danish-raza-why-was-the-gwalior-court-in-such-a-hurry-to-block-iipm-urls

The Centre for Internet & Society Joins the Global Network Initiative

praskrishna — 2012-04-25T09:13:50Z

The Global Network Initiative (GNI) is pleased to announce its newest member, the Centre for Internet & Society based in Bangalore, India. A technology policy research institute, CIS brings to GNI in-depth expertise on global Internet governance as well as online freedom of expression and privacy in India.

"We are delighted to add our first member based in India and welcome CIS’s engagement in support of transparency and accountability in technology," says GNI Executive Director Susan Morgan. "GNI's Principles for responsible company behavior apply globally, but require an appreciation of unique local contexts if they are to take hold. CIS will provide invaluable insight as we consider opportunities to work with India's burgeoning ICT industry."

"India’s ICT sector is one of the most dynamic worldwide, " says CIS Executive Director Sunil Abraham, "but rapid technological advances have raised anxieties around issues including hate speech, political criticism, and obscene content at a time when Indian institutions for the protection of free expression are under strain. We look forward to working with GNI's member organizations on these challenging issues."

CIS an independent, non-profit, research organization which is involved in research on the emerging field of the Internet and its relationship to the society, CIS brings together scholars, academics, students, programmers and scientists to engage in a large variety of Internet issues. CIS also runs different academic and research programs and is receptive to new ideas and collaborations, projects and campaigns for the public.

Leslie Harris, GNI Board Member and President and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology says: "The addition of CIS not only increases GNI’s global reach, it significantly enhances the initiative’s capacity around shared learning and policy engagement, not just in India, but on internet policy around the world."

Click to read the original published on the Global Network Initiative website.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/cis-joins-gni

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.

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 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 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.

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

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

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

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

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