The Centre for Internet and Society
http://editors.cis-india.org
These are the search results for the query, showing results 31 to 45.
India Blocks Facebook, Twitter, Mass Texts in Response to Unrest
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-pbs-org-aug-28-2012-simon-roughneen-india-blocks-facebook-twitter-mass-texts-in-response-to-unrest
<b>The Indian government has gone on the offensive against Internet giants such as Facebook, Google and Twitter, demanding hundreds of pages be removed or blocked after political unrest erupted in various parts of the country.</b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This post by Simon Roughneen was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2012/08/india-blocks-facebook-twitter-mass-texts-in-response-to-unrest241.html">posted</a> in Media Shift on August 28, 2012. Nishant Shah is quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On August 15, India's independence day, Indian <a href="http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-08-16/news/33232891_1_northeast-strict-action-rumours">northeasterners began fleeing</a> Bangalore, the country's southern IT hub and 5th largest city, after text messages said to threaten Assamese people and other northeasterners were sent around.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Authorities restricted text messages so they could be sent to only five recipients to stop bulk sending, which was followed by a government backlash against social media and news sites; more than 300 pages have been blocked in recent days.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Exodus</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The scene during the exodus was reminiscent of an old newsreel from World War II Europe, or, more aptly, from the separation of India and Pakistan in the late 1940s when around 25 million people took flight amid chaos and bloodshed as the contours of the new states were drawn up after British withdrawal.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On the platform at a Bangalore train station were hundreds of people from Assam state and other areas of India's northeast, a remote part of the country almost 2,000 miles away. The region is mostly surrounded by Bangladesh, Bhutan, China and Burma and is linked to the rest of India only by a narrow strip of land nicknamed the chicken-neck.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In July, <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Assam-remains-tense-2-more-bodies-found/articleshow/15790126.cms">fighting in the northeast's Assam state</a> between local ethnic groups and Muslims -- which some Indians say are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh -- killed 80 people and forced 400,000 more from their homes, most of them Muslims. On August 11, <a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/c7ab28d4-e454-11e1-affe-00144feab49a.html">a march in Mumbai</a> , India's financial capital, ended up in a riot, with two killed and dozens injured, when Muslims there protested attacks on Muslims in the northeast and on Muslim Rohingya in Burma.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The SMS scare in Bangalore came next, but who sent what and why has never been clearly established, though three men were <a href="http://www.indianexpress.com/news/man-held-in-bangalore-sent-messages-to-20-000-probe/991361/">subsequently arrested</a> in Bangalore on suspicion of mass-forwarding threatening text messages.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Nonetheless, the scare, real or hyped, was enough to prompt panic among the 300,000 or so northeasterners who study and work in Bangalore. Interviewees at the city's rail station, waiting for a train to Guwahati in Assam state, a two-and-a-half-day journey, <a href="http://www.simonroughneen.com/asia/south-asia/india-south-asia/thousands-of-indian-northeasterners-flee-bangalore-after-text-message-scare-christian-science-monitor/#more-6511">said they hadn't received or even seen any messages</a>, but the rumor mill went into overdrive and their parents in the northeast urged them to come home, temporarily at least.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A lack of confidence in police, perceived racism against northeasterners -- some of whom appear east or southeast Asian and are sometimes called "chinki" by other Indians -- as well as political discord ahead of elections next year <a href="http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?282077">all contributed</a> to the exodus.</p>
<h2>Government Reacts</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Indian government urged the northeasterners to stay put, as the exodus spread to Pune, Chennai and other large cities in the south and west where northeasterners work. Text messages were limited to five recipients to stop bulk messages spreading fear, a bar later raised to 20 recipients. India has around 750 million cell phone subscribers, the world's second biggest market after China, and the government's nationwide restriction seemed an over-reaction given that the exodus was confined to a few cities.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In a country of 1.2 billion people -- the world's fourth biggest economy measured in purchasing power parity terms -- the government is worried about a recent economic slowdown. Growth is at its lowest since 2003, and foreign investors are complaining out loud about <a href="http://www.simonroughneen.com/business-economics/hows-business-in-india-watch-bangalore-christian-science-monitor/#more-6519">hazy rules and red tape</a>. India feels it needs to nip any political unrest in the bud with foreign investment dropping by 78 percent year-on-year, according to June figures.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Apparently with public order in mind, the Indian government began blocking websites and pages said to contain inflammatory content, even as the exodus slowed.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Nishant Shah of the Bangalore-based <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/">Centre for Internet and Society</a> said that the government is trying to figure out how best to react to the transition from an era when news and information was carried via broadcast and print.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"In the older forms of governance, which were imagined through a broadcast model, the government was at the center of the information wheel, managing and mediating what information reached different parts of the country. In the [peer-to-peer] world, where the government no longer has that control, it is now trying different ways by which it can reinforce its authority and centrality to the information ecosystem. Which means that there is going to be a series of failures and models that don't work," Shah told PBS MediaShift in an email.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Overdoing It?</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">However, for a country that has long styled itself as the world's biggest democracy, and is home to some of the world's biggest selling English language newspapers, the last few days have seen the government take a forceful line against Internet giants such as Google and Facebook that some feel threatens freedom of speech.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The text messages were said to be from some of India's 170 million or so Muslim population, the world's third largest after Indonesia and Pakistan -- and the Indian government at first sought to blame Pakistan for fomenting the exodus by whipping up anger among India's Muslims.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Following the text restrictions, Indian authorities blocked what they describe as "incendiary" and "hate-mongering" content on websites in Pakistan and Bangladesh that they say spurred the northeast fighting -- including images of the 2010 Tibet earthquake passed off as images of Burmese Buddhists after attacking Burmese Muslims -- and asked Google and Facebook to remove the content.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">However, news reports on the exodus, as well as other coverage of Muslim-Buddhist clashes in Burma, were blocked. Among those affected were Doha-based news agency Al-Jazeera and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). And stories on sectarian fighting in Arakan in western Burma -- where Buddhist Arakanese have clashed with Muslim Rohingya, with the flare-up catching the attention of Islamist groups elsewhere, including India -- were blocked in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">ABC <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/abc-hit-as-india-blocks-media/story-e6frg6so-1226457697028">said on Friday</a> content that "in relation to the particular blocked ABC, we are surprised by the action and we stand by the reporting."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">An April 2011 law says that the government must give 48 hours before blocking pages, as well as an explanation for the block in each individual case, though this can be sidestepped in an emergency. "Every company, whether it's an entertainment company, or a construction company, or a social media company, has to operate within the laws of the given country," said Sachin Pilot, minister of state in the Ministry of Communications, speaking about the recent restrictions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There's more to the back-story than just the 2011 IT law, however. Prior to the recent exodus from Bangalore and the government reaction, Google and Facebook were facing charges for allegedly hosting offensive material.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A Google spokesman, speaking by telephone from Singapore about the Indian government's recent blocks, said that the company abides by the law of the land, in India and elsewhere. "We also comply with valid legal requests from authorities wherever possible, consistent with our longstanding policy," he said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">All told, 80 million to 100 million Indians are online, and India has the world's third biggest number of <a href="http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/">Facebook users</a>, at 53 million. But, that just makes up just 4.5 percent of the country's population.</p>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: justify; "><img alt="@PM0India.png" src="http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/assets_c/2012/08/@PM0India-thumb-300x393-5300.png" /><br />Some commentators see the government as oversensitive. For example, using the pushback to put a block on an account parodying the country's prime minister.</td>
<td>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Twitter has 16 million accounts in the country. By Friday, a stand-off between New Delhi and Twitter saw around 20 Twitter handles blocked by Indian ISPs, on the orders of the government, with threats that the government could block Twitter completely.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The hashtag <a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/search/%20%23GOIblocks">#GOIblocks</a> gets about 10-12 tweets per minute -- going by a quick scroll-through -- from users protesting the government's measures. However, caught up in the dragnet so far are accounts with little apparently to do with the Bangalore exodus. The Indian opposition said the blacklist is partisan, while other commentators see the government as oversensitive, using the pushback to put a block on an account (<a href="https://twitter.com/@PM0India">@PM0India</a>) parodying the country's prime minister, for example.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Adding to the irony, though it is not clear whether this was by accident or design -- the Twitter account of <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/social-media/Twitter-apologizes-restores-ministers-account/articleshow/15643487.cms">Milind Deora</a>, the country's minister of state for communications and IT, and a vocal proponent of the recent blocks, was taken down by Twitter for 12 hours before being restored -- along with an apology by Twitter on Saturday.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>This story has been altered to correct the date of India's independence day</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i><a href="http://www.simonroughneen.com/">Simon Roughneen</a></i><i> </i><i>is an Irish journalist usually based in southeast Asia. He writes for the</i><i> </i><i>The Irrawaddy,</i><i> </i><i>Christian Science Monitor</i><i> </i><i>and others. He is on twitter @simonroughneen and you can</i><i> </i><i><a href="https://plus.google.com/106019217146969702755/about">Circle him on Google+</a>.</i></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-pbs-org-aug-28-2012-simon-roughneen-india-blocks-facebook-twitter-mass-texts-in-response-to-unrest'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-pbs-org-aug-28-2012-simon-roughneen-india-blocks-facebook-twitter-mass-texts-in-response-to-unrest</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial mediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-09-03T02:46:42ZNews ItemIndia Bans Mass SMS to Counter Panic
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/blogs-wsj-com-aug-17-2012-shreya-shah-india-bans-mass-sms-to-counter-public
<b>Last year social networking was credited with helping to organize revolutions across the Middle East and with getting normally apathetic middle-class Indians onto the streets to protest corruption.</b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This article by Shreya Shah was <a class="external-link" href="http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/08/17/indian-bans-mass-sms-to-counter-panic/">published</a> in the Wall Street Journal on August 17, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But in recent days, India has seen a darker side of social networking, as doctored videos of Muslims being attacked and text messages warning of retaliation by Muslims went viral in the wake of <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443570904577546271721787692.html?KEYWORDS=assam+riots">riots in the northeastern state of Assam</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The messages have caused panic among thousands of Indians and spurred attacks and clashes in two cities. In an attempt to calm the situation, India banned the ability to send mass text messages on Friday afternoon, the home ministry press office confirmed. The ban will stay in effect for two weeks.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In remarks to Parliament on Friday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, “The unity and integrity of our country is being threatened by certain elements.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The riots in Assam saw clashes between Bodo tribals and Muslim immigrants, beginning in late July, which led to dozens of deaths and displaced tens of thousands of people. On Friday, Abdul Khaleque, press secretary to the chief minister of Assam, told India Real Time that the death toll had risen to 78 as sporadic clashes continued. Of the 400,000 people that had fled their homes, approximately 115,000 had returned home.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As India has struggled this month to bring calm to Assam, flare-ups started taking place in the western city of Pune, while in Bangalore, thousands of northeastern workers began <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/08/16/bangalore-urges-northeastern-workers-to-remain/">fleeing the city</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Mobile phone messages saying that northeasterners had been killed in Bangalore have been circulating since Sunday, said Dilip Kanti, a 24-year-old law student from Mizoram who has lived in the city in the southern state of Karnataka for six years.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“The messages warned that we should leave the city before the day of Eid,” he added. Monday, Aug. 20, is an official holiday for Eid, the festival that marks the end of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Karnataka state government and the police have said that this is a hoax message and that they are investigating the source of these messages.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The messages appear to be intended to panic northeasterners, send large numbers of them back to their home state, and foster fear of Muslims. Those developments could set the stage for sectarian riots, always a concern in a country that has seen such clashes break out frequently.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The home minister has said an inquiry is underway. But so far officials have not shared information about the source of these messages.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Presently, Indian companies that send mass text messages need to register to do so. But there’s no bar on individual users sending mass messages. A<a href="http://www.cnngo.com/mumbai/life/travel-e-ticketing-agencies-exempted-new-sms-caps-953755"> limit of 100 messages</a>per user per day was imposed last year in an attempt to reduce spam and later increased to 200, but this was <a href="http://www.medianama.com/2012/07/223-implications-of-delhi-high-courts-removal-of-the-200-sms-per-day-limit-in-india/">overturned by the courts</a> in July.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Text messages are the “most potent weapon of rumor,” said <a href="http://www.jsgp.edu.in/JSGPFaculty/ShivVisvanathan.aspx">Shiv Visvanathan</a>, a professor at the Jindal School of Government and Public Policy in Haryana. “They can multiply a few thousand times in a minute.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India has been aware of the danger of high-tech rumor-mongering. When the verdict on the contested religious site of the <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/tag/babri-masjid-verdict">Babri Masjid</a> in Uttar Pradesh state was due in 2010, the Indian government temporarily banned the ability to send mass text messages.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But this time, with a new home minister, Sushil Kumar Shinde, who has only been in the job for a little more than two weeks, India was slower to act. It wasn’t till Friday afternoon – after the messages had been circulating for nearly a week – that India banned mass text messaging.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But by Wednesday, students and workers from the northeast who were living in Bangalore, where these messages circulated, were rushing to the train station to head home. On Thursday alone, two special trains were scheduled to take 6,000 people back to Guwahati, the capital of Assam.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Some of them had already experienced personal run-ins with Muslims upset about the riots in Assam. A 21-year-old student from the state of Nagaland, who didn’t want his name used, said that he is “sick of receiving these messages with rumors.” Apart from the messages, he said that he had been threatened twice in Bangalore by Muslims in the last five days but did not want to return to Nagaland and miss classes. His mother, on the other hand, is fearful for his safety and is forcing him to come back. His roommates have already left. “I will stay till Ramadan and if the situation doesn’t get better I will have no option but to leave,” he said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The messages have gained potency from the fact that there have been some attacks on northeasterners in parts of India; these attacks too seem to have been intentionally instigated online.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Videos were doctored to show Muslims being tortured purportedly by ethnic Assamese, Pune police inspector Prasad Hasabnis told India Real Time.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“These incited the youth,” he added.</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-UF266_ismsba_D_20120817073659.jpg" /></th>
<td>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Four students from the northeastern state of Manipur were <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article3765708.ece">attacked in Pune</a> by young Muslim men in three separate incidents in the last week as a result, he said. In <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443537404577583143397317210.html">Mumbai</a>, meanwhile, two people were killed and 65 injured after a protest over the suffering of Muslims in Assam turned violent.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A group called the Bhagat Singh Kranti Sena (Bhagat Singh’s Revolution Army) has been spreading some of the rumors, said Laurence Liang, a researcher with the Alternate Law Forum, a Bangalore-based human rights group that also advocates free speech.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Mr. Liang said the group put up a post on Facebook that remained up until Wednesday. It said that a fatwa has been issued by the Muslims against people from the northeast and provided telephone numbers that didn’t work, he added. The Alternate Law Forum complained about the post to Facebook and it has since been taken down, he said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Technology is a double-edged sword,” says Mr. Liang. A few people use it to “rip up a frenzy of emotion by spreading rumors,” he says. He added that it didn’t help that “people in the United States and the United Kingdom, sitting in the safety of their homes, reply provocatively on social media, unaware of the consequences they unleash.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Of course, some people are trying to use Twitter and Facebook to counter the rumors.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">American Enterprise Institute resident fellow <a href="http://twitter.com/dhume01">Sadanand Dhume</a> tweeted on Friday that a video purporting to show violence in Assam was actually footage from Indonesia.</p>
<p>“I lived in Indonesia so recognized the policeman’s uniform, batik sarong & writing on baseball cap. Must be many more fake videos out there,” he said. (Mr. Dhume is an opinion columnist for The Wall Street Journal in India.)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">And in a message on Facebook, Walter Fernandes, head of the North-Eastern Social Research Centre, said northeastern and Muslim associations were meeting in Bangalore to figure out how to quell the rumors, and that people shouldn’t give in to panic. Muslim leaders have promised to speak about the situation and the need to protect people from the northeast in their sermons, Mr. Fernandes wrote.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Indian government last year attempted to censor social networking site like Facebook, arguing inflammatory content on the site could lead to violence in India. Facebook, Google and several other Internet firms are presently <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304537904577277263704300998.html">on trial in India</a> for failing to remove offensive material from their sites in response to complaints. This month’s developments could help the government make a stronger case for censoring these sites.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But Pranesh Prakash, of the Bangalore-based Center for Internet and Society, says that greater regulation will not solve the problem. What he says is needed are proactive statements by the government and rigorous fact-checking by the media, especially regional news channels.</p>
<p>The only way of “countering rumors is by fact,” he said.</p>
<p><i>– Preetika Rana contributed to this post.</i></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/blogs-wsj-com-aug-17-2012-shreya-shah-india-bans-mass-sms-to-counter-public'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/blogs-wsj-com-aug-17-2012-shreya-shah-india-bans-mass-sms-to-counter-public</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial mediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-08-27T07:29:59ZNews ItemGovernment to hold talks with stakeholders on Internet censorship
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-the-hindu-com-shalini-singh-sep-4-2012-govt-to-hold-talks-with-stakeholders-on-internet-censorship
<b>In an unprecedented move, the government, through the Department of Telecommunications and the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, has agreed to initiate dialogue on Internet censorship with mega Internet companies, social media giants such as Google and Facebook, members of civil society, technical community, media, ISPs and legal experts.</b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This article by Shalini Singh was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article3856121.ece">published</a> in the Hindu on September 4, 2012. Pranesh Prakash's analysis is quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The triggers for the discussion, which will be held on Wednesday, are the riots in Assam, Mumbai and Uttar Pradesh, as well as the mass exodus of north-east Indians from Bangalore, which resulted in bringing the government, civil society organisations and the media to a flashpoint.<br /><br />Two of India’s seniormost officers in the area of Internet censorship, DoT Secretary R. Chandrashekhar and Director General, CERT-IN, Gulshan Rai will engage with a range of stakeholders in a two-hour meeting titled ‘Legitimate Restrictions on Freedom of Online Speech: The need for balance – from Deadlock to Dialogue.’<br /><br />Other panellists include representatives from Google and Facebook; Pranesh Prakash from the Centre for Internet and Society (a civil society group); Prabir Purkayasta, Delhi Science Forum (technical community); Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, president, Foundation for Media Professionals; Rajesh Chharia, president, Internet Service Providers Association of India; and Apar Gupta, an advocate dealing with cyber issues.<br /><br />One analysis by the CIS has shown that 309 specific items, including URLs, Twitter accounts, IMG tags, blog posts and blogs were blocked. Complaints arose when blocking a page resulted in the blocking of an entire website — which has scores or hundreds of web pages. The government maintained that this was necessary as there was a sense of crisis. Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde insisted that the government was “taking strict action only against those accounts or people which are causing damage or spreading rumours.” However, the collateral damage of the move was the Twitter accounts of several people, including journalists like Kanchan Gupta, being blocked.<br /><br />“Mass censorship is like killing a fly with a sledgehammer. Rather than blocking the sites, the government should have used the same media, Facebook, Twitter and Google to counter terrorism and hate speech. I am glad that they are now open to dialogue,” says Mr. Thakurta.<br /><br />“It is an extremely productive move as it will generate awareness among content providers, government and users. In the absence of any dialogue, everyone was just sticking to their own positions without listening to the other stakeholders’ point of view,” says Mr. Chharia.<br /><br />The meeting is to bring several stakeholders in dialogue on a single platform.<br /><br />Nearly 50 other experts from industry, mobile service providers, Internet companies, intermediaries, academia and some international organisations as well as multilaterals are expected to join the conference, which will be held at 2.30 p.m. on September 4 at FICCI.<br /><br />While this is seen as a brave attempt by some, there are an equal number of sceptics who believe that the discussion may not yield the desired result given the national security objectives governing law enforcement agencies on the one hand and the desire of users, media and civil society to preserve free speech on the other. Clearly, ISPs, Internet companies and social media are in a tough spot since they face legal obligations on legitimate orders for blocking on one hand while needing to protect their user privacy and rights to unhindered access to information.<br /><br />If successful, it is possible that this dialogue will ensure that legitimate restrictions do not slide into illegitimate censorship.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-the-hindu-com-shalini-singh-sep-4-2012-govt-to-hold-talks-with-stakeholders-on-internet-censorship'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-the-hindu-com-shalini-singh-sep-4-2012-govt-to-hold-talks-with-stakeholders-on-internet-censorship</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaIT ActSocial mediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-09-04T03:39:32ZNews ItemGovernment asks Twitter to block fake 'PMO India' accounts; site fails to respond
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/articles-economictimes-indiatimes-com-govt-asks-twitter-to-block-fake-pmo-india-accounts-site-fails-to-respond
<b>A standoff between the government and microblogging service Twitter, that has got India's online community up in arms, continues, as Twitter is still to act on India's requests to block some of the fake 'PMO India' accounts. </b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This article was <a class="external-link" href="http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-08-23/news/33342478_1_twitter-parody-accounts-unlawful-content">published</a> in the Economic Times on August 23, 2012. Sunil Abraham is quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India's Minister for Communications and Information Technology <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/topic/Kapil%20Sibal">Kapil Sibal</a> said, "Twitter has not responded to our requests in a satisfactory manner. The fake accounts are still there. The government of India is contemplating what action should be taken against Twitter and this will be announced as soon as we have finalised our response," he said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Sibal further added that the government received a response from the <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/topic/US%20Department%20of%20Justice">US Department of Justice</a>, which also agreed that the content on the sites India sought to ban was inappropriate.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Twitter's operating code allows for parody accounts to be allowed as long as such accounts clearly identify as parody. The accounts in question - including @Indian_pm, @PMOIndiaa, @dryumyumsingh, @PM0India- do so.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Unlike other popular parody accounts of world leaders, though, some of these accounts make no attempt to 'spoof' tweets from the Prime Minister. The user of the @PM0India handle, with over 11 thousand followers, has changed their handle to @thehinduexpress, and tweeted "When I've to parody PM, I'll use the other a/c and RT that. For countering media and <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/topic/Congress">Congress</a>, this ID will be used. To hell with censorship."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">An email by ET to <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/topic/Twitter%20Inc">Twitter Inc</a>, received no response at the time of going to press. However, news agency PTI quoted sources saying that Twitter has communicated to the PMO that it would be locating the "unlawful content". "India is important to us and we would like to have clearer communication in these matters in future," PTI quoted Twitter as saying. Official spokesperson for Indian Prime Minister's Office Pankaj Pachauri confirmed that Twitter is looking into the matter.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Over the past few days, the government has blocked around 300 websites which it blames for spreading rumours that triggered the exodus of people from the North East from several cities. <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/topic/Google">Google</a> and <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/topic/Facebook">Facebook</a> on Tuesday told ET they were working with India in removing content which can incite violence.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img class="gwt-Image" src="http://www.economictimes.indiatimes.com/photo/15610805.cms" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"There is clear evidence that these social networks have caused harm and disruption. However, they need to be clearer about the way they go about blocking sites and other links. The block order contained around 20 accounts and over 80 <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/topic/Youtube">Youtube</a> videos.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It also had several mainstream media reports and a few Pakistani sites," Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bangalore-based <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/topic/Centre%20for%20Internet">Centre for Internet</a> and Society said. Analysts do not rule out the possibility that Twitter itself will be blocked in India if it does not act.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/articles-economictimes-indiatimes-com-govt-asks-twitter-to-block-fake-pmo-india-accounts-site-fails-to-respond'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/articles-economictimes-indiatimes-com-govt-asks-twitter-to-block-fake-pmo-india-accounts-site-fails-to-respond</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial mediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceIntermediary LiabilityCensorship2012-09-04T12:24:52ZNews ItemFill The Gap: Global Discussion on Digital Natives
http://editors.cis-india.org/research/grants/digital-natives-with-a-cause/dntweet
<b>More often than not people don't understand the new practices inspired by Internet and digital technologies. As such a series of accusations have been leveled against the Digital Natives. Educators, policy makers, scholars, and parents have all raised their worries without hearing out from the people they are concerned about. Hivos has initiated an online global discussion about Digital Natives. So, to voice your opinion, start tweeting with us now #DigitalNatives.</b>
<div class="content-view-full">
<div class="class-event">
<div class="pagecontent">
<h2>If you cannot attend Fill The Gap, you can also join us in a global discussion on some of the issues being discussed at #DigitalNatives<br /></h2>
<br />
<p>1.
Are
you an apolitical consumer, or do you have ambitions?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNatives" target="_blank">http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNatives</a></p>
<p>2.
Are
you a little prince or princess, who only wants to talk to like minded people
or are you different?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesPrincess" target="_blank">http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesPrincess</a></p>
<p>3.
Is
Wikipedia your bible or do you really know something?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesWiki" target="_blank">http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesWiki</a></p>
<p>4.
Are
you a digital dinosaur? They say you don’t know anything about ICT!</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalDinosaur" target="_blank">http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalDinosaur</a></p>
<p>5.
Why
use the Internet, why don’t you march the streets?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesProtest" target="_blank">http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesProtest</a></p>
<p>6.
Plans
to change the world? What do you need?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesChanceTheWorld" target="_blank">http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesChanceTheWorld</a></p>
<br />If you are in Amsterdam, here is the information you will need to attend the event:<br />
<h2>Fill the Gap! - 7</h2>
<h3>
R U Online?</h3>
<div class="date">Date: 15 January 2010 </div>
<div class="date">Time: 12.30 until
17.00 hour</div>
<div class="date">Location: Het Sieraad, Postjesweg 1, Amsterdam</div>
<br />
<strong></strong>The seventh edition of Fill the Gap! is all about the power of youth
and IT in developing countries. How can their skills be strengthened
and put to use for a better world? Hivos, apart from cohosting the
event, will be involving digital natives to hear their stories about
ICT and engagement.
<br />
<p>
An Open Space event on the potential of new (mobile) media and youth in
developing countries. For everyone in politics, the profit and the
non-profit sectors who is interested in ICT and international
development cooperation.</p>
<p>
The use of new (mobile) technology is the most natural thing in the world for the youth of today.</p>
<p>
Shaped by the digital era and at ease with creativeity, these
innovators use new media to change the world. Just think of the Twitter
revolution in Iran. What can the international development sector learn
from this? How could international development cooperation use the
potential power of youth to tackle development problems?</p>
<p> The seventh edition of Fill the Gap! is all about the power of
youth and IT in developing countries. How can their skills be
strengthened and put to use for a better world? The kick-off will be
hosted by Jennifer Corriero, co-founder of Taking IT Global: the
international platform for youth and the use of new media for a better
world. Then the floor is open to discuss your own ideas with people
from new media, the business world and the international development
sector during the Open Space sessions. Join in: come to Amsterdam on
Friday January 15th and be inspired during Fill the Gap!<br />
<br /> Registration is free. The programme is in English.</p>
<br /><a href="http://www.fill-the-gap.nl/Fill_the_gap_7?" target="_blank">» Fill the Gap</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/research/grants/digital-natives-with-a-cause/dntweet'>http://editors.cis-india.org/research/grants/digital-natives-with-a-cause/dntweet</a>
</p>
No publishernishantSocial mediaDigital ActivismDigital GovernanceDigital NativesAgencyYouthFeaturedCyberculturesNew PedagogiesDigital subjectivitiesICT2010-01-22T10:54:13ZBlog EntryFacebook's Delicate Dance With Delhi On Censorship
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-forbes-com-mark-bergen-aug-29-2012-facebooks-delicate-dance-with-delhi-on-censorship
<b>At the end of last week, a hashtag briskly rose across India: #Emergency2012. It was a reference to the 21-month stint, beginning in the summer of 1975, when then PM Indira Gandhi determined democracy an inconvenience.</b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Contributed by Mark Bergen, the post was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/markbergen/2012/08/29/facebooks-delicate-dance-with-delhi-on-censorship/">published</a> in Forbes on August 29, 2012. Sunil Abraham is quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This time around, the government launched a jumbled attempt, following ethnic violence in the northeast, to stem rumors behind a panicked exodus. They blocked over 300 sites and axed at least 16 Twitter accounts, including those of <a href="http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-08-23/news/33342537_1_twitter-accounts-twitter-users-block-six-fake-accounts" target="_blank">political opponents and journalists</a>. Many of us found our cell phone texts suddenly, with no announcement, cut off after five missives.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It was hardly the Emergency of 1975. The government’s actions were far less draconian than three decades ago. But, back then, there were no foreign internet companies to complicate matters—and, it seems, absolve the government.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In response to the recent charges, <a href="http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-08-24/internet/33365421_1_twitter-accounts-objectionable-content-twitter-users" target="_blank">Delhi claimed</a> that there was “no censorship at all.” As the communications minister, Kapil Sibal, put it, “Facebook and Google are cooperating with us.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Under the circumstances, shutting down the incendiary hate speech online was warranted, explained Sunil Abraham, the director of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bangalore. The process was just incredibly inept. “There were so many things they did wrong,” he told me when I asked about the government’s response. And the reaction can be tacked onto <a href="http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/05/india-asks-google-facebook-others-to-screen-user-content/" target="_blank">a very recent history</a> of Delhi issuing sweeping, usually empty, threats of censoring U.S. internet companies.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Perhaps the Indian government has wasted, frittered a way goodwill,” Abraham continued. “It has cried ‘wolf’ so many times that this time the internet intermediaries are not taking them as seriously as they should.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">His group <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/analysing-blocked-sites-riots-communalism" target="_blank">analyzed the sites</a> shut down last week, pointing out the “numerous mistakes and inconsistencies that make blocking pointless and ineffectual.” It’s clear that the censorship was also opportunistic—used to stamp out political parody Twitter accounts—and counterproductive. Among the sites blocked was a Pakistani blog debunking the rumors behind the whole exodus episode.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Abraham criticized the government for coming to the intermediaries with broad demands first, rather than directly to Twitter, Facebook and Google. That approach, coupled with earlier censorship demands, may strain the trust between the ruling coalition and the web giants.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Still, Facebook has every reason to keep Delhi happy. This year, the number of users in India <a href="http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-08-05/social-media/29854245_1_advertisers-and-developers-social-networking-number-of-internet-users" target="_blank">hit 32 million</a>—a 85 percent jump from the last. The total is expected to nearly double next year, leap-frogging Indonesia for the title of second largest market. An overwhelming chunk of that growth will come from mobile users. As this solid report from <a href="http://forbesindia.com/article/special/facebooktoo-much-hype-too-little-substance/33106/1#ixzz24kFQXSMH" target="_blank"><i>Forbes India</i></a> shows, the company is still struggling here, as it is in the U.S., to turn those new users into ad revenue:</p>
<p class="callout" style="text-align: justify; ">Indian businesses spent Rs 2,850 crore on digital advertising as of March 2012, a number that’s expected to grow to Rs 4,391 crore next year, according to a report by the Internet Mobile Association of India/Indian Market Research Bureau (IAMAI/IMRB).<br /><br />…But Facebook has not been able to capture much of this share. Mahesh Murthy reckons that businesses spent about Rs 150 crore on Facebook marketing, but only a third went to Facebook’s own kitties in the form of ad revenues. The rest went to social media marketing firms which handle Facebook accounts.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">That’s not to say that the company will discontinue its aggressive efforts. It likely will not be deterred by policies that attack free speech—Zuckerberg’s empire has long been accused of <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/markbergen/2012/08/29/facebooks-delicate-dance-with-delhi-on-censorship/techcrunch.com/2007/11/22/is-facebook-really-censoring-search-when-it-suits-them/" target="_blank">complacency with censorship</a>. It’s India’s<a href="http://www.indianexpress.com/news/facebook-google-face-heat-on-india-tax/958603/" target="_blank">infamously unpredictable tax policies</a> toward foreign entities that would conceivably slow the company’s expansion.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There’s little reason to suspect, then, that Facebook, Google and the western web behemoths will not continue to cooperate with Delhi moving forward. And much of that cooperation should come not as blatant censorship but covert surveillance. According to the <a href="http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/map/" target="_blank">Google Transparency Report</a>, India has made over 2,000 data requests and 100 removal requests, third only to the States and Brazil. As the mobile revolution soars, that number will surely rise.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On Monday evening, Christopher Soghoian, a D.C.-based privacy analyst, spoke at the CIS before a crowd of young Indian law students and activists. Despite the shoddy security default of internet firms, he said, they can impose limits on government surveillance. “When these companies receive requests from where they don’t have an office,” he claimed, “they refuse.” Two years ago, Facebook India opened its first office in Hyderabad.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Soghoian advised his audience to push for privacy and transparency standards in India. He shared the story of the long-fought <a href="http://mashable.com/2011/01/27/facebook-https/" target="_blank">battle for encryption protection</a> with Facebook in the U.S. Yet, he admitted that security provisions can falter when a government is bent on policing the internet—and a company is bent on cooperation. “If you can force companies to hand over the keys,” he said, “then encryption is useless.”</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-forbes-com-mark-bergen-aug-29-2012-facebooks-delicate-dance-with-delhi-on-censorship'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-forbes-com-mark-bergen-aug-29-2012-facebooks-delicate-dance-with-delhi-on-censorship</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial mediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-09-03T04:39:45ZNews ItemDigital Native
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/indian-express-december-22-2013-nishant-shah-digital-native
<b>The end of the year is supposed to be a happy, feel-good space for families, friends, societies and communities to come together and count our blessings. It is the time to look at things that have gone by and look forward to what the New Year will bring.</b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;">The article was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.indianexpress.com/news/digital-native/1210347/0">originally published in the Indian Express</a> on December 22, 2013.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;">And yet, when I started writing this piece, my horizons seemed to be eclipsed by the amount of violence we have witnessed in the last year, and the inability of our governance systems to deal with them.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Around this time last year, the nation had woken up to the horrors a young woman suffered as a group of men raped her in a moving bus in Delhi. The inhumanity of the crime, her tragic death, and the fact that despite our collective anger and grief, the year has been dotted with violence of a gendered and sexual nature, should be enough to quell any celebrations. What happened to her and then to many other reported and invisible survivors of sexual violence in the country has seen a dramatic transformation of the digital public sphere.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Spurred by anger, frustration and the realisation that we are often the agents of change, people have taken to the streets and the information highway in unprecedented forms. Every reported incident of sexual violence — from the young intern who was molested by a former Supreme Court judge to the now infamous Tehelka case — sparked great ire on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and collaborative user-generated content sites. Hashtags have trended, videos have gone viral. Men and women have bonded together to speak against the increasingly unsafe spaces we seem to inhabit.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Responding to this public demonstration and outrage, we have seen some positive developments from the governments and judiciary systems which are morally, legally and constitutionally bound to look after us. And yet, we are quickly realising that much of this is not enough. While the law takes its course and tries to craft and enforce more efficient regulation to prevent and protect victims of such violent crimes, we have despaired at how it doesn't seem to change things materially.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The digital spaces that we have used to fight, to protest and to call for action, are also where we have shared the frustration at how little material reality has changed. Hashtags on Twitter have gone through life cycles of anger, protest and despair, as the complex structures of archaic laws, slow judiciary processes, prejudiced judges, and a populist politics which is often superficial, take their toll on processes to establish justice, equality and freedom for our societies.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As tweets and Facebook updates have now clearly told us, through testimonies and witness accounts, these questions cannot be understood in isolation. The social media has consistently reminded us that the December 16 gang rape was not just about one woman. It was about the misogynist societies that we are constructing and the fundamental flaws in systems which encourage the idea that men have ownership of the bodies and lives of women in our country. Across the year, through campaigns by online intervention groups like the Blank Noise Project or through note-card viral memes like "I need feminism" have emphasised the need to acknowledge these not as "women's problems" or "exceptional" problems. These are problems that need to be understood in the larger context of human rights, and our rights to life, dignity, equality and freedom enshrined in our Constitution.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">And yet, as another year comes to an end, the social media is ablaze at a decision that has marked one of the darkest days in recent judicial history. On December 11, the Supreme Court of India repealed the landmark historical judgement issued by the Delhi High Court that read down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code that criminalises same-sex relationships. Finding this in defiance of our constitutional rights, the well-weighed judgment was celebrated across social media — nationally and globally — for its recognition that the problem of discrimination is never just about one demography or section of the society. As the LGBTQ communities stood in shock, there was something else that happened on social media.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">For once, the comments of disbelief, anger and surprise turned into a roar for correcting such a verdict. And it is not only the LGBTQ identified people and activists who are joining this clamour. Straight people, people with families, families with LGBTQ children, are all coming out and finding a common bond of solidarity that works around hashtags and viral sharing of messages. The world of social media has shown how we have learned, that we cannot leave the underprivileged to fight for themselves. Because, if we ignore the discrimination against them, we will have nobody to support us when we are being treated as sub-human and irrelevant in a country that has often done poetic interpretations of what constitutional rights mean.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">I started writing this piece with despair. But I slowly realise that maybe there is something to be thankful about this year. That even when our archaic systems of justice are catching up with the accelerated transformations in our lives, the social media does act as a public space where those bound together in their belief for equality and justice can act in solidarity. On Twitter, this fateful day, everybody was queer. And they did not have to identify themselves as men or women, straight, gay or lesbian. Despite our bodies, our differences, our status and practices, we can claim to fight for those whose voices, bodies, lives and loves are being negated in our country. And if you cannot take to the streets to make your support felt, remember that the digital public sphere is active and buzzing. Those in power have no choice but to take into account the collective voice on the internet, which demands and shall build open, fair and equal societies.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/indian-express-december-22-2013-nishant-shah-digital-native'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/indian-express-december-22-2013-nishant-shah-digital-native</a>
</p>
No publishernishantSocial mediaWeb PoliticsResearchers at WorkDigital Natives2015-04-17T10:40:02ZBlog EntryDigital AlterNatives with a Cause?
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/dnbook
<b>Hivos and the Centre for Internet and Society have consolidated their three year knowledge inquiry into the field of youth, technology and change in a four book collective “Digital AlterNatives with a cause?”. This collaboratively produced collective, edited by Nishant Shah and Fieke Jansen, asks critical and pertinent questions about theory and practice around 'digital revolutions' in a post MENA (Middle East - North Africa) world. It works with multiple vocabularies and frameworks and produces dialogues and conversations between digital natives, academic and research scholars, practitioners, development agencies and corporate structures to examine the nature and practice of digital natives in emerging contexts from the Global South. </b>
<p></p>
<p><strong>I</strong><strong>ntroduction</strong></p>
<p>In the 21<sup>st</sup>
Century, we have witnessed the simultaneous growth of internet and digital
technologies on the one hand, and political protests and mobilisation on the
other. Processes of interpersonal relationships, social communication, economic
expansion, political protocols and governmental mediation are undergoing a
significant transition, across in the world, in developed and emerging
Information and Knowledge societies.</p>
<p>The young
are often seen as forerunners of these changes because of the pervasive and
persistent presence of digital and online technologies in their lives. The “
Digital Natives with a Cause?” is a research inquiry that uncovers the ways in
which young people in emerging ICT contexts make strategic use of technologies
to bring about change in their immediate environments. Ranging from personal
stories of transformation to efforts at collective change, it aims to identify
knowledge gaps that existing scholarship, practice and popular discourse around
an increasing usage, adoption and integration of digital technologies in
processes of social and political change.</p>
<p><strong>Methodology</strong></p>
<p>In 2010-11,
three workshops in Taiwan, South Africa and Chile, brought together around 80
people who identified themselves as Digital Natives from Asia, Africa and Latin
America, to explore certain key questions that could provide new insight into
Digital Natives research, policy and practice. The workshops were accompanied
by a ‘Thinkathon’ – a multi-stakeholder summit that initiated conversations
between Digital Natives, academic researchers, scholars, practitioners,
educators, policy makers and corporate representatives to share learnings on
new questions: Is one born digital or does one become a Digital Native? How do
we understand our relationship with the idea of a Digital Native? How do
Digital Natives redefine ‘change’ and how do they see themselves implementing
it? What is the role that technologies play in defining civic action and social
movements? What are the relationships
that these technology based identities and practices have with existing social
movements and political legacies? How do we build new frameworks of sustainable
citizen action outside of institutionalisation?</p>
<strong>
</strong>
<p><strong>Rationale</strong></p>
<p>One of the
knowledge gaps that this book tries to address is the lack of digital natives’
voices in the discourse around them. In the occasions that they are a part of
the discourse, they are generally represented by other actors who define the
frameworks and decide the issues which are important. Hence, more often than
not, most books around digital natives concentrate on similar sounding areas
and topics, which might not always resonate with the concerns that digital
natives and other stake-holders might be engaged with in their material and
discursive practice. The methodology of the workshops was designed keeping this
in mind. Instead of asking the digital natives to give their opinion or recount
a story about what we felt was important, we began by listening to their
articulations about what was at stake for them as e-agents of change. As a
result, the usual topics like piracy, privacy, cyber-bullying, sexting etc.
which automatically map digital natives discourse, are conspicuously absent
from this book. Their absence is not deliberate, but more symptomatic of how
these themes that we presumed as important were not of immediate concerns to
most of the participants in the workshop who are contributing to the book<strong>.</strong></p>
<strong>
</strong>
<p><strong>Structure</strong></p>
<p>The
conversations, research inquiries, reflections, discussions, interviews, and
art practices are consolidated in this four part book which deviates from the
mainstream imagination of the young people involved in processes of change. The
alternative positions, defined by geo-politics, gender, sexuality, class,
education, language, etc. find articulations from people who have been engaged
in the practice and discourse of technology mediated change. Each part
concentrates on one particular theme that helps bring coherence to a wide
spectrum of style and content.</p>
<p><strong>Book 1: To Be: Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? Download <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/dnbook1/at_download/file" class="external-link">here</a></strong></p>
<strong>
</strong>
<p>The first
part, <em>To Be</em>, looks at the questions
of digital native identities. Are digital natives the same everywhere? What
does it mean to call a certain population ‘Digital Natives”? Can we also look
at people who are on the fringes – Digital Outcasts, for example? Is it
possible to imagine technology-change relationships not only through questions
of access and usage but also through personal investments and transformations?
The contributions help chart the history, explain the contemporary and give ideas
about what the future of technology mediated identities is going to be.</p>
<strong>Book 2: To Think: Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? Download <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/dnbook2/at_download/file" class="external-link">here</a></strong><strong>
</strong>
<p>In the
second section, <em>To Think,</em> the
contributors engage with new frameworks of understanding the processes,
logistics, politics and mechanics of digital natives and causes. Giving fresh
perspectives which draw from digital aesthetics, digital natives’ everyday
practices, and their own research into the design and mechanics of technology
mediated change, the contributors help us re-think the concepts, processes and
structures that we have taken for granted. They also nuance the ways in which
new frameworks to think about youth, technology and change can be evolved and
how they provide new ways of sustaining digital natives and their causes.</p>
<p><strong>Book 3: To Act: Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? Download <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/dnbook3/at_download/file" class="external-link">here</a></strong></p>
<p><em>To Act</em> is the third part that concentrates on stories
from the ground. While it is important to conceptually engage with digital
natives, it is also, necessary to connect it with the real life practices that
are reshaping the world. Case-studies, reflections and experiences of people
engaged in processes of change, provide a rich empirical data set which is
further analysed to look at what it means to be a digital native in emerging
information and technology contexts.</p>
<strong>
</strong>
<p><strong>Book 4: To Connect : Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? Download <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/dnbook4/at_download/file" class="external-link">here</a></strong></p>
<p>The last
section, <em>To Connect</em>, recognises the
fact that digital natives do not operate in vacuum. It might be valuable to
maintain the distinction between digital natives and immigrants, but this
distinction does not mean that there are no relationships between them as
actors of change. The section focuses on the digital native ecosystem to look
at the complex assemblage of relationships that support and are amplified by
these new processes of technologised change.</p>
<p>We see this
book as entering into a dialogue with the growing discourse and practice in the
field of youth, technology and change. The ambition is to look at the digital
(alter)natives as located in the Global South and the potentials for social
change and political participation that is embedded in their interactions
through and with digital and internet technologies. We hope that the book
furthers the idea of a context-based digital native identity and practice,
which challenges the otherwise universalist understanding that seems to be the
popular operative right now. We see this as the beginning of a knowledge
inquiry, rather than an end, and hope that the contributions in the book will
incite new discussions, invoke cross-sectorial and disciplinary debates, and
consolidate knowledges about digital (alter)natives and how they work in the
present to change our futures<strong>.</strong></p>
<p><strong><a class="external-link" href="https://www.surveymonkey.com/MyAccount_Login.aspx">Click here</a> to order your copy. We invite readers to contribute reviews of an essay they found particularly interesting. Contact us: nishant@cis-india.org and fjansen@hivos.nl if you want more information, resources, or dialogues</strong></p>
<p>Nishant
Shah</p>
<p>Fieke
Jansen</p>
<p><strong>For media coverage and book reviews,</strong> <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/media-coverage" class="external-link">read here</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/dnbook'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/dnbook</a>
</p>
No publishernishantSocial mediaDigital ActivismRAW PublicationsCampaignDigital NativesAgencyBlank Noise ProjectFeaturedCyberculturesFacebookPublicationsBeyond the DigitalDigital subjectivitiesBooksResearchers at Work2015-04-10T09:22:29ZBlog EntryDetails emerge on government blockade of websites
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-the-hindu-com-aug-24-2012-details-emerge-on-govt-blockade-of-websites
<b>Facebook pages, Twitter handles among 300 unique web addresses blocked by ISPs.</b>
<hr />
<p>Pranesh Prakash's analysis is quoted in this article <a class="external-link" href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article3812819.ece">published</a> in the Hindu on August 24, 2012.</p>
<hr />
<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; "><span>Over the past week, the Ministry of Communications and IT has sent out orders to ISPs (Internet service providers) to block over 300 unique addresses on the Web, cracking down on websites, Facebook pages, YouTube videos and even Twitter handles, ostensibly to prevent incitement to communal tension and rioting.</span></p>
<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; "><span>But a closer look at the specific URLs (web addresses) blocked by the government has given rise to doubts whether the government may have acted high-handedly, in some instances cracking down on parody Twitter handles.</span></p>
<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; "><span>Through four orders, one issued a day from August 18 to 21, the government sent out lists of specific URLs to be blocked by the Internet service providers.</span></p>
<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; "><span>An analysis of the leaked government orders by blogger Pranesh Prakash of the Center for Internet and Society (www.cis-india.org) revealed the extent of the government missive: in specific cases, it had asked for blocking of some portions of a website — like Facebook pages or Twitter handles — and in other instances asked for entire websites.</span></p>
<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; "><span>The government orders carried no specific reasons for the blockades. But in the backdrop of the paranoia surrounding the exodus of northeast people from South Indian cities, it appears that it may have been to disallow the use of the Web for spreading information that incites communal violence and rioting.</span></p>
<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; "><span>Cyber law expert N. Vijayashankar said though the government seemed to have acted within the Rules of IT Act 2008, the onus fell on it to justify the reasons why the specific websites were blocked and dispel doubts that there may have been some political motives at least pertaining to specific sites, especially in the blocking of some parody Twitter accounts spoofing the official Twitter account of the Prime Minister’s office (@PMOIndia).</span></p>
<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; "><span>“No website can be blocked permanently. Any blocked website must be taken up for review by a committee in a span of two months,” Mr. Vijayashankar added. “But sadly the review committee does not have any public representatives. It comprises only the secretaries to government.”</span></p>
<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; "><span>If the websites had indeed been blocked considering the emergency of the situation and keeping in mind national security, then the responsibility for preparing the list falls with the Home Ministry.</span></p>
<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; "><span>“Whatever be the case, this cannot pave the way for clamping down on websites at one swipe,” Mr. Vijayashankar added.</span></p>
<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; "><span>The news about the clampdown set the social networks abuzz through Thursday. Popular humour Twitter account holder Ramesh Srivats tweeted: “Am slightly worried that some government guy will notice that all the offending sites have “http” in them, and then go ban that.”</span></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-the-hindu-com-aug-24-2012-details-emerge-on-govt-blockade-of-websites'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-the-hindu-com-aug-24-2012-details-emerge-on-govt-blockade-of-websites</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaIT ActSocial mediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-08-28T09:51:01ZNews ItemCriticism mounts over India censorship
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-ft-com-aug-24-2012-james-crabtree-tim-bradshaw-criticism-mounts-over-india-censorship
<b>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.</b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Following <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/80a70142-e7a1-11e1-86bf-00144feab49a.html" title="Thousands flee Bangalore over fear of persecution - FT.com">panicked scenes among groups from the nation’s troubled north-east</a> and fearing an escalation of urban violence between Muslim and Hindu groups, the administration this week instructed internet companies, including Facebook and <a href="http://markets.ft.com/tearsheets/performance.asp?s=us:GOOG">Google</a>, to block more than 300 web pages and more than a dozen Twitter accounts it claimed were inflaming communal tensions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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”.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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 <i>The Satanic Verses </i>and restricting derogatory portrayals of religious figures in Bollywood movies.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“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.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The online restrictions followed related measures <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/91446d40-eb94-11e1-b8b7-00144feab49a.html" title="Indian mobiles go quiet amid SMS curbs - FT.com">restricting to five the number of text messages</a> that could be sent from most Indian mobile phones, although this was lifted to 20 on Thursday.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“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.”</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-ft-com-aug-24-2012-james-crabtree-tim-bradshaw-criticism-mounts-over-india-censorship'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-ft-com-aug-24-2012-james-crabtree-tim-bradshaw-criticism-mounts-over-india-censorship</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial mediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-08-27T06:38:51ZNews ItemChina's Generation Y : Youth and Technology in Shanghai
http://editors.cis-india.org/research/grants/the-promise-of-invisibility-technology-and-the-city/GenerationY
<b>Within the context of internet technologies in China, Nishant Shah, drawing from his seven month research in Shanghai, looks at the first embodiment of these technologies in the urbanising city. In this post, he gives a brief overview of the public and academic discourse around youth-technology usage of China's Generation Y digital natives. He draws the techno-narratives of euphoria and despair to show how technology studies has reduced technology to tools and usage and hence even the proponents of internet technologies, often do a disservice to the technology itself. He poses questions about the politics, mechanics and aesthetics of technology and offers the premise upon which structures of reading resistance can be built. The post ends with a preview of the three stories that are to appear next in the series, to see how youth engagement and cultural production can be read as having the potentials for social transformation and political participation for the Digital Natives in China.</b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/research/grants/the-promise-of-invisibility-technology-and-the-city/GenerationY'>http://editors.cis-india.org/research/grants/the-promise-of-invisibility-technology-and-the-city/GenerationY</a>
</p>
No publishernishantCyberspaceSocial mediaShanghaiCyborgsCyberculturesDigital Natives2009-09-21T14:09:16ZBlog EntryCensorship makes India fall two places on global internet freedom chart
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/dna-india-sep-27-2012-dilnaz-boga-censorship-makes-india-fall-two-places-on-global-internet-freedom-chart
<b>A recently released global report on the internet freedom rated India 39th in 2012, a slip from two places last year.</b>
<hr />
<p>The article by Dilnaz Boga was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_censorship-makes-india-fall-two-places-on-global-internet-freedom-chart_1745778">published</a> in DNA on September 27, 2012.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The report titled, Freedom on the net 2012 (FOTN): A global assessment of internet and digital media by Freedom House, a Washington-based monitoring group conducted a comprehensive study of internet freedom in 47 countries.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Quoting Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, the report said 309 specific items (URLs, Twitter accounts, img tags, blog posts, blogs, and a handful of websites) have been blocked by the government. But officially, the government has admitted to blocking 245 web pages for inflammatory content hosting of provocative content.<br /><br />Ketan Tanna, India analyst for Freedom House told DNA, “A reflection of the downward spiral in the freedom on the net that Indians enjoy is evident in the upward revision of scores for India in the FOTN 2012 report. India was one of the only 4 of the 20 countries that “recently experienced declines” and are democracies. The other three are Mexico, Turkey and South Korea.”<br /><br />Internet usage in India continues to increase, with tens of millions of new users getting online each year. According to the International Telecommunications Union, internet penetration was 10% — or about 120 million people at the end of 2011. Among internet users, 90 million were ‘active,’ accessing it at least once a month (70 million urban and 20 million rural).<br /><br />The report has mentioned that in India, “amid several court cases regarding intermediaries’ responsibility for hosting illegal content, much evidence has surfaced that intermediaries are taking down content without fully evaluating or challenging the legality of the request”.<br /><br />Citing an example, Tanna said in December 2011, the website Cartoons against Corruption was suspended by its hosting company after a complaint filed with the Mumbai police alleged that the site’s cartoons ridiculed parliament and national emblems. “As a result of such dynamics, large swaths of online content are disappearing, and the losses are far more difficult to reverse than the mere blocking of a website,” he added.<br /><br />More common than website blocking is the removal of content based on judicial orders, government directives, and citizen complaints. This phenomenon that has increased in recent years and in some cases, targeted content on political, social, and religious topics, the report said.<br /><br />The Indian authorities had submitted 68 removal requests covering 358 items between January and June 2011. According to Google, 255 items related to what it categorised as “government criticism,” while 39 involved defamation and 8 pertained to hate speech.<br /><br />In January, responding to a freedom of information request, the home ministry reported that the government orders 7,500 to 9,000 phone interceptions per month, the report disclosed. Criticising this practice and the government’s disregard for the Constitution, the data revealed, “Established guidelines regulate the ability of state officials to intercept communications, but India lacks an appropriate legal framework and procedures to ensure proper oversight of Intelligence agencies’ growing surveillance and interception capabilities, opening the possibility of misuse and unconstitutional invasion of citizens’ privacy.”<br /><br />As another method of controlling speech and activism online, governments have imposed temporary shutdowns of the internet or mobile phone networks during protests or other sensitive times. Localised internet shutdowns and mobile phone shutdowns occurred in India due to security concerns, the report said.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/dna-india-sep-27-2012-dilnaz-boga-censorship-makes-india-fall-two-places-on-global-internet-freedom-chart'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/dna-india-sep-27-2012-dilnaz-boga-censorship-makes-india-fall-two-places-on-global-internet-freedom-chart</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial mediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-09-27T10:37:47ZNews ItemBlocked websites: Where India flawed
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-ciol-com-aug-23-2012-blocked-websites
<b>Apart from not giving 48 hours response time, the Indian government has blocked some websites which don't exist or don't have web addresses, says an analyst.</b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Published in <a class="external-link" href="http://www.ciol.com/News/News-Reports/Blocked-websites-Where-India-flawed/165165/0/">CIOL</a> on August 23, 2012. Pranesh Prakash's analysis is quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India is threatening to block Twitter as the latter has allegedly failed to respond to the government's order to remove some inflammatory posts.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">That has come to light as it is being widely covered in media, but there are hundreds of websites which have already been shut, apparently without due notice to the owners.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Apart from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts, the blocked websites include which are sympathetic to Hindu and Muslim radical groups.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In an <a href="http://www.ciol.com/News/News-Reports/Blocked-websites-Where-India-flawed/165165/0/%28http:/cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/analysing-blocked-sites-riots-communalism%29" shape="rect" target="_self">analysis of 309 websites</a> blocked in the wake of exodus of North eastern people from Bangalore, Pranesh Prakash of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), says the government has blocked these sites under the Information Technology Act, but it failed to provide the mandatory 48 hours to respond (under Rule 8 of the Information Technology Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public, Rules 2009).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">He writes in his post: "The persons and intermediaries hosting the content should have been notified. Even if the emergency provision (Rule 9) was used, the block issued on August 18, 2012, should have been introduced before the "Committee for Examination of Request" by August 20, 2012 (within 48 hours), and that committee should have notified the persons and intermediaries hosting the content.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Internet censorship is acceptable as long as it is in the purview of the law and doesn't encroach one's freedom. In this case, some people and posts debunking rumours have been blocked, says Pranesh.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">He points to some discrepancies in the way the websites are blocked:</p>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Some of the items are not even web addresses (e.g., a few HTML img tags were included). Some of the items they have tried to block do not even exist (e.g., one of the Wikipedia URLs).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">An entire domain was blocked on Sunday, and a single post on that domain was blocked on Monday.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">For some YouTube videos, the 'base' URL of YouTube videos is blocked, but for other the URL with various parameters (like the "&related=" parameter) is blocked. That means that even nominally 'blocked' videos will be freely accessible.</li>
</ol>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">He concludes: "All in all, it is clear that the list was not compiled with sufficient care."</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-ciol-com-aug-23-2012-blocked-websites'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-ciol-com-aug-23-2012-blocked-websites</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaIT ActSocial mediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-08-27T03:00:16ZNews ItemAnalyzing the Latest List of Blocked Sites (Communalism and Rioting Edition) Part II
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/analyzing-the-latest-list-of-blocked-sites-communalism-and-rioting-edition-part-ii
<b>Snehashish Ghosh does a further analysis of the leaked list of the websites blocked by the Indian Government from August 18, 2012 till August 21, 2012 (“leaked list”). </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Unnecessary Blocks and Mistakes:</b></p>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">http://hinduexistance.files.wordpress.com/..., which appears on the leaked list, does not exist because the URL is incorrect. However, the correct URL does contain an image which, in my opinion, can be considered to be capable of inciting violence. It has not been blocked due to a spelling error in the order. Instead of blocking hinduexist<b><i>e</i></b>nce.wordpress.com/... the DoT has ordered the blocking of hinduexist<b><i>a</i></b>nce.wordpress.com/..., which does not exist.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Two URLs in the block order are from the website of the High Council for Human Rights, Judiciary of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The reason for blocking these two links from this particular website is unclear.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The website of the Union of NGOs of the Islamic World was blocked. Again, the reason for blocking this website remains unclear.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">URLs such as, http://farazahmed.com/..., mumblingminion.blogspot.com, were blocked. The content on these URLs was in fact debunking the fake photographs.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Certain blocked Facebook pages did not have any bearing on the North East exodus which was the main reason behind the blocks. For example, Facebook link leading to United States Institute for Peace page was blocked.</li>
</ol>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b> </b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Duration of the Block</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) did not specify the period for which the block has been implemented in its orders. As a result of which certain URLs still remain blocked while a majority of the links in the leaked list can be accessed. Lack of clear directions from the DoT has resulted in haphazard blocking and certain internet service providers (ISPs) have lifted the block on certain links whereas some other ISPs have continued with a complete block.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b> </b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>How have the intermediaries reacted to the block orders?</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Going by the leaked list of websites blocked by DoT, it issued the block orders to ‘all internet service licensees’. Intermediaries that do not fall in the category of 'internet service licensees’ were also sent a separate set of requests for taking down third party content. However, it is unclear under which provision of the law such request was made by the Government.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Internet Service Licensees</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/chart_1.png" alt="Implementation of the order at the ISP level" class="image-inline" title="Implementation of the order at the ISP level" /><br /></b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The internet service licensee or the ISPs have not followed any uniform system to notify that a particular URL or website in the leaked list is blocked according to DoT’s orders. The lack of transparency in the implementation of the block orders, have a chilling effect on free speech.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For instance, BSNL returns the following messages:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"This website/URL has been blocked until further notice either pursuant to Court orders or on the Directions issued by the Department of Telecommunications" or “This site has been blocked as per instructions from Department of Telecom (DOT).”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">However, these messages are not uniform across all the URLs/websites in the leaked list. BSNL does not generate any response for the majority of the URLs in the leaked list. This results in ‘invisible censorship’ as the person who is trying to access the blocked URL does not have any means to know whether a particular URL is unavailable or certain sites are blocked by government orders.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Lack of notification does not only infringes upon the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression but also violates the fundamental right to a constitutional remedy guaranteed under Article 32 of our Constitution. The person aggrieved by such block orders cannot approach the Court for a remedy because there is no means to figure out:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">(a) Description of the content blocked?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">(b) Who has issued the block order/request?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">(c) Under which provision of the law such block order/request has been issued?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">(d) Who has implemented the block order/request? and</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">(e) What was the reason for the block?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The intermediaries should provide with the above notification details while implementing a block order issued by the Government. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Intermediaries hosting third party content: </b></p>
<p align="right" style="text-align: justify; ">More than 100 out of the 309 blocks are Facebook (http and https) URLs. Facebook has not informed its users about the reasons behind unavailability of certain pages or content. This is another instance of invisible censorship. However, YouTube, a Google service, has maintained certain level of transparency, and informs the user that the content has been blocked as per ‘government removal request’. It is interesting to note that certain YouTube user accounts were terminated as well. It is unclear whether this was as a result of the block order. Furthermore, links associated with blogger.com, which is another service provided by Google, have been removed.</p>
<hr />
<p align="right" style="text-align: justify; ">This was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.medianama.com/2012/09/223-analyzing-the-latest-list-of-blocked-sites-communalism-rioting-edition-part-ii/">re-posted</a> by Medianama on September 26, 2012.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/analyzing-the-latest-list-of-blocked-sites-communalism-and-rioting-edition-part-ii'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/analyzing-the-latest-list-of-blocked-sites-communalism-and-rioting-edition-part-ii</a>
</p>
No publishersnehashishIT ActSocial mediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceIntermediary LiabilitySocial Networking2012-09-27T10:42:30ZBlog EntryAnalysing Latest List of Blocked Sites (Communalism & Rioting Edition)
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/analysing-blocked-sites-riots-communalism
<b>Pranesh Prakash does preliminary analysis on a leaked list of the websites blocked from August 18, 2012 till August 21, 2012 by the Indian government.</b>
<hr />
<p><b>Note</b>: This post will be updated as more analysis is done. Last update: 23:59 on August 22, 2012. This is being shared under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence</a>.</p>
<hr />
<img src="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/oimg?key=0AqefbzxbW_b_dE5rTG9XbkRab0cxWFdoOEgyN01YcWc&oid=1&zx=dskyfic7thzd" />
<hr />
<h2><b>How many items have been blocked?</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There are a total of 309 specific items (those being URLs, Twitter accounts, img tags, blog posts, blogs, and a handful of websites) that have been blocked. This number is meaningless at one level, given that it doesn't differentiate between the blocking of an entire website (with dozens or hundreds of web pages) from the blocking of a single webpage. However, given that very few websites have been blocked at the domain-level, that number is still reasonably useful.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Please also note, we currently only have information related to what telecom companies and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) were asked to block till August 21, 2012. We do not have information on what individual web services have been asked to remove. That might take the total count much higher.</p>
<h2><b>Why have these been blocked?</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As far as I could determine, all of the blocked items have content (mostly videos and images have been targeted, but also some writings) that are related to communal issues and rioting. (Please note: I am not calling the content itself "communal" or "incitement to rioting", just that the content relates to communal issues and rioting.) This has been done in the context of the recent riots in Assam, Mumbai, UP, and the mass movement of people from Bangalore.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There were reports of parody Twitter accounts having been blocked. Preliminary analysis on the basis of available data show that parody Twitter accounts and satire sites have <i>not</i> been targetted solely for being satirical. For instance, very popular parody Twitter accounts, such as @DrYumYumSingh are not on any of the four orders circulated by the Department of Telecom. (I have no information on whether such parody accounts are being taken up directly with Twitter or not: just that they aren't being blocked at the ISP-level. Media reports indicate <a href="http://goo.gl/GI9jP">six accounts have been taken up with Twitter</a> for being similar to the Prime Minister's Office's account.)</p>
<h2><b>Are the blocks legitimate?</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The goodness of the government's intentions seem, quite clearly in my estimation, to be unquestionable. Yet, even with the best intentions, there might be procedural illegalities and over-censorship.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There are circumstances in which freedom of speech and expression may legitimately be limited. The circumstances that existed in Bangalore could justifiably result in legitimate limitations on freedom of speech. For instance, I believe that temporary curbs — such as temporarily limiting SMSes & MMSes to a maximum of five each fifteen minutes for a period of two days — would have been helpful.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">However it is unclear whether the government has exercised its powers responsibly in this circumstance. The blocking of many of the items on that list are legally questionable and morally indefensible, even while a some of the items ought, in my estimation, to be removed.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">If the government has blocked these sites under s.69A of the Information Technology Act ("Power to Issue Directions for Blocking for Public Access of Any Information through any Computer Resource"), the persons and intermediaries hosting the content should have been notified provided 48 hours to respond (under Rule 8 of the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules 2009). Even if the emergency provision (Rule 9) was used, the block issued on August 18, 2012, should have been introduced before the "Committee for Examination of Request" by August 20, 2012 (i.e., within 48 hours), and that committee should have notified the persons and intermediaries hosting the content.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Importantly, even though many of the items on that list are repugnant and do deserve (in my opinion) to be removed, ordering ISPs to block them is largely ineffectual. The people and companies hosting the material should have been asked to remove it, instead of ordering Internet service providers (ISPs) to block them. All larger sites have clear content removal policies, and encouraging communal tensions and hate speech generally wouldn't be tolerated. That this can be done without resort to the dreadful Intermediary Guidelines Rules (which were passed last year) shows that those Rules are unnecessary. It is our belief that <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/constitutional-analysis-of-intermediaries-guidelines-rules">those Rules are also unconstitutional</a>.</p>
<h2><b>Are there any egregious mistakes?</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Yes, there are numerous such examples of egregious mistakes.</p>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Most importantly, some even <b>people and posts debunking rumours have been blocked</b>.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Some of the Twitter accounts are of prominent people who write for the mainstream media, and who have written similar content offline. If their online content is being complained about, their offline content should be complained about too.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Quite a number of the links include articles published and reports broadcast in the mainstream media (including a Times Now report, a Telegraph picture gallery, etc.), and in print, making the blocks suspect. Only the online content seems to have been targeted for censorship.</li>
</ol>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There are numerous mistakes and inconsistencies that make blocking pointless and ineffectual.</p>
<ol>
<li>Some of the items are not even web addresses (e.g., a few HTML img tags were included).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Some of the items they have tried to block do not even exist (e.g., one of the Wikipedia URLs).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">An entire domain was blocked on Sunday, and a single post on that domain was blocked on Monday.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">For some Facebook pages, the secure version (https://facebook.com/...) is listed, for others the non-secure version (http://facebook.com/...) is listed.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">For some YouTube videos, the 'base' URL of YouTube videos is blocked, but for other the URL with various parameters (like the "&related=" parameter) is blocked. That means that even nominally 'blocked' videos will be freely accessible.</li>
</ol>
<p>All in all, it is clear that the list was not compiled with sufficient care.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Despite a clear warning by the DIT that "above URLs only" should be blocked, and not "the main websites like www.facebook.com, www.youtube.com, www.twitter.com, etc.", it has been seen that some ISPs (like Airtel) <a href="http://www.labnol.org/india/india-blocks-youtube/25028/">have gone overboard in their blocking</a>.</p>
<h2><b>Why haven't you put up the whole list?</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Given the sensitivity of the issue, we felt it would be premature to share the whole list. However, we strongly believe that transparency should be an integral part of all censorship. Hence, this analysis is an attempt to provide some much-needed transparency. We intend to make the entire list public soon, though. (Given how porous such information is, it is likely that someone else will procure the list, and release it sooner than us.)</p>
<h2><b>Why can I still access many items that are supposed to be blocked?</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">One must keep in mind that fresh orders have been issued on a day-by-day basis, that there are numerous mistakes in the list making it difficult to apply (some of these mistakes have been mentioned above), and the fact that that this order has to be implemented by hundreds of ISPs.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Your ISP probably has not have got around to enforcing the blocks yet. At the time of this writing, most ISPs don't seem to be blocking yet. This analysis is based on the orders sent around to ISPs, and not on the basis of actual testing of how many of these have actually been blocked by Airtel, BSNL, Tata, etc.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Additionally, if you are using Twitter through a client (on your desktop, mobile, etc.) instead of the web interface, you will not notice any of the Twitter-related blocks.</p>
<h2><b>So you are fine with censorship?</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">No. I believe that in some cases, the government has the legal authority to censor. Yet, exercising that legal authority is usually not productive, and in fact there are other, better ways of limiting the harms caused by speech and information than censorship. Limiting speech might even prove harmful in situations like these, if it ends up restricting people's ability to debunk false rumours. In a separate blog post (to be put up soon), I am examining how all of the government's responses have been flawed both legally and from the perspective of achieving the desired end.</p>
<h2><b>So what should the government have done?</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Given that the majority of the information it is targeting is on Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter, the government could have chosen to fight <i>alongside</i> those services to get content removed expeditiously, rather than fight <i>against</i> them. (There are <a href="http://www.firstpost.com/videos/govt-to-use-social-media-to-prevent-misuse-of-technology-sibal-426231.html">some indications</a> that the government might be working with these services, but it certainly isn't doing enough.)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For instance, it could have asked all of them to expedite their complaints mechanism for a few days, by ensuring that the complaints mechanism is run 24x7 and that they respond quickly to any complaint submitted about communal incitement, spreading of panic, etc. This does not need the passing of an order under any law, but requires good public relations skills and a desire not to treat internet services as enemies. The government could have encouraged regular users to flag false rumours and hate speech on these sites. On such occasions, social networking sites should step up and provide all lawful assistance that the government may require. They should also be more communicative in terms of the help they are providing to the government to curtail panic-inducing rumours and hate speech. (Such measures should largely be reactive, not proactive, to ensure legitimate speech doesn't get curtailed.)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The best antidote for the rumours that spread far and wide and caused a mass movement of people from Bangalore to the North-Eastern states would have been clear debunking of those rumours. Mass outreach to people in the North-East (very often the worried parents) and in Bangalore using SMSes and social media, debunking the very specific allegations and rumours that were floating around, would have been welcome. However, almost no government officials actually used social media platforms to reach out to people to debunk false information and reassure them. Even a Canadian interning in our organization got a reassuring SMS from the Canadian government.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is indeed a pity that the government <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/resources/citizen-engagement-framework-for-e-governance-projects-and-framework-and-guidelines-for-use-of-social-media-by-government-agencies">notified a social media engagement policy today</a>, when the need for it was so very apparent all of the past week.</p>
<h2><b>And what of all this talk of cybersecurity failure and cyber-wars?</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Cybersecurity is indeed a cause of concern for India, but only charlatans and the ignorant would make any connection between India's cybersecurity and recent events. The role of Pakistan deserves a few words. Not many Pakistani websites / webpages have been blocked by the Indian government. Two of the Pakistani webpages that have been blocked are actually pages that debunk the fake images that have been doing the rounds in Pakistan for at least the past month. Even Indian websites <a href="http://kafila.org">like Kafila</a> have noted these fake images long ago, and <a href="http://kafila.org/2012/08/05/national-contestation-not-religion-responsible-for-the-plight-of-myanmars-rohingyas-ayesha-siddiqa/">Ayesha Siddiqa wrote about this on August 5, 2012</a>, and <a href="http://kafila.org/2012/08/13/how-to-start-a-riot-out-of-facebook-yousuf-saeed/">Yousuf Saeed wrote about it on August 13, 2012</a>. Even while material that may have been uploaded from Pakistan, it seems highly unlikely they were targeted at an Indian audience, rather than a Pakistani or global one.</p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>Domain</th><th>Total Number of Entries</th><th>Tuesday, August 21, 2012</th><th>Monday, August 20, 2012</th><th>Sunday, August 19, 2012</th><th>Saturday, August 18, 2012</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>ABC.net.au</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>AlJazeera.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>4</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">4</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>AllVoices.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>WN.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><b>AtjehCyber.net</b></td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>BDCBurma.org</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Bhaskar.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Blogspot.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>4</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">3</td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Blogspot.in</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>7</b></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">3</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">3</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Catholic.org</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>CentreRight.in</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>2</b></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">2</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>ColumnPK.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Defence.pk</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>4</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">2</td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
</tr>
<tr style="text-align: right; ">
<td style="text-align: left; ">EthioMuslimsMedia.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td>1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Facebook.com (HTTP)</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>75</b></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">36</td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">7</td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">18</td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">14</td>
</tr>
<tr style="text-align: right; ">
<td style="text-align: left; ">Facebook.com (HTTPS)</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>27</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td>3</td>
<td>23</td>
<td>1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Farazahmed.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>5</b></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">4</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Firstpost.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>2</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>HaindavaKerelam.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>HiddenHarmonies.org</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td>1</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><b>HinduJagruti.org</b></td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>2</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Hotklix.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>HumanRights-Iran.ir</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>2</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Intichat.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Irrawady.org</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>IslamabadTimesOnline.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Issuu.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><b>JafriaNews.com</b></td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>JihadWatch.org</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>2</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">2</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>KavkazCenter</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>MwmJawan.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>My.Opera.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Njuice.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>OnIslam.net</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>PakAlertPress.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Plus.Google.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>4</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">4</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Reddit.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Rina.in</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>SandeepWeb.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>SEAYouthSaySo.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Sheikyermami.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>StormFront.org</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Telegraph.co.uk</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>TheDailyNewsEgypt.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>TheFaultLines.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>ThePetitionSite.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><b>TheUnity.org</b></td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>TimesofIndia.Indiatimes.com <br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>TimesOfUmmah.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Tribune.com.pk</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Twitter.com (HTTP)</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Twitter.com (HTTPS)</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>11</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">10</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Twitter account</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>18</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">16</td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">2</td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>TwoCircles.net</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>2</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">2</td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Typepad.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Vidiov.info</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Wikipedia.org</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>3</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">3</td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr style="text-align: right; ">
<td style="text-align: left; ">Wordpress.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>8</b></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td>3</td>
<td>2</td>
<td>2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>YouTube.com</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>85</b></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">18</td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">39</td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">14</td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">14</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>YouTu.be</td>
<td style="text-align: right; "><b>1</b></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: right; ">1</td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Totals</th><th style="text-align: right; ">309</th><th style="text-align: right; ">65</th><th style="text-align: right; ">88</th><th style="text-align: right; ">80</th><th style="text-align: right; ">75</th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>The analysis has been cross-posted/quoted in the following places:</p>
<ol>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://www.livemint.com/2012/09/04231942/Need-a-standard-strategy-to-de.html">LiveMint</a> (September 4, 2012)</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-the-hindu-aug-26-v-sridhar-regulating-the-internet-by-fiat" class="external-link">The Hindu</a> (August 26, 2012)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/08/25/opinion-indias-clumsy-twitter-gamble/">Wall Street Journal</a> (August 25, 2012)</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/news/tech2-in-com-som-isps-block-wordpress-domain-across-india" class="external-link">tech 2</a> (August 25, 2012)</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-china-post-aug-24-2012-india-threatens-action-against-twitter-for-ethnic-violence-rumors" class="external-link">China Post</a> (August 25, 2012)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article3812819.ece">The Hindu</a> (August 24, 2012)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://www.livemint.com/2012/08/23210529/How-ISPs-block-websites-and-wh.html?atype=tp">LiveMint</a> (August 24, 2012)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/08/24/india-strong-reactions-to-social-media-censorship/">Global Voices</a> (August 24, 2012)</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/news/in-reuters-com-david-lalmalsawma-aug-24-2012-indias-social-media-crackdown-reveals-clumsy-govt-machinery" class="external-link">Reuters</a> (August 24, 2012)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/PZN75N">Outlook</a> (August 23, 2012)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://www.firstpost.com/tech/epic-fail-how-india-compiled-its-banned-list-of-websites-427522.html">FirstPost.India</a> (August 23, 2012) </li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://ibnlive.in.com/news/haphazard-censorship-leaked-list-of-blocked-sites/284592-11.html">IBN Live</a> (August 23, 2012)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://newsclick.in/india/analysing-latest-list-blocked-sites-communalism-rioting-edition">News Click</a> (August 23, 2012)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://www.medianama.com/2012/08/223-india-internet-blocks/">Medianama</a> (August 23, 2012)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://kafila.org/2012/08/23/an-analysis-of-the-latest-round-of-internet-censorship-in-india-communalism-and-rioting-edition-pranesh-prakash/">KAFILA</a> (August 23, 2012)</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-ciol-com-aug-23-2012-blocked-websites" class="external-link">CIOL</a> (August 23, 2012)</li>
</ol>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/analysing-blocked-sites-riots-communalism'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/analysing-blocked-sites-riots-communalism</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshIT ActSocial mediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionInternet GovernanceFeaturedCensorship2012-09-06T11:52:47ZBlog Entry