The Centre for Internet and Society
http://editors.cis-india.org
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India: obscene pics of gods require massive human censorship of Google, Facebook
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/obsecene-pics-of-gods-require-massive-human-censorship
<b>It's hardly the sort of Internet policy statement one hopes to hear from judges in major democracies. "Like China, we can block all such websites [who don't comply]," Justice Suresh Cait told Facebook and Google lawyers in India yesterday. "But let us not go to that situation." </b>
<p>No, let's not. But it's what the government wants if Internet companies won't start screening and censoring all user-generated material on social network and user-generated content sites. And they'd better do their screening by hand, not with machines.</p>
<p>The New York Times <a class="external-link" href="http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/05/india-asks-google-facebook-others-to-screen-user-content/">reported last December</a> that India's Telecommunications and Human Resources Development Minister, Kapil Sibal, has been battling hard with Internet companies on pre-emptive screening and censorship.</p>
<p>About six weeks ago, Mr. Sibal called legal representatives from the top Internet service providers and Facebook into his New Delhi office, said one of the executives who was briefed on the meeting.<br /><br />At the meeting, Mr. Sibal showed attendees a Facebook page that maligned the Congress Party’s president, Sonia Gandhi. “This is unacceptable,” he told attendees, the executive said, and he asked them to find a way to monitor what is posted on their sites.<br /><br />In the second meeting with the same executives in late November, Mr. Sibal told them that he expected them to use human beings to screen content, not technology, the executive said.</p>
<p>The Internet companies insist that they can't possibly pre-screen everything that goes up. If something truly is illegal under local laws, they are generally willing to take it down when a court rules.</p>
<p>The main concern is obscenity (though criticism of government officials appears to touch a sore spot, too); in the current case against Facebook, Google, and others, the obscenity involves pictures of <a class="external-link" href="http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/google-facebook-fight-case-over-obscene-material-online-165813">gods, goddesses, and Mohammed</a>.</p>
<p>"At present it's obscene images of Gods and Goddesses, tomorrow it can be an image of someone in your family posted online. There has to be some control," Justice Cait said at yesterday's hearing. He allowed the case against the Internet companies to proceed.<br /><br />Who's pressing for the court case? A journalist. NDTV has a <a class="external-link" href="http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/news/why-ive-taken-google-facebook-to-court/221000">new interview</a> with him, in which the man presses for quick action. (Note: the actual interview portion is not in English.)</p>
<h3>Can we censor dissent while we're at it? </h3>
<p>Between January and June 2011, India requested that Google <a class="external-link" href="http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/governmentrequests/IN/?p=2011-06&t=CONTENT_REMOVAL_REQUEST">remove 358 bits of content</a> by filing 68 different complaints. One was from Google Maps (for "national security"); almost every other was from YouTube, social network Orkut, and Google's Blogger platform. Almost none came with a court order.</p>
<p>"We received requests from state and local law enforcement agencies to remove YouTube videos that displayed protests against social leaders or used offensive language in reference to religious leaders," Google explained.<br /><br />"We declined the majority of these requests and only locally restricted videos that appeared to violate local laws prohibiting speech that could incite enmity between communities. In addition, we received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove 236 communities and profiles from Orkut that were critical of a local politician. We did not comply with this request."<br /><br />This is hardly an inspiring track record. While in public the companies are criticized for obscenity, Google's most recent records show only 3 requests to remove pornographic material. Government criticism and defamation were actually the two largest categories of requested material.</p>
<p>As the Financial Times <a class="external-link" href="http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2012/01/13/india-internet-clean-up-or-censorship/#axzz1jMVt0nc2">"beyondbrics" blog notes</a>, the Internet companies are coming under increasing attack for content they host, despite the vagueness of the demands for censorship. For instance, "Last month, a lower court had ordered the sites to remove all 'anti-social' or 'anti-religious' content by February 6. As Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet & Society, told beyondbrics last month, it’s difficult to establish exactly what is anti-religious: for example, the Hindu profession of belief in multiple gods is blasphemous to Muslims, Christians and Jews."</p>
<p><em>Photograph by Diganta Talukdar</em></p>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/india-obscene-pics-of-gods-require-massive-human-censorship-of-google-facebook.ars">The blog post by Nate Anderson was published in ars technica on 14 January 2012</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/obsecene-pics-of-gods-require-massive-human-censorship'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/obsecene-pics-of-gods-require-massive-human-censorship</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet Governance2012-01-17T09:46:25ZNews ItemIndia’s Internet Curbs Under Legal Cloud
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/wsj-com-aug-25-2012-rumman-ahmed-r-jai-krishna-indias-internet-curbs-under-legal-cloud
<b>India’s crackdown on the Internet has caused much debate. But was it legal?</b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This article by Rumman Ahmed and R Jai Krishna was <a class="external-link" href="http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/08/25/indias-internet-curbs-under-legal-cloud/">published</a> in Wall Street Journal on August 25, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India’s government says its moves this week to block websites, Twitter accounts and news portals was necessary to reduce simmering tensions over ethnic violence in the northeast of the country.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Authorities have far-reaching powers to do just that, laid down in rules framed in April 2011 under the country’s controversial new IT law.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But those <a href="http://deity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/downloads/itact2000/Itrules301009.pdf">rules state</a> authorities must give companies 48 hours notice before blocking Web pages. In cases of emergency, New Delhi can block first and inform a special government committee within 48 hours. That committee must notify the blocked sites.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Many of the sites that India blocked or sought to block, including Twitter accounts of anti-government commentators and mainstream news organizations, say they were given no forewarning of the actions and weren’t contacted afterwards, either.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Indian news website Firstpost.com and Kanchan Gupta, a newspaper columnist who is critical of the government, were among those who faced blocks. Mr. Gupta and First Post Editor-in-Chief R. Jagannathan both said they were not contacted by the government either before or after the blocks.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Home Ministry this week provided lists of around 300 web pages, including Twitter accounts and news stories, to the Ministry of Communications and IT, which then ordered Internet Service Providers to block them.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Kuldeep Dhatwalia, a Home Ministry spokesman, confirmed the lists. The government, he said, was not bound to give notice in an emergency situation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The government’s reading of the IT law is unlikely to win it any friends among those who say the government is curtailing Internet freedoms.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“It seems the government is yet to have a well planned strategy in place to counter threats to public security and law and order events arising out of viral distribution of malicious content via social media networks,” said Anirban Banerjee, an associate vice president at CyberMedia Research, a New Delhi-based information technology research firm.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India’s government has defended its conduct by saying the blocked Web pages and Twitter handles were inciting communal hatred amid recent violence between Muslims and northeasterners in the state of Assam that has cost almost 80 lives.</p>
<p>The government says some off the sites hosted fake pictures purporting to show violence against Muslims in Assam. In fact, many of these pictures showed Muslim refugees from Myanmar, authorities say.</p>
<p>“We are only taking strict action against those accounts or people which are causing damage or spreading rumors. We are not taking action against other accounts, be it on Facebook, Twitter or even SMSes. There is no censorship at all,” the Home Ministry said in a statement Friday.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“We decided on taking action because there were pictures of Myanmar etc. online, which were disturbing the atmosphere here in India.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Critics, though, say the government also targeted Twitter accounts that were critical of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, giving a political tinge to the censorship.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Some commentators said the government asked Internet Service Providers to block sites without invoking any laws.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“The four orders that were sent to the ISPs don’t say under which section or under what power these orders are being sent,” said Pranesh Prakash, a lawyer and program manager at the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“They were sent without invoking any statute or without invoking any law. The orders just say that those on the list would have to be blocked immediately. It doesn’t say these have be decided by whom, under what provision or what law,” Mr. Prakash added.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">One telecom operator said on condition of anonymity that the government has not sent any new lists since Aug. 21. Google Inc and Facebook Inc. say they are working with the government to take down offensive content. Twitter Inc. has not commented.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The latest clampdown comes as public-interest groups are pressing the government to scrap the latest Web censorship laws. Critics say the rules not only limit free speech but also expose Internet companies to unfair liability for material posted by Web users.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“In the 21st century, you cannot censor your way to public tranquility,” said Mishi Choudhary, lawyer and director of international practice at New York-based Software Freedom Law Center.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/wsj-com-aug-25-2012-rumman-ahmed-r-jai-krishna-indias-internet-curbs-under-legal-cloud'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/wsj-com-aug-25-2012-rumman-ahmed-r-jai-krishna-indias-internet-curbs-under-legal-cloud</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-08-26T05:48:12ZNews ItemIndia’s ethnic clashes intensify within social-media maelstrom
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-the-globe-and-mail-stephanie-nolen-august-23-2012-indias-ethnic-clashes-intensify-within-social-media-maelstrom
<b>It began in mid-July: First came a series of retaliatory killings between ethnic communities in the state of Assam in mid-July. Soon nearly 500,000 people had fled their homes for grim refugee camps. The central government belatedly sent in troops to assist, although that has barely quieted matters. But in the meantime, the violence in remote Assam triggered a bizarre series of knock-on events that has affected the entire country.</b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Published in the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/indias-ethnic-clashes-spiral-into-deadly-game-of-telephone/article4496392/?cmpid=rss1">Globe and Mail</a>. Sunil Abraham is quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p>First a Mumbai demonstration in support of Muslims in Assam turned violent, leaving two people dead. Then tens of thousands of people from the northeast who lived and worked in big cities in the south of India packed up and fled back home – terrorized by Facebook, Twitter and text messages threatening them with violence in “retaliation” for what was happening in the north. The Indian government accused Pakistani agents of producing the threatening material to destabilize India. Then India went on a web crackdown, ostensibly trying to shut off the social media causing the panic – but setting off a fierce debate about censorship in the process.</p>
<p><b>Violence in the northeast</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The seven states in the Indian northeast are connected to the rest of the country by only a tiny strip of land and often seem to exist in a whole other country. Several states have ongoing ethnic conflicts, and are covered by a law giving the Indian armed forces central powers, sharply criticized by human rights organizations. But the rest of the country knows little and, it often seems, cares less about these disputes.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">So it was, initially, with the violence in Assam: in mid-July, killings began in the west of the state that has seen historic conflict between people in the Bodo ethnic group, which makes up about 35 per cent of the state population, and Bengali-speaking Muslims who migrated to the region, in some cases generations ago, from farther south – they are about 29 per cent of people in the state. The fight, said Sanjoy Hazarika, who directs the Centre for North East Studies at Jamia Millia University in Delhi, is over access to resources, and land. Simply put, the Bodo, who hold political power in the state, won’t share the resources they receive from New Delhi, which angers other groups, while the Bodo, who fear their status as the dominant group is ebbing, are desperate to hold on to power. Over the course of two weeks, some 79 people were killed, often gruesomely; at least 14,000 homes were burnt and people from both sides of the fight fled to refugee camps in one of the largest movements of people in the region since partition in 1947.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Mr. Hazarika noted that the dispute had existed as warm embers to a long-running demand for a separate Bodo state: “When governments don’t get at the core of issues and when [they] leave things half-baked and unresolved these things fester.” Some 190,000 people were still living in camps left over from riots in the 1990s, he said. “Governments come and go and are incapable of sending people home in safety.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Right-wing Hindu organizations in the country including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the official opposition, blamed the trouble on illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Mr. Hazarika rejected the idea. “Of course there are Bangladeshis coming in but nothing on the scale they are propagating – it’s a mantra to divert attention from the real core issues of natural resources, political power and just economic distribution of central funds.” Because the central government has failed to respond except by sending troops, he added, there is real danger these sporadic clashes could become a wider armed conflict.</p>
<p><b>Repercussions in the south</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The first sign that this episode of violence in the northeast was going to have an impact outside the region came when a demonstration in Mumbai on Aug. 11, organized in support of Muslim victims of alleged atrocities, became violent. Two people were killed and at least 14 were seriously injured. Some protesters said they had been shown images taken from the Internet of Muslim victims in the northeast, which inflamed the crowd.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Days later, the exodus began: thousands of people of northeastern origin who had migrated for work to the more prosperous big cities of the south, such as Bangalore and Pune, suddenly began to flood into train stations, desperate to flee. They said they had received text messages warning them to go or face violent reprisal for what had been done to Muslims in Assam. But it wasn’t just Assamese who were fleeing: people from Manipur and the other five states went too, because Indians from the rest of the country rarely distinguish between the northeast states and they all felt afraid.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In vain, the Prime Minister and other major political figures pleaded with them to stay put and stay in their jobs. Nitin Pai, an expert on social media with a think tank called the Takshashila Institution, said it was the first time India saw what it means to be what he calls a “radically networked” country – more than three-quarters of Indians have cellphones and can receive text messages. Far fewer have Internet access – but one person who sees a Facebook page or Twitter post can quickly text 50 others, he noted. “When people are connected in such a fashion it’s very easy to mobilize them quickly, and mobilization is much faster than counter-mobilization. In Bangalore, by the time people in authority came to know there was a rumour and people were packing their bags, they were too late – by then 5,000 people were at the train station.” The government response needed to go up a hierarchy and across ministries – and meanwhile the text messages were flying.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It was also, said Mr. Pai, indicative of how little faith people had in government’s ability to protect them, and, Mr. Hazarika said, illustrated the deep distrust people from the northeast have for the central government</p>
<p><b>Internet crackdown</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As the government began to dig in to the cause of the panic, the story became increasingly bizarre. Almost none of the images that were ostensibly outraging Muslims in the rest of India, and potentially spurring them to acts of vicious revenge, were actually of Assam. The much-circulated Facebook images were Photoshopped (often badly) pictures of atrocities allegedly carried out against Muslims in Burma several years ago or entirely unrelated pictures (such as those of Buddhist monks helping earthquake victims in Tibet) purporting to be from Assam. But the media consumers in question were not sophisticated, Mr. Pai noted, and the irrationality was lost in the mass panic.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On Aug. 19, Indian Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said that government intelligence agencies had determined that the posts were originating in Pakistan, and that he had asked his Pakistani counterparts to track down and stop those responsible. Pakistan denied responsibility. Relations between the two countries, which had been thawing perceptibly, suddenly became chilly once more.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">To try to stanch the exodus to the northeast, the Indian government first banned the sending of bulk text messages and then began to try to block Internet sites that hosted offensive material. But this undertaking fast became fraught: for the past three years the Indian government has battled in court with big Internet companies, such as Facebook and Google, and its own citizens over efforts at censorship. The government has been engaged in a prolonged skirmish with the companies to try to force them to screen and remove “objectionable” material.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But up until now, that material has been satirical Twitter handles and Facebook groups that mock senior members of government or the ruling Indian National Congress. “Now for a change, the government has legitimate grounds to censor speech,” said Sunil Abraham, director of the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, “but they’ve cried wolf on so many occasions before.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Nevertheless, the companies concerned have engaged the government on the issue, acknowledged that the material in question is causing harm and disrupting public order, and appear to be co-operating in its removal. The government has listed 310 items – Twitter feeds, Facebook pages, URLs – for blocking. But, Mr. Abraham noted, instead of doing that directly with the firms, it is using the much slower and more erratic approach of relying on Internet Service Providers or ISPs to do it.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Mr. Abraham said he fears what may come next: that government will see this incident as reason – or use it as a pretext – to attempt to get an even tighter hold over the Internet. “Then we’re headed for big trouble.”</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-the-globe-and-mail-stephanie-nolen-august-23-2012-indias-ethnic-clashes-intensify-within-social-media-maelstrom'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-the-globe-and-mail-stephanie-nolen-august-23-2012-indias-ethnic-clashes-intensify-within-social-media-maelstrom</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-08-24T12:25:47ZNews ItemIndia's Techies Angered Over Internet Censorship Plan
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/techies-angered-over-censorship
<b>India has the world's largest democracy, and one of the most rambunctious. Millions of its young people are cutting edge when it comes to high-tech. Yet the country is still very conservative by Western standards, and a government minister recently said that offensive material on the web should be removed.</b>
<p>The way it was reported in India, Communications Minister Kapil Sibal started the whole row by assembling the heads of social networking sites at a meeting in his office in New Delhi.</p>
<p>At the time, he was reported to have asked companies, like Google and Facebook, to devise a system to filter through and edit out objectionable material before it could make its way online.</p>
<p>In an interview with the Indian cable channel CNN-IBN, Sibal pointed to
offensive religious content that could cause ethnic or inter-communal
conflict.</p>
<p>"We will defend any citizens' right to freedom of speech until our last
breath. But we don't want this kind of content to be on the social
media," Sibal said in the interview.</p>
<p>India's civil society, and more particularly its very active blogosphere, was outraged.</p>
<p>Pranesh Prakash from the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore
says even the suggestion of censorship is a dangerous idea. Particularly
if it's done before the content is posted online.</p>
<div class="pullquote"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/sibal.jpg/image_preview" alt="sibal" class="image-inline image-inline" title="sibal" />Indian Telecommunications Minister Kapil Sibal has said that Internet
giants such as Facebook and Google have ignored his demands screen
derogatory material from their sites, so the government would have to take action on its own.</div>
<p>"Pre-censorship is a very dangerous idea and is also something that actually doesn't happen in countries that are known for censoring the internet," Prakash says. "It will be charting a new path in Internet censorship."</p>
<p>Prakash says the proposal would be impractical, as well as undemocratic. Even with an army of censors, it would impossible to filter through content before it's uploaded, he says.</p>
<p>Stung by the criticism, Kapil Sibal now says he was misunderstood and that it "would be madness" to ask for pre-screening of content on electronic media and social media.</p>
<p>But in that fateful meeting, the Communications Minister also reportedly objected to unflattering portrayals of India's political leaders on the Internet and in Twitter messages. And that idea reinforced concerns that the government was overreaching and muffling dissent.</p>
<p>Censoring hate speech is one thing, but leaving it to the likes of Google to monitor political speech is problematic, says Apar Gupta, an Internet lawyer in New Delhi.</p>
<p>"It may offend you today, it may not cater to your taste, but at the end of the day: is it legal?" says Gupta. "The new proposals are quite a dramatic change, not only in terms of enforcement, but also in terms of what kind of speech it will prohibit."</p>
<p>Up till now, there has been some legal room for the government to censor inflammatory speech. For example, movies in India are subjected to a government censor board that monitors their content before they can be released to the general public. This year, a controversial movie about India's social caste system, was banned in some parts of the country.</p>
<p>But the Internet is less restrictive, says Apar Gupta.</p>
<p>"You can voice your opinion without any social sanctions for your opinions," he says. "So it's been a pressure valve which has allowed a lot of people to let off steam."</p>
<p>But even so, when debate online boils over in India it's the website or search engine that's held responsible. So critics of the proposed restrictions don't see the need for further action.</p>
<p>All this has left Communications Minister Kapil Sibal as something of a hate figure among Internet-savvy Indians. Although he says he's going to be pressing for tighter controls, he has agreed to meet with the Internet companies again.</p>
<p>This article by Elliot Hannon was published in NPR on 20 December 2011. Read the original <a class="external-link" href="http://www.npr.org/2011/12/12/143600310/indias-techies-angered-over-internet-censorship-plan">here</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/techies-angered-over-censorship'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/techies-angered-over-censorship</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet Governance2011-12-22T05:30:09ZNews ItemIndia's struggle for online freedom
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/indias-struggle-for-online-freedom
<b>"65 years since your independence," a new battle for freedom is under way in India — according to a YouTube video uploaded by an Indian member of Anonymous, the global "hacktivist" movement.
</b>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/indias-struggle-for-online-freedom-20120608-2016i.html">Rebecca MacKinnon's article was published in the Sydney Morning Herald on June 9, 2012</a></p>
<p>With popular websites like Vimeo.com blocked across India by court order, the video calls for action: "Fight for your rights. Fight for India." Over the past several weeks, the group has launched distributed denial-of-service attacks against websites belonging to internet service providers, government departments, India's Supreme Court, and two political parties.</p>
<p>Street protests are being planned for today in as many as 18 cities to protest laws and other government actions that a growing number of Indian internet users believe have violated their right to free expression and privacy online.</p>
<p>A lively national internet freedom movement has grown rapidly across India since the beginning of this year.</p>
<p>The most colourful highlight so far was a seven-day Gandhian hunger strike, otherwise known as a "freedom fast," held in early May on a New Delhi pavement by political cartoonist Aseem Trivedi and activist-journalist Alok Dixit. Trivedi's website was shut down this year in response to a police complaint by a Mumbai-based advocate who alleged that some of Trivedi's works "ridicule the Indian Parliament, the national emblem, and the national flag."</p>
<p>Escalating political and legal battles over internet regulation in India are the latest front in a global struggle for online freedom — not only in countries like China and Iran where the internet is heavily censored and monitored by autocratic regimes, but also in democracies where the political motivations for control are much more complicated.</p>
<p>Democratically elected governments all over the world are failing to find the right balance between demands from constituents to fight crime, control hate speech, keep children safe, and protect intellectual property, and their duty to ensure and respect all citizens' rights to free expression and privacy. Popular online movements — many of them globally interconnected — are arising in response to these failures.</p>
<p>Only about 10 per cent of India's population uses the web, making it unlikely that internet freedom will be a decisive ballot-box issue anytime soon. Yet activists are determined to punish New Delhi's "humourless babus," as one columnist recently called India's censorious politicians and bureaucrats, in the country's media. Grassroots organisers are bringing a new generation of white-collar protesters to the streets to defend the right to use a technology that remains alien to the majority of India's people.</p>
<p>The trouble started with the 2008 passage of the Information Technology (Amendment) Act, whose Section 69 empowers the government to direct any internet service to block, intercept, monitor, or decrypt any information through any computer resource.</p>
<p>Company officials who fail to comply with government requests can face fines and up to seven years in jail. Then, in April 2011, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology issued new rules under which internet companies are expected to remove within 36 hours any content that regulators designate as "grossly harmful," "harassing," or "ethnically objectionable" — designations that are open to a wide variety of interpretations and that free speech advocates argue have opened the door to abuse.</p>
<p>It is thanks to these rules that the website of the hunger-striking cartoonist, Trivedi, was taken offline. Also thanks to the 2011 rules, Facebook and Google are facing trial for having failed to remove objectionable content. If found guilty, the companies could face fines, and executives could be sentenced to jail time.</p>
<p>Saturday's protesters are calling for annulment of the 2011 rules and the repeal of part of the 2008 act. They are also calling for internet service companies to reverse the wholesale blocking of hundreds of websites, including the file-sharing services isoHunt and The Pirate Bay, as well as the video-sharing site Vimeo and Pastebin, which is primarily used for the sharing of text and links.</p>
<p>Internet service providers were responding to a court order from the Madras High Court demanding the blockage, which is aimed at preventing the online distribution of pirated versions of one particular film. The internet companies, fearing that they would not be able to catch every individual instance on every possible site they host, instead chose to block entire services along with all of their content — which had nothing to do with the film in question.</p>
<p>Such "John Doe" orders, named because they are directed against unknown potential offenders in the present and future, are characterised "by their overly broad and sweeping nature," argue lawyer Lawrence Liang and researcher Achal Prabhala, which extends "to a range of non-infringing activities as well, thus catching a whole range of legal acts in their net."</p>
<p>More broadly, as Delhi-based journalist Shivam Vij wrote in a recent essay: "The current mechanisms of internet censorship in India — blocking, direct removal requests to websites, intermediary rules — are draconian and unconstitutional. They need to be replaced with a new set of rules that are fair, transparent and accessible for public scrutiny. They should not be amenable to misuse by the powers-that-be for their own private interests."</p>
<p>Not only are the rules abused, but researchers find that they are causing extralegal censorship by companies that overcompensate in order to err on the side of caution. Last year, the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society performed an experiment in which it sent "legally flawed" takedown demands to seven companies that provide a range of online services, including search, online shopping, and news with user-generated comments.</p>
<p>The legal flaws in the notices were such that the companies could have rejected them without being in breach of the law. Yet "of the 7 intermediaries to which takedown notices were sent, 6 intermediaries over-complied with the notices, despite the apparent flaws in them," reads the Centre for Internet and Society report.</p>
<p>Despite the growing public opposition, a motion to annul the 2011 rules was defeated by voice vote in the upper house of Parliament last month. Yet the criticism was sufficiently sharp that Communications Minister Kapil Sibal announced that he will hold consultations with all members of Parliament, representatives of industry, and other "stakeholders" to discuss the law's problems and how it might be revised.</p>
<p>Many of the law's critics, however, are skeptical that this will eliminate the law's deep flaws and loopholes for abuse, especially given the government's failure to listen so far. Comments on the 2011 rules submitted last year by the Centre for Internet and Society were not even acknowledged as having been received by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. "Sibal uses the excuse of national security and hate speech," says the center's director, Sunil Abraham, "but that is not what is happening."</p>
<p>Abraham worries that what is really happening is a government effort at Internet "behavior modification" through a process akin to an experiment involving caged monkeys, bananas, and ice water. Put four monkeys in a cage and hang a bunch of bananas on the ceiling. Every time one of them climbs up to reach the bananas, you drench all of them with ice water.</p>
<p>Soon enough, the monkeys will start policing themselves — attacking anybody who tries to reach the bananas, making it unnecessary for their masters to deploy the ice water. "This is why the government is being so aggressive so early on, with only 10 percent of India's population online," says Abraham. "If you start the drenching early on, by the time you get to 50 per cent [internet penetration], every one will be well-behaved monkeys."</p>
<p>Companies will act as private internet police for fear of legal punishment before the government is called upon to step in and enforce the law. If it works, Indian politicians could have fewer reasons to worry about online critiques or mockery, because companies fearing prosecution will proactively delete speech that could potentially be designated "harassing" or "grossly harmful."</p>
<p>India is not China or Iran, however. Its politicians may be corrupt, and most of its voters may not understand why Internet freedom matters because they've never used the Internet. But it still has an independent press and boisterous civil society that are not going to give up their critiques and protests anytime soon. India also has a strong, independent judiciary, with a record of ruling against censorship and surveillance measures when a strong case can be made that they conflict with constitutional protections of individual rights. "On free speech I have high faith in the Indian judiciary," says Abraham. "There is a good chance to launch a constitutional challenge."</p>
<p>If Google and Facebook lose at their impending trial — now scheduled for July — they will most certainly appeal, which activists hope could provide just such an opportunity to prevent the sort of "behaviour modification" process that Abraham warns against.</p>
<p>Now India's burgeoning internet freedom movement needs its own reverse "behaviour modification" strategy — imposing consistent and regular doses of political and legal ice water upon India's bureaucrats, politicians, and companies whenever they do things that threaten to corrode the rights of India's internet users. Saturday's protest is just the beginning.</p>
<p><em>Sunil Abraham is quoted in the article. The report on Intermediary Guidelines co-produced by CIS and Google is also mentioned.</em></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/indias-struggle-for-online-freedom'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/indias-struggle-for-online-freedom</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaPrivacyFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-06-18T06:39:32ZNews ItemIndia's social media crackdown reveals clumsy govt machinery
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/in-reuters-com-david-lalmalsawma-aug-24-2012-indias-social-media-crackdown-reveals-clumsy-govt-machinery
<b>"High-handed" and "reckless" are some of the words used in the media to describe the government's online crackdown.</b>
<hr />
<p>Published in <a class="external-link" href="http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/08/24/india-twitter-facebook-ban-social-media-idINDEE87N09V20120824">Reuters</a> on August 24, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p>Add clumsy and incompetent to the list.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The government blocked access to more than 300 web pages after mobile phone text messages and doctored website images fuelled rumours that Muslims were planning revenge attacks for violence in Assam.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Much has been said and debated on the legal and moral legitimacy of the ban. But it's also important to study how officials went about deciding what to ban.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In his analysis of leaked government directives listing web pages to be banned, Pranesh Prakash of the Centre for Internet and Society said the list consists of people and pages who are actually debunking hateful rumours.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Twitter accounts of mainstream journalists and YouTube videos containing news clips from news channels like TimesNow, NDTV and Britain's Channel4 were included.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A glance at the list also shows that the banned pages include a Google Plus search page aggregating news stories posted on the topic "Assam riots." The government might as well ban Google.com, where anyone can do the same thing and much more.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It seems the government had no set procedure in trying to trace abusive content on the web. We don't know how they drew up the lists of sites to target, but it may have happened like this:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As northeast Indians began their exodus from cities fearing attacks, ministers and top bureaucrats went into a huddle and decided in all sincerity they must stop the spread of false information.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The task of quickly identifying malicious online content was given to lower ranking officials. Since there are no set procedures on how to scour the vast virtual universe and choose which offending pages to ban, the most likely step they took was to open Google and start typing in words related to the recent unrest, apart from trawling popular social sites.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The resulting list tells us that the official who vetted the selected pages was not too committed or had minimal online skills. Some of the pages are not even web addresses.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On Friday, the Times of India newspaper website (Read <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/news/internet/IT-communication-minister-Milind-Deoras-Twitter-account-suspended/articleshow/15629838.cms">here</a>) reported that the Twitter account of junior Communications and IT minister Milind Deora was blocked instead of the Deora imposter the government was trying to target.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Such amateurishness is not restricted to technology issues alone. There are many examples of clueless officials left red-faced in the face of public scrutiny.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Last year, the country's premier investigating agency, the CBI, had to withdraw a version of its list of India's 50 Most Wanted fugitives after it was revealed that one was already in jail and another living with his family after getting bail. The Central Statistics Office made a goof-up with the index of industrial production for January 2012, revising growth to 1.14 percent after initially putting it at 6.8 percent, a huge gap.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">One of the most baffling gaffes happened in 2010 when the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity issued a full-page ad on the occasion of National Girl Child Day featuring the photograph of a male former Pakistan Air Chief Marshal who appeared alongside Indian cricketers Kapil Dev and Virender Sehwag.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But the cake must go to External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna. He read out his Portuguese counterpart's speech while addressing the United Nations Security Council.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">(David Lalmalsawma is a Reuters journalist. The opinions expressed here are his own and not of Reuters. You can follow him on Twitter @david_reuters)</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/in-reuters-com-david-lalmalsawma-aug-24-2012-indias-social-media-crackdown-reveals-clumsy-govt-machinery'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/in-reuters-com-david-lalmalsawma-aug-24-2012-indias-social-media-crackdown-reveals-clumsy-govt-machinery</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-08-25T06:11:30ZNews ItemIndia seeks a tighter grip on social media
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-upi-com-aug-24-2012-india-seeks-a-tighter-grip-on-social-media
<b>India, with the world's third largest number of Facebook users, is clamping down on social media after recent posting of inflammatory videos on Web sites.
</b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Published in <a class="external-link" href="http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2012/08/24/India-seeks-a-tighter-grip-on-social-media/UPI-29191345804200/">United Press International</a> on August 24, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But the United States urged New Delhi to find the right balance between freedom of speech and the need to maintain law and order, a report by The Times of India said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The government's move to block sites it deems unacceptable comes after doctored videos showing apparent violence against Muslims in Assam created violent panic.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While officials say they believe the videos originated on Pakistani blogs, the issue highlighted the uneasy relationship between freedom of speech on the Internet and the government's need to damp down inter-ethnic tensions.</p>
<p>Union Home Secretary R.K. Singh said New Delhi will be raising the issue with Pakistani officials.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"I am sure they (Pakistan) will deny it but we have fairly accurate technical evidence to show that the images originated and were circulated from their territory," he said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Last week Indian federal and state ministers as well as police authorities watched closely as Assamese Muslims living and working in Bangalore engulfed the train station seeking train ticket home after rumors of the Web site information swept through their community.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Rail authorities and train companies in Bangalore, in the southwest state of Karnataka, put on extra trains to Assam in the northeast to cope with the influx of people who said they feared an outbreak of ethnic violence.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Twitter promised to cooperate with the government after the Prime Minister's Office complained to it about objectionable content on six accounts resembling the PMO's official account, a Press Trust of India report said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Twitter said it was "actively reviewing" the request and will seek information from the Ministry of Communication and IT "to locate the unlawful content and the specific unlawful tweet," the PTI report said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook said it will comply with requests from Indian authorities but only where posts broke its existing rules that apply in all countries, a report by the BBC said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"We have received requests from Indian authorities and agencies and are working through those requests and responding to the agencies," Facebook said. "Content or individuals can be removed from Facebook for a variety of reasons including issuing direct calls for violence or perpetuating hate speech."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">At stake for many Internet service providers, site developers and proxy servers is a slice of one of the world's potentially most lucrative advertising markets.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A report by Businessweek in May said India will have more users of Facebook -- which opened an office in India in 2010 -- than any other country by 2015.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India has around 46,300,000 Facebook users,Socialbakers, a social media analytics firm in London, says. This makes India the third-biggest Facebook market behind second-place Brazil with just more than 48 million users and first-place United States with nearly 157 million.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The growth of users in India is around 22 percent a month and will match the United States by the end of 2014, each having around 175 million users, Socialbakers said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">However, the United States has voiced concern that India may overstep a censorship mark in its attempt to stamp out offensive Web sites.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">State Department spokeswoman <a href="http://www.upi.com/topic/Victoria_Nuland/" title="Victoria Nuland">Victoria Nuland</a> said Washington has been monitoring the situation of Assamese Indians flooding back to Assam from southern India because of concerns about their personal safety.</p>
<p>The U.S. government is "going to obviously watch and see how that process goes forward."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"We are always on the side of full freedom of the Internet," Nuland said in a report by The Times of India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"But as the Indian government continues to investigate these instances and preserve security, we also always urge the government to maintain its own commitment to human rights, fundamental freedoms, rule of law."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Nuland also said the U.S. government maintained "open lines to our own companies in India, as we do around the world, and we are obviously open to consultation with them if they need it from us."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The weight of the law may be against most of Internet intermediaries, Pranesh Prakash, a lawyer at the Bangalore-based Center for Internet and Society, said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"The rules are very onerous on intermediaries, since they require them to act within 36 hours to disable access to any information that they receive a complaint about," Prakash wrote in an article The Indian Express newspaper in May 2011.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Any "affected person" according to technology laws can complain about issues including defamation, blasphemy, trademark infringement, threatening the integrity of India, disparaging speech or the blanket "in violation of any law."</p>
<p>It isn't mandatory to give the violator an opportunity to be heard before taking down their content.</p>
<p>"Since intermediaries would lose protection from the law if they didn't take down content, they have no incentives to uphold freedom of speech," Prakash said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"They instead have been provided incentives to take down all content about which they receive complaints without a considered evaluation of the content."</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-upi-com-aug-24-2012-india-seeks-a-tighter-grip-on-social-media'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-upi-com-aug-24-2012-india-seeks-a-tighter-grip-on-social-media</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-08-25T03:02:35ZNews ItemIndia limits social media after civil unrest
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/articles-latimes-com-mark-magnier-aug-23-2012-india-limits-social-media-after-civil-unrest
<b>Indian officials have gone too far in limiting text messages and pressuring local Internet firms as well as Twitter and others to block accounts, critics say.</b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This article by Mark Magnier was published in <a class="external-link" href="http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/23/world/la-fg-india-twitter-20120824">Los Angeles Times</a> on August 23, 2012 and re-posted in <a class="external-link" href="http://www.channel6newsonline.com/2012/08/after-civil-unrest-indian-government-places-limits-social-media/">Channel 6 News</a> on August 24, 2012. Sunil Abraham is quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Has the Indian government lost its sense of humor?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">That's what some in India were asking as word spread that authorities had pressured Twitter into blocking several accounts parodying the prime minister after civil unrest that saw dozens of people from northeastern India killed and thousands flee in panic.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This week, the government also imposed a two-week limit of five text messages a day — raised Thursday to 20 — potentially affecting hundreds of millions of people, and pressured local Internet companies as well as Facebook, Twitter and Google to block hundreds of websites and user accounts.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Although journalists, free speech advocates and bloggers said the effort to squelch rumors may be justified, several criticized the actions as excessive.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"You cannot burn the entire house to kill one mischievous mouse," said Gyana Ranjan Swain, a senior editor at Voice & Data, a networking trade magazine. "You're in the 21st century. Their thinking is still 50 years old. It's just 'kill the messenger.'"</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Comedians said Indian political humor is evolving and there's more leeway to make fun of politicians than a decade ago, but the nation's mores still call for greater respect than in the West.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"If I tried something like South Park, I'd be put behind bars tomorrow," said Rahul Roushan, founder of Faking News website, which satirizes Indian current events.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Faking News has lampooned the recent corruption scandals, including specious stories about theme restaurants (where customers must bribe waiters or go hungry); and a tongue-in-cheek report that India has banned the zero because too many of them appear nowadays in auditors' reports, after recent coal and telecommunications scandals each allegedly involving more than $30 billion.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Roushan, whose site isn't blocked, said he hopes low-level officials misinterpreted government directives.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"I'm still in a state of disbelief," he said. "I don't think the government is so stupid that it can ask that parody accounts get taken down. If they did, God help this country."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A spokesman for the prime minister's office said the blocking of six fake Twitter accounts attributed to the prime minister has been in the works for months and wasn't related to the recent crisis. He said the move was in response to tweets containing hate language and caste insults that readers could easily mistake as the Indian leader's. A dozen Twitter accounts and about 300 websites were blocked, according to news reports.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"We have not lost our sense of humor," said Pankaj Pachauri, the prime minister's spokesman. "We started a procedure to take action against people misrepresenting themselves."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But some Twitter users whose accounts are frozen, including media consultant Kanchan Gupta, counter that the government may be using the crisis to muzzle critics.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"I'm very clear in my mind this is a political decision," said Gupta, who has been critical of corruption and the government's policy drift. "If they were openly confrontational of me, they'd go nowhere, so they're trying this."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Attempts to access his Twitter page Thursday were met with the message: "This website/URL has been blocked until further notice either pursuant to Court orders or on the Directions issued by the Department of Telecommunications."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Even Britain's Queen Elizabeth II has numerous parody accounts so India needs to lighten up, consultant Gupta said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">He's received several messages from worried Pakistani friends since the news broke. "They ask if I'm all right, say they hope they haven't frog-marched you to jail," he said. "What irony."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The restrictions are the latest chapter of a crisis that started in July when Muslims and members of the Bodo tribal community in northeastern India clashed over land, jobs and politics. The result: 75 people killed and 300,000 displaced.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Muslims in Mumbai, formerly Bombay, staged a sympathy demonstration last week; two more people were killed and dozens injured.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Rumors, hate messages and altered photos of supposed atrocities against Muslims soon spread on social media sites, and several people from northeastern India were beaten in Bangalore and other cities, prompting the crackdown.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">New Delhi has accused Pakistani websites of fanning the online rumors. (Islamabad said it would investigate if there's any proof.) But Indian news media also reported that 20% of the websites blocked contained inflammatory material uploaded by Hindu nationalist groups in India that were apparently trying to stir up sectarian trouble.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Twitter community has responded with derision and humor to limits on text messages on prepaid cellphones.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"Feeling deeply insulted that I still have not been blocked," tweeted user @abhijitmajumder. "Victim of govt apathy."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Sunil Abraham, head of the Bangalore civic group Center for Internet and Society, said this week's restrictions are the latest in a series of regulations and recommendations aimed at tightening Internet control.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/articles-latimes-com-mark-magnier-aug-23-2012-india-limits-social-media-after-civil-unrest'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/articles-latimes-com-mark-magnier-aug-23-2012-india-limits-social-media-after-civil-unrest</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial mediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceIntermediary LiabilityCensorship2012-09-04T11:59:01ZNews ItemIndia limits social media after civil unrest
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/afr-com-aug-24-2012-mark-magnier-india-limits-social-media-after-civil-unrest
<b>Has the Indian government lost its sense of humour? That’s what some in India were asking as word spread that authorities had pressured Twitter into blocking several accounts parodying the prime minister after civil unrest that saw dozens of people from northeastern India killed and thousands flee in panic.</b>
<hr />
<p>Published in the <a class="external-link" href="http://afr.com/p/technology/india_limits_social_media_after_5VkrlRTSzrrE3o3di9mwNI">Australian Financial Review</a>. Sunil Abraham is quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This week, the government also imposed a two-week limit of five text messages a day – raised Thursday to 20 – potentially affecting hundreds of millions of people, and pressured local internet companies as well as Facebook, Twitter and Google to block hundreds of websites and user accounts.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Although journalists, free speech advocates and bloggers said the effort to squelch rumours may be justified, several criticised the actions as excessive.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“You cannot burn the entire house to kill one mischievous mouse,” said Gyana Ranjan Swain, a senior editor at Voice & Data, a networking trade magazine. “You’re in the 21st century. Their thinking is still 50 years old. It’s just ‘kill the messenger’. ”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Comedians said Indian political humour is evolving and there’s more leeway to make fun of politicians than a decade ago, but the nation’s mores still call for greater respect than in the West.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“If I tried something like South Park, I’d be put behind bars tomorrow,” said Rahul Roushan, founder of Faking News website, which satirises Indian current events.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Faking News has lampooned the recent corruption scandals, including specious stories about theme restaurants (where customers must bribe waiters or go hungry); and a tongue-in-cheek report that India has banned the zero because too many of them appear nowadays in auditors’ reports, after recent coal and telecommunications scandals each allegedly involving more than $US30 billion.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Roushan, whose site isn’t blocked, said he hopes low-level officials misinterpreted government directives.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“I’m still in a state of disbelief,” he said. “I don’t think the government is so stupid that it can ask that parody accounts get taken down. If they did, God help this country.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A spokesman for the prime minister’s office said the blocking of six fake Twitter accounts attributed to the prime minister has been in the works for months and wasn’t related to the recent crisis. He said the move was in response to tweets containing hate language and caste insults that readers could easily mistake as the Indian leader’s. A dozen Twitter accounts and about 300 websites were blocked, according to news reports.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“We have not lost our sense of humour,” said Pankaj Pachauri, the prime minister’s spokesman. “We started a procedure to take action against people misrepresenting themselves.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The restrictions are the latest chapter of a crisis that started in July when Muslims and members of the Bodo tribal community in northeastern India clashed over land, jobs and politics. The result: 75 people killed and 300,000 displaced.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Muslims in Mumbai, formerly Bombay, staged a sympathy demonstration last week; two more people were killed and dozens injured.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Rumours, hate messages and altered photos of supposed atrocities against Muslims soon spread on social media sites, and several people from northeastern India were beaten in Bangalore and other cities, prompting the crackdown.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">New Delhi has accused Pakistani websites of fanning the online rumours. (Islamabad said it would investigate if there’s any proof.) But Indian news media also reported that 20 per cent of the websites blocked contained inflammatory material uploaded by Hindu nationalist groups in India that were apparently trying to stir up sectarian trouble.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Twitter community has responded with derision and humour to limits on text messages on prepaid mobile phones.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Feeling deeply insulted that I still have not been blocked,” tweeted user @abhijitmajumder. “Victim of govt apathy.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Sunil Abraham, head of the Bangalore civic group Centre for Internet and Society, said this week’s restrictions are the latest in a series of regulations and recommendations aimed at tightening internet control.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Before, the government’s had no grounds for censorship, it was only acting on the bruised egos of bureaucrats and officials,” he said. “This time, it’s got a legitimate right given the disruption of public order. But it hasn’t done so very effectively.”</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/afr-com-aug-24-2012-mark-magnier-india-limits-social-media-after-civil-unrest'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/afr-com-aug-24-2012-mark-magnier-india-limits-social-media-after-civil-unrest</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-08-24T12:33:21ZNews ItemIndia internet: clean-up or censorship?
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/clean-up-or-censorship
<b>Is India going the way of China? Not when it comes to development indicators. Or enhanced infrastructure. Or economic power. But in another category at which Beijing excels: web censorship.</b>
<p>That was the implication of a ruling on Thursday from Justice Suresh Kait, of the Delhi High Court, who told lawyers for Facebook India and Google India that unless they develop mechanisms to regulate “offensive and objectionable” material on their web sites, India is prepared to take drastic measures,<a class="external-link" href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/Chunk-HT-UI-Technology-Update-SocialMedia/We-ll-do-a-China-HC-warns-Facebook-Google/Article1-796243.aspx"> according to the Hindustan Times</a>. “Like China, we will block all such websites,” Kalit declared.</p>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://ibnlive.in.com/news/sanction-to-prosecute-fb-google-likely/220554-3.html">According to the IBN news channel</a>, the government seems to be moving to make good on those threats:</p>
<p>Government sources said on Friday that the Delhi High Court was likely to issue sanctions to prosecute social networking sites Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo India in the ongoing spat between the companies and the Government of India over content regulation.</p>
<p>“Prosecution for some of the non-bailable offences requires prior sanction of the government, which has been sought and it is likely to be granted,” the sources said.</p>
<p>[…]</p>
<p>Summons are to be sent to the companies through the Ministry of External Affairs directing their heads to appear before court on March 13, which is when the next hearing will take place. The Ministry of Communication and Information Technology will file its affidavit by this evening.</p>
<p>Clearly there’s trouble in “the world’s largest democracy”.</p>
<p>Kalit’s pronouncement is the latest turn in a story that broke last month, when the New York Times reported that telecoms minister Kapil Sibal had met with executives from Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft to discuss the pre-emptive removal of “offensive material” – including, it seems, web pages that had criticized the leader of his party, Sonia Gandhi.</p>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2011/12/06/indias-dreams-of-web-censorship/#axzz1ixRB6VOO">As beyondbrics reported</a>, Sibal then gave a combative press conference where he said: “I believe that no reasonable person aware of the sensibilities of large sections of communities in this country and aware of community standards as they are applicable in India would wish to see this content in the public domain,” referring to “offensive material” he had shown some reporters prior to the conference.</p>
<p>He added, repeatedly, that the government did not believe in censorship.</p>
<p>Apparently, Kalit didn’t get the memo.</p>
<p>Lawyers for the internet giants appeared before the judge to request the dismissal of a criminal complaint filed by a private citizen in a lower court under sections of the Indian law that cover “sale of obscene books etc”, “sale of obscene objects to young person etc” and “criminal conspiracy”. The judge declined.</p>
<p>“The magistrate of the trial court had observed that the material submitted by the complainant contained obscene pictures and derogatory articles pertaining to various Hindu gods, Prophet Muhammad and Jesus Christ”, IBN reported.</p>
<p>According to the Hindustan Times:</p>
<p>On behalf of Google India, senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi said it was humanly not possible to filter or monitor the postings of obscene, objectionable and defamatory material. “Billions of people across the globe, post their articles on the website. Yes, they may be defamatory, obscene but cannot be checked,” he said.</p>
<p>A Google spokesperson issued a statement last night, saying, “We did file a petition before the Delhi High Court. The Court has now issued a notice to the petitioner. We can’t comment at this stage.”</p>
<p>Today, the company issued a clarification:</p>
<p>Today the Court has merely directed the petitioner to serve the Court order to the overseas entities at their respective addresses and has adjourned the matter to March 13th.</p>
<p>Last month, a lower court had ordered the sites to remove all “anti-social” or “anti-relgious” content by February 6.</p>
<p>As Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet & Society, told beyondbrics last month, it’s difficult to establish exactly what is anti-religious: for example, the Hindu profession of belief in multiple gods is blasphemous to Muslims, Christians and Jews.</p>
<p>A lower court had directed the central government to take “immediate appropriate steps” and file a report by January 13.</p>
<p>It has not been released yet, but later on Friday you can Google it. Take the opportunity – if India goes the way of China, it might prove more difficult in future.</p>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2012/01/13/india-internet-clean-up-or-censorship/#axzz1jc78a2Dx">This blog post by Neil Munshi was published in beyondbrics on 13 January 2012</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/clean-up-or-censorship'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/clean-up-or-censorship</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet Governance2012-01-16T11:17:11ZNews ItemIndia faces Twitter backlash over Internet clampdown
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/in-reuters-com-devidutta-tripathy-satarupa-bhattacharjya-aug-24-2012-india-faces-twitter-backlash
<b>The Indian government faced an angry backlash from Twitter users on Thursday after ordering Internet service providers to block about 20 accounts that officials said had spread scare-mongering material that threatened national security.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Written by Devidutta Tripathy and Satarupa Bhattacharjya, this post was <a class="external-link" href="http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/08/23/net-us-india-internet-clampdown-idINBRE87M0LG20120823">published</a> in Reuters on August 24, 2012. (Additional reporting by Ross Colvin, Annie Banerji and David Lalmalsawma and Andrew Quinn in Washington; Writing by Ross Colvin; Editing by John Chalmers, Andrew Osborn, Gary Hill). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The backlash came as New Delhi turned up the heat on Twitter, threatening "appropriate and suitable action" if it failed to remove the accounts as soon as possible. Several Indian newspapers said this could mean a total ban on access to Twitter in India but government officials would not confirm to Reuters that such a drastic step was being considered.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Twitter, which does not have an office in India, declined to comment. There are about 16 million Twitter users in the South Asian country.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The government has found itself on the defensive this week over what critics see as a clumsy clampdown on social media websites - including Google, YouTube and Facebook - that has raised questions about freedom of information in the world's largest democracy.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"Dear GOI (Government of India), Keep your Hands Off My Internet. Else face protest" tweeted one user, @Old_Monk60.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India blocked access to more than 300 Web pages after threatening mobile phone text messages and doctored website images fuelled rumors that Muslims, a large minority in the predominantly Hindu country, were planning revenge attacks for violence in the northeastern state of Assam, where 80 people have been killed and 300,000 have been displaced since July.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Fearing for their lives, tens of thousands of migrants fled Mumbai, Bangalore and other cities last week. The exodus highlighted underlying tensions in a country with a history of ethnic and religious violence.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">According to documents obtained by Reuters, the government has targeted Indian journalists, Britain's Daily Telegraph, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Al Jazeera television in its clampdown on Internet postings it says could inflame communal tensions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The directives to Internet service providers listed dozens of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter pages. A random sampling of the YouTube postings revealed genuine news footage spliced together with fear-mongering propaganda.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In Washington, the State Department urged New Delhi to balance its security push with respect for basic rights including freedom of speech.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"As the Indian government seeks to preserve security we are urging them also to take into account the importance of freedom of expression in the online world," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Nuland said Washington stood ready to consult with U.S. companies as they discuss the issue with the Indian government, although it was not now directly involved.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"The unique characteristics of the online environment need to be respected even as they work through whether there are things these companies can do to help calm the environment," she said.</p>
<p><b>Indian Journalists Targeted</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The government says Google and Facebook have largely cooperated while Twitter has been much slower to respond.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"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.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Twitter has been instructed to remove 28 pages containing "objectionable content," an interior ministry official said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"If they do not remove the pages, the Indian government will take appropriate and suitable action," he added.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The government has ordered Internet service providers to block the Twitter accounts of veteran journalist Kanchan Gupta and television anchor Shiv Aroor. Some appeared to have begun complying with the order on Thursday as Twitter users reported difficulties in accessing their pages.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"It is a political decision, because of my criticism of the government," said Gupta, who was an official in the previous government led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The government's actions triggered a storm of criticism from Twitter users, with the hashtags #Emergency2012 and #GOIBlocks among the top trending topics on Twitter in India on Thursday. Some compared the situation with the state of emergency imposed by the government in 1975, when some journalists were jailed.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Centre for Internet and Society, which analyzed the 300 banning orders, found that they contained "numerous mistakes and inconsistencies." Some of the banned websites belonged to people trying to debunk the rumors, for example, it said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"This isn't about political censorship. This is about the government not knowing how to do online regulation properly," said CIS program manager Pranesh Prakash.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India's parliament last year passed a law that obliges Internet companies to remove a range of objectionable content when requested to do so, a move criticized at the time by rights groups and social media companies.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/in-reuters-com-devidutta-tripathy-satarupa-bhattacharjya-aug-24-2012-india-faces-twitter-backlash'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/in-reuters-com-devidutta-tripathy-satarupa-bhattacharjya-aug-24-2012-india-faces-twitter-backlash</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial mediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-08-27T06:56:37ZNews ItemIndia Dismisses Charges of Internet Censorship
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/learning-english-voanews-com-india-dismisses-charges-of-internet-censorship
<b>Read, listen and learn English with this story. Double-click on any word to find the definition in the Merriam-Webster Learner's Dictionary.</b>
<hr />
<p>This is the <a class="external-link" href="http://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/india-dismisses-charges-of-internet-censorwhip/1495735.html">VOA Special English Technology Report</a>. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The government in India is defending itself against charges of Internet censorship. The move comes after the government last week asked companies like Facebook and Twitter to block more than three hundred websites.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Officials accused the websites of posting edited images and videos of earthquake victims. They said the websites falsely claimed that the images were Muslim victims caught in recent ethnic conflict in India’s northeastern Assam state and Burma. A number of the images were reportedly uploaded from Pakistan.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Officials said the panic that resulted caused thousands of Hindu immigrants to flee the area. They feared that Muslims would answer the false reports with attacks of their own. Cyber law expert, lawyer Pawan Duggal says this is the first time the Internet and mobile-phone technology have been used to create fear in a community.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">PAWAN DUGGAL: “India has to wake up to the need for putting cyber security as the number-one priority for the nation. Unfortunately, India does not even have a national cyber-security policy. The nation does not have any plan of action, should this kind of emergency happen again. India needs to have its own cyber army of cyber warriors.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On Friday, India’s Communication and Information Technology Minister Kapil Sibal dismissed charges that the government is trying to censor social media. But he said the misuse of social media has to be prevented.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Pranesh Prakash is program manager at the Bangalore-based Center for Internet and Society. He says some of the web pages that have been blocked included official news websites.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">PRANESH PRAKASH: “I am not questioning the motivations of the government which in this current case seemed to be above board. We found that most of the material that they have complained about is actually stuff that is communal. But I do feel that the government went overboard in doing so, that it has also curbed legitimate reportage.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">He says some of the websites were uploaded by people trying to let others know that the images were false.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The government in India has called on social media companies to come up with a plan to keep offensive material off the web. Last year, it passed a law that requires companies to remove so-called “objectionable content” when requested to do so.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A Google Transparency report says that last year India topped the list of countries that make such requests. Supporters of online freedom have expressed concern that India may be restricting web freedom.<br /> <br /> About one hundred million people in India use the Internet - the third-largest number of net users in the world. About seven hundred million people have mobile phones.<br /> <br /> And that's the VOA Special English Technology Report. I'm Steve Ember.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/learning-english-voanews-com-india-dismisses-charges-of-internet-censorship'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/learning-english-voanews-com-india-dismisses-charges-of-internet-censorship</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-08-26T05:29:15ZNews ItemIndia Debates Misuse of Social Media
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-voanews-com-aug-21-2012-anjana-pasricha-india-debates-misuse-of-social-media
<b>India has blocked more than 250 websites after provocative online content spread panic among people from the country's northeast, prompting some of them to flee Indian cities. The crackdown has sparked a debate about how the country will cope with misuse of social media. </b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Anjana Pasricha's article was originally published by <a class="external-link" href="http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2012/08/22/2012082200496.html">Voice of America</a> on August 21, 2012 and re-posted in the <a class="external-link" href="http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2012/08/22/2012082200496.html">Chosunilbo</a> on September 4, 2012. Sunil Abraham is quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Officials say the websites that were blocked had posted edited images and videos of victims of earthquakes and claimed they were those of Muslim victims caught in recent ethnic strife in India's northeastern Assam state and Burma.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As the images went viral, rumors began about reprisal attacks against Hindu migrants from the northeast working in other parts of India. Hate text messages warning of violence circulated widely. Worried about their safety, thousands of the migrants fled Indian cities last week to return to Assam.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Taken aback by the mass exodus, the government says the "unity and integrity of the country is at stake."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde says that "elements" had used social networking sites to whip up communal sentiments. Shinde says a number of the sites had been uploaded from Pakistan. Shinde adds that the government has gathered a lot of evidence through the investigation, whether from Facebook communication or text messaging.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Officials have also blamed social networking sites such as Twitter, Yahoo and Facebook for not screening objectionable content.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Cyber specialists say the government needs to go beyond the blame game and learn how to manage misuse of social media on the massive scale witnessed last week. About 100 million people in India use the Internet, the third-largest number of net users in the world. About 700 million people have mobile phones.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Cyber law expert, lawyer Pawan Duggal says this is the first time the Internet and mobile-phone technology have been used to incite fear in a community.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"India has to wake up to the need of putting cyber security as the number-one priority for the nation," Duggal noted. "Unfortunately, India does not even have a cyber-security policy. The nation does not have any plan of action, should such an emergency happen again. India needs to have its own cyber army of cyber warriors."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The government has been involved in a dispute with web companies such as Google and Facebook for several months and has called for them to devise a voluntary framework to keep offensive material off the web. India routinely asks these companies to remove what it calls "objectionable content," which has led to fears India may be diluting web freedom.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Sunil Abraham heads the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore, an advocacy group for net freedom. He says the government's recent crackdown on hundreds of websites is warranted, but says it needs to be more sophisticated and aggressive in handling threats and rumors emanating from the internet.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"Social media websites and other Internet intermediaries should have been asked by the government to run banner advertising or some other form of messaging that revealed the lack of truth in the rumors that were circulating," Abraham explained. "The best way to deal with misinformation is to produce more accurate and more credible information. By just blocking access to fraudulent information, you do not fully undermine the power of rumors because by the time the government had decided to act the photographs and videos had already gone viral. And even though the websites are blocked these images will continue to circulate."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The exodus of northeast migrants from Indian cities has slowed in recent days as India has moved to block multimedia and bulk text messaging, and panic has subsided after repeated assurances of safety by the government.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-voanews-com-aug-21-2012-anjana-pasricha-india-debates-misuse-of-social-media'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-voanews-com-aug-21-2012-anjana-pasricha-india-debates-misuse-of-social-media</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial mediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-09-04T12:13:21ZNews ItemIndia Blocks News Website Pages for 'Spreading Fear' over Assam Violence
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-ibi-times-co-uk-gianluca-mezzofiore-aug-24-2012-india-blocks-news-website-pages-for-spreading-fear-over-assam-violence
<b>Access to more than 300 internet web pages including some published by Telegraph, Times of India and Al-Jazeera blocked.</b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This article by Gianluca Mezzofiore was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/377157/20120824/india-blocks-more-300-internet-pages-news.htm">published</a> in International Business Times on August 24, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Indian government has blocked more than 300 internet web pages including ones published by the Daily Telegraph, Australia's ABC and Al-Jazeera claiming they contained <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/376629/20120823/india-threatens-block-twitter-over-ethnic-violence.htm" target="_blank">"incendiary" material</a> likely to spread panic.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Internet experts said the move might be illegal as the Indian government interfered with hundreds of website, including some Twitter accounts, blogs and links to certain stories.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Internet posts, phone text messages and fake video clips have allegedly spread rumours that Muslims were poised to attack the Assamese population in Chennai, Mumbai and Pune. More than 10,000 Assamese workers fled to their native state in northeastern India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The content, bound to fuel tension between Muslim migrants and Assamese workers, included images that falsely portrayed the relief effort for the 2010 Tibetan earthquake disaster as Burmese Buddhists walking among their Muslim victims.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The mass exodus from southern cities followed clashes in Assam between the Bodo tribe and Muslims. At least 80 people were killed and hundreds of thousands were displaced.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Telegraph reported that India blocked its pages including a photo-gallery of Reuters and AFP news pictures that documented "attacks by Burma's Buddhist Rakhine community on villages which had been occupied by Rohingya Muslims, who had migrated from Bangladesh several decades earlier".</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Among other news outlets blocked were The Times of India, the Dainik Bhaskar and FirstPost.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"The government has gone overboard and many of its efforts are legally questionable," Pranesh Prakash, who studies internet governance and freedom of speech at the Centre for Internet and Society, said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"The government's highest priority should have been to counter the rumours and it did a really bad job of that."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Victoria Nuland, spokeswoman for the US State Department, said it was urging the Indian government "to take into account the importance of freedom of expression in the online world" while addressing its security concerns.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-ibi-times-co-uk-gianluca-mezzofiore-aug-24-2012-india-blocks-news-website-pages-for-spreading-fear-over-assam-violence'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-ibi-times-co-uk-gianluca-mezzofiore-aug-24-2012-india-blocks-news-website-pages-for-spreading-fear-over-assam-violence</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial mediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-08-27T04:53:08ZNews ItemIndia blocks more than 250 Web sites for inciting hate, panic
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-washington-post-rama-lakshmi-august-20-2012-india-blocks-more-than-250-web-sites-for-inciting-hate-panic
<b>Nearly 80 people have been killed and 400,000 displaced in fighting between Muslims and India’s Hindu Bodo tribespeople in Assam, a northeastern state of India, in recent weeks. The violence has prompted many northeasterners living in major cities to flee, fearing reprisals.</b>
<hr />
<p>The article by Rama Lakshmi was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/india-blocks-more-than-250-web-sites-for-inciting-hate-panic/2012/08/20/aee0b846-eadf-11e1-866f-60a00f604425_story.html">published in the Washington Post</a> on August 20, 2012. Sunil Abraham is quoted in it.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India blocked about 250 Web sites and social networking sites Monday, accusing them of spreading inflammatory content that <a class="external-link" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/india-says-websites-in-pakistan-to-blame-for-spreading-panic-among-northeast-indians/2012/08/19/3c793960-e9d4-11e1-9739-eef99c5fb285_story.html">triggered panic</a> among thousands of workers and students from the country’s eight northeastern states last week.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The government’s blame list ranged from Facebook to fundamentalist Pakistani sites, Twitter to text messages, and Google to YouTube videos. Authorities also barred the sending of text messages to more than five people at a time for two weeks.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Thousands of people from northeastern India fled several cities in the south and west of the country last week after text messages circulated warning that they faced reprisal attacks from Muslims over recent ethnic clashes in the northeastern state of Assam.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The government said a number of Web sites had deliberately tried to inflame passions, hosting <a class="external-link" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/exodus-shows-alienation-of-indias-northeast/2012/08/17/63bae21e-e88d-11e1-a3d2-2a05679928ef_story.html">morphed videos of violence</a> against Muslims in Burma and asserting that they were filmed in Assam. The images went viral and provoked riots by Muslim residents of Mumbai just over a week ago.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"We have blocked a number of sites. We have also identified a number of sites which were uploaded from Pakistan," Home Secretary R. K. Singh told reporters in New Delhi on Monday.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik has asked India for evidence about the alleged Pakistani Web sites, which Singh said he would share.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Although some analysts said the curbs were justified because the sites posed a threat to public order, others said the actions were a knee-jerk response from a weak government unable to effectively assuage the concerns of its frightened citizens.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"This is a government that is trying to hide its incompetence by blaming everybody but unwilling to look at itself for failure to protect its citizens," said a government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to the media.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Others said that by cracking down on Web sites and social media, the government was dodging the deeper issue of the racism and alienation felt by many people from the northeastern states, who are routinely denigrated by their fellow Indians for supposedly being more Chinese or Southeast Asian in appearance.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But India’s <a class="external-link" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/facebook-google-tell-india-they-wont-screen-for-derogatory-content/2011/12/06/gIQAUo59YO_blog.html">relationship with Internet freedom</a> has become increasingly troubled.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In the past year, the government has locked horns with Google, Yahoo and Facebook, as well as with local activists and bloggers, over censorship and content screening. Analysts then accused the government of trying to silence middle-class critics at the height of a national <a class="external-link" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/india-blocks-more-than-250-web-sites-for-inciting-hate-panic/2012/08/20/aee0b846-eadf-11e1-866f-60a00f604425_story.html">anti-corruption movement</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The government has been holding public meetings on <a class="external-link" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/indias-new-internet-rules-criticized/2011/07/27/gIQA1zS2mI_story.html">proposed rules</a> to prohibit Web sites and service providers from hosting information that could be regarded as “harmful,” “blasphemous” or “insulting.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Last year, India topped the list of countries that routinely ask Internet companies to remove content, according to the Google Transparency Report.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Although Internet penetration is still low in India, the country has the third-largest number of Web users in the world, with more than 100 million people accessing the Internet. A <a class="external-link" href="http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2012/8/In_India_1_in_4_Online_Minutes_are_Spent_on_Social_Networking_Sites">new report</a> says that Indians spend one in every four minutes online visiting social networking sites.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Some free-speech activists fear the events of last week may have provided the government the justification it was seeking to increase Web censorship.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“I have fears that the present situation should not cause a disproportionate response which affects freedom of speech online,” said Apar Gupta, a lawyer and advocate for free speech online. “Historically, a national security argument is very tough to dislodge the competing interests of freedom of speech.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Other advocates of Internet freedom say the government is justified in the crackdown but could have opted for a more nuanced approach.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“A blanket ban does not necessarily lead to a reduction in the circulation of rumors because people become more vulnerable in a communication vacuum,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Center for Internet and Society, an advocacy group based in the southern city of Bangalore, which experienced a mass exodus of frightened northeasterners last week.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Abraham said the government sent out broad instructions to Web sites to block all hate speech, without giving specific definitions or examples. “The government could have done this in a more sophisticated manner, like putting up banner notices on Facebook and Twitter; blocking text messages that had certain key words; or warning the sites to proactively dismantle some content.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Indian Department of Electronics and Information Technology <a class="external-link" href="http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=86355">said in a statement</a> Monday that it had been working with international social networking sites on the issue but that “a lot more and quicker action is expected from them to address such a sensitive issue.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A Google India official said that “content intended to incite violence is prohibited on YouTube, and we act quickly to remove such material flagged by our users.”</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-washington-post-rama-lakshmi-august-20-2012-india-blocks-more-than-250-web-sites-for-inciting-hate-panic'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-washington-post-rama-lakshmi-august-20-2012-india-blocks-more-than-250-web-sites-for-inciting-hate-panic</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-08-22T04:38:26ZNews Item