The Centre for Internet and Society
http://editors.cis-india.org
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Regulating the Internet by fiat
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-the-hindu-aug-26-v-sridhar-regulating-the-internet-by-fiat
<b>The Union government’s move to ban or block 310 online entities is worrisome.</b>
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<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; ">This article by V Sridhar was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/internet/article3821580.ece">published</a> in the Hindu on August 26, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.</p>
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<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; ">The unprecedented spike in the velocity of hateful, offensive and blatantly communal online content earlier this month, which reinforced rumour mongering on the ground that resulted in the exodus of people from the northeast from several Indian cities has been a classic example of how new technologies can be harnessed for old vices. But just as disturbing has been the manner in which the government yielded to the old itch of censoring, banning or blocking content. Between August 18 and August 21, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), in four separate directives issued to all Internet service licensees, asked them to “block access” to a total of 310 URLs (Unique Resource Locators).</p>
<h3>Directing ISPs</h3>
<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; ">The number of URLs blocked does not quite convey the extent of the banned content because the list includes instances of entire websites, a single Web page in some cases, videos posted on YouTube, Twitter handles, Facebook entries, or even instances of links that would take the browser to an img tag (an individual image that is linked to an HTML page). Although the directives clearly stated that the service providers should block only the specific URLs leading to the main sites such as YouTube, Facebook or Twitter.</p>
<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; ">Airtel, the leading telecom and Internet service provider, blocked youtu.be, the short URL that Twitter and Facebook users normally use for sharing images and videos. A perusal of the four orders clearly shows that Airtel overreacted. Although the service provider subsequently corrected the error, worries about arbitrary disruptions remain.</p>
<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; ">Pranesh Prakash, Programme Manager, Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), who did the first analysis of the resources that were pulled out of the Web, said the list was only partial, because they related only to the URLs that ISPs were asked to block, not what action would have been initiated against those offering Web services.</p>
<h3>A ragtag list</h3>
<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; ">Net activists, even those who do not have an absolutist notion of the right to free speech, have expressed deep reservations about the manner in which the government has blocked 310 URLs. Although Mr. Prakash, who is also a lawyer, believes that “temporary curbs” of freedom of expression, in situations such as the unprecedented situation earlier this month may be necessary, he argued that the government acted carelessly and in a kneejerk manner. “It is a ragtag list, prepared in a haphazard manner,” he told <i>The Hindu</i>.</p>
<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; ">Logically, the rules applicable to hate content ought to be the same whether the offence is in print or whether it appears as online content. Mr. Prakash pointed to the fact that official agencies such as the police have not gone after those responsible for the content posted in the blocked URLs, which shows that the government’s approach is not backed by a resolve to bring to book those responsible for spreading hate.</p>
<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; ">The ban-first, examine-later approach is wrong for three sets of reasons, argued Mr. Prakash. First, because there are what he characterises as “egregious mistakes”. Second, he doubts whether regulations prescribing due process of enforcing and reviewing the ban were indeed followed. Third, the government ought to have acted smarter, by using the same media to debunk the rumours that were swirling in several Indian cities but also in the northeast. Mr. Prakash pointed to the case of a Canadian intern working at the CIS who received an SMS from a Canadian government agency that asked her not to heed the rumours. Although the Bangalore police did issue an SMS asking people not to heed such rumours, it came well after the rumour mongering had passed its peak.</p>
<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; ">“I generally believe that the government must exercise utmost caution in censoring,” said Mr. Prakash. He pointed out that in the list were sites and people who had done nothing to promote hate. He refered to the case of Amit Paranjpe, whose twitter handles were blocked. “If you go through his timeline, you will not find anything that is communal at all,” Mr. Prakash says. “I do not think the government acted responsibly by going after material that is not directly inflammatory, or contributes to the state of panic,” he argued. “I do not doubt the motives of the government, because I see that the overwhelming majority of the material it has blocked is stuff that has something to do with communalism or rioting, whether it is as reportage or as material that contributes to tension,” he observed. He also did not think the government used the crisis as an excuse to put down politically dissenting voices, which was what happened last October (critical references to Sonia Gandhi were removed then).</p>
<h3>Cyber terror?</h3>
<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; ">Significantly, the list of blocked domains did not match the government’s claim that a lot of the hate content were in the form of images with misleading captions, most of which came from Pakistan. Mr. Prakash pointed out that many of these images had “been floating around” in Pakistan for at least a month before the rumours hit their peak in mid-August. He noted that within Pakistan there had been debates about the authenticity of these images. “In fact, the reportage and the countering of the reportage in the Pakistani media has been much more sophisticated than in India,” he observed. Significantly, the debate was not even targeted at the Indian audience, but to Pakistani or a global audience. “This debunks the notion some sections of the media have propagated, that this is about cyber war or cyber terrorism,” he says. “I have not seen evidence that India has been targeted from Pakistan,” he observed.</p>
<h3>Lack of transparency</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It has also been done without abiding by the procedures that are clearly laid down. Mr. Prakash pointed out, the provisions of the Information Technology Act require that “persons or intermediaries” blocked ought to have been given an opportunity to explain their position within 48 hours. He doubted that this had been followed. Moreover, he argued that the people or companies hosting the offensive content, not the ISPs, ought to have been asked to remove them. After all, most of the large and popular intermediaries have clearly laid down conditions of usage, he said.<br /><br />The lack of transparency in the manner in which the government blocked these websites — even if it is accepted that the content was hateful, abhorrent and aimed at stirring social tension — is worrisome because it sets a precedent for unchecked use of power, without proper sanction. Nor was it a smart way of addressing an innovatively virulent way of spreading chaos. While the government’s use of the sledgehammer may have got it out of the immediate crisis it found itself in, it may have fewer friends when faced with a similar outbreak later.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-the-hindu-aug-26-v-sridhar-regulating-the-internet-by-fiat'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-the-hindu-aug-26-v-sridhar-regulating-the-internet-by-fiat</a>
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No publisherpraskrishnaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-08-26T10:13:03ZNews ItemTo regulate Net intermediaries or not is the question
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/www-deccan-herald-aug-26-2012-to-regulate-net-intermediaries-or-not-is-the-question
<b>Given the disruption to public order caused by the mass exodus of North-Eastern Indians from several cities, the government has had for the first time in many years, a legitimate case to crackdown on Internet intermediaries and their users.</b>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Sunil's column was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.deccanherald.com/content/274218/to-regulate-net-intermediaries-not.html">published</a> in the Deccan Herald on August 26, 2012.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">There was, of course, much room for improvement in the manner in which the government conducted the censorship. But the policy question that becomes most pertinent now is: do we need to regulate Internet intermediaries further? The answer is yes and no. <br /> <br /> There are areas where these intermediaries need to be regulated in order to protect citizen and consumer interest. But to deal with rumour-mongering and hate speech, there is sufficient provisions in Indian law to deal with the current disruption in public order and any similar disruptions in the future. <br /> <br /> It is a common misunderstanding to assume that all civil society organisations that advocate civil liberties on networked technologies are regulatory doves that wish to dismantle regulation of the private sector and allow them complete free hand for innovation and, perhaps, causing harm to public interest.<br /> <br /> The opposite is also not necessarily true. We are not hawks, those that believe in maximal regulation of the private sector. The state should regulate the private sector in areas where the citizens are unable to protect their own interest and self-regulation is inadequate. But there are many other areas where regulation needs to be dismantled in the interests of citizen and public interest. <br /> <br /> Dr Rohan Samarajiva, founder of a Colombo-based regional policy think tank LIRNEasia, explains this best using the ‘law of soft toys’. When his daughter was young he told her that in Sri Lanka there was a law which mandated that every time she got a new soft toy, she would have to necessarily give away another one.<br /> <br /> The regulatory lesson here is: the mandate for regulation cannot keep endlessly expanding. As the government moves into new areas of regulation, it should also exit other older areas where regulatory rupee is providing limited returns. These decisions should be based on evidence of harm caused to citizens and consumers. The following are a list of areas where regulation is required for Internet intermediaries:<br /> <br /> Privacy: India needs the office of the privacy commissioner established and an articulation of national privacy principles through the enactment of the long awaited Privacy Act. This privacy commissioner should be able to investigate complaints against intermediaries, proactively investigate companies, order remedial action and fine companies that violate the principles and other policies in force. Remedial action could require change in policies, features, data retention policies and services etc. <br /> <br /> Competition: Many of these intermediaries have been taken to court on anti-trust complaints, fined and subjected to remedial action by regulators in America and Europe. <br /> <br /> Earlier this year, BharatMatrimony.com has filed a complaint against Google at the Competition Commission of India (CCI) alleging anti-competitive practices in its Adwords program. In addition, based on a report submitted by Consumer Unity & Trust Society (CUTS), a civil society organisation, CCI has initiated an investigation into Google's search engine for anti-competitive practices. If they are found guilty of breaking competition law they could be fined up to 10 per cent of their turnover.<br /> <br /> Speech: Article 19(2) of the Constitution permits Parliament to enact laws that place eight categories of reasonable restrictions on speech. Unfortunately, the Information Technology Act and its associated rules attempts to expand these restrictions and in addition does not comply with the principles of natural justice. Ideally, all those impacted by the censorship should be informed and should be able to seek redress and reinstatement for the censured speech.<br /> <br /> The policy sting operation conducted by the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) last year demonstrated that intermediaries are risk-averse and tend to over-comply with takedown notices. There is a clear chilling effect on speech online and it is important that the Act and rules be amended at the earliest.<br /> <br /> Intellectual Property: Policies that fall under this inappropriate umbrella term for many differently configured laws make the yet unproven fundamental assumption that granting limited monopolies to rights holders, usually corporations, will result in greater innovation. However, citizen and consumer interest is protected through provisions for exceptions and limitations in laws such as copyright, patent, trademarks etc. Some examples of these safeguards that guarantee access to knowledge in Indian law include compulsory licences, patent opposition, fair-dealing etc. <br /> <br /> There are many other areas where special treatment may be required for intermediaries. For example tax law needs to handle evasion techniques like the Double Irish and the Dutch Sandwich. Given my lengthy wish-list of regulation of Internet intermediaries, why then has CIS become an NGO member of the Global Network Initiative?<br /> <br /> This is because I believe that technological development happen too quickly for us to purely depend on government regulation. Self-regulation has an important role to play in keeping up with these rapid changes. As self-regulatory norms mature they could be formalised into policy by the government.<br /> <br /> Therefore, I consider it a privilege that CIS has been accepted as a member of this self-regulatory initiative and we influence GNI norms using our Indian perspective. However, when self-regulation fails to protect public interest, then the government must step in to regulate Internet intermediaries.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/www-deccan-herald-aug-26-2012-to-regulate-net-intermediaries-or-not-is-the-question'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/www-deccan-herald-aug-26-2012-to-regulate-net-intermediaries-or-not-is-the-question</a>
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No publishersunilFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceIntermediary LiabilityCensorship2012-08-26T06:12:48ZBlog EntryWhen #GOIBlocks, twitterati fly off their ‘handles’
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-hindustan-times-aug-26-2012-when-goi-blocks-twitterati-fly-off-their-handles
<b>Ever since the news broke mid-week that some genuine Twitter accounts and six spoof accounts were blocked, the social networking platform has been in a tizzy.</b>
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<p style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/technology/SocialMedia-Updates/When-GOIBlocks-twitterati-fly-off-their-handles/SP-Article1-919446.aspx">Published</a> in the Hindustan Times on August 26, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Hashtags like #GOIblocks and variations on the same theme began “trending” and the twitterati, functioning like a virtual democracy, have been bombarding the world in real time with posts about the issue. 16 accounts of the 15 million twitter users in India, among them those of a few journalists, spoof accounts like @PM0India, a right-wing parody of @PMOIndia, the official twitter account of the Prime Minister’s office, and a few anonymous accounts like Barbarian Indian (@barbarindian) and Dosabandit (@dosabandit) were blocked.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While Narendra Modi turned his twitter display picture black in solidarity with the idea of freedom of speech (and was promptly termed a hypocrite with many like @JagPaws, who has 641 followers, tweeting, “Whoa!! Is he supporting Jihadi sites?”), Pankaj Pachauri, (49,827 followers) Communications Adviser to the Prime Minister’s office, has put up twitter rules and the National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon’s ominously pro-surveillance keynote address at the release of the IDSA report on “India’s Cyber Security Challenge”.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Many like Nitin Pai @acorn, with 16,988 followers, founder of Takshashila Institute, a public policy think tank, tweeted that “under extraordinary circumstances, the govt must do whatever it can under the constitution to prevent loss of life” and added that targeted and temporary blocks of sites, facebook pages and twitter handles that spewed hate were acceptable. Others like film maker Harini Calamur (@calamur) (11,277 followers) who says she is against censorship tweeted that “Blocking internet handles & sites is silly” and “the Govt’s job is to uphold the constitution & protect our fundamental rights. Not make value judgements.” Much of the debate has led to a genuine exchange, sometimes making comrades of people from opposing camps. Kanchan Gupta, a journalist known for his pro-Hindutva views, whose twitter handle @KanchanGupta (26,424 followers) was among those blocked, accepted on TV that scores of “people from all communities” many of whom “disagreed violently” with him had extended their support on twitter.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Others like writer Shivam Vij (@Dilidurast), who has 3,296 followers, whom Hindutvawadis has often branded ‘pseudo sickular’, surprised baiters by speaking against the ban.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Many were strident in their criticism of the arbitrary nature of the blocks and tweeted that it was indicative of authoritarianism. “Internet blocks in India have been increasing in frequency&intensity. I wouldn't put this down to knee-jerk/foolishness.There is *intent*,” tweeted Nikhil Pahwa (@nixxin), founder and editor of @medianama. Others like business journalist Samidha Sharma @samidhas worried that the government’s frequent attacks on freedom of expression shows that it is “following china in all the wrong things”.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While Pranesh Prakash (@pranesh_prakash) of the Centre for Internet and Society tweeted, “They've blocked sites from all parts of the spectrum: Muslim right-wing, Hindu right-wing, neutral news sites, etc. No politics”, many others saw the move as a “self-serving” one. “Dear GoI: why not be honest enough to say that this web censorship has NOTHING to do with security+ all to do with your own arrogance” tweeted Sunny Singh (@sunnysingh_nw3).</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-hindustan-times-aug-26-2012-when-goi-blocks-twitterati-fly-off-their-handles'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-hindustan-times-aug-26-2012-when-goi-blocks-twitterati-fly-off-their-handles</a>
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No publisherpraskrishnaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-08-26T05:56:19ZNews 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>
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<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>
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<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>
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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>
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No publisherpraskrishnaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-08-26T05:48:12ZNews 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>
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<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>
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<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>
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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>
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No publisherpraskrishnaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-08-26T05:29:15ZNews ItemTweets and twits
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-thehindu-com-opinion-editorial-aug-25-2012-tweets-and-twits
<b>The orders issued by the Ministry of Communication and IT to block more than 300 items on the Internet, including Twitter handles, Facebook pages, YouTube videos, blogposts, pages of certain websites, and in some cases entire websites, tell a revealing story of a government that has simply not applied its mind to the issue of how to deal with hate speech, both cyber and traditional. </b>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Published in the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/article3817241.ece">Hindu</a> on August 25, 2012. Pranesh Prakash's blog post is quoted.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">There can be no argument against taking down material that can incite violence, and some of the targeted content rightly needed to be blocked. But this should have been done transparently, with judicial oversight. In the present case, it is not clear what laws have been invoked to block the items specified in the four orders issued from August 18 to 21. Certainly, the orders themselves do not make reference to any law. As pointed out by the Centre for Internet and Society (<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/analysing-blocked-sites-riots-communalism" class="external-link">http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/analysing-blocked-sites-riots-communalism</a>), if the government had acted under the Information Technology Act, the host servers of the affected sites should have been notified and given 48 hours to respond under the IT Rules of 2009; and if it used the emergency provision in the Rules, which are themselves opaque, the orders should have come up before an ‘examination of request’ committee within 48 hours. Another serious problem is that the orders do not mention the duration of the blocks.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Especially disturbing is the decision to block the Twitter handles of right-wing agitators and one pro-Hindutva journalist. Bad taste, warped logic and chauvinist comment do not, by themselves, add up to hate speech or criminal incitement. If an individual is really spreading hate through speech, print or the Internet, let the government proceed against him or her under the Indian Penal Code — where the courts will have the final word — rather than indulging in censorship that is pre-emptive and arbitrary. And mindless too: among the sites blocked is an anti-hate page on a Pakistani website which was one of the first to expose how fake photographs had been used to whip up Islamist passion on the Rakhine clashes in Myanmar. A London School of Economics-Guardian study of the 2011 London riots documents how Twitter was used extensively in a positive way, to organise community clean-up operations after the riots. On the other hand, their analysis of 2.5 million tweets showed, the response to messages inciting riots was ‘overwhelmingly negative’. The lesson from this is that it is possible to counter hate on social media through the same platform. This is really what the government should be doing, instead of the Sisyphean task of trying to block noxious content that will always find other ways of bubbling to the surface.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-thehindu-com-opinion-editorial-aug-25-2012-tweets-and-twits'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-thehindu-com-opinion-editorial-aug-25-2012-tweets-and-twits</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-08-25T07:45:43ZNews ItemBlocking Twitter: How Internet Service Providers & telcos were caught between tweets and tall egos
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-aug-25-2012-blocking-twitter
<b>Long derided as 'dumb pipes' to the Web, Internet service providers (ISPs) are discovering these days that insult is being increasingly followed up by injury. </b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Joji Thomas Philip and Harsimran Julka's article was <a class="external-link" href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Blocking-Twitter-How-Internet-Service-Providers-telcos-were-caught-between-tweets-and-tall-egos/articleshow/15661642.cms">published</a> in the Times of India on August 25, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span id="advenueINTEXT">In the fight between netizens who spare no effort at lampooning the powers that be and alarmingly frequent government flashes of rage at comments that can range from the mildly disrespectful to downright defamatory, telcos and ISPs find themselves much like the grass in the age-old Swahili saying "When two elephants fight, it's the grass that suffers". <br /><br /> The latest reminder of the hard place they find themselves in came earlier this week when news first broke that the government had asked for some accounts on social media site Twitter to also be part of websites and Internet pages it wanted blocked by ISPs. The news triggered a wave of outrage across cyberspace, with many users venting their rage at the first entity they associate the web with - their ISP, which in many cases is also their telecom operator. </span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><span id="advenueINTEXT">"We acted immediately to the government's orders, but ended up being targetted and criticised wrongly only because we acted first," explained one official, who sought anonymity for himself and the company to avoid offending bureaucrats. <br /><br /> It's a common feeling. Telcos and ISPs are increasingly finding themselves in a 'Damned if you do, Damned if you don't' predicament these days, having to walk a tightrope between government orders and a restive netizenry. <br /><br /> And government orders can range from the super-urgent to arbitrary to sometimes ill-conceived. Very often, its 'one ban fits all' makes little allowance for differences between social networking sites and regular websites. <br /><br /> Executives in telecom companies recounted the instance when the government on August 18 ordered a ban on bulk SMSes and restricted text messages to five per day as part of efforts to combat the large-scale migration of people of north-eastern origins from other states to their home provinces fearing reprisal attacks. <br /><br /> "Within an hour of the directive, we started getting calls seeking compliance," said a top executive with a leading <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/telco"><span>telco</span></a>. But as the Centre was demanding compliance reports, operators were busy trying to decipher its notification, which read: "(a) Block bulk SMS (more than 5) for the next 15 days in the entire country across all states/UTs (b) Block bulk MMS (more than 5) and all MMS with attachment more than 25 KB for the next 15 days in the entire country across all states/UTs." <br /><br /> <b>Shoot first, talk later </b> <br /><br /> Telecom operators were nonplussed by the notification. Did it apply only to senders of bulk text messages who use this facility for commercial purposes? Or, did it mean customers could not send SMSes to more than five people simultaneously? <br /><br /> "When we sought clarification, the explanation was completely different and took a new dimension. It was five text messages per day per customer," said the regulatory head of a GSM operator, requesting anonymity as he did not want to offend the government. <br /><br /> Mobile phone companies then approached the department of telecom explaining that they did not have any technology with which they could impose a five SMSes a day limit for postpaid users. "The home and telecom ministries had not even realised that a facility did not exist before issuing the directive," said the marketing head of a leading telco. <br /><br /> In this case, the government accepted the operator's arguments and relented, but still told the companies not to highlight the limitation. "This time around, our arguments were accepted. Going by past instances, some operators had feared that the government would slap a hefty penalty for non-compliance without considering what we had to say," the marketing head said. <br /><br /> Industry officials say the tendency of 'shoot first, talk later' among bureaucrats and ministers long used to having their orders followed, especially when it came to the world of social networking which very few of them had any idea about, meant that it was safer to obey first and correct later. <br /><br /> "We don't even do any application of mind to the government's notices on requests. We wholesale block them. We can't even question the government's requests. A notice is a law in effect. Violation means a potential penalty which can go up to the cancellation of my licence and thus end to my business," said the head of a Delhi-based ISP that serves business users. <br /><br /> Executives with several ISPs and telcos say most often, court orders, government notifications and directives are not in public domain, and these result in angry consumers assuming that their service provider is up to some mischief. <br /><br /> ISPs say public clarifications by the government would go a long way in addressing the issue. "There has to be transparency. The government should have proactively disclosed the names of the websites it wanted blocked. The persons and intermediaries hosting the content should have been notified and provided with 48 hours to respond as required by the <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/IT-Act"><span>IT Act</span></a>," said <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Pranesh-Prakash"><span>Pranesh Prakash</span></a> of the Centre for Internet and Society, a research organisation. </span><span id="advenueINTEXT"> </span></span></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-aug-25-2012-blocking-twitter'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-aug-25-2012-blocking-twitter</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-08-25T07:36:04ZNews ItemSocial media, SMS are not why NE students left Bangalore
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/www-first-post-com-aug-25-2012-nishant-shah-social-media-sms-are-not-why-ne-students-left-bangalore
<b>I woke up one morning to find that I was living in a city of crisis. Bangalore, where the largest public preoccupations to date have been about bad roads, stray dogs, and occasionally, the lack of night-life, the city was suddenly a space that people wanted to flee and occupy simultaneously.</b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Nishant Shah's article on North East exodus was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.firstpost.com/tech/social-media-sms-are-not-why-ne-students-left-bangalore-423151.html">published</a> in FirstPost on August 20, 2012.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Through technology mediated gossip mill that produced rumours faster than the speed of a digital click, imagination of terror, of danger and of material harm found currency and we found thousands of people suddenly leaving the city to go back to their imagined homelands.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The media spectacle of this exodus around questions of religion, ethnicity and regionalism only emphasised the fact that there is a new wave of connectedness that we live in – the social web, or what have you – that can no longer be controlled, contained or corrected by official authorities and their voices.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Despite a barrage of messages from the law enforcement and security authorities, on email, on large screens on the roads, and on the comfort of our cell-phones, there was a growing anxiety and a spiralling information mill that was producing an imaginary situation of precariousness and bodily harm.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Much has been said about the eruption of this irrationality that pokes holes in the mantle of cosmopolitanism that Bangalore (and other such ‘global cities’) is enveloped in, in its quest to represent the India that is supposed to shine. It has been heartening to see how communities that were supposed to be in conflict have worked so hard in the last few days, at building human contacts and providing assurances of safety and inclusion, which are far more effective than the official word.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There has been a rich discourse on what this means for India’s modernity, especially when such an event marks the so-called neo-liberal cities, showing the darker undercurrents of discrimination and suspicion that seem to lie just beneath the surface of networked neighbourhoods.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While there is much to be unpacked about the political motivations and the ecologies of fear that our immigrant lives are enshrined in, I want to focus on two aspects of this phenomenon which need more attention.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The first is the fierce localisation of our global technologies. There is an imagination, especially in cities like Bangalore, of digital technologies as necessarily plugging us in larger networks of global information consumption. The idea that technology plugs us into the transnational circuits is so huge that it only tunes us towards an idea of connectedness that is always outward looking, expanding the scope of nation, community and body.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">However, the ways in which information was circulating during this phenomenon reminds us that digital networks are also embedded in local practices of living and survival. Most of the times, these networks are so naturalised and such an integral part of our crucial mechanics of urban life that they appear as habits, without any presence or visibility, In times of crises – perceived or otherwise – these networks make themselves visible, to show that they are also inward looking.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The visibility of the networks, when they suddenly crop up for public viewing, for those of us who are outside of that network, it signals that something has gone wrong. There is a glitch in the matrix and we need to start unpacking the local, the specific and the particular that signals the separation of these networks from our habits of living.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The second point I want to make is about the need to look at the ellipsis that occurs in this spectacular emergence of the network and the apparatus that is set into place to control and regiment it. The hyper-visibility of the information and technology network destabilises the ways in which we think of our everyday, thus emerging not only as a sign of the crisis but a crisis unto itself.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">These ellipses of the crisis – replacing the crisis with the network – as well as the collusion between the crisis and the network are the easy solution that state authorities pick up on.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This is a problem about the nation-wide building of mega-cities filled with immigrant bodies that are not allowed their differences because they all have to be cosmopolitan and mobile bodies. The solution, however, is offered at the level of technology.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Instead of addressing the larger issues of conservative parochialism, an increasing back-lash by conservative governments and a growing hostility that emerges from these cities which nobody possesses and nobody belongs to, the efforts are being made to blame technology as the site where the problem is located and the object that needs to be controlled.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">So what we have is redundant regulation that controls the number of text messages we are able to send, or policing of internet for those spreading rumours. The entire focus has been on information management, as if the reason for mass exodus of people from the North East Indian states and the sense of fragility that the city has suddenly been immersed in, is all due to the pervasive and ubiquitous information gadgets and their ability to proliferate in peer-2-peer environments outside of the control of the government.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Digital Technologies have become the de facto scapegoats of many problems in our past. It invites more regulation, containment and censorship of the freedom that digital technologies allow you – from the infamous Delhi Public School MMS Scandal in the early 2000s to the recent attempts at filtering the social web – we have seen the repeated futility of such measures of technology control, and yet it appears as a constant trope in the State’s solution to the problems of the contemporary.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This obsession with governance of technology to resolve a much more nuanced problem is akin to fabulous stories of mad monarchs banishing spinning wheels from their kingdoms or sentencing hammers to imprisonment for the potential and possibility of crime.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">And these solutions are always going to fail, because they fail to recognise either the intimate penetration of digital technologies in our everyday life, or the ways in which our local structures are constructed through the presence of ubiquitous technologies and gadgets and screens and networks.</p>
<div id="_mcePaste">
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There has been a rich discourse on what this means for India’s modernity, especially when such an event marks the so-called neo-liberal cities, showing the darker undercurrents of discrimination and suspicion that seem to lie just beneath the surface of networked neighbourhoods.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While there is much to be unpacked about the political motivations and the ecologies of fear that our immigrant lives are enshrined in, I want to focus on two aspects of this phenomenon which need more attention.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The first is the fierce localisation of our global technologies. There is an imagination, especially in cities like Bangalore, of digital technologies as necessarily plugging us in larger networks of global information consumption. The idea that technology plugs us into the transnational circuits is so huge that it only tunes us towards an idea of connectedness that is always outward looking, expanding the scope of nation, community and body.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">However, the ways in which information was circulating during this phenomenon reminds us that digital networks are also embedded in local practices of living and survival. Most of the times, these networks are so naturalised and such an integral part of our crucial mechanics of urban life that they appear as habits, without any presence or visibility, In times of crises – perceived or otherwise – these networks make themselves visible, to show that they are also inward looking.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The visibility of the networks, when they suddenly crop up for public viewing, for those of us who are outside of that network, it signals that something has gone wrong. There is a glitch in the matrix and we need to start unpacking the local, the specific and the particular that signals the separation of these networks from our habits of living.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The second point I want to make is about the need to look at the ellipsis that occurs in this spectacular emergence of the network and the apparatus that is set into place to control and regiment it. The hyper-visibility of the information and technology network destabilises the ways in which we think of our everyday, thus emerging not only as a sign of the crisis but a crisis unto itself.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">These ellipses of the crisis – replacing the crisis with the network – as well as the collusion between the crisis and the network are the easy solution that state authorities pick up on.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This is a problem about the nation-wide building of mega-cities filled with immigrant bodies that are not allowed their differences because they all have to be cosmopolitan and mobile bodies. The solution, however, is offered at the level of technology.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Instead of addressing the larger issues of conservative parochialism, an increasing back-lash by conservative governments and a growing hostility that emerges from these cities which nobody possesses and nobody belongs to, the efforts are being made to blame technology as the site where the problem is located and the object that needs to be controlled.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">So what we have is redundant regulation that controls the number of text messages we are able to send, or policing of internet for those spreading rumours. The entire focus has been on information management, as if the reason for mass exodus of people from the North East Indian states and the sense of fragility that the city has suddenly been immersed in, is all due to the pervasive and ubiquitous information gadgets and their ability to proliferate in peer-2-peer environments outside of the control of the government.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Digital Technologies have become the de facto scapegoats of many problems in our past. It invites more regulation, containment and censorship of the freedom that digital technologies allow you – from the infamous Delhi Public School MMS Scandal in the early 2000s to the recent attempts at filtering the social web – we have seen the repeated futility of such measures of technology control, and yet it appears as a constant trope n the State’s solution to the problems of the contemporary.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This obsession with governance of technology to resolve a much more nuanced problem is akin to fabulous stories of mad monarchs banishing spinning wheels from their kingdoms or sentencing hammers to imprisonment for the potential and possibility of crime.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">And these solutions are always going to fail, because they fail to recognise either the intimate penetration of digital technologies in our everyday life, or the ways in which our local structures are constructed through the presence of ubiquitous technologies and gadgets and screens and networks.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/www-first-post-com-aug-25-2012-nishant-shah-social-media-sms-are-not-why-ne-students-left-bangalore'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/www-first-post-com-aug-25-2012-nishant-shah-social-media-sms-are-not-why-ne-students-left-bangalore</a>
</p>
No publishernishantFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-08-28T10:48:06ZBlog EntryWhat lurks beneath the Network
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/down-to-earth-org-nishant-shah-aug-24-2012-what-lurks-beneath-the-network
<b>There is a series of buzzwords that have become a naturalised part of discussions around digital social media—participation, collaboration, peer-2-peer, mobilisation, etc. Especially in the post Arab Spring world (and our own home-grown Anna Hazare spectacles), there is this increasing belief in the innate possibilities of social media as providing ways by which the world as we know it shall change for the better. Young people are getting on to the streets and demanding their rights to the future. </b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Nishant Shah's column on the North East exodus and digital networks was published in <a class="external-link" href="http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/what-lurks-beneath-network">Down to Earth</a> magazine on August 24, 2012</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Citizens are mobilising themselves to overthrow authoritarian governments. Socio-economically disadvantaged people, who have always been an alternative to the mainstream, are finding ways of expressing themselves through collaborative practices. Older boundaries of nation, region and body are quickly collapsing as we all become avatars of our biological selves, occupying futures that were once available only to science fiction heroes.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">To this list of very diverse phenomena, I want to add the recent tragic and alarming exodus of people from the north eastern states, from the city of Bengaluru, where I live. There might not be many connections between this state of fear which instigated thousands of people, fearing their safety and security, to leave Bengaluru and return home and the global spectacles of political change that I listed earlier. And yet, there is something about the digital networks, the social web and the ways in which they shape our information societies, that needs to be thought through. In the Arab Spring like events, which are events of global spectacle, there is a certain imagination of digital technologies and its circuits that gets overturned.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">These events challenge the idea that digital networks are always outward looking—connecting us to somebody and someplace ‘out there’ in a world that is quickly getting flat—and show how these networks actually create new local and specific communities around information production, consumption and sharing. These networks that connect people in their information practices, often make themselves simultaneously ubiquitous and invisible. So that the interfaces that we operate through—laptops, cellphones and other portable computing devices—become such a part of our everyday life, that we stop noticing them. They are a natural element of our everyday mechanics of urban survival, and in their omnipresence, become invisible.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This invisibility or naturalisation of the digital technologies, often make us forget the intricate and inextricable way in which they are woven into our basic survival strategies. Especially with the younger generation that has ‘grown up digital’, the interface, the gadget and the network is the default space that they turn to for their everyday needs. We develop intimate relationships with these technologised circuits, making them such a part of our quotidian existence that we often forget that these technologies are external to us. Which is why we come across articulations like, “I love my computer because my friends live in it,” or “I feel amputated when you take away my cell-phone”. These are ways in which we naturalise and internalise the digital technologies that we live in and live with. However, in times of crises, we suddenly realise the separation, as the technologies make themselves present, unable to sustain the new conditions of crises. It would be fruitful to see then that the eruption in our seamless connection with the digital technologies is a sign of an external crisis –something that we have seen in the Arab Spring or the Anna Hazare campaign, where these networks became visible to signal towards an external crisis. The emergence of networks into public view is a symptom that there is something that has gone wrong and so we see the separation of the digital ecosystem from its external reality and context.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The unexpected visibility of the network indicates that the regular information ecologies have been disrupted, the contexts which support community interaction at the local level have been changed, and those changes need to be accounted for and addressed in order for the network to become the transparent infrastructure of new urban communities again. In many ways, it resonates with the science fiction logic of the Matrix Trilogy where, if you can see the matrix, it means that something has gone wrong in the fabric of reality and it needs to be fixed.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The exodus of the north eastern people also needs to be examined in this context. In an immigrant city like Bengaluru, the sense of belonging and community is often deeply mediated by the digital ecologies of information sharing. Beneath the veneer of a global city that is to connect with the external world, there is also a huge network of local, specific and invisible practices that do not become a part of the global spectacle of digital technologies, and operate in a condition of relative invisibility. However, when the logic of a migrant city gets disrupted because the conditions of its work force get threatened, these networks go into an overdrive. They become gossip and rumour mills. They become visible and suddenly create conditions of fear, danger and crisis that were unexpected. And so, without a warning, over-night, a huge number of people, who were a part of these networks, decided to abandon their lives and head home, because the larger social, cultural and political threats transmitted through these local networks before they could become global spectacles that we could consume.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A large part of the people fleeing the city had already crowded the trains and left their lives behind, before any attempt at regulation or control could be made. All kinds of post-facto theories about the real or perceived nature of the threat, the actual cases of violence, and the conditions of life in the IT City have emerged since then. However, in all these theories is a recognition that the crisis which led to this phenomenon lingers on and cannot be addressed. There is no particular person to hold responsible. The few scattered incidents of attacks, violence or intimidation have been recognised as strategic and opportunistic interventions by local regressive groups. All in all, we have a condition where something drastic and dramatic has happened and there is no real or material person or group of people who can be blamed for it. And so, instead of addressing the crisis and the conditions which led to the exodus, we have committed an ellipsis, where we have made technology the scape-goat of our problems.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">And we have done this repeatedly in the history of technology and crises in India. In the early days, when the notorious Delhi Public School MMS clip that captured two under-age students in sexual activity, became hugely visible, instead of addressing the problem at hand, we eventually set up a committee to regulate the conditions of cultural production and distribution online. During the horrifying bomb-attacks in the trains in Mumbai, we tried to block Blogspot and curtail information online as if technology was the reason that these acts were made possible. Last year, Dr. Sibal’s attempts at establishing a pre-censorship regime on information on the social web, because he encountered material that was disrespectful to the Congress party leader Mrs. Gandhi, sought to regulate the web rather than look at the political discontent and dissent that was being established through those articulations. Because there was no way by which the local situation could be controlled or contained, technology became the only site of regulation, inspiring draconian measures that limit the volume of text messaging and try and censor the web for lingering traces of the information mill that catalysed and facilitated this exodus.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This is a remarkable ellipsis where the actual problem – the conditions of life and safety in our global cities – is hidden under a perceived problem, which is the sudden visibility of a digital information ecosystem which was not apparent to us hitherto. And while there is no denying that at the level of tactics, for immediate fire-fighting this kind of regulation is important, nay, necessary, we also need to realise that at the level of strategy, these kinds of knee-jerk regulatory mechanisms are not a resolution of the problem. These laws and attempts at censorship are neither going to correct what has happened, nor are they going to be potent enough to curb such networked information sharing in the future. They are symbolic tactics that are trying to correct the crisis – the feeling of fear and danger – and in that, they do their job well in establishing some sense of control over the quickly collapsing world. However, we need to look beyond the visibility of this network, and realise that the crisis is not its emergence or its functioning but at something else that lurks behind the facade of the network.</p>
<p>Nishant Shah is director (research), Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/down-to-earth-org-nishant-shah-aug-24-2012-what-lurks-beneath-the-network'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/down-to-earth-org-nishant-shah-aug-24-2012-what-lurks-beneath-the-network</a>
</p>
No publishernishantFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-08-25T07:10:38ZBlog EntryHow ISPs block websites and why it doesn’t help
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-livemint-com-aug-24-2012-gopal-sathe-how-isps-block-websites-and-why-it-doesnt-help
<b>Banning websites is ineffective against malicious users as workarounds are easy and well known.</b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Gopal Sathe's article was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.livemint.com/2012/08/23210529/How-ISPs-block-websites-and-wh.html?atype=tp">published</a> by LiveMint on August 24, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India blocked 245 web pages for provocative content on Monday in an effort to prevent the spread of hate messages and lessen communal tensions in the country, and suggested via an official release on the website of the Press Information Bureau that more could follow.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As was widely reported in the days that followed, most websites blocked were not related to the ethnic clashes in Assam.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Pranesh Prakash, programme manager with the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, analysed the sites which were listed by the government. In his analysis, 33% of all blocked addresses were on Facebook, 27.8% on YouTube, 9.7% on Twitter and the rest were spread over a number of different websites including Wikipedia, <i>Firspost.com</i> and <i>TimesofIndia.Indiatimes.com.</i></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Prakash says, “I don’t believe that the decision to block sites was politically motivated, but I do believe that in trying to prevent harm, the government has gone overboard.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">He also writes in his analysis, “Even though many of the items on that list do deserve (in my opinion) to be removed [...] the people and companies hosting the material should have been asked to remove it, instead of ordering the ISPs to block them.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Prakash also pointed out, “There are numerous egregious mistakes. Even people and posts debunking rumours have been blocked, and it is clear that the list was not compiled with sufficient care.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Of course, India’s overall record on Internet censorship isn’t great, with the current laws encouraging Internet service providers (ISPs) to take down content without investigating individual cases properly. And that is not even taking into consideration official government orders, such as this decision to block websites.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The process of blocking content for an ISP is very simple. After all, any content that is coming from a website to your computer has to travel through the ISP, giving it ample opportunity to observe and censor banned content.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Think of it like this—you’re on an island, with no way to reach the mainland (Internet) where all the websites are. The ISP builds a bridge connecting you to the mainland, and charges you to let cars (data) from the sites come to you, by opening the road. Each web page has a unique ID, like a licence plate. If the government tells the ISP to block a specific page, it’s added to the blacklist, and isn’t allowed on the bridge. The government could also block a full domain, such as <i>Facebook.com</i>, which would be like blocking all cars with DL plates, instead of specific numbers.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">New Delhi based cyber security consultant Dominic K. says, “The content is still there and can be accessed from outside India, so these measures are really very ineffective. People can use proxies or a virtual private network (VPN) to circumvent these measures with ease, by appearing to be a different site; so banning sites does nothing to deter malicious users.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Proxies are websites that load blocked sites for you—if the proxy is not using the ISP doing the block, they can still load the content from the blocked site and present it to the users, since the blocklists simply block websites, and not their content.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">VPNs work in a similar fashion, creating a virtual presence for the user outside of their own country. This can be done to circumvent blocks and access region-specific content, but is also a perfectly legitimate tool, and can increase your security greatly.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It’s a pretty crude system but it’s used around the world. In Australia, for example, the government has a page that directly lists their web censorship activities. It wants to block material that includes child sexual abuse imagery, bestiality, sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act. However, as noted on the same page, these measures can be easily circumvented. Since the content remains on the Internet, and is only blocked, it can be accessed by “any technically competent user”.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">China, meanwhile, is frequently criticized for what is called, tongue-in-cheek, “the great firewall of China”. Reporters without Borders, a French organization that works for freedom of the press, has a list of countries that are “enemies of the Internet”. China, Iran, North Korea and Burma are some of the worst offenders, but Australia, India, Egypt, France and South Korea are also on the watchlist as “countries under surveillance”.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Saudi Arabia and the UAE publish detailed information on their filtering practices but other countries such as China return connection errors, and fake “file not found” errors.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There is a long history of Internet censorhip in India, and a perception that the laws have been used for political ends. Net censorship has been around for a while—in 1999, VSNL blocked access to Pakistani newspapers. Later, in 2006 the government wanted to block certain separatist groups of the Yahoo! Groups platform. While the government issued specific pages for the ban, initially, the whole Yahoo! Groups domain was blocked by ISPs. In 2007, Orkut was told to remove “defamatory” pages created by users.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Cartoon pornography website <i>Savitabhabi.com</i> was also blocked in 2009, while several blogging services such as Typepad were blocked last year for a few weeks, and then the block was lifted, with no explanations.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Like Australia, in the UK too, child pornography is filtered by the government, though users there have to opt-in for this filtering. Other countries such as Denmark, Norway and Sweden also see such content being filtered. The Indian IT Act also notes various kinds of illegal content which is not permissible, such as child pornography and hate speech.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Other countries, such as the US, also have aggressive Internet censorship of copyrighted content. Prakash says, “Internet censorship is not restricted to India alone. Every country in the world has been doing this in different ways. The United States, for example, has even seized domains in copyright cases, which were legally hosted in other countries. With regards to political censorship, which some feel is a concern now, I don’t think that the Indian government is doing that. I believe that they are sincerely trying to address a serious issue, but people are going overboard.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">He adds, “The biggest concern is that there is no transparency about what is being blocked, or why, and this leaves things open for active misuse in the future.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In Google’s 2011 <i>Transparency Report</i>, released in June this year, India did not feature very favourably. According to Google, the number of content removal requests the company received increased by 49% from 2010. There were five court orders from India ordering the Internet giant to remove content and there were 96 other requests by Indian government agencies for 246 individual items.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In comparison, the US made only 77 requests in the same period. They also revealed that 70% of the content removal requests from India were related to defamation. National security and religious offence attracted far fewer removal requests. Google received only one request from Indian agencies from July to December 2011 for removal of pornographic content.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Our government might not be politically motivated in this instance—however, the possibility for abuse is high, and what’s more, the measures that are being taken are limited at best. Instead of ordering ISPs to block content directly, the government should be working with the content owners and platforms offering the content to have it taken down properly. Instead, we get crude measures which do nothing to deter malicious users, and only serve to inconvenience the general users.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-livemint-com-aug-24-2012-gopal-sathe-how-isps-block-websites-and-why-it-doesnt-help'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-livemint-com-aug-24-2012-gopal-sathe-how-isps-block-websites-and-why-it-doesnt-help</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-08-25T06:56:41ZNews ItemInternet expert criticizes Indian cyber blockades
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/hosted-2-ap-org-aug-24-2012-internet-expert-criticizes-indian-cyber-blockades
<b>The Indian government's attempts to block social media accounts and websites that it blames for spreading panic have been inept and possibly illegal, a top Internet expert said Friday.</b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Written by Muneeza Naqvi, this was originally published in <a class="external-link" href="http://hosted2.ap.org/OREUG/86053d8662944f7698388c63189f97c6/Article_2012-08-24-India-Cyber%20Censorship/id-aa810bf90e2c4130bb940d285f2eb5a2">Associated Press</a> on August 24, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Earlier this month, thousands of people from the country's remote northeast began fleeing cities in southern and western India, as rumors swirled that they would be attacked in retaliation for ethnic violence against Muslims in their home state.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Last weekend, the government said the rumors were fed by gory images — said to be of murdered Muslims — that were actually manipulated photos of people killed in cyclones and earthquakes. Officials said the images were spread to sow fear of revenge attacks.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">After that, the government began interfering with hundreds of websites, including some Twitter accounts, blogs and links to certain news stories. The government also ordered telephone companies to sharply restrict mass text messages.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is unclear who has been spreading the inflammatory material. Experts say that despite the government's electronic interference, there are many ways to access the blocked sites.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"The government has gone overboard and many of its efforts are legally questionable," said Pranesh Prakash, who studies Internet governance and freedom of speech at The Center for Internet and Society, a research organization in the southern city of Bangalore.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The center has published a list of more than 300 Internet links blocked in the last two weeks. These include some pages on Facebook, YouTube and news items on the sites of Al Jazeera, Australia's ABC, and a handful of Indian and Pakistani news sites.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On Friday, the Twitter account of Milind Deora, India's junior communications minister, appeared blocked. A message at his (at)milinddeora account said "the profile you are trying to view has been suspended."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Deora told the Press Trust of India news agency that his account was being verified and was only temporarily suspended. PTI said Deora had been tweeting in defense of the government blocking efforts before the account was suspended.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The exodus of people from the northeast followed clashes in Assam state over the last several weeks between ethnic Bodos and Muslims settlers. At least 80 people were killed in that violence and 400,000 were displaced. Most of those who fled were living in Bangalore, where text messages spread quickly threatening retaliatory attacks by Muslims.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Bodos and the Muslim settlers — most of whom arrived years ago from what was then East Pakistan, and which is now Bangladesh — have clashed repeatedly over the decades. But the recent violence was the worst since the mid-1990s.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"The government's highest priority should have been to counter the rumors and it did a really bad job of that," said Prakash, adding that the government should have at least tried to counter the panic through the same social media sites that it was blocking.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The government's actions have sparked outrage on social networking sites, with hashtags critical of the government quickly becoming top trending topics on Twitter's India site.</p>
<p>But Prakash was as dismissive of that reaction as he was of the government attempts at censorship.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The government's actions reek of "the kind of incompetence one has come to expect," he said, "but the hashtags (hash)Emergency2012 etc. suffer from a lack of perspective, too."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Kapil Sibal, the senior minister of communications and information technology, said in a statement that Facebook and Google were cooperating with the government and shutting down some sites that the government had pointed out as objectionable. Sibal said Twitter had also said it was ready to talk with the government.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But he said that "the accusations that we are aggressively targeting someone's account or websites are incorrect."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On Thursday, Victoria Nuland, spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, had told reporters that it was urging the Indian government "to take into account the importance of freedom of expression in the online world" while addressing its security concerns. She said the U.S. was ready to help India's efforts to talk to social networks regarding the issue."</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The above was carried in the following places:</p>
<ol>
<li> <a class="external-link" href="http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-08-24/internet-expert-criticizes-indian-cyber-blockades">Bloomberg Businessweek</a> (August 24, 2012)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://www.khaleejtimes.com/kt-article-display-1.asp?xfile=data/international/2012/August/international_August802.xml&section=international">Khaleej Times</a> (August 24, 2012)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/internet-expert-criticizes-indian-cyber-blockades-17071588#.UDr2TdbibFs">ABC News</a> (August 24, 2012)</li>
<li><span><a href="http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2018980504_apasindiacybercensorship.html" target="_blank"><span>Seattle Times</span></a> </span>(August 24, 2012)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://www.vancouversun.com/mobile/news/world-news/Internet+expert+criticizes+India+cyber+blockades+wake+ethnic/7139293/story.html">Vancouver Sun</a> (August 24, 2012)</li>
<li><span><a href="http://www.kansascity.com/2012/08/24/3776866/internet-expert-criticizes-indian.html" target="_blank"><span>Kansas City</span></a>. </span>(August 24, 2012)</li>
<li><span><a href="http://www.timescolonist.com/technology/Internet+expert+criticizes+India+cyber+blockades+wake+ethnic/7139293/story.html" target="_blank"><span>Times Colonist</span></a> </span>(August 24, 2012)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2012/08/24/2494805_internet-expert-criticizes-indian.html">Merced Sun-Star</a> (August 24, 2012)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://news.yahoo.com/internet-expert-criticizes-indian-cyber-123930580.html">Yahoo News</a> (August 24, 2012)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2012/08/24/2197739_internet-expert-criticizes-indian.html">SanLuisObispo.com</a> (August 24, 2012)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://www.terrorismwatch.org/2012_08_19_archive.html">Terrorism Watch</a> (August 25, 2012)</li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://www.sci-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=84590">Sci-Tech Today</a> (August 26, 2012)</li>
</ol>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/hosted-2-ap-org-aug-24-2012-internet-expert-criticizes-indian-cyber-blockades'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/hosted-2-ap-org-aug-24-2012-internet-expert-criticizes-indian-cyber-blockades</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial mediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-08-28T10:11:44ZNews 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 ItemGovt in line of fire over web censorship
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-livemint-com-aug-24-2012-surabhi-agarwal-govt-in-line-of-fire-over-web-censorship
<b>Social media abuzz with allegations of government gagging free speech in the garb of curbing hate messages.</b>
<hr />
<p>This article by Surabhi Agarwal was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.livemint.com/2012/08/24002044/Govt-in-line-of-fire-over-web.html">published</a> in LiveMint on August 24, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The government is once again in the line of fire over web censorship, with allegations rampant on social media Thursday that it was gagging free speech in the garb of containing hate messages that had led to communal violence and a panic exodus by people from the north-eastern states in some cities.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">According to a list first published on its website by The Economic Times, Twitter accounts of some journalists including Kanchan Gupta, a former columnist of the Pioneer newspaper, Shiv Aroor, deputy editor at the Headlines Today news channel, and those of some individuals associated with and sympathetic to right-wing causes have been blocked.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The block wasn’t in place for some of the accounts late Thursday, although this could have been because some internet service providers were slow to follow the government’s orders.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There was outrage on social media, especially on Twitter where #Emergency2012 and #GOIBlocks quickly became top trending topics on the micro-blogging website for India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Was it wrong to seek help of Indians for the victims of Assam Riots? Is it a crime in India if you help your fellow citizens in need?” tweeted Anil Kohli, whose account Twitanic is also on the list of blocked Twitter accounts.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Pravin Togadia, international working president of the right-wing Vishwa Hindu Parishad, tweeted: “Some say Gvt blocked my twitter account, some say this, some say that! It is my REAL twitter account. Block TRUTH & there will be 1000M Togadias!”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The government has issued four orders over the last one week to block over 300 web pages. According to a post by Pranesh Prakash of the Centre for Internet and Society, 33% of them were on Facebook, 28% on Google Inc.’s YouTube and around 10% on Twitter.com.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Prakash told Mint that there may be a case of excessive censorship in the damage-control exercise following the communal violence and the scaremongering that followed but the motives do not seem political. “Both Kanchan Gupta and Swapan Dasgupta seem to be having a right wing ideology, but while the former’s account is blocked the latter’s is not,” Prakash said. “The difference is on the kind of content which has been posted.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While he would accuse the government of not taking sufficient care while drawing up the list, he couldn’t accuse it of trying to curb media freedom. “It is too far (fetched) an accusation and I am not making it.”</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-livemint-com-aug-24-2012-surabhi-agarwal-govt-in-line-of-fire-over-web-censorship'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-livemint-com-aug-24-2012-surabhi-agarwal-govt-in-line-of-fire-over-web-censorship</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-08-25T03:13:19ZNews 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 ItemTwitter users hit back at government ban
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-hindustantimes-com-aug-24-2012-twitter-users-hit-back-at-govt-ban
<b>The government faced an angry backlash from Twitter users on Thursday after ordering Internet service providers to block about 20 accounts that officials said had spread scare-mongering material that threatened national security.</b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Published in the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/NewDelhi/Twitter-users-hit-back-at-government-ban/Article1-918505.aspx">Hindustan Times</a> on August 24, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.</p>
<hr />
<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>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 (GOOG.O), 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 rumours that Muslims, a large minority in the predominantly Hindu country, were planning revenge attacks for violence in Assam, where 80 people have been killed and 300,000 have been displaced since July.</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 US 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>"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 analysed the 300 banning orders, found that they contained "numerous mistakes and inconsistencies." Some of the banned websites belonged to people trying to debunk the rumours, for example, it said.</p>
<p>"This isn't about political censorship. This is about the government not knowing how to do online regulation properly," said CIS programme manager Pranesh Prakash.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Parliament last year passed a law that obliges Internet companies to remove a range of objectionable content when requested to do so, a move criticised at the time by rights groups and social media companies.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-hindustantimes-com-aug-24-2012-twitter-users-hit-back-at-govt-ban'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-hindustantimes-com-aug-24-2012-twitter-users-hit-back-at-govt-ban</a>
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No publisherpraskrishnaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-08-25T02:51:18ZNews Item