1) Since Friday or around that Blogspot has been progressively blocked by all ISPs. Typepad and Geocities too, depending upon the ISP.
2) That no explanation was issued by either CERT-IN or DoT (Department of Telecom) or any of the ISPs. We deserve to know why this is happening and who is accountable.
3) On Monday we got to know for a fact that the DoT did issue orders to block some websites.
4) On Tuesday morning the papers gave us a list of websites, 17 or 18, which the DoT sought to be blocked. There is no information on why these were sought to be blocked.
5) Amongst these are four Blogspot-hosted blogs:
http://exposingtheleft.blogspot.com
http://commonfolk.blogspot.com
http:/commonense.blogspot.com
http://princesskimberley.logspot.com [spelling dispute here]
6) Today Dr Gulshan Rai told a reporter (see it in the papers tomorrow) that Blogspot as a whole was not sought to be blocked, but only the four blogs above.
7) WHAT are these blogs about? Why does the DoT want hem blocked? Why should I not read them? Why was this announcement not made earlier, on Friday itself, that they are blocking these blogs?
8) WHY have sites like clickatell.com, dalitstan.com, hinduunity.org and hinduhumanrights.org also on the list? Is there any EVIDENCE that these sites are against national security or is there any precedent of these sites causing violence through hate speech?
9) WHEN will the en-masse blockade on blogspot, typepad and geocities be lifted and who will take responsibility (and issue an apology) for the inconvenience caused o so many since Friday?
10) EXACTLY the same thing happened in 2003. The DoT wanted http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kynhun blocked and the ISPs didn’t know how to do it. So they blocked http://groups.yahoo.com, resulting in uproar from thousands of Yahoo! Groups users in India. ISPs were then told by the govt to work around it and block only ‘kynhun’ rather than Yahoo! Groups as a whole. And ISPs did it. In three years neither CERT-IN, nor DoT, nor ISPs have learnt any lessons. In a country which is massively expanding e-governance, internet security is in the hands of such morons. Is it safe to be online at all in India?
Previous posts:
Sleep with princess Kimberly, and expose the left
Bloggers against censorship
“Somebody must have blocked some sites. What is your problem?”
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“In three years neither CERT-IN, nor DoT, nor ISPs have learnt any lessons. In a country which is massively expanding e-governance, internet security is in the hands of such morons.”
Well said Shivam.
This is amazing, does anybody in India care about free speech and right to information? A similar move in Europe or America would have caused a national outrage and all I am seeing here is a weak protest by a few bloggers.
Who authorized CERT-IN to decide what Indians need to read and not read? If they have been given such authority, what is the difference between India and China or North Korea?
Can this be challenged in the Supreme court or a smaller court? I am not legal expert, can somebody with knowledge in that area post his views. Maybe Indian citizens can get a ruling from the court that prohibits the government departments from wielding such powers.
well ajay, is the current national response more in tune to what u were expecting?
more or less, Indians seem to live more like subjects of the Govt, than as citizens of a country,
I just visited front pages of top Indian news sites like Indiatimes.com, ndtv.com, rediff.com and ibnlive.com, Only ibnlive has a small link on the right side to a story about bloggers being pissed of with the govt about their blogs being blocked by the govt. No news about the the list of sites that fill 2 odd pages that have also been blocked
This is pathetic,
Pl. check http://www.physorg.com/news72460837.html too.
swarup
We should some how make ISPs correct their mistake. We created a forum called http://freespeech.desihub.com
Lets share our thoughts and see what we can do. My blog at Desihub is not yet blocked, but never know Indian ISPs might knock down all the domains who provide blogging feature.
It gets worse if they block entire desihub.com, which provides more than blogging to consumers. Hope we can educate our ISPs together and make them learn their mistakes!!
Bala
http://bala.desihub.com/blog
typepad still down
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we are back….
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