Indian Government orders ISPs to block websites

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

On Friday, India's Department of Telecomunications (DoT) passed an order to Indian ISPs to block several websites.

While the list of websites is confidential, sites known to be on the list are *.blogspot.com, *.typepad.com, and geocities.com/*.

Indian ISPs have slowly been complying with the order. MTNL, Reliance, and SpectraNet have already been blocking websites, while state-backed BSNL and VSNL have not yet started, but are expected to start blocking the blog websites soon.

The Indian government (DoT) has refused to give any reason(s) for the blocking of the popular blog websites. When asked about the censorship of the sites, Dr Gulshan Rai, director of CERT-IN, the only body authorised to issue directives to ISPs, responded by saying "Somebody must have asked for some sites to be blocked. What is your problem?"

According to one source, It is believed that terrorists are using the blogs to communicate. Even if this is true, blocking the domains makes about as much sense as turning off India's telecommunications networks, because the terrorists use phones to communicate. Also, any internet-savvy individual can easily circumvent the domain blocking by using IP addresses, or by using a proxy to access the internet.