The Terrorists Have Won

…because now, you can’t read Blogspot or Typepad-hosted blogs in India. That means no Barmaid, no Abhi, no MD, no Brimful, no Badmash, no Maisnon. Erstwhile Mutineer Manish has more (natch) on Ultrabrown:

For all the talk of IndiaÂ’s freedom and democracy, the Indian government has apparently just censored all of Blogspot and Typepad. For shame. Blogspot- and Typepad-hosted blogs are inaccessible from my Bombay ISP and many others and seem to be blocked at the Airtel Internet backbone in Delhi. Geocities is reportedly blocked as well.[link]

Sabahat Iqbal Ashraf pointed out the utter lameness of this action via the ASATA mailing list:

As I was saying all along, unenlightened Internet policies are not a Pakistani monopoly; the Indian establishment can be just as “efficient” in the matter. First it was only Pakistan blocking most blogs, now it seems the Indian establishment is getting into the act…

Apparently, terrorists are using blogs to communicate, but Ultrabrown notes that Dr Gulshan Rai, Director of the Computer Emergency Response Team—India (CERT-IN) feigned cluelessness when asked about this unwelcome development:

“Somebody must have blocked some sites. What is your problem?“…

Awesome.

I can’t improve on Manish’s response to that:

As the world’s back office, for India to blame overzealous techies would hardly be credible. It’s not yet clear which blogs the government was targeting, but the tactic of banning Blogspot is nothing less than outright repression — mimicking the tactics Pakistan used to shut down discussion of Danish cartoons critical of Islam. India is now in the august company of some of the world’s least free nations

…because I’m too busy freaking out over the possibility he raises at the end of his post:

These repeated incidents are also a cautionary tale about the dangers of relying on Web apps centralized on a small handful of domains. WhatÂ’ll you do when your government blocks Gmail?

Shivam Vij has a detailed and worrisome post about his telephonic attempts to figure out what the hell is going on, here. He also has a grim sort of workaround, since not all platforms are censored equally:

Is there a moral of the story? Yes, there is. Shift to your own domain and your own hosting and most of all, to WordPress. [link]

…or, click your ruby slippers together thrice and chant, “There’s no speech like free, there’s no speech like free, there’s no speech like…

130 thoughts on “The Terrorists Have Won

  1. Okay, last comment. Sorry, but I am fascinated by this topic.

    Not on my blog post, it shouldn’t be. You know I love it when you grace my virtual tea party. 🙂

  2. I suspect it is some goof up / miscommunication. A few years back Indian govt banned all access to yahoogroups. Their intention was to just ban a couple of groups..

  3. I suspect it is some goof up / miscommunication.

    Hi, yes, I’m in India. Is there an engineer in the house? Anyone? Anyone? Venkatasubramaniam?

  4. Hi, yes, I’m in India. Is there an engineer in the house? Anyone? Anyone? Venkatasubramaniam?

    How DARE you stereotype my polysyllabically-surnamed people! How dare you!

  5. I’m not at all computer savvy (it took me about 3 months to figure out how to use the fancy quote thing on this blog). But how exactly does one blog an entire domain from an entire country? Does it require all the servers in India to collectively block the sites, how does it work? Also, if people are planning terrorist attacks via the web, don’t you want to keep the open exchange. I figure it would be that much easier to keep tabs on the dangerous groups out there. I’d also like to point out that, despite all the flaws, this is another illustration of how good we have it Stateside.

  6. This is a case of some inept babu trying to please his bosses rather than thought out Indian policy. Probably does not matter to most Indians as someone previously said. A tiny percentage in India has access to internet. And most deshis are probably checking out cute models on the net rather than blogging. Still, it creates a negative impression of India outside its borders. In any event, even if some “evil doers” were communicating via a blog, its better to keep it open and visible to monitor its usage and maybe try to investigate those individuals rather than shutting its access and loosing this opportunity.

  7. How DARE you stereotype my polysyllabically-surnamed people!

    Oh, I get even worse.

    But how exactly does one blog an entire domain from an entire country?

    Threaten the backbones with overseas Internet peering arrangements and make them filter out the domains at the router level.

  8. Ok here is the link

    The world’s largest democracy has blocked its citizens from accessing Yahoo!’s news groups, causing havoc to India’s flourishing IT industry.

    It was in 2003..

  9. Oh, I get even worse.

    “Madna Museum of Modern Art.” I might have to invest in that one. Genius work, Agastya.

  10. Sabahat Iqbal Ashraf, who was quoted above, puts out the following call on the ASATA mailing list:

    Could folks please help me/us (there’s a discussion on the “Bloggers Collective” forming around a ban on some/large number of blogs in India) find groups in South Asia and the diaspora specifically devoted to Free Speech?

    Anyone know of any?

  11. This is so stupid. The internet is far too dynamic for shotgun censorship to have any effect in disrupting communications.

  12. DAMMIT! Gah Gah Gah. . . . ./quoth the girl who sticks to her blogspot blog out of loyalty. .. .

    Believe me, this long-loyal Typepadder feels your pain. :\

  13. “Madna Museum of Modern Art.” I might have to invest in that one. Genius work, Agastya.

    So very English. Thank you, Mr Kobayashi. I laud you.

  14. Use http://www.pkblogs.com to access your blogs hosted by blogspot.

    I was pleasantly amused at the irony of the whole situation. When the nation is at a diplomatic stand-off against it’s neighbours for a particularly heinous act that was almost surely blessed by them, it is ironic that bloggers have to resort to Pakistani help to allow for free speech.

    Paradoxically enough, it even goes far enough to bolster our South-Asian identity as opposed to dividing ourselves along nationalistic lines. We are two nations plagued by malfunctioning governments but dealing with very similar issues. I am sure the average Pakistani does not really want to blow people up in Mumbai. And it is pleasant that we can use their proxies to protect free speech.

  15. I was reading the World of Warcraft boards the other day, and I got really scared. I couldn’t help wondering whether those kids discussing strategies for their next Blackwing Lair raid were actually 3l33+ LeT operatives exchanging coded messages about their plot to r0><0r the New Delhi Metro and pwn hundreds of innocent Indian n00bz. Then I had to laugh at myself. As any educated person knows… blogging is the only safe way for terrorists to transmit secret information over the Internet…

  16. I was reading the World of Warcraft boards the other day, and I got really scared. I couldn’t help wondering whether those kids discussing strategies for their next Blackwing Lair raid were actually 3l33+ LeT operatives exchanging coded messages about their plot to r0x0r the New Delhi Metro and pwn hundreds of innocent Indian n00bz. Then I had to laugh at myself. As any educated person knows… blogging is the only safe way for terrorists to transmit secret information over the Internet…

    (apologies for the double… apparently one my leetspeak characters caused the first post to be truncated)

  17. This is an absolutely crazy response by the Indian government!! This is almost a step closer to the Great Firewall of China! I hope we dont go there.

    Hopefully the government gets a clue by this online outrage that has been caused by this ridiculous step, and rethink the matter!!

    Luckily my blog on desihub – http://mihir.desihub.com/blog still works in India.

    Is there a petition created for this yet? Any other constructive way to fight this?

    -Mihir

  18. MD says

    I was saying your posts made me think about this issue a little differently.

    Thank you MD for your comment. I appreciate that we have a conversation.

    I’ll point out counterarguments to the reasons i’ve heard on why the SM’ers think this is Baa-ad.

    1. (MD) This tramples on free speech. Counterpoint: But what is free speech, hmmm? Surely society requests and, in some cases, asserts restraint on speech in order to protect the few from the few. Movie ratings are an example. Cigarette advertisements are another. The ban on protests within a specific distance from military funerals is another. Can we burn the flag (D.C.)? Can we piss on war memorials (Ottawa)? In an incendiary environment like in India, can we allow some fool to publish inflammatory comments on religious relations, or ‘how to make a bomb’ or ‘how to do the next terrorist strike’? Given that the printed word is highly revered in India and the general population is not cynical as with out West, it may actually be prudent to exercise content control over an unregulated medium. At first blush, a bureaucrat may think this is a good path of action.

    2. (Amardeep) This impacts opinion makers. Counterpoint 1: Some data points. India’s internet users are 38M (as per iamai survey). About 30% of US population read blogs (a google search). the ban affects about 70% of the blogging population. Net net – the impact of the ban is about 0.7% of India. Two scenarios. There are a fair number of ‘opinion makers’ in the affected population. This is in itself disturbing, in that the reins of the country are in the hands of a tiny population whose wants and priorities are detached from 99.7% of the population. The second scenario is that the 0.7% does not have any significant opinion makers. Well, then, no point bothering.

    Counterpoint 2: Finally, even were your concerns true Amardeep, rediffiland is superior to blogspot at least, and a significant desi community still has access to content that is truly relevant to India (most indian bloggers on blogspot seem to have a westward ho outlook, IMO).

    1. (newbie) inept babu trying to please his bosses Counterpoint: this babu took action soon after the mumbai blasts. I wouldnt call him/her inept. (S)He seemed to take charge and take responsibility. Past experiences with management suggest that this person’s heart is in the right place and he/she was decisive with some amount of research put into the decision. That’s a good thing.

    2. (newbie) it creates a negative impression of India outside its borders. Counterpoint: Isnt there rabindrasangeet – “Ekla chaalo re”. 🙂 If the decision was made because it was believed to be the best decision in the circumstances, the rest of the world can take a hike.

    3. (Amardeep) this is technically futile. Counterpoint: It seems to have foiled the casual surfer so it’s putting up some (though modest) roadblocks on the terror highway.

    4. (MD) blocking may lose us the opportunity to gain insights into terror tactics. Counterpoint: See my earlier argument on the work effort needed to implement data mining – multiply effort by 3x for freeform text mining.

  19. You forgot “writing”, “directing”, “arguing”,

    Hey don’t forget the physics and economics.

    /grumpily, since she has plenty of relatives in the Indian armed forces, and this is just turning into an awful, crummy, veddy veddy bad, no good news day.

  20. List of some of the blocked sites: Hindutva ones, surprisingly.

    • hinduunity.org • hinduhumanrights.org • princesskimberley.com • bloodspot.com • dalitstan.org • clickatell.com • blogspot.com • geocities.com • typepad.com

    Some of the URLs are clearly wrong (expired domains redirecting to businesses).

  21. How widespread is internet use in India?

    From Financial Times: Blogging, particularly on fanatic and religious websites, had surged soon after the Mumbai bomb blasts on July 11. Over 25% of IndiaÂ’s 38 million internet users are active bloggers. Currently, there are over 120 million bloggers worldwide and multiplying at the rate of about 10 million per month. The number is expected to cross 160 million in 2006.

    I do not know the source and veracity of the data.

    From my epxeprience:

    I cannot tell how widespread is blogging. However, I think basic use of internet is more than one would guess. Along Delhi-Roorkee road route, there are innumerable internet cafes, computer literacy short courses shops along the streets of Meerut, Muzaffarnagar. I internet surfing for Aishwarya Rai’s/ Mallika Sherawat’s (she is originally from Meerut) picture is quite common even amidst power outages 5 times a day.

    Even, Madarassas are supposed to have basic computer courses. I know someone who is involved in developing physics and math courses in Urdu on internet, known as Taleem.

  22. They have not blocked the blogger or blogspot! It seems an act of major stupidity by some ISPs!!

  23. Manish, at least something good happened by blocking these hate spreading websites. Hinduunity.org and likes hardly represent Hindutva. If Hindutva were to be banned, rss.org is the right place to start. However, a real culprit got caught here – dalitstan.org

  24. • hinduunity.org • hinduhumanrights.org • princesskimberley.com • bloodspot.com • dalitstan.org • clickatell.com • blogspot.com • geocities.com • typepad.com

    What the hell is princesskimberley.com? Anyway, some reasons, of varying levels of credibilty, I can think of that a virulent Hindutva site might have been blocked out:

    1. There’s a theory floating about that bajrang dal was responsible for the bombings.
    2. The government is trying to prevent hate organizing right now in the aftermath of the bombings.
    3. The government is taking advantage of the panic to suppress some sites that it had wanted to anyway.

    I wonder, also, if there weren’t specific typepad or blogger sites that they wanted to block and one or more idiots accidentally sent a request to the ISPs to block all of them (kind of like the difference between blocking one page on espn.com and blocking the whole site).

  25. Holy mother of God! I don’t care if the Hindutva sites are the ones blocked…. I don’t care how widespread internet use is in India… and I thought we had moved past the time when certain trappings of modern society could be considered luxuries beyond the scope of your fundamental rights and the state could regulate your access to them…

    I used to read about the middle east, China and Pakistan with a twinge of sadness… never thought this would happen here. But then living in Mumbai you tend to have such illusions… illusions of security(the shattering of which started in 1992 and has only now reached climax) and the stupid stupid illusion that this place is free-er than George Bush’s ‘land of the free’… well, had to wake up sometime. Today in the evening when I mourn for the dead I have another thing to feel sick to the core and angry about.

  26. “When the Government is caustically intrusive, The people will be morally deficient.” — from Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, as translated in The Tao of War (Ralph D Sawyer)

    So is our Government laying the foundation for us to become morally deficient? I’d say that is screwed-up war strategy if at all it is that…

  27. Lal Salaam

    The government is afraid especially of the large number of pro-naxal bloggers on the Indian blogoshpere who have time and again highlighted government atrocities which have gone unreported in the mainstream media.

    Visit my blog to know why. NAXAL REVOLUTION

    Regards

    Stalingam

  28. This is just a pathetic attempt by the govt to show that they’re doing something. Free speech takes another knock in India. Our f**king govts never learn. SIGH!!!

    In response to Anuj’s comment, if the govt really feels that some of the sites you’re happy to see closed down are promoting hate speech, why not have it done through a transparent court order? Something doesn’t smell right. And however much you find RSS or other Hindutva sites repulsive, they all should enjoy protection under the free speech umbrella.

  29. I hear from a very reliable source that the govt is thinking of banning BEST buses and the mumbai locals, as terrorists are hitching rides on them, and even planting bombs.

  30. Stalingam…

    as someone once said “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

    Infact I more than disapprove of what you say… your stupid naxal revolution has done little for the people. The last attack killed 26 people, most I’m sure were non combatants.

    But I don’t like the fact that my government will curb your right to express your opinions.(opinions mind you… they should do all they can to stop you from plotting bombings and killings… the opposite of a police state is not anarchy)

    ps: I’d like to read what you have to say but you are on blogspot;)

  31. For all the brilliant advisors on government payroll, this is the best option that they could come up with. They should have coordinated this move with blogspot because that would have been more efficient and less likely to cause a stir amongst the public. It’s sad that they went for the brute force method to circumvent their terrorism communication issue. This is one of the stupidest things I’ve seen our government do..

    I am waiting for an official statement from the government on this issue, and I hope this is big mistake, for the sake of the government.

  32. Blocking blogs is not so much about policing lifestyle as it is about intentional curbing of the freedom of expression. To me, it casts serious doubts over the credibility of the Government’s efforts to fight terrorism, if this is the approach towards finding solutions. Moreover, it smacks of distrust on the intelligence of the masses that make up the all-important “votebanks”, if not (more respectably!) the “citizens”.

  33. right on Starship Enterprise, and obviously they know the blogosphere is influential and they probably thought this is a good way to stamp out their power. question is now what is everyone going to do about it!

  34. 1. There’s a theory floating about that bajrang dal was responsible for the bombings.

    You mean a theory floating in madressahs..

  35. Some twenty sites are blocked in India and people started making nonsense by saying blah.. blah.. blah.., comparing India with China, with countries of Middle-East and even with North Korea too. This is as kike as most of the stupid ‘breaking-news’ come every hour on news channel containing no valuable content.

    As working as the fifth pillar of Indian Democracy, we should be more cautious while reacting on the decision of the government. Comparing Indian democracy with autocratic countries is an extreme step. We should completely avoid these kinds of blogging. People are in a hurry to react and taking no time to literally abusing the step taken by the government, which yet not be released officially.

    On the other hand, the government should take cautious steps to block some websites, and it should release the proofs or basis of blocking. In spite of giving directives to ISPs, they might ask Google to do that.

    Anyway, I am requesting the respected bloggers to stop criticizing the government move so harshly and try to find out the major cause behind that. We should provide some suggestive measures in front of the government to have an eye before taking such kind of step.

  36. Pratyush, looks like you are a bit dense to understand what people are aggrieved about. Do you work for the DoT or something? Please spare everyone your drivel.

  37. more blogs are writing about their frustration of India blocking blogs. Check this one out: http://www.currybear.com/nucleus/

    The blog makes a good point; are we going to ban every means of communication if the terrorists get a strong hold of it?

  38. PLEASE SUPPORT US WE ARE AGAINST BAN Instead of catching the culprits of 7/11 Mumbai Blast, Indian Govt. have now blocked Freedom of speech and express views. Support Us
  39. Comparing Indian democracy with autocratic countries is an extreme step.

    There are obviously differences in the relative amount of “autocracy” and “deprivation” (these tend to be multifaceted–like democracy for one social class, but not for others, as has been a trend in U.S. history) induced by governments of various stripes, but all governments tend to do something along those lines at one point. Which is basically to say, as a counterpoint to what you’re saying, to ignore that this is happening in India would be foolhardy.

  40. anuj,

    ‘However, a real culprit got caught here – dalitstan.org..’

    check indian jails… you’d find the rosters of inmates as satisfying..

  41. The disadvantage of stifling a healthy debating atmosphere is evident. So is the autocratic intent behind this.

  42. MH observations:

    1. The govt. itself asked for 20 odd sites to be banned. I’m not sure if you know this, but a very active hate campaign is being run over SMS and some blogs, asking for violence against certain communities they say are responsible for the blasts. Immediately after a terrorist attack of this scale, it would be irresponsible on the govt’s part to allow this to blow up.

    2. Most ISPs just went ahead and blocked the IP addresses corresponding to these sites. Unfortunately, all blogs on blogspot resolve to the same IP. This is at worst incompetence on the part of the ISPs, and possibly a communication gap b/w them and the DoT. I’m sure that the person who issued those orders would’ve assumed that it was possible to block only specific blogs – especially since NIC dial-up (a govt. run ISP which most civil servants use) is capable of blocking specific subdomains.

    3. This does NOT put India in the same league as China, Pakistan, North Korea. I’m sure its painful not to be able to read your favourite blogs – but it’s stupid to react in this way. There ARE some ISPs in india that have blocked only those specific sites – its a far better idea to change your ISP than rant against the govt.