<nettime> Re: [Reader-list] Bearded Men and Blogs at Risk

[Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl>]

Hi Shuddha,

It's exactly what China has been doing for quite some time (blanket ban on
blogs and geocities). Fine company!
Could you please repost this to nettime, with an update maybe (like
Kiran's initiative)

cheers, patrizio & THREE Diiiinooos!


> POST 7/11, GOVT TARGETS 'EXTREME' WEBSITES, BLOGGERS ON THE BLINK, says
> the Indian Express.
>
> Those on the Commons Law List will have seen this already, (where it was
> forwarded by Prashant Iyengar) as will those who read Indian Express.
> Goes to show that the first responses of power in a moment of crisis are
> also inevitably the clumsiest ones possible.
>
> Round up a few history sheeters, detain a man waiting to see a girl he
> loves deplane just because he had hidden himself in a burqa so that he
> could stand undetected by her chaperones. Send out eighteen crack
> investigation teams to look for men with facial hair. A bad time for
> bearded cross dressers.
>
> Were I the foot soldier sometimes identified as a terrorist I would buy
> gilette mach 3 and after shave in bulk, wear a baseball cap the wrong
> way round, and cheerfully whistle my way through the next bombing. And
> write innocous messages on postcards to my handlers, whosoever they may
> be.
>
> While the jackasses (patriotic hackers) of the outfit with the 'cool'
> title of Computer Emergency Response Team (India), a less than well
> known cabal in the ministry of telecommunications, cut a swathe through
> blogs, leaving blocked sites in their wake.
>
> So begins a morning in the information superpower.
>
> enjoy
>
> Shuddha
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> POST 7/11, GOVT TARGETS 'EXTREME' WEBSITES, BLOGGERS ON THE BLINK
>
> Source: The Indian Express
> http://www.indianexpress.com/printerFriendly/8719.html
>
> MUMBAI, NEW DELHI, JULY 17: The fast-growing community of online
> bloggers has borne the brunt of the government's decision to block
> some 20 websites in a post-Mumbai show of force. Some of the websites
> that have been blocked are Dalitstan.org, Clickatell.com,
> Hinduhumanrights.org and Hinduunity.com.
>
> But the most harried Internet users were the bloggers, who couldn't
> access Blogspot.com, Typepad.com or Geocities.com pages. Sources in
> ISPs in Delhi as well as Mumbai confirmed that the one blog government
> has asked them to block is Princesskimberly.blogspot.com.
>
> It seems the order posed technical problems, resulting in a blanket
> ban on all blogs. You cannot block a single page on blogspot.com,
> which is why all of them are getting blocked, said Neha Viswanathan,
> Regional Editor, South Asia, Globalvoicesonline.org from London.
>
> The Indian order was issued on July 13, sources in the Ministry of
> Telecom confirmed, though the Computer Emergency Response Team
> (India), part of a global cyber-security network set up three years
> ago, did not announce the bans officially.
>
> Only sources in several ISPs such as Spectranet and Airtel confirmed
> that they had received the site-blocking order. R Grewal, a
> spokesperson for Spectranet confirmed: We received a list of over 20
> websites to block from the Department of Telecom, and this
> (Blogspot.com) was one of them.
> Apparently, all the websites blocked are said to express 'extreme
> religious views.'
> MTNL officials said they were handed a 22-page document detailing the
> sites to block a month ago. 'It came from the National Informatics
> Centre (NIC). It was the first time that they had done something of
> this nature,'' says RH Sharma, sub-divisional engineer for MTNL in
> Delhi.
>
> Government sources confirmed late in the evening that some websites
> have been blocked based on police reports that they were fuelling
> hatred. They denied that the Mumbai blasts had anything to do with
> censorship and that security checks on the blocked sites were on since
> before the terrorist attacks.
>
>
>
>
> http://www.nalsartech.org/tikiwiki/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=16897
> _______________________________________________
> commons-law mailing list
> commons-law@sarai.net
> https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/commons-law
>
> _________________________________________
> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
> Critiques & Collaborations
> To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request@sarai.net with
> subscribe in the subject header.
> List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>
>
>




#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net