The Government of India some years back established the Computer Emergency Response Team, or CERT-IN, as a means to monitor all incoming and outgoing Internet traffic from India. The primary purpose of CERT-IN is to handle Internet security and many institutions and agencies are allowed to call on it, including the home affairs ministry, courts, the intelligence services, the police and the head of the National Human Rights Commission. CERT-IN's main mission is to enhance the security of India's Communications and Information Infrastructure through proactive action and effective collaboration.Currently, there is no established law as to which websites the government censors, or when. In the past, mainly pornographic and anti-establishment political websites have been blocked. Once in a while, western news sites have also been blocked, though these blocks were usually short-lived.In 2001, the Bombay High Court appointed a Committee to oversee issues relating to cyber pornography and Cybercrime. The Court invited the petitioners Jayesh Thakkar and Sunil Thacker as special invitees to provide their inputs and recommendations on cyber laws. The Committee upon identifying key ixsues made recommendations such as licensing of Cyber cafe, introducing identity cards for Cyber cafe visitors, ensure that Cyber Cafe that have cubicles or partitions be required to ensure that minors are not allowed to use machines in cubicles or behind partitions, mandatory maintaining of IP logs by cyber cafe, and so on. The Committee made several other recommendations such as connectivity and authentication at Internet service provider level which provided that Internet service providers were responsible for time clock coordination and record keeping. The report addressed the issue of protecting minor children from accessing adult sites and made a recommendation that Internet Service Providers must protective parental softwares with every Internet connection. The committee placed a special emphasis on lack of technical knowledge in the police and recommended special training of cyber cops. The report of the committee was well accepted by the Courts and is being put in to practice by the Police and Cyber cafes jointly. The Cyber Crime Investigation Cell was set up pursuant to recommendation made by the committee.A draft broadcast bill is being introduced which if passed would enable muzzling of all forms of mainstream media under conditions such as "reports implicating friendly nations".
Instances of censorship
Yahoo Groups ban, Sep 2003
The first documented incident of Internet censorship in India was the Yahoo groups ban of 23rd September 2003.Kynhun, a Yahoo group linked to the outlawed "Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council,", a minor separatist group from the North-Eastern state of Meghalaya, which espoused the case of the Khasi tribe was banned.The order to implement the ban was forwarded to Indian ISP's by the Department of Telecommunications. Difficulties in implementing the ban by the ISP's ultimately led to all Yahoo groups being banned for a period of about two weeks.
Internet censorship of July 2006
Internet censorship of July 2006
The second reported incident of Internet censorship is the Indian Government's censorship of 17 websites including some blogs starting July 1, 2006.The actual order did not ask for blogspot.com, typepad.com or geocities.com to be blocked. However, the inability of Indian ISP's to block specified sub-domains, once again led to these sites being blocked completely.
