BlogSpot blocked by Indian ISPs

Monday, July 17, 2006

It appears India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has issued a directive to Indian ISPs to block BlogSpot and TypePad, and several ISPs have complied. LiveJournal is spared. I’ve been unable to access BlogSpot since Friday — the connection times out.

Here are reports from Mridula Dwivedi and Neha Viswanathan, and on DesiPundit. There’s a new Bloggers Collective group for tracking updates. Shivam Vij is currently working the phone with ISPs and government departments and so far has confirmation that this blockage was not ordered by CERT-IN, the only body authorised to issue orders to ISPs under the IT Act 2003. The order came from DoT on Friday (CERT-IN is required to route orders via DoT) and the list of sites being blocked is not public. Shivam’s asked for the list but been told it is “highly confidential”.

I’ll post updates as they become available.

Update: Shivam Vij managed to get through to DoT official Dr Gulshan Rai, who it appears is also director of CERT-IN. His response: “Somebody must have asked for some sites to be blocked. What is your problem?” Please tell him what your problem is. According to the directory, his phone number is +91 (11) 2436 3081. Email. Nandan Babla’s posted a guide to filing a Right to Information (RTI) application (bypass block).

There’s a wiki page now for reporting ISPs that are participating in the block. If you can’t access BlogSpot, please report your ISP.

Update 2: GeoCities is also blocked. Dina Mehta has her take on the situation. Amit Agarwal has a collection of tips on how to bypass the block (but first you’ll have to bypass the block to read that). Shivam Vij now has a longer write-up on the information he dug up this morning.

Update 3 – 5:15 PM: Airtel (and possibly) Sify have also started blocking.

Update 4 – 10:55 PM: Sify and Tata Indicom (previously VSNL) are also confirmed blocking now. Shivam Vij has an article out at Rediff. Boing Boing’s carrying links (hello BB readers!) too. That should get the word out a bit. Others on the Bloggers Collective group have been pursuing journalists at various publications.

I had a late evening meeting with the technical head of a large, non-consumer ISP. It was work related, so I can’t reveal who until appropriate. He confirmed that DoT has a regular practice of sending a list of URLs to be blocked, and that it is illegal for an ISP to block anything other than this list. Since it comes from a government department, the list is not confidential. I hope to have my hands on it shortly.

Neha’s collecting other updates, by far the most comprehensive yet.

Update 5 – July 18, 12:15 PM: Mainstream media is picking up the story. There’s a list on the wiki. Far too much noise on Bloggers Collective group about how censorship can be routed around via proxies. Get this, folks. This isn’t about censoring bloggers. This is about curtailment of civil rights of all internet users. That is what we should be fighting against.

Update 6 – 5:15 PM: The group is now getting extremely noisy. 235 members and 570 messages, in just two days. I wrote a piece for the Times on how to circumvent mistaken censorship. If it clears the editors, it’ll hopefully be in print tomorrow. Getting around the block is easy, but we need people to be aware of how. Nishant Shah offers the thought that maybe the government ordered this block knowing fully well that it could be circumvented. Their point is made, anyway.

Update 7 – July 19, 9:50 AM: So much going on now, I’ve stopped keeping track. Neha’s not. This is taking way too much time away from other priorities. As should be clear by now, the government has not decided to block blogs. This is a case of mass ISP incompetence (or intentional goof so as to raise awareness, the conspiracy theorist in me wants to believe). My article made it to several editions of the Times of India, even making front page in the Hyderabad edition. I haven’t seen it yet. It’s not in the online edition and ePaper isn’t working for me just now. Kamla Bhatt did a podcast on the affair last night. Amit Agarwal, Neha Viswanathan, Suresh Ramasubramanian and I were interviewed.

Update 8 – 3:30 PM: My article appeared in the Times of India in Hyderabad (front page!), Bangalore (page 9), Mumbai (page 12), Delhi (page 15) and Lucknow (page 11). Because each edition was differently edited depending on space constraints, here is the full length version.

Update 9 – 8:40 PM: The Indian Consulate in NYC has offered an explanation:

From: A.R.Ghanashyam <dcg@[snip]>

A two-page write up containing extremely derogatory references to Islam and the holy prophet which had the potential to inflame religious sensitivities in India and create serious law and order problems in the country appeared in a blog facilitated by well known search engines. The matter was immediately taken note of by our CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) and the Department of Telecommunications (DOT) was informed of it. The DOT took up the matter forthwith with the search engines and instructions were also issued to all Internet providers to block the two impertinent pages. Because of a technological error, the Internet providers went beyond what was expected of them which in turn resulted in the unfortunate blocking of all blogs. Department of Telecommunications have now clarified the issue and the error is being rectified and it is expected that normalcy in respect of blogs will soon be restored.

Update 10 – 11:05 PM: Shivam Vij calls the bluff. None of the blocked sites appear to have anything to do with threatening the national interest.

HinduUnity.org and HinduHumanRights.org are among 17 sites sought to be blocked, on the grounds that they are spreading Hindu nationalist propaganda. Accessed through an anonymizer, HinduUnity.org was found to have articles against Congress party President Sonia Gandhi and Indian Muslims. It also had a ‘hit list’ of people it considered anti-Hindu.

Another site on the list is Rahulyadav.com, set up by a US-based person who calls himself a member of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. Dalitstan.org, on the other hand, calls itself a ‘human rights organisation working for the upliftment of Dalits.’

None of the sites seem to possess any direct security threat to India, or have any connection with the recent Mumbai blasts. Even more bizarre are the blogs sought to be blocked. ‘Princess Kimberley’ is a defunct blog with just two postings in 2004 about an American teenager’s depressing life. ‘Commonfolk Commonsense’ is a Chinese language blog, while 'Exposing the Left' is written by someone in Southern Illinois!

CNN-IBN covered the issue in a news segment at 10 PM. Peter Griffin posted a scan of a fax of the order asking for the sites to be blocked:

Number 15 on that list, imagessearchyahoo.com, is a typo for image.search.yahoo.com, Yahoo!’s image search site. The typo domain is also owned by Yahoo!. Searching for images via a typo of the domain name is against the national interest? I’d love to see how the government justifies this one.

Update 11 – July 20, 8:15 AM: Gopal Sankaranarayan, a lawyer, is upset that if the block is being lifted as reported, it will kill the momentum to file a PIL to ensure such blocks do not happen again. He’s right. It’s not just the petition, but any form of coordination against this sort of thing happening again. (More.)

Update 12 – 9:00 PM: DoT now says ISPs are at fault for blocking more than necessary and demands an explanation. ISPAI in return tells DoT that blocking has practical constraints. Full story. DoT also claims the order to block came from the Department of Information Technology (DIT). DoT secretary D S Mathur says “DoT is the licensor and the controlling agency for ISPs, and when we get a request from DIT to block sites, we have to act accordingly.”

Update 13 – 11:30 PM: Arka Mukhopadhyay is mailing public intellectuals to register their protest. She has confirmation from Dr U R Ananthamurthy (bypass block). This is a novel method, one that hadn’t occurred to me before. For it to be effective, however, we must take their voices beyond blogs, into public consciousness. I should note here that the bypass link this time is via pkblogs.com, a resource set up by Pakistani bloggers when fighting censorship in their country and now usable in India too. They were gracious enough to share their code. Dr Awab Alvi, Sabahat Iqbal Ashraf (bypass) and Omer Alvie (bypass) have been fairly active helping out with the Indian blockade.

Update 14 – July 22, 11:30 PM: Just a notice that I’m no longer adding to this post. Updates will be in new posts henceforth.

Jacob — Jul 17, 2006 6:22:28 PM — # ↩

No ban, just an 'operation'
Jace, there is no ban. There is an 'operation' in progress. Some SIMI activits were found using blogs to communicate and organise. Everything should be back to normal in 48 hours. Unfortunetly, I can give the source of this information, we will just have to wait for 48 hours.
- Atlantean — Jul 17, 2006 6:38:04 PM — # ↩
  
  Interesting
  Jacob,
  SIMI using blogs to communicate and organise?! Hmmm... interesting... I hope everything gets normal quick... where, I mean, where exactly did you hear about the SIMI thingy? You read somewhere, overheard a conversation or what?
  - Jacob — Jul 17, 2006 7:01:41 PM — # ↩
    
    source
    one friend & one civil servent.
    - Kiran Jonnalagadda — Jul 17, 2006 7:05:04 PM — # ↩
      
      What is SIMI?
      I may be late on the news, but who or what is SIMI?
      - Gulnar — Jul 17, 2006 7:14:42 PM — # ↩
        
        Updated without any problem
        SIMI is Students Islamic Movement of India.
        Btw, I have had no problem updating my blog today.
      - Sid Carter — Jul 17, 2006 8:02:15 PM — # ↩
        
        Just surfaced ?
        Just came up for a quick breather...is it ? :)
        
        Kiran Jonnalagadda — Jul 17, 2006 10:39:19 PM — # ↩
        
        Breather
        You bet. I’ve been having one heck of a time at work. More on that when the time is appropriate.
      - Ashwin Nanjappa — Jul 18, 2006 7:23:51 AM — # ↩
        
        SIMI who?
        They're supposed to be one of the prime suspects in the Mumbai blasts. IAC I don't see how by blocking their blogs, their activity can be stopped/frozen. Typical old-world police reaction to the new age tools.
    - ToyDaVirus — Jul 18, 2006 11:14:02 AM — # ↩
      
      48 hours???
      Hey ask your friend and the so called public servent, how long is 48 hours for them? This is dictatorship at its best. And all you people can join this community and have your say. www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=17278628.
- Daniel — Jul 17, 2006 10:21:00 PM — # ↩
  
  “It seems that some blogs are being used by some terror units (read SIMI) to communicate”
  and in other news, The Indian Government has decided to turn off the water supply as it has been reported that the terrorists use water to live
  Its always good to see that any government has intelligent people making all the decisions.
lohit — Jul 17, 2006 10:19:56 PM — # ↩

where did you collect all this info. nice summary, btw is it resolved now?
- Kiran Jonnalagadda — Jul 17, 2006 10:29:07 PM — # ↩
  
  Lohit, all non-attributed info is off the Bloggers Collective list. The issue isn't resolved yet. No idea how long it will be.
Chris Damitio — Jul 17, 2006 11:29:35 PM — # ↩

blog blocking
Hey Jace, how can I tell if my blog, Incredible Fukn.us is being blocked? (www.fukn.us)
chris damitio
- Kiran Jonnalagadda — Jul 18, 2006 9:23:33 AM — # ↩
  
  Chris, I can access it and my ISP blocks the other sites, so I guess that means you're in the clear.
taj — Jul 17, 2006 11:49:15 PM — # ↩

Coral works -- but for how long?
Turns out Coral cache versions of the URLs work fine, one wonders if they will get blocked too. I'm on Airtel/Bharti, and these are working fine atm: www.typepad.com.nyud.net:8090/ geocities.yahoo.com.nyud.net:8090/
Dhiraj Gupta — Jul 18, 2006 4:10:53 AM — # ↩

Some sites?
When you block blogspot.com and tyeppad.com, you are blocking off a waaaaaaaaaaaay big chunk of the Internet to really call it a few sites.
The few sites that he talks about run millions of sites on them.
And WHY the Heck would SIMI or any organization that hides behind a veil of secrecy put up posts that could be access publicly on a blogging system, anyway?
I mean, c'mon, the guys who put up the order to block BlogSpot have absolutely no clue about the way the Internet works, do they?
Dhiraj.
- Mihir — Jul 18, 2006 6:36:03 AM — # ↩
  
  india not ready for web2.0?
  Indian govt and majority of the market still dont get the concept of web 2.0 or community websites! This reminds me of the arrest of Avnish Bajaj because some guy sold some porno MMS on eBay/Bazee! knee jerk reaction of the poor ignorant politicians if you ask me! :-(
  sad reality www.desihub.com/blogs/page/mihir/20060717#indian_market_government_not_yet
- Michael K — Jul 18, 2006 8:24:22 AM — # ↩
  
  Public site
  Dhiraj, you can set your blog as private.....
  But that does not condone the govts action.
  - sathish — Jul 18, 2006 12:21:28 PM — # ↩
    
    Why is it that we always blame the Govt, whether they act or dont?? Govt would give an explanation soon on why it was done. Why not we be patient rather than jumping the wagon with so many posts blaming the Govt??
    - Kiran Jonnalagadda — Jul 18, 2006 1:17:13 PM — # ↩
      
      Sathish, in this case, regardless of explanation, the government's actions are violating civil rights, which is wrong, period.
- Aparna — Jul 20, 2006 5:55:38 PM — # ↩
  
  wow! good thinking...looks like you spent a lot of time doing research on this. And so did I to locate this on the NET;-)
Gautam — Jul 18, 2006 5:15:12 PM — # ↩

Greasemonkey Script
For Firefox users, try the script linked to at the bottom of the post:
www.pkblogs.com/doesthisthat/2006/07/1984.html
or
doesthisthat.blogspot.com/2006/07/1984.html
Pratyush Ranjan — Jul 18, 2006 6:01:16 PM — # ↩

some 20 blog sites are blocked in India
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.
mohit sharma — Jul 19, 2006 10:40:49 AM — # ↩

SIMI . now government will see SIMI bhoot everywhere to justify it's every action , hahahahaha .
Gautam — Jul 19, 2006 11:06:13 AM — # ↩

ToI
Read your article in the Bangalore edition of ToI. Very well written and I like that yoy suggested Tor up front. Now if only we could get a few people to run Tor servers...
TheLearnedMan — Jul 19, 2006 11:16:19 AM — # ↩

Typepad
Crazy stuff...all my Typepad blogs are unaccessible with the "server timed out error". Blanket ban doesnt make sense... Even if I use Unipeak.com or Proxify.com to access, how do I get the word out to my thousands of readers all across India...
- Kiran Jonnalagadda — Jul 19, 2006 1:24:11 PM — # ↩
  
  Go to the press, like I did. ;)
  - Jacob — Jul 19, 2006 3:34:21 PM — # ↩
    
    Great stuff
    Jace, nice article. Unfortunetly, I caouldn't access any of the sites you mentioned because they are all banned where I am (the United Arab Emirates). Even flickr, orkut and other well know sites are blocked here. I guess that's the price you pay for a tax free life ;-(
    - Kiran Jonnalagadda — Jul 19, 2006 5:45:10 PM — # ↩
      
      Jacob, an SSH tunnel is all you need to get around the ban. Or I can host Torpark for you to download.
- Anonymous User — Aug 8, 2006 12:56:46 PM — # ↩
  
  try unipeak.net
  - Alee — Aug 17, 2006 3:34:13 PM — # ↩
    
    unipeak thing...thanks but it took to me the main page.. but when i entered the login and password, nothing! any other kool ideas... ???? :)
Nitesh Gautam — Jul 20, 2006 12:08:57 PM — # ↩

Update: Not all the websites listed are blocked by Sify
Hi,
My ISP is SIFY and I tried to open the websites mentioned by you.
Right now, out of these 17, only one websites seems to be blocked - www.hinduunity.org/
Whereas following websites are shown as URL Not found -
prinesskimberly.blogspot.com/
merrimusings.typepad.com/
hinduhumanrights.org/hindufocus.html
Following domains are shown as not registered -
nndh.com/
dalitstan.com/
imamali8.com/
bloodroyaltriped.com/
Rest 9 websites are opening fine. Donno, from where the hell govt got idea of blocking rahulyadav.com/ as it is someone's personal website...with nothing to do with terrorism. commonfolkcommonsense.blogspot.com/ contains some chinese looking text...any decrypter? :)
And many of these sites which are opening but mentioned under blocked list are taking full opportuninty to advertise themselves with BIG LETTERS written over their sites as - BANNED IN INDIA!
Nandan — Jul 20, 2006 4:01:35 PM — # ↩

My name
Just for the record, my name is Nandan Babla, not Nandan Saha.
nonedone.blogspot.com
- Kiran Jonnalagadda — Jul 20, 2006 9:02:27 PM — # ↩
  
  Sorry, fixed. Can’t recall where I got “Saha” from.
  - manish — Jul 21, 2006 3:39:21 AM — # ↩
    
    Down with Blogger Ban
    Hi
    I have started this online petition to voice our concern abt this ban. lets spread the wrd and take a concerted action to bring down this demented ban.
    the url is : www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?blogban
    regards
    manish
    - Kiran Jonnalagadda — Jul 21, 2006 7:43:51 AM — # ↩
      
      Manish, your frustration will be better channelised by assisting one of the existing groups who are handling media outreach or filing a PIL. An online petition is useless, particularly at this stage when DoT has ordered lifting the block (but not the ban).
      - Prashant — Jul 21, 2006 12:04:05 PM — # ↩
        
        i am not able to see my blog
        if the ban has been lifted why can't i see my blog whether my folks in us can see it ?? i am able to post on blog via console and email i can read my blog in feedreader (newsgator) any update ?
        
        Kiran Jonnalagadda — Jul 21, 2006 12:11:15 PM — # ↩
        
        Not all ISPs have complied yet. I use Airtel and Reliance, and neither have.
Sumit Goyal — Aug 31, 2006 12:43:15 AM — # ↩

Can't we approach court against this freedom to speech violation
Guys I was just wondering whether a group of bloggers can file a petition in court against Indian Govt. for blocking the sites as this breaks freedom of speech act.
You cannot block a major group of sites just because of some defaulters.
The govt. should take proper steps to deal with people IF they break the law(which any blogger doesn't) but should not block the sites like this.
This govt. is doing just nothing but making our country worst day by day.
- Kiran Jonnalagadda — Sep 1, 2006 5:02:32 PM — # ↩
  
  There was some movement to file a PIL on just this basis. I'm not aware of current status.

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