The Department of Telecommunication & IT had, in an order dated 17th December, banned 32 websites in India citing Terrorism as the reason. Most of the websites blocked were basically sites that allowed copy-pasting of content anonymously and sharing it with the world. The reason – these websites allowed people to anonymously post Jihadi propaganda on their platform.
Interestingly, the list contained website hosting and creation platforms like Weebly , hpage, iPage and video hosting platforms like Dailymotion and Vimeo. The list also included popular software repositories like Github and Sourceforge.
Here is the complete order given by Ministry of Communication & IT to all the Internet Services providers.
————————————————
Government of India
Ministry of Communication & IT
Department of Telecommunications
Sanchar Bhawan, 20, Ashoka Road, New Delhi-110001
(Data Services Cell)
No: 813-7/25/2011-DS (Vol-IV)
Dated: 17/12/2014
To
All Internet Service Licensees
Sub: Direction to block Internet Website.
Under the powers conferred by Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 and under the Information Technology (Procedures and Safeguards for Blocking of Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009, it has been decided to immediately block the access to the following **32 URLs**:
01) https://justpaste.it/
04)
05) https://pastee.org
07) http://slexy.org
08) http://paste4btc.com/
09) http://0bin.net
11)
12) http://atnsoft.com/textpaster
18) http://www.000webhost.com/
19) https://www.freehosting.com
21) http://www.dailymotion.com/
24)
26) https://snipt.net
27) http://tny.cz (Tinypaste)
28) https://github.com (gist-it)
31) http://www.snippetsource.net
- All the Internet Service licensees are accordingly directed to immediately block the access to above URLs.
- The compliance be submitted immediately, failing which the Department may initiate action under Rule 12 of the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking of Access of information by Public) Rules, 2009.
———————————
If you see the list above except for Sourceforge, all other url’s got a blanket ban on their websites rather than just the incriminating url.
We tried accessing a few urls and while some threw up blank pages, some of them were still accessible to us while writing this report. It seems that ISPs are still in the process of blocking these websites.
Why This Ban?
The websites that were banned essentially contained material about Areeb Majid, and ISIS member who was arrested by National Investigative Agency along with 3 others from North Karnataka’s Bhatkal region. These websites were used by ISIS to attract Indian youth to join their forces. Some of the websites also contained anti-national content.
BJP’s IT Cell National Head Arvind Gupta also said in a tweet that the websites have been blocked on the advice of ATS as they were carrying material from the ISIS.
Govt Unblocks 4 out of 32 websites
According to IANS, the Government decided to unblock four websites after they gave assurances to the government that they will not allow pasting on Jihadi propaganda. The sites that were unblocked were Website creation & hosting site Weebly.com, Video hosting platforms Vimeo.com & Dailymotion.com and software repository gist.github.com.
The Government has also said that they will remove blocks for other websites after they get the assurances from others.
How Does a Website Block Happen?
The much talked about Section 69A of the IT act grants power to central Government to issue directions for blocking of public access to any information through any computer resource. Simply put, Government can block any website under certain conditions.
While it may seem that website block happens indiscriminately, there is a method to the madness. Govt has come up with procedure on how a website can be blocked. Here is the Flow Chart that explains it.
[Click on the picture to zoom]