Post 7/11, Govt targets ‘extreme’ websites, bloggers on the blink

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.

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.