Indian Government has recently been in the news for obstructing the internet and trying to put curbs on freedom of speech online as well as monitoring and blocking data that is not to its taste. Naturally, this has infuriated internet users and Anonymous recently launched an attack against an Indian organization for actively promoting internet censorship.
Things got really bad when in 2008, Information Technology Act was passed which effectively empowered the government to force any ISP to block, intercept, monitor or decrypt whatever information from whatever computer it wishes to monitor. That, naturally, is a shameless violation of basic human rights and is an attempt to keep tabs on every citizen of India, monitoring all their online communications.
But things were to get even worse. In April 2011, yet more new rules were implemented according to which ISPs were to remove any ‘grossly harmful’, ‘ethnically objectionable’ and ‘harassing’ data. These terms, naturally, are very vague and government could use them to virtually censor any kind of online information, including the silencing of online political dissent.
It is these moves and other similar policies of the Indian government to protest which, Anonymous members gathered in 16 cities around India and registered their protest. The members, as usual, were wearing Guy Fawkes masks and gathered at notable places.
The chief point behind this protest was to retaliate against ISPs who were blocking file-sharing websites on the pretext that they didn’t want certain Bollywood movies to be shared through torrents. Rather than screening torrents carrying these movies, the ISPs chose to block the entire service such as Pirate Bay, a move which is dumb as well as an attempt to ‘close’ the internet.
Source: BBC
Courtesy: Giga Om
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Indian organization for actively promoting internet censorship.