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The current mechanisms of internet censorship inIndia [ Images ]are draconian and unconstitutional. They need to be replaced with a new set of rules that are fair, transparent and accessible for public scrutiny, says Shivam Vij

Recent debates on internet censorship inIndiahave focussed on the allegedly free-for-all nature of the internet. Those of us who have argued against internet censorship have been somewhat misrepresented as arguing for absolute freedom whereby the reasonable restrictions laid down in Article 19 (A) of the Constitution of India don't apply. Nothing could be farther than the truth.

It has been said that the internet can be used to incite violence, particularly inter-communal violence, and there needs to be a mechanism to prevent that. Communications Minister Kapil Sibal [ Images ] wants internet giants to "self-regulate" for this reason, denying that he wants to censor political dissent on the internet. On the heels of his expression of such concern in December 2011,Mufti Aijaz Arshad Qasmi and journalist Vinay Rai filed cases against various internet companies for similar material that is religiously offensive.

It needs to be pointed out, however, that the cases filed by Qasmi and Rai are under the Indian Penal Code and do not even invoke the Information Technology Act. So if the Indian Penal Code can be used against religiously offensive material, why do we need any new mechanism to "regulate" or even "self-regulate" the internet?

Since even before the internet became important enough for Indian courts, government departments and agencies to ask American internet companies to remove content, the government has had another mechanism in place: asking internet service providers or ISPs to block a webpage. They did so informally by blocking

Imagine a situation when you don't even know of books or films that are banned -- the public cannot even debate the rights and wrongs of such censorship because we don't even know what is censored on the Indian web. We are in that situation and it beats me why we are not angry about it. Nevertheless, it makes you wonder: when the government has been blocking webpages it thinks are not suitable for Indians to view, why do we need new and additional laws or 'mechanisms' to tackle allegedly "offensive" material on the web?

Okay, so ISP-level blocking can be easily bypassed using "anonymiser" websites and software. That is not a problem for the Indian government either, as it has been informally asking big internet companies to remove content for years and, guess what, these companies have been complying. To give but one example, on February 15, 2011, Dalit groups in Mumbai [ Images ] protested against a Facebook page titled 'I Hate Ambedkar'. A group of around 400-500 people pelted stones and burnt tyres. By evening the police had acquired an order from a magistrate's court in Bandra to ask Facebook to removed a defaced photo of B R Ambedkar from the page, and also that the page be blocked inIndia. As I read news reports of the protest that night, sitting inDelhi [ Images ], I tried to find the Facebook page in question. It had already been taken off or blocked or both.

There were many such cases of allegedly defamatory or inflammatory content in Orkut inMaharashtra [ Images ]in 2006-07, involving, unsurprisingly, Bal Thackeray [ Images ], Chhatrapati Shivaji and Ambedkar. This resulted in Maharashtra police's cyber crime cell establishing a hotline with Orkut whereby the latter promised to "block those 'forums' and 'communities' that contain 'defamatory or inflammatory content' but also provide the IP addresses from which such content has been generated," according to a report in theEconomic Times.

Shocking as it sounds, this has been happening for some years now, and not only in Maharashtra but acrossIndia. Any representative of the Indian government writes to Google to remove, say, a YouTube video, and they may comply with it, and even the person who created/uploaded that video doesn't know that the government got it removed! We don't know what these pieces of removed content are, so we can't debate whether in those cases the Indian Constitution's Fundamental Right to free speech was violated or whether its reasonable restrictions prevailed in letter and spirit. Nevertheless, it still brings us to the question: if the government already has had such mechanisms in place, why do we need new rules and regulations?

Nobody can disagree that popular social networking websites are often used to defame, abuse or threaten people. We have all seen that on the internet. However, not only does the Indian government and law have enough ways to deal with it -- as showed above -- it is also not the case that these internet companies do not exercise "self-regulation". All major social networking sites give users options to report content that is offensive, amounts to hate speech, incites violence, is pornographic and so on. While reporting such, you are often asked to cite the reason.

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India's skewed internet censorship debate

If you are familiar with Tor, you know it to be the anonymous Web utility and browser that allows people to get around censorship and communicate without being spied on. It was essential for communication during the Arab Spring protest movement and many other like minded movements. Its also used and endorsed by Anonymous for their operations.

The researchers behind Tor have another great program up their sleeve to help combat Internet censorship directly. Its called OONI which stands for Open Observatory of Network Interference. Its a utility that does just as its name sounds. It allows users to look at a network and see what Web sites are blocked and censored by the ISP. Heres the official description:

OONI is the Open Observatory for Network Interference and its aim is to collect high quality data using open methodologies, using Free and Open Source Software (FL/OSS) to share observations and data about the kind, methods and amount of surveillance and censorship in the world.

This is a human rights observation project for the Internet. OONI seeks to observe levels of surviellance, censorship, and networked discrimination by networked authoritarian power structures.

The end goal of the OONI project is to collect data which shows an accurate representation of network interference on the Filternet we call the internet.

Its a great tool thats been needed for a long time. While there are other organizations that detail how free the Web is in various countries, OONI will actually see what kind of content is blocked in these countries. It might even reveal a few surprises regarding countries that claim to be free.

Of course, the next question would be if OONI has already exposed any kind of censorship. Indeed it has and one is pretty close to home. T-Mobile has a filter on their own browser called Web Guard. Its meant to be a block for adult and other offensive content, because parents understandably dont want their children to have access to this kind of content. The problem is that the feature is by default turned on for pre-paid accounts and it doesnt inform users how to opt out of it.

It wouldnt be a huge problem except that T-Mobiles Web guard also blocks a pretty large amount of legitimate sites as well. The most humorous being the official Web site of the Tor Project. Other inclusions on the Web Guard block list includes Newgrounds, Cosmopolitan Magazine, a Chinese sports Web site, a 9/11 conspiracy site, a French pop music site and other seemingly unrelated Web sites.

When Tor asked T-Mobile about the blocking, a representative for the company just kept saying they would help him turn off Web Guard, but never provided any details as to why Web site like the torproject.org were censored. To that end, Tor says that T-Mobile is deciding what pre-paid customers, mostly children under 18, are allowed to see.

The other major censorship regime that OONI has spotted was in Palestine. They claim that the that censorship is taking place in Bethlehem and is politically motivated. Out of all the Web sites that OONI analyzed, only eight were found to be blocked. Those eight Web sites that were blocked were all news sites that were found to report critical news about Palestines President, Mahmoud Abbas.

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Tor Researchers Create OONI To Monitor Censorship

SINA said in a regulatory filing Friday night, "Government regulation and censorship of information disseminated over the Internet in China may adversely affect our ability to operate Weibo...Although we attempt to monitor the content posted on Weibo, we may not always be able to effectively control or restrict the content generated or placed on Weibo by our users and the PRC government may increase the level of Internet censorship. On March 31, 2012, we had to disable the comment feature of Weibo for three days to clean up comments related to certain rumors that were posted on our website. If in the future the PRC government authorities decide to restrict the dissemination of information via microblogging services or online postings in general, Weibo could be impaired or even ordered to shut down, which may adversely impact our website traffic, ability to monetize this aspect of our business and our brand equity. Furthermore, we may be subject to claims based on the user-generated content posted on Weibo."

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SINA says censorship may affect ability to operate Weibo

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Calcutta News.Net Wednesday 2nd May, 2012 (IANS)

Violence and censorship against mediapersons are a "threat" to democracy and also constrains their ability to operate freely, an international body of journalists said Wednesday.

The Commonwealth Journalists Association (CJA) also condemned state repression against media in countries like Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

"Without a free press and freedom of expression, governments can impose bad policy and abuse power with impunity," said Rita Payne, president of CJA, underlining the consensus at a meet on 'Threats to Democracy'.

Violence and censorship remains an everyday threat for many journalists and such constraints their ability to operate, the CJA said in a statement to mark World Press Freedom Day May 3.

"The CJA unanimously condemns instances of state repression against media reported out of Pakistan, Sri Lanka and some African member states of the Commonwealth," Payne said.

"With some Commonwealth countries, including India and Pakistan resisting a draft UN Action Plan on safety of journalists, the CJA warned that democracy itself is under threat due to constraints on the ability of journalists to operate," she added.

Putting action to words, the CJA has endorsed the Table Mountain Declaration, aimed at abolishing criminal defamation and promoting a free press in Africa.

In 2011, 179 journalists were imprisoned worldwide, up from 145 the previous year while another 67 were killed last year; 17 more so far this year. They were murdered, killed on dangerous assignments or died in crossfire, Payne said.

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'Censorship on journalists a threat to democracy'

The communications minister of the Palestinian Authority (PA) has resigned, accusing senior officials of clamping down on critics and stifling freedom of expression.

Abu Daqa announced he was stepping down late Thursday, and revealed that the PAs attorney general had ordered Palestinian Internet service providers to block access to at least eight websites critical of PA President Mahmoud Abbas over the past six months, the BBC reports.

The websites were reportedly loyal to one of Abbas most strident opponents, Mohammed Dahlan, a former Gaza Strip security chief who was kicked out of the Fatah movement which dominates the PA in June after accusing the president of weakness and corruption.

More from GlobalPost:Palestinian leader Abbas sends Israeli PM Netanyahu letter outlining demands for peace talks

Daqa said the Internet crackdown was bad for the image of the Palestinian Authority in the world, and pointed out that the websites could continue to reach users by switching to other domains, according to the Associated Press.

The PAs crackdown was also criticized in Washington. US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Thursday: We are concerned about any uses of technology that would restrict access to information.

Weve had these concerns in other parts of the world, and we wouldnt want to see the PA going in the direction that some of those regime have gone in, she added.

More from GlobalPost: Has Israel's regional isolation helped protect its economy?

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/israel-and-palestine/120427/palestinian-communications-minister-qu

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Palestinian communications minister quits over Internet censorship