The Government of India has blocked 245 web pages for inflammatory content which contained images and videos mostly morphed, aimed at targeting people of North East. Meanwhile, the government has also threatened legal action against micro-blogging site Twitter and could also seek assistance from US authorities to track down offensive material posted on websites in order to get such content pulled off.

The Department of Electronics & Information Technology had issued an advisory on 17 August 2012 to all the intermediaries including national and international social networking sites, advising them to take necessary action to disable such inflammatory and hateful content hosted on their websites on priority basis.

However, such inflammatory and harmful content continued to appear on the social networking sites despite the advisory and request made by the Department of Electronics & Information Technology. The circulation of hate messages and availability of inflammatory and harmful content led to disturbance of peace and harmony at several places in the country causing threat to life and national security.

The web pages hosting such content inciting violence and creating law and order problem were identified. Keeping in view the sensitivity and need for restoring peace, harmony and public order, the Government on recommendation of Ministry of Home Affairs issued orders under section 69A of the Information Technology Act 2000 directing intermediaries including international social networking sites to block 76 web pages on 18.08.2012, 80 web pages on 19.8.2012 and 89 web pages on 20.8.2012.

These intermediaries and international social networking sites were also requested to provide registration details and access logs of the person who uploaded such content. The initial response from international social networking sites indicates that such content have been hosted from outside the country and to a large extent from a neighbouring country (Pakistan).

An intermediary social networking site has responded that the up-loaders of the inflammatory and hateful content are outside the jurisdiction of the country, thereby implying that they are not obliged to take any constructive step to deal with it. The proxy servers and Virtual Private Network (VPN) services which hide the user identity operating from number of countries appear to have been used for uploading the content. The agencies are continuously monitoring hosting of such inflammatory and harmful content.

When asked if the government could consider legal action against Twitter, R Chandrashekhar, Secretary, Department of Telecommunications said, “Absolutely . It also includes action with regards to the services they provide within the country, it  includes actions to revenues accrued within the country and regarding the damages caused within the country.”

According to Chandrashekhar, Twitter has been slow in their responses to the government’s complaints and it may be because they don’t have any offices in the country. On Twitter we have had particular problems, it may be in part because they don’t have an office in India, but the response from Twitter in particular has been extremely poor.  Many of the sites that should be blocked have not been blocked.”