Nerve Endings Firing Away

It is almost confirmed that the blogspot domain was blocked by several ISPs on account of a government directive that supposedly wanted to restrict access to ‘terrorist blogs’ after the Mumbai blasts. Shivam Vij wrote an excellent and timely piece on Rediff that got the news out to the public and he has been working the phones to gather more information on the source of the directive. Of course, he hasn’t been completely successful given the nature of our bureaucratic machinery and ‘pass the buck’ mentality. However, one reaction from none other than CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) – IN’s director Dr. Gulshan Rai takes the cake and reveals much about the government’s attitude – “Somebody must have blocked some sites. What is your problem?” Call him at +91 (11) 2436 3081 and tell him what the problem is.
Thankfully, desi bloggers – resident or otherwise have rallied superbly and are pooling resources to share information to get around the block. Also, the international media has picked up the story and India’s democratic reputation is at stake. I had imagined such censorship happening in China, Pakistan, and other Middle Easter countries but never India. We may trample on economic freedoms and do the occassional moral policing but never has an order come from the top to clamp down on free speech. People who think bloggers are off their rocker are already clamoring to justify the government’s actions as measures taken to counter terrorist actions. The recent bomb blasts, like 9/11 might even make curtailing civil liberties a bit easier to explain to the man on the street. But not many are aware that these may leave dangerous precedents.

I am not sure how did the government arrive at the conclusion that terrorists are using blogs to communicate amongst themselves. If I was a smart terrorist, I would use email and not post a call for Jihad and wait for comments. If you really want to be popular, you would have a page on MySpace. Come on, if there was a popular terrorist blog, we would have got a tip off at DesiPundit although some detractors might say we do link to ‘opinion terrorist’ blogs all the time.

Let us take the government’s argument a bit further and help them in curtailing the menance of terrorism by blocking or banning stuff. Let them outlaw all use of cell phones because if you have seen RGV’s Company, you know that you can run an entire gang from Malaysia. Terrorists use cars to make a hasty retreat so lets ban cars in major cities. Let the bastards run for their life and we can chase on foot. Run for 21 miles and we don’t even have to host a marathon every year. The terrorists target temples, busy marketplaces, and crowded trains. Let us ban all of them. No religion, no trade, and subsequently no commute. Ban any gathering of more than three people so the terrorists will have to bomb their own headquarters if they hope to kill more than three in one go.

Anything else you can think of banning that will curb the threat of terrorism?

Update: The MSM stories are trickling in now. Through Financial Express, we get a partial list of the 12-18 websites/blogs that the government wanted to ban for allegedly spreading hate. The list is:

• hinduunity.org
• hinduhumanrights.org
• princesskimberley.com
• bloodspot.com
• dalitstan.org
• clickatell.com
• blogspot.com
• geocities.com
• typepad.com

The funniest one by far is princesskimberley.com which I checked and doesn’t exist. The article in Indian Express however mentions that URL as ‘Princesskimberly.blogspot.com’ (see, this one got all blogs on Blogspot blocked). But upon checking it, it is a two-year-old abandoned blog by some Kimi who happens to be depressed about her life and has just two posts. A depressed American (I think) hardly qualifies as a national security threat. Since the author of the IE article had written to me earlier today, I have informed her of this.

Now, as you see most of the websites (not blogs!) are religion-oriented and have hate-mongering material but still I don’t think banning them is the solution. Websites with “extreme religious views” are hardly national security threat material and more importantly, trying to ban or block them just gives them more importance than they deserve. Anyway, that is an issue for another day.

The Hindustan Times article has a priceless quote by ‘officials who defend the decision’ by saying:

“We would like those people to come forward who access these (the 12) radical websites and please explain to us what are they missing from their lives in the absence of these sites.”

I am gladly stepping forward and saying that Blogspot and Typepad (Geocities? really?) each have few million quality blogs that if blocked would drastically reduce our access to quality writing. So basically, Mr. ‘Officials’ , the correct number of ‘radical’ websites are much more than simply 12…say, give or take several million.