My friend Qisai called me up today saying that he could not access his blogspot, but can still log-in to blogger.com and does a post. At the first thought, it must be to do with the bad connection. But he asks me to open today’s headline in the Times of India, page 9. Well, it’s clear now, the Indian government has blocked some blogs due to security reason.
What security? It’s said that some terrorist are using blogs to convey their messages and therefore the hosting should be banned. Unfortunately, some of the sites suspected belong to the terrorist are run on a free-hosting blog provider like blogspot.com which means all blogs using the same domain will be blocked as well.
It’s certainly not a smart move on the part of Indian police deptt. to do so simply because it’s India – the largest democratic country in the world with freedom of expression clearly stated in its Constitution; and (2) they should be aware that blocking a particular suspected websites which are using a free hosting will affect all other innocent bloggers who use the same domain. Thus the government intentionally or not has done a “collective punishment” which cannot be justified.
Similar posts around the blogs: Ethan Zuckerman, Neha Viswanathan, Girlwonder, Pallab, Gurinder.
From Indian newspapers, see here.
