Devangshu Datta: Why Net blocks don't work

TECHNOBEAT

One important benchmark of democracy is the right to free speech. Most politicians vociferously defend this in public. But in practice, governments prefer to control the flow of information. Hence, bans on books, TV channels and so on.

The Internet provides a special challenge for censors. Repressive regimes use a combination of two methods to prevent embarrassing stuff coming off the Net. One is to control physical access; the other is to selectively block websites.

In Myanmar, private Net connections are illegal. In Vietnam, cybercafes are policed by security staff and surfers must provide detailed personal information. But physical control is impossible wherever it's possible to gain Net-access through ISD.

The blocking of domains is a widely-employed technique. The Chinese block search-engines and filter search-queries; in the UAE, pop-ups inform surfers that certain domains are blocked.

The Indian Information Technology Act (2000) allows the block of domains that promote pornography, slander, racism, gambling, terrorism or violence. The blocking order is issued by an apex agency, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), which is under the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).

Those powers have been invoked twice, so far. In September 2003, CERT ordered Internet service providers (ISPs) to block a Yahoo! Groups domain.

The site (http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/kynhun) was an e-mail group with 25-odd members. It alleged discrimination against ethnic minorities in Meghalaya. The ban caused a ruckus because most ISPs blocked all Yahoo! Groups, causing distress to a multitude of surfers.

The second ban came in May 2004. A site called www.hinduunity.org was blocked at the request of the Mumbai police. This site consists of one long, sick, vitriolic rant about minorities. Speaking personally, I don't think it's much of a loss.

But I would still oppose both bans on principle. The government didn't provide any justification for the bans. ISPs just got terse notices ordering blocks. In the second case, the order came from the Mumbai Police rather than CERT and some ISPs didn't comply.

What is the due legal process of invoking a Net ban? In practice, it seems a mid-level bureaucrat can arbitrarily block a domain without public notice or justification.

When a book or newspaper is banned, the decision is taken by a magistrate who issues an order in response to a request filed by a state government. That allows for more debate and the right to appeal the ban is also easier to invoke.

Domain censorship imposed like this sets a precedent for more arbitrary censorship in future. Tehelka's sting occurred in March 2000, prior to the passage of the IT Act "" otherwise it could well have been the first website to be blocked.

One fervently hopes that the censorship provisions of the IT Act will not be misused. But it would be realistic to expect that they will be, sooner or later. However, domain blocks can be bypassed with ease and both banned sites saw a jump in traffic post-ban!

There are two easy methods to access blocked sites. One is to use an "anonymizer" that offers cloaked access. Anonymizer software can be downloaded "" most of it is free, some sites levy charges.

An anonymizer lands the surfer at an unblocked site, a proxy that relays data from the blocked domain. The ISP record shows that the surfer has never visited the banned site and, often importantly, the blocked site doesn't know the visitor's profile.

The technique is slow because of the relay-delay. But it's effective. China and Iran regularly block known anonymizers but these shift Internet protocol (IP) addresses (the string of numbers that define a net-locale) continuously. Bans are effectively unenforceable.

The other anti-censorship option is to use peer-to-peer (P2P) software like Triangle Boy (TB). P2P works just as well as anonymizers. TB resembles Napster in that anybody with the software can relay data off a domain, much as Napster allows anybody possessing it to relay MP3 uploads and downloads.