Govt officials to meet ISPs soon on website blocking hitches

ISPs have expressed difficulties in blocking URLs or websites with secure-encrypted headers

Several departments of the government are set to soon meet internet service providers (ISPs) to find ways for bulk blocking of websites.

Officials from the department of electronics and information technology (DeitY), the ministry of home affairs, Intelligence Bureau, cabinet secretariat and Centre for Development of Telematics are expected to sit with the ISPs to streamline the process, according to a recent communication.

The meeting was proposed as the ISPs have expressed some difficulties in blocking URLs or websites which have secure-encrypted headers (https-//..) or have been sourced from multiple locations, particularly through Content Delivery Network.

In the past few weeks, the Government had asked the ISPs to block a little more than 500 websites but this could not be done due to these technical issues.

In February this year, a review committee of the cabinet secretariat had decided not to intervene in the decision of the DeitY to block 310 Uniform Resource Locators (URL) between August 18-20, 2012, at the request of law enforcement agencies.

Earlier, the Deity had blocked the URLs as the websites were said to be hosting several provocative clips and photographs on social networking sites that had the potential to incite communal passion. The government had unblocked some websites after discussion with the stakeholders concerned.