How to Bring Terrorists to Their Knees? Take Away Their Blog Access!

Guest blogger, Sachin is planning to join us here on A.B. from India. He was getting ready to prepare a story for posting pretty soon. I just received the following email from him. I guess this should qualify as his first blog post !

"I don't believe this!

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/07/17/report_indian_gov_bl.html

Initially I had thought that maybe the services were down, as I had been trying to reach your blog for quite a while and saw this only tonight. I am amazed and shocked, to say the least!"

After receiving Sachin's e-mail, I checked the Stat Counter and indeed there has been no visitor here from India since midnight - a time when readers from India usually come in.

An Update from Sachin:

"I'm now able to access the blocked blogs after using a web proxy service appropriately entitled 'Hide My Ass."
<http://w2.hidemyass.com/index.php>

Comments

[Vik]

Test

[Joe]

Wow.

[Justin]

Oh Jesus.

Q: Where is Zidane around now? A few well-placed headbutts to the Singh administration may be what is in order.

[Ruchira Paul]

Justin:
You are right! The Indian govt. deserves a few well placed head butts to various parts of its anatomy. And I guess they are getting them too. Free speech advocates and bloggers in India are up in arms.

It appears that the average Indian may be more tech savvy than the government. I am not sure what the whole story is. I have so far heard from three different people (two of them guest bloggers currently in India). Each named a different target (India has lots of problems with politically unhappy people) that the govt. may be trying to prevent from using blogs as their forum for agit prop. But whatever the muddled story is, it is definitely a security issue.

I get quite a few readers from India. In the last 48 hours, there have been none. Some like my sister, who read my blog regularly, are quite irritated.

Unlike the Israeli government which just bombs the hell out of suspected enemies, the Indian government shuts down bloggers. I can't say which is a more effective mode of fighting terrorism - neither seems to be working!