M A I N   N E W S

Tech hassles in blocking Twitter accounts
Ajay Banerjee/TNS

New Delhi, August 21
Continuing with its effort of locating communally sensitive content on the Internet, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs India will now seek legal recourse to identify the persons uploading such content. Sixty-five more web-pages having offensive content have been identified. Earlier, 270 websites, blogs, Facebook and Twitter accounts were found to have such content.

Blocking 28 Twitter accounts containing hate content is proving to be a difficult task due to technical reasons. These accounts can be blocked only by the company that runs the micro-blogging site, but it has not been cooperating so far, say MHA officials. In all other cases, engineers have been able to block the offensive content.

The strategy to tackle such websites is being widened to include more players and have legal look to have a watertight case in the court.

Around 30,000 persons of North-East origin have so far fled cities like Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune and Hyderabad amid rumours that groups belonging to a particular community were looking to take revenge.

As desired by Interior Minister of Pakistan Rehman Malik, India will provide evidence on the Pakistan-based persons and organisations that uploaded the morphed pictures and videos to spread rumours about “atrocities” on a particular community. The MHA has blocked the Internet protocol (IP) addresses of the persons. But to identify the persons and ascertain their locations in Pakistan, India needs the help of Pakistan-based telecom service providers.