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Hate posts: Govt to ban 250 websites, but is that enough?
Stepping up its drive against "erring" portals, government has ordered blocking of more than 250 websites in which morphed images and videos were uploaded to incite Muslims leading to exodus of people belonging to the north-east from Karnataka and some other states.
The home ministry, which already banned more than 130 websites for spreading rumours amongst the people from north-east, indicated that number of banned website might cross the 250 mark in next few days.
Facebook and Twitter have been put under special watch.
The websites that have been banned belong to Pakistan, some West Asian countries and the United States.
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Hate posts: Govt to ban 250 websites, but is that enough?
The foreign ministry has sought the help of Saudi Arabia and the US to assist the Indian government in taking legal action against the offenders.
Pawan Duggal, cyber expert, says: "China has told websites operating in its country that if they want to cater to the country then they are bound to follow the Chinese law. India has to have something like this. Banning is not an answer. You got to prosecute the offenders. You ban 250 websites and you will get 2,500 more in the one week."
Law minister Salman Khurshid said that the government is taking quick and effective action against the websites who tried to spread hatred through their content.
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Hate posts: Govt to ban 250 websites, but is that enough?
The government is also contemplating to take up the CERT-In (Computer Emergency Response Team-India) findings at the international forum, as it has turned out to be the biggest instance of cyber warfare on India in recent times.
A Pakistan-based hardline group is suspected to have been involved in doctoring images and spreading them across social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and You Tube to incite Muslims and create scare among people of north-eastern region living across India.
Most of the online content started getting posted from July 13 and fake profiles were created for spreading morphed pictures, according to a home ministry report prepared in the wake of mass exodus of people belonging to the north east from Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai and Mumbai following rumours about possible attack on them.