GOVERNMENT TO BLOCK 690 OFFENSIVE WEBPAGES

The Indian government has ordered intermediaries to block 690 webpages/URLs for having anti-national, objectionable and hate content this year. The directions were issued under Section 69 of the Information Technology Act, 2000. The revelation was made by Union minister Kapil Sibal in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.
"Based on the request of law enforcement agencies and directions of the Courts during the last three years, the competent authority... issued directions to intermediaries for blocking of 690 webpages/URLs carrying such anti-social, anti-national and hateful content,"said the minister.
Out of 690 webpages, 663 were blocked during the current year."All the intermediaries complied with the directions issued to themby the competent authority and blocked the webpages/URLs for access in the country," Sibal sdded.
Citing data provided by the National Crimes Record Bureau (NCRB), Sibal revealed a total of 420, 966 and 1,791 cyber crime cases were registered under the IT Act, 2000 during 2009, 2010 and 2011, respectively.
The maximum number of cyber cases under the IT Act were lodged in Andhra Pradesh (349), followed by Maharashtra (306), Kerala (227), Karnataka (151), Rajasthan (122) and Uttar Pradesh (101) in 2011.
A total of 1,184 persons were arrested in 2011 for cyber crime under the IT Act.
Minister of State for Communications and IT Milind Deora, responding to a separate query, disclosed the government is in talks with the intermediaries, including social networking websites, to remove objectionableand hate content from the web.
The NCRB data revealed about 139, 328 and 496 cases were registered under the IT Act, 2000 for obscene publication/ transmission in electronic form during the years 2009, 2010 and 2012
"As per the information tracked and reported to Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), during the period May 17-June 15, 2012, a total number of 25 websites were defaced by the 'Anonymous' group," Deora revealed.