The Central government on Monday said it would share with Pakistan evidence of its people and organisations having uploaded inflammatory and objectionable content on the Internet to incite religious sentiments in India, which led to the exodus of northeast people from various States.
Meanwhile, the government blocked 89 more websites on which morphed images and fake videos were uploaded from across the border.
Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde has conveyed to his Pakistani counterpart Rehman Malik that New Delhi would share with Islamabad all evidence of the involvement of certain Pakistani groups and individuals in the uploading of morphed images and videos to spread rumours and create communal tension in India, Home Secretary R.K. Singh told journalists here.
“We will share [all evidences] with them,” Mr. Singh said when asked to comment on Mr. Malik’s statement that India had not yet shared any evidence with Pakistan. Investigations revealed that a majority of these images were uploaded in Pakistan.
Commenting on the role of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, Mr. Singh said that at this stage, it was difficult to say who were behind it, but Indian agencies were probing it. “You do not know who is behind it…to say or to deny that a particular organisation was or was not linked with anyone is difficult. But some photographs have names of one or two organisations [of Pakistan].”
The Home Ministry has identified more websites and blogs carrying hate messages, pictures and videos. On its directions, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEIT) has blocked 89 more websites, taking the total number of sites jammed in the past three days to 245.
A senior DEIT official said Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and international social networking sites were asked to provide registration details and access logs of persons who had uploaded objectionable and inflammatory content. The initial response from international social networking sites indicated that such contents were hosted from outside the country, and to a large extent from Pakistan. “We have been working with international social networking sites… However, a lot more and quicker action is expected from them to address such a sensitive issue,” he said.
The Centre is also planning to share the findings of its cyber security teams on international forums as this episode has turned out to be the biggest instance of cyber warfare against India in recent times. The focus is on a Pakistan-based militant group said to be behind doctoring images and videos and uploading them on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
“Most of the online content started getting posted from July 13 and fake profiles were created for spreading morphed pictures… The proxy servers and Virtual Private Network services, which hide the identity of users operating from a number of countries, appear to have been used for uploading inflammatory content. We are investigating it and will come out with more evidences soon,” the official said.
Keywords: northeast exodus, Assam riots, social media, cyber attack
Let me tell you what Pakistan's response will be after receiving Indian evidence. "Pakistan government rejects India's evidence". "Indian evidence shall not stand in a court of law". "Instead of blaming Pakistan, India should introspect and look for faults within". "Pakistan wants good relations with India". Etc.
I dont understand why should we if at all provide any evidence to Pakistan, it is an issue with the whole Indian Administration where they totally failed to control this ethnic violence. It shows our incapability to rule any state in India, where the govt has failed to protect its own citizens. For Politicians they would be bothered only about their security and not citizen's security. Since they need these citizens only for voting....
Before blaming to others there is an utmost need to look around & inside ours. This is not the first incident where people have been targeted based on their location in the country. If we will able to hold our unity tightly no one can even dare to think to break us. First of all we will have to win the confidence of ours to avoid any such type of incidents in the future. Last but not the least we should punish the persons hardly who are trying to break this unity at least who are inside our country.
I really doubt this time for mere an external hand responsible for such an
exodus. Burmese massacre of Rohingya muslims resulted in birth of millions
of blogs around the globe- an estimated 3 million- and not only hosted
from muslim countries as only few muslim countries are actually
technologically so advanced to have respectable internet penetration. Most
of these blogs are hosted by human rights activists and other NGOs. Assam
problem started immediately Rohingya started subsiding but this sudden
exodus which started from states Karnataka and Maharashtra both more or
less infamous for notorious organization that are against those from other
states. Taking advantage of Pakistan's conspiracies for destabilizing
peace in India, I strongly do believe these organizations too would have
tried to fish in these troubled waters and also played some roles in such
an exodus. How can one forget attacks on North Indians in Mumbai in past,
Mangalore attack, and Bangalore v/s Bangaluru tussle.
And what would be the response from the Pakistan .Time and again India provides credible evidence which gets rejected by Pakistan. It is naive to expect any worthwhile response ,so why this farcical formality of going through the motions when the outcome is apparent beforehand ?
Better to seek co-operation of the ISPs and social networking sites and to impress upon them the need for a quick response from them.
We as Indians are always licking the wounds after it hurts us. What has
happened to the famed NATGRID and our intelligence chaps? We tend to
blame everything to Pak and not able to prevent any. We have become
experts in "sharing" evidence with Pak after the event has occurred. It
does not augur well for a country which is technologically superior to
Pak.
People responsible for security of our nation should now see the importance of a media without lethal power, which can destabilise a nation without a single shot.The whole exercise of purchase of so called large defence purchases (where as our people are remaining impoverised) is showing an activity for generating unaccounted money to some individuals.
The political parties should have a note on these phenomenon.
Pathetic Indian Sarkar..Calls ourself as information technology super house. it took pathetic govt babu's more then 1 week to even understand the problem. High-time they could have called anyone on BLR street to find and get the best software gurus to stop the mess before the damage was done. Sorry state of indian politics there are no leader around with a strong spine and common sense. Its even pathetic India is asking a foreign power to find the problem..when the best and brightest from BLR power the world IT 24*7.
With all due respect Sir, we do not have any rights to blame others
for this exodus. Either our people are not educated to ignore the rumors or don't have faith on neighboring states or the states
themselves shows discrimination on others. It could be any reason but
it shows our weakness. If today, the exodus could be triggered with a
website message (and spread through bulk SMS,MMS), tomorrow they can
very well plan for something big. It is time to regroup ourselves that
all the Indian citizens are safe on any part of India and if any
states fails to provide security, they are thrown out of power.
Sorry, i don't understand if the GoI is being naive here or is trying to prove its intellect - in either case this is useless, unless you realize how Cyber wars are being fought - in this case as proxies funding and supporting the people that do this. Sending dossiers is ridiculous (as always) and will get a standard NO - so what is the Govt trying to prove to the public or to anyone else. If anything give them back in kind or simply stop washing linens in public, it doesn't behove a supposed superpower like us to do thia over and over again.
Let us see what action Pakistan takes now. Anyway, this issue is another wakeup call for India. It had better be prepared for cyber warfare on an urgent basis.
I dont think that those people can be capture by applying this easy procedures by govt. In india there exist Information Securities Act, etc and also many internet securities have been engaged. But unfortunetly they are not able to crack those fake messages. May be due to high number of internet users are there. But it is clear from above that the RESPONSIBLE PERSONS are not playing their due diligent. Even they are just taking salary without working fluently. It is the part of duty of a INDIVIDUAL who is responsible to handle the said job.
Till what date Indian Government give evidence to psuedo government of
Pakistan, infact there is no such thing as government in pakistan. What
Indian government need to give to pakistan is not evidence but something
special so that in future no evidence is required.
I am really concerned if elected leaders of India are up to the task of protecting India from external threat. The recent "cyber" attack originating from Pakistan with regard to NE exodus and tepid response from India is worrying cause for me. Worst is, what other secret document are being pilfered from India by joint efforts by Pakistan/China via cyber warfare? I always thought "India" was a staging ground for Pakistan and other rogue powers as to how to hurt the democratic powers,leaving no trace behind. The evil experiments staged in India by jihadi elements (with pliant China) are duplicated across the Globe in UK and USA. India must raise its vigilance against the disruptive forces coming from abroad and as well as home grown. Sadly, India does not resolve as repeated incidences went nowhere.
One of the primary aim of the fundamental rights embedded in the
constitution was to protect people from persecution during the time of
distress and the govt has now given up the freedom of speech when the
testing time came. We are not going to solve this imposing ban of bulk
SMS and blocking websites.The govt is not addressing the question that
do we have to depend on the mercy of these website owners for the
peace internal law and order in this country.The reason for our
problems is our long time inability to enforce law of the land and
punish the culprits who do mischief. Also the question arises that a
people of a religious community resort to violence and become an
existential threat to the fellow residents of their city raises
serious questions. But the biggest reason for our problems is lack of
interest in the police officers to enforce law and order in this
country.They are not bothered about law and order they are just
worried about their hafta collection.
Indian techies helping the government should take up this challenge of
bringing to book those responsible for this 'cyber warfare', to prove
their mettle and to render a great service to the nation.
The Government should have taken this step in the beginning. Not now. After the damage is done. Its late in everything.
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