India is up against the newest threat to its national security: cyber jihad.
The
recent discovery of a web of hate sites on the Internet that caused
nationwide exodus of citizens of northeast from different Indian cities
to their native land is an indication of how the terrorists are
constantly evolving and mutating. A large number of the 245 websites
blocked by the Indian government in past few days are found to be
operating from Pakistan, the Ministry of Information and Technology has
gone on record as saying.
This
is despite the fact that the NTRO has a 120-member strong cyber
security team. In addition, the NTRO also boasts of two special teams --
a 35-member team for cyber patrolling and a 60-member team of hackers
for taking the cyber battle right into the enemy camp. These teams have a
pan-India presence and are deployed in big cities like Mumbai,
Hyderabad and Bangalore. Incidentally these are the cities where the
cyber warriors have wreaked havoc in past few days.
The
mandate given to the officials patrolling and policing the cyber space
is clear: instead of trying to force the closure of the hate websites
and get into a protracted battle with the service providers, paralyze
these websites as soon as they pop up.
However,
what puts India, an acknowledged IT superpower of the world, in poor
light is the fact that the response of the Ministry of Home Affairs has
been tepid and dreadfully slow. It took over a month for the MHA to
discover that the northeast exodus had been triggered by morphed images
and videos uploaded on these hate websites to incite Muslims in the wake
of clashed between Bodos and Muslims that started in Assam on July 13.
On
August 20, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government blocked 89
more websites taking the total number to 245 of such hate-spewing
portals that triggered exodus of citizens of the northeast from
different parts of the country. Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, who
raised the issue with his Pakistani counterpart Rehman Malik on
telephone during his first telephonic conversation with Malik, later
said India would provide evidence to Pakistan on the involvement of
Pakistani websites in launching a malicious hate campaign against the
people of the northeast.
The
National Technical Research Organization (NTRO), the apex scientific
body set up in 2004 that reports directly to the Prime Minister’s
Office, has uncovered hundreds of websites that have been indulging in
anti-India propaganda. Though most of these websites are operating from
Pakistan, the NTRO does not rule out the possibility of other countries
too being involved in this, possibly at the behest of elements in
Pakistan.
However,
the government is finding it difficult to tame the Internet as leading
cyber sphere entities like Google, Facebook and Twitter have bluntly
told the government that they can’t remove anti-India propaganda. The
government has unsuccessfully tried to block individual accounts on
Facebook and Twitter that have been spreading malicious rumors about the
citizens of northeast. Hundreds of such accounts have come to light but
the social networking sites have refused to cooperate with the Indian
government, either citing technical difficulties or hiding behind the
cover of international laws.
