Anonymous writes an open letter to Government of India before nation wide protest on Saturday 9th June 2012.

Anonymous writes an open letter to Government of India before nation wide protest on Saturday 9th June 2012.

Dear Government Of India,

We are Anonymous. It has come to our attention that you have blocked file sharing websites in India. We also know you are in the process of making a Great Indian Firewall, to censor the internet in India. Anonymous believes, however, that pursuing this direction is a sad mistake on your behalf. Not only does it reveal the fact that you do not seem to understand the present-day political and technological reality, we also take this as a serious declaration of
war from yourself, the Indian government, to us, Anonymous, the people.
We, the Anonymous are attacking the websites of Government of India, Internet Service Providers with a DDoS attack for past 15 days to spread our message. We would also like to bring to your notice that no content or the data was harmed in this process.

First and foremost, it is important to realize what a DDoS attack exactly is and what it means in the contemporary political context. As traditional means of protest (peaceful demonstrations, sit-ins, the blocking of a crossroads or the picketing of a factory fence) have slowly turned into nothing but an empty, ritualized gesture of discontent over the course of the last century, people have been anxiously searching for new ways to pressure politicians and give voice to public demands in a manner that might actually be able to change things for the better.

Anonymous has, for now, found this new way of voicing civil protest in the form of the DDoS, or Distributed Denial of Service, attack. Just as is the case with traditional forms of protest, we block access to our opponents’ infrastructure to get our message across. Whether or not this infrastructure is located in the real world or in cyberspace seems completely irrelevant to us.

Moreover, we would like to take this opportunity to set the record straight on the difference between a DDoS attack and hacking, as these concepts often seem to be confounded when media and policy-makers talk about Anonymous.
Hacking as such is defined by the law as ‘unauthorised access to a computer or network’, whereas a DDoS attack is simply a case of thousands of people making legitimate connections to a publicly accessible web server at the same time, using up the entire bandwidth or processing power of the given server at
once and thereby causing a huge ‘traffic jam’.

It is clear then, that arresting somebody for taking part in a DDoS attack is exactly like arresting somebody for attending a peaceful demonstration in their hometown. Anonymous believes this right to peacefully protest is one of the fundamental pillars of any democracy and should not be restricted in any way.
Moreover, we have noted that similar attacks have also been carried out against Wikileaks itself, yet so far, nobody has been arrested in connection with these attacks, nor are there even any signs of an investigation into this issue at all.

The HC Madras never issued any list of websites of be blocked, the DoT never issued a list of websites to be censored. Why is that ISPs are forced to block file sharing websites? Why is that instead of blocking few links the whole domain was blocked? The blocking of these websites is wrong and unjustified.

Torrents are widely used to distribute open source and free software such as Linux distributions, and many other books and publications that are in the public domain. Video hosting sites like Vimeo are used by millions of people every day. You no longer have access to this content even though it is perfectly legal.
Many small – medium businesses use Vimeo to showcase their services and individuals including filmmakers and designers use it to promote their work. These people are strongly hit by the ban on these websites through no fault of their own.
Most of these sites provide a mechanism for illegal and copyrighted content to be taken down, but the GoI and Indian ISPs decided to bypass this mechanism and block these sites entirely. Few ISPs are blocking contents for their own good, to hide the scams, to hide their corrupt doings.

We can therefore only assume that these censorship’s are politically motivated, and were being carried out under pressure from the Government of India.
Anonymous can not, and will not, stand idle while this injustice is being done. You can easily arrest individuals, but you cannot arrest an ideology. We are united by a common objective and we can and WILL cross any borders to achieve that. So our advice to you, the Government of India, is to take this statement as a serious warning from the citizens of the world. We will not rest until all the ISPs unblock the censored websites.

A great man once said “Freedom is my birth right and I shall have it”. Today, we echo his words. We stand as one. We demand freedom.

Signed,
Anonymous.

We are Anonymous.
We do not forgive the denial of basic human rights.
We do not forget those who assist the oppressed.
To the tyrannical government of India … Expect us.