Anonymous takes down MTNL site to protest Internet censorship

Just a couple of days away from their scheduled peace protests, across the country, popular hacktivist group, Anonymous are at it again and this time it is the official website of MTNL that is down. MTNL is a very popular ISP in the metros, primarily Mumbai and Delhi. While the Internet services are working fine, the main site (http://www.mtnl.net.in/) is down. The site acts as a gateway for a number of services for MTNL, which include bill payment and schemes on their services. Of course, the various sections of the site can be accessed by doing a simple Google search. As has been the case with previous hacking attacks, Anonymous hasn’t damaged any data on site, except for the main home page from the look of things. There’s no sign of the Anonymous message, which was found on previous hacking attacks in the past.

Anonymous made the announcement on Twitter some two hours back on their official account. The site is still down as of 5:30pm. MTNL is one of the ISPs that’s been blocking torrent and other file sharing sites. Anonymous has been planning a protest that’s expected to take place on the 9th of June, just a few days from now.

MTNL, the next big target

About 350 students and professionals are expected to join this protest by Anonymous. The hacking group describes itself as a ‘decentralized network of individuals focused on promoting access to information, free speech, and transparency with no central point of contact.’ The peaceful protest in Mumbai will be held at Azad Maidan, Churchgate at 4 pm.

The group’s official blog page has the schedule for the 9th of June, along with a set of directives, which the group claims are a must and should be adhered to, during the peaceful protest.  A lot of netizens are supporting the cause and have signed up for the protest via social networking sites. These protests have been planned across Mumbai, Delhi, Chandigarh, Indore, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Cochin, Calicut, Ahmedabad and Kundapur and is tentative in other cities of Uttar Pradesh, Nagpur, Chennai, Jaipur, Mysore and Thiruvananthapuram.

Web censorship has been a topic of debate in recent times. The gravity of the issue came to light only recently when incidents of hacking in retaliation to web censorship became a frequent occurrence. With the government on one side taking an increasingly active stance in tightening the reins on the way we access content on the web, groups like Anonymous are on the other hand citing free speech. OpIndia is against the banning of entire websites, if only a part of the website infringes copyrights.