Hacker group Anonymous is once again in limelight, as it targets the official website of Union minister Kapil Sibal. According to reports, Sibal’s website, www.kapilsibalmp.com, was displaying a message – ‘the website has been hacked by Anonymous #OpIndia’. However, the website looks like has been restored now.
Claiming the responsibility of hacking Sibal’s website, Anonymous on its Twitter account said: “He (Sibal) had used the words ‘Victims of freedom of Expression’. He is hiding the fact that #66A is breaking the internet media.”
Sibal’s site earlier displayed: ‘Welcome to the website of www.kapilsibalmp.com This website is currently… Under Maintenance’.
Anonymous’ latest campaign is against the controversial Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, under which recently two girls were arrested in Maharashtra for posting anti-Bal Thackery status on Facebook. There have been similar incidents in West Bengal and Puducherry. There’s been a lot of discussions across the country on the alleged misuse of the Section 66 A by the police and on the need of clearer guidelines that ensure freedom of expression guaranteed by the Constitution of India.
Anonymous slams Sibal over the Section 66 A of IT Act
Hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking to scrap the Section 66A, the Supreme Court of India today issued notices to the Central government as well as four states, including Maharashtra, West Bengal, Puducherry and Delhi.
The court observed that the Section 66A of IT Act deals with punishment for sending offensive messages through communication service…which cause annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred or ill will.
It’s not the first time Anonymous has tried to attack the government sites to safeguard the ‘Internet freedom’. The hacker group recently took down several government sites including those of to oppose ISP’s move to block the file-sharing and streaming websites such as The PirateBay, Vimeo, Torrentz.eu, KickAssTorrents.com, and BitSnoop.com. Anonymous withdrew its protests after Madras High Court ruled that the ISPs should not block entire websites to preventing a single piece of pirated content to be shared online.
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