Hackers give Sonia nasty birthday gift. No thanks Kapil

GN Bureau | December 9, 2011



As if to snub communications minister Kapil Sibal threatening a crackdown on internet giants like Google, Yahoo and Facebook for "offensive" contents, unknown hackers broke into the ruling Congress party's website and defaced Sonia Gandhi's profile page with an obscene pornographic message and that too on her birthday.

The attack coincided with Gandhi's 65th birthday and came just days after the Indian government pledged a crackdown on "unacceptable" internet content, that included doctored pictures of the Congress leader. All that the party could do was to shut the website, but only after hours after it was hacked.

It was dirty pictures and offensive comments on Sonia Gandhi on a score of popular websites that had prompted Sibal to announce that he will evolve guidelines and mechanism to deal with the issue. He had highlighted examples of faked pictures of politicians, including Sonia Gandhi, and other images on social network pages that he said could inflamme religious tensions.

A storm of online ridicule along with warnings had greeted his statement not only from users of the popular websites but even from the US Department of States two days ago that India should do nothing that impinges upon the freedom of expression.

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