India’s VPN ban in Kashmir ‘adds to psychological pressure’, say residents
Al Jazeera
Government orders a sweeping ban on VPNs for two months in the disputed region, citing ‘threats to national security’.
Basit Banday*, employed with an IT firm based in the southwestern Indian city of Pune, handles sensitive healthcare data of his company’s clients, ensuring they are safe from leaks and cyberattacks.
Until late last year, the 27-year-old Kashmiri Indian was able to do that using a virtual private network (VPN), which allows a user to mask their internet protocol (IP) address by routing web traffic through a remote server in a manner that makes it undetectable to telephone data or internet service providers (ISPs).
But that changed on December 29 when the Indian government ordered a sweeping ban on the use of VPNs for two months in Indian-administered Kashmir, citing “threats to national security” and alleged “misuse” of the services to “incite unrest”.
The government claimed the use of VPN in Kashmir has the potential to be exploited for “unlawful and anti-national activities”, including dissemination of inflammatory material, misinformation, and other activities that threaten public order.
“It was further observed that VPNs enable encrypted data transmission, mask IP addresses, bypass firewalls and website restrictions, and may expose sensitive information to potential cyber threats,” said one of the almost identical orders, issued by the chief administrator in every Kashmir district.
