ONI research says the Indian government completely depends on the Computer Emergency Response Team - set up in 2003 by the Department of Information Technology under the IT Act to block websites, which in turn depends on Internet service providers (ISPs) to block sites identified by government authorities as relating to national unity and state security.

One of the reasons for India's Internet freedom is because there is no uniformity in blocking, as the ISPs react differently says the report. It provides the example of the bombing of suburban trains in Mumbai on July 11, 2006 after which CERT issued a blocking order on 17 websites, which was implemented inconsistently The report observes: "Government attempts at blocking have not been completely effective as the content quickly migrated to other websites and users have found ways to circumvent filtering."

"Though India fares well on transparency, it resorts to clumsy ways of blocking websites in the wake of terror attacks, which is an ineffective way to deal with such serious problems," says Ronald Deibert of the University of Toronto.