Update: Looks like the Indian government wants a geography specific kill switch for social networking or rather any website that it wants to block. According to a report by The Economic Times, the government has asked ISPs and telecom service providers to build embedded technologies allowing it block websites in specific regions or states. The development follows the exodus of citizens from the North Eastern states from cities like Bangalore and Pune, among others, after the spread of rumours, for which the government blamed social networks and SMS, and blocked certain websites, social network accounts and restricted SMS. The ET report cites a senior home ministry official to confirm the development and adds that the government had asked ISPs and telcos to block Twitter in eight states, namely Kerala, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh. However, the telcos had responded that they could only block sites nationally and that they did not have the technology required to implement selective state-wise blocking of websites. According to another report, the government had issued the directive to ISPs including BSNL, Tata Communications, Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Reliance Communications, and to the Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI). However, they reverted expressing their inability in blocking traffic selectively. Telcos do not allott IP addresses on a state-wise basis, and have a small number of gateways through which cyber traffic originates and terminates. The government's demand would imply that they'd need to have a large number of gateways and allott…
