Yesterday, Karthik Balakrishnan, a volunteer with SaveTheInternet.in, wrote about how Airtel was possibly checking each and every unencrypted packet of data going to sites connected with popular Content Delivery Network Cloudflare. The analysis published suggested that since Cloudflare was using Airtel for connectivity with host servers, every packet of data between Cloudflare and the host server (in this case for the PirateBay) was being checked by Airtel for its destination, and if it were in violation of government orders, it was being blocked. What this means is that even if you're not an Airtel user, merely by virtue of Cloudflare's partnership with Airtel, every single unencrypted connection between Cloudflare and the content servers - thus, in this case, for every user accessing The Pirate Bay torrent site, was being monitored and blocked by Airtel by inserting an iframe, even if the end user isn't an Airtel customer. In response to MediaNama's queries, Airtel sent a boilerplate response and hasn't responded to further queries. The response, attributable to "An Airtel spokesperson", says: “This is completely baseless and incorrect. As a policy, Airtel does not block/sniff any content. Only in the case of instructions/orders from the Government or the Courts, specified URLs are blocked. Blocking of any page [as per instructions from relevant authorities] is done at the URL level and not whether it is http/https. This also has nothing to do with the validity of any certificate.” Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince spoke with MediaNama in detail about the issue: MediaNama: What's going…
