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Internet censorship in Pakistan

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The Government of Pakistan censors all internet traffic by means of routing all connections through a central exchange which is administered by the Internet Exchange. Furthermore Pakistani ISPs are also under orders to block certain websites on their own routers. A common victim by major ISPs in Pakistan was the weblogs hosted at blogspot.com (The blanket ban on the blogspot.com blogs is lifted), amongst other important social networking websites.

History and law

The Government of Pakistan some years back established the Pakistan Internet Exchange (PIE), as a means to monitor all incoming and outgoing Internet traffic from Pakistan. The primary purpose of PIE is to filter content as the government deems fit. A secondary purpose is to keep track of all incoming and outgoing e-mail, which by parliamentary order are kept for a period of at least three months.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Company (PTCL) announced in April, 2003 that it would be stepping up censorship of pornographic websites. "Anti-Islamic" and "blasphemous" sites were also censored. In early March 2004, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) ordered Internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to all pornographic content. The ISPs, however, displayed absence of technical know-how, and advocated that the PTCL would be better fit to carry out FIA's requirement. A Malaysian firm was then hired to provide a filtering system.

Currently, there is no established law as to which websites the government censors, or when. In the past, mainly pornographic and anti-establishment political websites have been blocked. Once in a while, western news sites have also been blocked, though these blocks were usually short-lived.

Supreme Court directive

The Supreme Court on March 1, 2006 directed the government to block internet sites displaying the Muhammad cartoons and called for an explanation from authorities as to why these sites had not been blocked earlier.[1] A three-member bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhary, summoned the country's Attorney General as well as senior communication ministry officials on March 13 to give a report of "concrete measures for implementation of the court's order".

On March 2, 2006, in pursuant to a Petition filed by Dr. Mohammed Imram Uppal under Article 184(3) of the Constitution of Pakistan, the Supreme Court sitting en banc ordered the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) and other government departments to adopt measures for blocking websites showing blasphemous content. The Court also ordered Attorney General Makhdoom Ali Kahn to explore laws which would enable blocking objectionable websites. In announcing his decision, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, said, "We will not accept any excuse or technical objection on this issue because it relates to the sentiments of the entire Muslim world. All authorities concerned will have to appear in the Court on the next hearing with reports of concrete measures taken to implement our order," which was scheduled on March 13, 2006.

Consequently, the government blocked a number of websites hosting the cartoons deemed to be sacrilegious. This ban included all the weblogs hosted at the popular blogging service blogger.com, as some bloggers had put up copies of the cartoons – particularly many non-Pakistani blogs.

On the hearing on March 14, 2006, the PTA informed the Supreme Court that all websites displaying the Muhammad cartoons have been blocked. The bench issued directions to Attorney General of Pakistan Makhdoom Ali Khan to assist the court on Monday on how it could exercise jurisdiction to prevent the availability of blasphemous material on websites the world over.[2]

The blanket ban on the blogspot.com blogs was lifted on May 2, 2006 [3]. Shortly thereafter the blanket ban was reimposed, and extended to Typepad blogs.The blanket ban on the blogspot.com blogs is lifted again. Pakistan also blocked Baloch nationalist websites.

How Internet is censored

The government of Pakistan currently has a simplistic IP based filtering procedure in place, and since all websites hosted on blogspot resolve to the same IP address, they all have been blocked now blogspot is unblocked in all over Pakistan.

Since the PIE uses Cisco routers to block traffic, which are capable of more complex filtering rules, the government removed this blanket block on all blogspot weblogs few months ago as it has the capability to only target specific websites.

As all internet traffic is routed through the PIE, Pakistani ISPs have also been ordered to also block certain websites on their routers. Previously, all the major ISPs in Pakistan blocked weblogs hosted at blogspot.com, But now its been unblocked.

Wikipedia article on Islamic Emirate of Waziristan earns a threat of an internet ban

On September 19, 2006 when a reporter from the Daily Times asked a Government of Pakistan Foreign Office spokesperson to comment on a recent Wikipedia article "The Islamic Emirate of Waziristan", the spokeswoman characterized the article as "baseless propaganda". The news story pointedly ended with a reminder that "The federal government has said several times that it plans to ban several websites and web pages through the Ministry of Information and Technology and Pakistan Telecommunicatoin Authority (PTA). [1]

See also

References

  1. ^ Waqar, Ali (September 19 2006). "Pakistan recognises Islamic Emirate of Waziristan?". Daily Times. Retrieved 2006-09-19. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)

Media reports

Others

Workarounds

Digital Opportunity Initiative for Pakistan

Government policies relating to Internet censorship

Websites reported as blocked in Pakistan

The following websites are reportedly banned in Pakistan, the references are mentioned in brackets.

Most of these site can be visited and it is fake report, the sites listed here are mainly related to Baluchistan and in Balochi language, which hardly be understand in Pakistan by 10,000 people and approximately 500 to 1000 will be able to understand the message given, so why Pakistan will need to bann these site?

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