“What was its fault that despite paying the heavy fine it was not restored to its original position,” the ANP legislator asked, while speaking in the joint sitting of both the houses of parliament on Wednesday.

He questioned why the cable operators were not listening to the Information Ministry despite the fact that under the law, the regulation of the cable operators comes under the Ministry of Information. “The Information Ministry seemed to have failed in controlling the cable operators who were not listening to it,” Zahid Khan added.

The News

For an entire year now we have had to make do without one of modern civilisation’s most comforting creations – YouTube – just because some loser who is now languishing in jail put up a trailer for a movie that was never even made. We ended up punishing the estimated seven million Pakistanis who use YouTube just to ‘protect’ them from something they either would never have heard about or shown no interest in perusing. And we have continued doing so for 365 days! At this point our nose is so disfigured only rhinoplasty will restore it.

Nothing is more annoying than the smug self-satisfactory ignorance of those who support the ban. There are many, who obviously understand nothing of how YouTube, or indeed the internet, works who have gleefully explained how the ban in Pakistan is costing Google so much lost revenue. Such inconvenient facts, like YouTube not making any money from the country because it doesn’t have a country-specific site here or that it loses nearly half a billion dollars a year, do not matter to a mind that closes itself off to reason.

A recent online poll conducted about YouTube in Pakistan found that over 60 percent of people claim to use the video-sharing site for educational purposes. In an equally unscientific assertion, I would venture that more than 50 percent of those people were lying, unless education is defined as learning about the art of reverse swing from old clips of Wasim and Waqar. Those who want YouTube unblocked are already ceding a lot of ground when they try to defend the site as a tool for learning rather than what it really is: lots and lots of fun.

The one thing this country could use is people who stand up for having a good time. There are a lot of things that can’t be defended on the grounds of utility but still provide much joy to the world. Failing to acknowledge the pleasure principle is what has led to all those fun things still being illegal which were outlawed more than three decades ago in Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s last-gasp attempt to save his rule.

Since ZAB’s time there has unfortunately been a surge in the kind of people who HL Mencken described as harbouring the “haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.” Fighting back against that mindset on all fronts is mandatory if we don’t want censorship and a loss of liberty to continue for another three decades.

The YouTube ban, powerful though it is as a symbol of censorship since it most affects the wealthy who are only used to the freedoms of others being taken away, is only one example of the killjoys encroaching on our right to seek what the US Declaration of Independence called the “pursuit of happiness.”

In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa the MMA government became notorious for defacing and tearing down billboards and giving a good go at destroying Pakhtun cinema. Self-righteous thugs and charlatans have attacked theatres, enacted the harassment of innocent teen couples for the enjoyment of the moral police watching along on their TV screens and cast judgement on anyone who does not live their life the exact way they want them to. And all of us have been too scared to speak out for fear of being cast as irreligious or, horror of horrors, secular.

Pakistan has become a country where we are no longer to pursue what makes us happy, even if isn’t hurting anyone else. The professional scolds in society are no longer content to mind their own business despite being under no compunction to alter their lifestyle from the evil secularists. This is why those who denounce extremists on both sides are being so disingenuous. There is only one side that is giving the other marching orders and shoving their virtues down our throats. The other side would just like to be left alone and for everyone to be free to choose which lifestyle they prefer.

The debate – to the small extent that it exists – has been framed as one between virtue and sin rather than freedom and censorship. This is why nothing remotely positive will be written about anything that has been denounced by a small but extremely vocal minority. Everyone is simply too cowered by them, and the threat of violence implicit in their moral denunciations, to mount a challenge. The ban on YouTube was meant to stave off any potential violence that may have been caused by the offending trailer. Yet, we still had violence just a few days after the site was blocked. Now a year later the ban has become the norm and, in an inversion of the way things should be, we have to argue that the ban is illogical rather than forcing proponents of the ban to explain why it still continues.

Freedom in this country is nothing but a poetic truth trotted out around election time so that we can be proud of being a democracy. For true freedom to prevail – the kind where preening moralists and fearful governments cannot simply snatch away anything they don’t want us to enjoy – the ballot box is only the first rest stop in a long journey.

The writer is a journalist based in Karachi. Email: nadir.hassan@gmail.com

The News

The process for blocking — on paper at least — is as follows. The Inter-Ministerial Committee for the Evaluation of Websites (IMCEW) convenes to reach a decision. This decision is communicated as a directive by the Ministry of Information, Technology and Telecom (MoITT) to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA). The PTA issues orders to internet service providers (ISPs) and it is at the ISP level that the blocking takes place. The IMCEW and the MoITT are responsible for policymaking, the PTA for enforcement. The ISPs simply comply.

Decisions are reached and imposed. Who is on the IMC — other than the various ministries and agencies — and what its decision-making process entails remains unknown. There is no public disclosure or documentation of the decisions, neither is public input taken into account. The only input, it seems, that is taken into account is that of violent mobs and law-breakers. And there is no way of challenging the decision other than going the court route.

Also, this process has been known to be hijacked by vested interests who, by sheer clout, are able to override it and ensure their own decisions are implemented — at whichever level.

Time and again, Pakistan’s internet users have been subjected to bans and blockades. Always, these decisions have been arbitrary as has been the manner of implementation. In the past, ISPs have acted as whistle-blowers for outing political censorship. And this, in fact, has been the only disclosure regarding decisions made behind closed doors.

But what happens if state-level filters are installed? Since the first day in office, Minister of State Anusha Rahman has maintained that as soon as filters are in place, YouTube will be reopened. According to the minister, filters will do the needful — block the video but provide access to the platform. Repeatedly, the ministry and others in government have been apprised of the dangers of filtering. But what’s really surprising is how the ministry seems to have found a solution in a few weeks time, just as the next court hearing is upon them.

It is pertinent to mention that twice the minister and the secretary IT were told to appear in court but excused themselves. The objective was for the political leadership to get involved, hear what everyone had to say and then take steps to resolve the issue. But the pursuit of filters displays a disregard for any input other than their own. While the court has not reached a conclusion on the YouTube case yet, it has raised the question as to why attempts to block should be made, when they can’t guarantee 100 per cent results; should there not be another solution? This was arrived at after hearing state and non-state actors extensively on the policy and technology aspects of the issue.

A solution to address the YouTube ban and similar issues has been pending for months, years, in fact, as the same challenge presented itself when Facebook was banned in 2010. According to the PTA’s submission to court, no system exists in Pakistan that can block HTTPS URLs, which is why particular links to the video could not be blocked, but the whole domain had to be. How has this system suddenly been unearthed by the ministry? And why, against the cautioning of civil society and experts, who have consistently maintained it will cause a huge breach of privacy and compromise online safety and security, is it being pursued? Accepting filters to reopen YouTube will be an extremely damaging compromise if it is made, much worse than the blocking of one platform.

To date, manual methods have been employed to achieve blocking. What happens when ISPs are also taken out of the picture? If filters are installed, would they be at the gateway level? According to statements issued by the ministry, PTCL is providing it with the technology for free, for a period of one year. Where does it intend to install this system? At the gateway level or at landing stations where internet traffic enters the country? If government-owned landing stations are given the sole right to operate the mechanism, who is to check what more than ‘objectionable’ — and whose criteria of objectionable — is taken down? And what of compromised communication security? Who becomes privy to everything one says or does on the internet?

What China with innumerable resources and finances has not been able to achieve, Pakistan thinks it can. As rapidly as blocking technology evolves, so do circumvention tools. Access through proxies has proved this much. Is it justified then to spend millions on technology that is easy to sidestep in the first place? Also important to remember is that China, Iran and Saudi Arabia are not models to emulate, not if Pakistan is a democratic country and the present government intends for it to remain so. What China, Iran and Saudi Arabia do is in the capacity of a non-democratic set-up. Democracies don’t allow for authoritarian mindsets that decide and impose decisions even if they override citizens’ rights. So, either Pakistan is a democracy, or it is not. And if it is, then democratic processes must be followed and rights must be protected.

The Express Tribune