Governments of Pakistan in the last decade have shown a propensity to inflict self-harm when it comes to new technologies, particularly the internet. The YouTube ban that was imposed more than two years ago has become an irrelevant laughing-stock. The ban has given rise to a reported acceleration in the development of proxies that may be downloaded and deployed to circumvent the ban. Any internet user who wants to can view whatever content he or she may wish — including all the banned pornographic sites, overdoses of blasphemy and any number of banned hate-speech websites. The blasphemous clip that started this farrago was removed by Google after a US court ruling, but is still available in a shortened version for those determined to see it — and not only on YouTube.

In an attempt to repair this shot in the foot, the government has now announced that it is developing legislation to ‘localise’ YouTube in Pakistan, bringing it within the ambit of local law, as it is currently operating under US law. A draft bill has been tabled with the National Assembly standing committee on IT and assuming it is passed, the government can then work with Google in order to gain the rights to locally manage the site — which may or may not be a good idea depending on one’s view of the ever-expanding censorship of media in the country. The government hopes that this will give it the opportunity to block “objectionable material” — and if it believes that, it is living in a fool’s paradise. YouTube is an increasingly essential global resource in the education matrix from pre-school to PhD studies. Pakistan already has an education crisis of immense depth and breadth, and banning YouTube feeds into the educational deficits. Vast libraries of free educational material are denied to our students — to say nothing of the innocent and non-objectionable pleasures that may be found on YouTube. Finding a face-saving way of getting YouTube back online for the average internet user should be a priority. We await with interest.

Express Tribune

The post Will YouTube ever be unblocked? appeared first on Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF).

ISLAMABAD: For those who have been able to access YouTube in the last a few days, the joy is short-lived.

“The reason why YouTube was accessible in certain parts of the country was because of a technical fault which will be fixed,” said Minister of State for Information Technology Anusha Rehman on Friday.

The rumours that YouTube was accessible in certain parts of the country during the last a few days are true. According to a senior official in the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), YouTube became accessible through certain Internet Service Providers (ISPs) due to a technical fault.

Minister says issue of YouTube blockade will be addressed through new cyber crime bill
“The news of unblocking YouTube will be announced officially, not done quietly,” said the official.

The minister stated that the YouTube issue was being addressed in the cyber crime bill which she hoped would be approved by the government in about two months.

She explained that the Bill safeguarded the interests of the service providers (Google in this case which owns YouTube) by not

holding it responsible for any blasphemous or anti-state content posted online by individuals/users.

“We saw how a blasphemous content was shown in France and its fallout was seen in the streets of Pakistan. No government will take the responsibility upon itself to unblock YouTube until a concrete solution is found to deal with objectionable content on internet,” she said.

Wahajus Siraj, the convener for Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan (ISPAK), explained how unlike Pakistan countries, including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt, Indonesia and Malaysia, entered into agreements with the USA.

“Under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, these countries are in a position to request service providers such as Google to follow local laws and remove objectionable content from YouTube.” He said Pakistan also needed to enter into a similar agreement to be able to request service providers to block objectionable content.

The news that YouTube had become accessible spread like a wildfire but many internet uses remained disappointed as some could access YouTube and many others could not.

“It was too good to be true but I still immediately switched on my laptop but an error window showed on the screen instead of YouTube,” said medical practitioner Hyra Farooq, who then started calling friends to confirm if the news was correct.

The video sharing website has been banned in Pakistan since September 2012 after the search engine giant refused to take down a blasphemous film triggered protests around the world and in Pakistan.

As the ban on YouTube enters into the third year, internet users in Pakistan continue to access it through alternate channels.

Daily Dawn

The post YouTube ‘unblocking’ short-lived joy appeared first on Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF).

There was a recent news item suggesting that the ministry or governmental authority or whatever had declared that the ban on YouTube was not going to be lifted in Pakistan any time soon. The reason given was that improper content could not be removed from it. By improper content we all know what is meant. Primarily, one particular video is what this ban is all about. Here I think it is important to point out what is otherwise generally known: those really interested in accessing YouTube have already figured out how to do it, ban or no ban. And I am sure that these people are definitely not viewing the aforementioned video. If they really wanted to watch it they have probably done so already. The question then is: why the continued ban on YouTube?

Anybody who uses the internet regularly, especially to read foreign newspapers or any other source of information, inevitably comes across material that could be considered blasphemous. Concerning the notorious cartoons that created quite a stir in Pakistan a few months ago, most foreign newspapers published copies of those cartoons. Interestingly, The New York Times was one major newspaper that avoided doing so. The point really is that much that can be considered blasphemous is available to people in Pakistan even with the YouTube ban. However, as I was researching for a short article on the early history of Islam, I tried to search for ‘Muhammad’. To my utter disbelief, the Wikipedia entry on Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was blocked, obviously by the Pakistani side. And that did make me wonder who decides to block which site on the internet.

It is conceivable that as the mullahs keep on agitating against access to anything on the internet that is identifiably uncomplimentary towards Muslims, we will end up with bans on an increasing number of internet sites. However, the mullahs, in their ignorance about the internet, do not realise that blocking any number of sites does not prevent access to the sort of information they find objectionable. The only way to assure that nobody living in Pakistan can read any ‘blasphemous’ material on the internet is to prevent any access to the internet. Perhaps that is the direction we are going in, the so-called slippery slope towards complete censorship. But then we will also have to ban things like satellite television, which provides unfiltered foreign content that could also be quite reprehensible.

The next question about preventing access to inappropriate material brings us to the problem of Pakistanis travelling abroad and those Pakistanis who live in foreign countries, especially in the Godless west where blasphemous material is freely available. In this matter, the mullahs will have to decide pretty soon about the ‘purity’ status of those Pakistanis who have been exposed to such material while abroad and who did not try to kill all those responsible for propagating such material. Should such people even be allowed to re-enter Pakistan in this befouled state? Here, it is obvious that the only way to prevent ordinary Pakistanis from exposure to objectionable stuff is to prevent them from leaving the country. Only people who have been certified by the mullahs to be entirely incapable of either viewing or understanding any form of blasphemy (the totally ignorant?) should be allowed to go abroad. And even then somebody, preferably a mullah, must be with them to keep an eye on them.

This might sound excessive but I still remember a picture from a UN meeting during the heyday of the Soviet Union. The picture showed the Russian representative in front with one person watching him very carefully and another person watching the watcher very carefully. Clearly such surveillance will be necessary for any Pakistani who does go abroad. And if there is any evidence that such a person wilfully and deliberately indulged in watching forbidden materials then that person must be forced to return to Pakistan immediately and face justice. This could open up an entirely new reason for demanding political asylum while visiting any country in the European Union or in the United States and Canada since, on return to Pakistan, a person who willingly indulged in watching forbidden material could be executed urgently.

I can just imagine the hordes of Pakistanis in any of the above countries getting their picture taken with a ‘blasphemous’ cartoon prominently displayed next to them, putting that picture on social media and then demanding asylum. Even though I claim no expertise in such ‘legal’ matters, I am sure that no civilised country will deport a ‘foreigner’ back to a country where he or she might be subject to the death penalty for a crime that is not even considered a crime in the host country. Though I would not be surprised if they somehow made an exception for Pakistanis. Our Pakistani ‘elites’ who frequently frequent countries where blasphemy runs rampant must also be looked at very, very carefully. Clearly such persons must be water boarded to find out if they ever wilfully and deliberately watched blasphemous material while abroad and then punished appropriately. Fortunately, this will probably rid Pakistan of almost the entire leadership of all our political parties. If nothing else that would be great.

Finally, about our impressionable youth. Clearly they must be prevented from any access to the internet lest their fragile minds are contaminated by ‘inappropriate’ material. More importantly, none of these young people should be allowed to go abroad for education. We all know exactly what sort of things they will see and learn about while they are supposedly getting an education. Purity of the fragile Pakistani mind is definitely more important than the inevitable contamination by an advanced education in the Godless west. And, yes, I have a question for our mullahs: how do you figure out that something like a cartoon or a video is blasphemous without first wilfully and deliberately reading, seeing or watching it?

Daily Times

The post Goodbye YouTube appeared first on Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF).

Pakistan is becoming more Orwellian by the week. The ban on YouTube has now been announced as “indefinite” as the government has been unable to find a way to block blasphemous content. For me the ban was inconvenient for around 10 minutes — the time it took to find a free Virtual Private Network (VPN) that spoofs my IP address, downloads and installs it. There are dozens of options for dodging around the ban and millions have gone this route. To the best of my knowledge nobody has been arrested or prosecuted for doing so, because so far as I am able to tell, no specific law is being broken.

In the wake of the YouTube ban, several locally-grown file sharing sites have been developed that use YouTube content but apply varying levels of filtering. A little experimentation reveals that searching for the English counties of Essex and Sussex is blocked on one site, as is a search for tracks by the 1970s punk band The Sex Pistols — but on a similar site neither is blocked.

Going in search of blasphemous content on these supposedly ‘clean’ sites quickly revealed that those who run them or set them up have very little knowledge or understanding of the world of stand-up comedy. Every religion under the sun comes in for a thrashing, and some of the content would make the publishers of Charlie Hebdo blink. All there at the click of a mouse, on sites that have the blessing of the government.

Moving on from the file-sharing sites, there is a vast mucky ocean of pornography out there as well, a lot of it free. Government agencies have blocked countless thousands of pornographic websites but once again the VPN workaround does the trick and pornographic content is available to anybody who wants to view it in Pakistan. This keeps the thriving pornographic CD/DVD industry in business, a multi-billion rupee cash cow that goes from strength to strength.

If your tastes veer towards the jihadi or the scummy waters of sectarianism, then there are websites in Arabic and English as well, I discovered, as French, German and Portuguese that were poisonously sectarian in their content. I also discovered that I did not need to use a VPN to view this material on all of the sites I found — the government was not blocking them and was presumably happy to allow them to propagate their messages of hatred and intolerance. Pornography may be deemed unfit for Pakistani consumption, but it is fine to advocate the killing of people who belong to certain sects or religious faiths.

Those who want to really dig into the darkest recesses of the internet can download a TOR browser for themselves and explore the Dark Net, a move I would not advise but there are many here that I know use TOR as their preferred workaround for government attempts to censor what they can or cannot see.

All of the above I was able to discover sitting at my desk over the space of a couple of hours. There is without a doubt a freedom of speech issue around the YouTube ban, and at least one NGO has fought it through the courts. But the internet is constantly evolving, and even the monolithic YouTube will one day disappear as will Facebook and Twitter as other platforms emerge and consumer tastes and needs change.

Before the ban, YouTube was a popular site for people in Pakistan who were plugged into distance-learning education programmes, and many universities were uploading material for student use. It was also the go-to site for local news material that the mainstream media could not or would not touch; it still is but only if you are using a proxy service.

As governments everywhere in the world have learned, the internet can be deeply inconvenient to say the very least. It can in some circumstances feed political instability and it is obviously a vehicle for terrorism — and it is ubiquitous. Blocking YouTube to satisfy the clerical establishment has done nothing but stimulate a workaround culture that now has its own ubiquity, rendering the ban meaningless. Censorship has generated a creative obverse, an unforeseen consequence of limiting freedoms.

Express Tribune

But Pakistanis can only dream about such freedom on the internet. YouTube has already been blocked in the country. Meanwhile, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority writes to the Twitter management to get various kinds of content blocked. A censorship watchdog site reports that in May, Twitter used its Country Withheld Content tool in Pakistan for the first time, blocking certain accounts and tweets.

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Skype have electrified journalism’s social engine across the globe. They have become a vital source for gathering information. I can understand Pakistan’s concerns about cyber warfare, sectarian violence and militancy. But these measures are curbing democratic values.

Indiana University’s latest survey suggested that around 80 per cent of Americans use social media for getting news in the US. But Pakistan seeks to put bars on the use of this medium as it seems unable to control the flow of controversial information. Indeed, some anti-state elements were floating blasphemous content which has sparked violence in the country. But why can’t Pakistan make laws to deal with controversial material flowing on social sites rather than just curbing press freedom?

Whatever the dilemma of our digital age is, social media has helped me file stories on the issues relating to Pakistan while sitting in Missouri. For instance, one could access live updates on Twitter and Facebook about the attack on the Karachi airport. I was updated through the social media about recent honour killings in Pakistan which helped me file stories for The Star. I was able to find many viewpoints, ranging from top Pakistani politician Imran Khan, to eyewitnesses to these incidents.

Every news media is obsessed with the latest information. Yes, there is no second choice for survival in this digital age except to grab on to social media as new reporting tools. Our job, however, is to verify the information we grab. Long live social media!

Express Tribune

The session titled ‘strengthening broadcast journalism’ revolved around experiences and expressions of two journalists currently on a training tour organised by the US state department.

Anzur with over 30 years of working experience was accompanied by Linda Roth, executive producer at the Cable News Network`s programme The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.

They shared their experiences as broadcast journalists and discussed reporting being done under current circumstances world over.

Anzur pointed out how investigative reporting was harder than ever.

The surest way of making it possible was through a collective effort by all media houses involved, she added.

In this connection she narrated an incident that occurred back in 1976 in Phoenix, Arizona. A reporter for the Arizona Republic, Don Bolles, was given a tip-off about organised crime by a source and asked to meet him at a hotel. The source didn`t show up when Bolles reached the hotel.

He got back in his car to leave the premises and as soon as he turned the ignition on, a powerful bomb ripped through the car, leaving him with severe injuries. He died after 11 days. Apart from being a reporter for the newspaper, he was one of the founding members of a consortium of investigative reporters called, Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE).

Though shocked, the IRE decided to send out a dozen reporters to work on the same story. `They ended up publishing a 23-part series on organised crime in various newspapers across the country. His car is now part of a museum in Arizona, where children are informed about his courage and strength,` she added.

It was this kind of camaraderie between reporters from various news organisations which was missing in the present circumstances when it was needed most, she said.

Competitive media companies must come together to cover the stories left uncovered by another reporter. This will send out a stronger message to the government and groups posing threats, she said.

While speaking about multiple issues in one go, both Roth and Anzur were mindful of not speaking about particular issues, such as the controversy surrounding former National Surveillance Agency whistle blower Edward Snowden, which they said was `out of their area of expertise`.

Speaking about newspapers and broadcast journalism, Anzur said that the only way to push reporters into writing or presenting a better story was to stop being their consumers.

`The storytelling has to be first class to gain the attention of your viewers or readers, otherwise people can always go back to YouTube and watch funny cat videos.

Roth, meanwhile, spoke about how daytime viewing can, at times, be completely twisted. Quoting an incident, she said once a video of a when it was needed most, she said.

`Competitive media companies must come together to cover the stories left uncovered by another reporter. This will send out a stronger message to the government and groups posing threats, she said.

While speaking about multiple issues in one go, both Roth and Anzur were mindful of not speaking about particular issues, such as the controversy surrounding former National Surveillance Agency whistle blower Edward Snowden, which they said was `out of their area of expertise`.

Speaking about newspapers and broadcast journalism, Anzur said that the only way to push reporters into writing or presenting a better story was to stop being their consumers.

`The storytelling has to be first class to gain the attention of your viewers or readers, otherwise people can always go back to YouTube and watch funny cat videos.

Roth, meanwhile, spoke about how daytime viewing can, at times, be completely twisted. Quoting an incident, she said once a video of aman committing suicide went live on a TV news channel. Summing up the topic, Anzur said that, `Having a free press can sometimes mean having a bad press. But it`s better than censorship.

Speaking of good and bad press, a gentleman sitting in the front row pointed out how some of the recent reporting on Ukraine crisis on US news channels was full of ‘machismo and nationalism’. Once again being guarded,both reporters gave a non-committal response: `The American press loves to reach through other means and tries to explore all the angles of a story.

By the end of the conversation and answering a volley of questions thrown at them, Anzur wrapped up the session by saying: `What you (reporters) do is tremendous. It takes some real courage to report from here (Pakistan). All we can do is to cheer you on.` Giving another piece of advice, she said that journalists in Pakistan must fight for their independence. `Don`t let the government put you in line, rather you should be putting them in line.

The power is in your hands, if you don`t like it, turn it off.

DAWN

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is scheduled to visit New York on 23rd of this month to attend the UN General Assembly session and is due to fly to USA today (Sunday). During his weeklong stay in the US‚ the Prime Minister will address the UN General Assembly on 27th September in which he is set to highlight Pakistan’s point of view on various regional and international issues, besides domestic priorities.

Sources in telecom sector privy to the development told this scribe that YouTube is likely to reopen soon across the country as the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication has dispatched a summary to the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. They said that ostensibly necessary measures and arrangements to point out and immediately block the unbearable material from the Internet has been completed. And, with this, the sacrilegious material would be blocked or filtered with the assistance of Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL). A committee constituted by the ministry has already given his green signal to go ahead and recommended to reload the website, they added.

Since the incumbent PML-N government has sworn in power, it has been seriously contemplating over the controversial matter very sensitively to reopen the YouTube. A research had also been initiated by the telecom ministry to determine the YouTube links, which contained the sacrilegious movie, and also for blocking mechanisms for other URLs and links on both the Http and the secure Https protocols to ensure the restraint of controversial content.

During the last week of August last, Minister of State for Information Technology and Telecommunication Anusha Rahman Khan while taking to the media persons also said that YouTube would open soon and a cell has been established in PTA to point out and immediately block the unbearable material from the Internet. She also said that a team comprising experts was working hard round the clock to block the sites containing blasphemous material and about 4000 such sites have already been blocked. She said that the government was working on the issue involving blockage of YouTube and a committee consisting of 14 members had deeply worked on the matter and had put forwarded some recommendations for consideration to resolve the matter permanently. The committee recommended the government to open the website, she added.

The minister also said that with the help of free of cost filters from Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) a trial was conducted and 4,000 URLs had been blocked successfully. She also informed the journalists that a response cell in PTA has also been established to monitor and immediately block the blasphemous material on the Internet following the refusal of the Google Inc. management to block those URL that contained unbearable material, she added.

The Google Inc had so far declined to cooperate with the government of Pakistan in removing unpleasant material from the websites and the honourable Supreme Court of Pakistan that found blasphemous material on the website ordered to suspend the YouTube in Pakistan. Moreover, the last government to quell simmering protests appeared after the release of anti-Islam amateur film “Innocence of Muslims”, had blocked YouTube in Pakistan in 2012. And, a decision to close YouTube in Pakistan was also taken by the Inter-Ministerial Committee. In accordance, the IT ministry ordered PTA to block the websites. Similarly, a policy directive was also issued by the ministry in May 2012 and advised the PTA to deploy a state of the art technical solution to proactively and independently block blasphemous and pornographic matters from the websites.

Interestingly, the IT ministry had earlier also taken up the matters with the management of YouTube and Facebook for blocking the blasphemous content from websites. In response, Facebook had restricted the access and upload of the video on the website. But, the Google Inc did not remove the sacrilegious content by saying that YouTube complies with international laws that are subject to the laws of United States that, however, do not comply with Pakistan-specific content removal request.

The Nation

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

After verifying the strength of the response mechanism placed by the PTA to handle blasphemous material on the Internet next week, the government will forward the issue of re-opening of YouTube to the Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC), it is learnt.

“We are actively pursuing this sensitive issue to ensure the blockage of viewership of blasphemous film “Innocence of Muslim” in Pakistan, but we want to ensure placing of an effective system under the PTA to handle complaints of its re-loading on the YouTube,” Minister of State for Information Technology, Anusha Rehman, said when The News sought her comments on Friday.

To another query about grey trafficking monitoring system, the minister said after the ICH policy, the LDI operators in 2012 contributed Rs270 million towards the monitoring of grey trafficking which will have interface to PTA and this system would be in place by September 15.

However, the sources said the PTA authorities would brief the minister of state on the strength of their complaint handling mechanism on coming Monday.

The PTA, the sources said, replied back to an official communication sent out by the Ministry of Information Technology (MoIT) about response mechanism on complaints in case of reloading of blasphemous film or pornography, stating that the PTA had set up a toll-free number and complaint email (complaint@pta.gov.pk) processed by the Services Division of PTA where blasphemous URLs can be sent.

The MoIT had given a three-day deadline to the PTA to apprise them about complaint handling mechanism after which this issue will be forwarded to the IMC for decision.

Keeping in view the sensitivity of the issue, the letter states that a comprehensive mechanism was already in place whereby upon receipt of complaints all obnoxious content relating to blasphemous or pornographic is blocked.

Sources in the PTA said that this complaint cell was established in 2006 and in 2009 Complaint Management System was put in place which was also shared with cellular companies at that time.

Taking decisions on blocking of content does not fall under the jurisdiction of PTA, as it is the domain of IMC (Inter-Ministerial Committee) which comprises different stakeholders including the intelligence agencies under the chairmanship of Federal Secretary MoIT.

However, the sources in MoIT say an effective enforcement on the directives of PTA was a problematic area and they cited different examples such as the regulator remained unable to enforce its directive on spam filters.

They said the PTA also remained unable to install filters in accordance with the policy directive of MoIT. “There is need to understand the difference between the mandate of the ministry and regulator, as the PTA is not under the direct control of MoIT,” said the official sources.

The sources also pointed out that there were some top guns who in official briefing claimed that there were eight million URLs having blasphemous film and it was not possible for them to clean such a massive URLs. They had argued that only 0.5 million URLs could be blocked in Pakistan.But after the PML-N took the reins of power, the minister of state for IT formed a 14-member committee which identified only 4,000 URLs.

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