LAHORE: In a dingy Internet cafe, Abdullah gets round the censors with one click and logs onto YouTube, officially banned for a year and at the heart of Pakistan\u2019s cyberwar for control of the web.<\/p>\n
On September 17, 2012 Islamabad blocked access to the popular video-sharing website after it aired a trailer for a low-budget American film deemed offensive to Islam.<\/p>\n
Pakistan summoned the most senior US diplomat in the country to protest against the \u201cInnocence of Muslims\u201d, demanding that the film be removed and action taken against its producers.<\/p>\n
A year later, the film is barely mentioned but YouTube, whose parent company is US multinational Google Inc, is still banned in Pakistan, as it is in China and Iran.<\/p>\n
Pakistan is no stranger to censorship. Foreign television programmes deemed offensive are blocked. Films shown at cinemas are stripped of scenes considered too daring.<\/p>\n
But the YouTube ban is in name only.<\/p>\n
Internet users like Abdullah Raheem, a university student in Pakistan\u2019s cultural capital Lahore, can easily access the site through a simple proxy or Virtual Private Network (VPN).<\/p>\n
\u201cMost people who go to school or university know how to access YouTube, but not the rest of the population,\u201d says Abdullah. Only 10 percent of Pakistan\u2019s estimated 180 million people have access to the Internet, one of the lowest rates in the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis ban has no impact,\u201d says Abdullah, who still feels bad about logging onto YouTube. \u201cAs a Muslim, I\u2019m ashamed\u2026 because the \u2018Innocence of Muslims\u2019 defiled Islam.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pakistan blocked the site only after Google was unable to block access to the film because it has no antenna in the country.<\/p>\n
Although Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt defended hosting the film, the company did have the technology to block access to it in countries such as Egypt, India and Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
But the Pakistani government didn\u2019t stop there. It then ordered that websites be monitored for \u201canti-Islam content\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, which specialises in Internet censorship, says Pakistan has used Canadian company Netsweeper to filter websites relating to human rights, sensitive religious topics and independent media.<\/p>\n
The researchers say that pornographic content and political websites from Balochistan, the southwestern province gripped by separatist insurgency, are among those blocked.<\/p>\n
Shortly after Pakistan\u2019s former military ruler Pervez Musharraf was arrested in April, Pakistan shut down access to a satirical song posted on YouTube\u2019s rival Video that poked fun at the army.<\/p>\n
But the song \u201cDhinak Dhinak\u201d performed by the Beygairat Brigade, which is Urdu for Shameless Brigade, quickly went viral as Pakistani Internet users went through proxy VPNs to watch it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is still creating waves. So I think they helped our popularity by banning that song,\u201d said the Brigade\u2019s lead singer Ali Aftab Saeed, 29.<\/p>\n
Saeed believes that the authorities are bent on a wider campaign of Internet censorship, not just restricting access to items considered blasphemous in the nation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe thought that they would try to ban just the link to that particular video (\u2018Innocence of Muslims\u2019) but they instead banned the whole website (YouTube) and then they extended it to satire and people who discuss the role of military groups. So yes, it is a worrying situation,\u201d he told AFP.<\/p>\n
Shahzad Ahmad, director of Internet rights campaign group, Bytes For All, also says that online censorship serves a wider political agenda than just shutting down blasphemous content.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe government is trying to curtail, limit and curb citizen freedom of expression,\u201d Ahmad told AFP.<\/p>\n
He says citizens are waging a \u201ccyberwar\u201d against Pakistani institutions who are blocking and filtering the Internet.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a very clear defiance from users, particularly from the youth on government filtering,\u201d he told AFP.<\/p>\n
Bytes For All has gone to court in Lahore, demanding an end to \u201cillegal and illegitimate\u201d censorship of the Internet.<\/p>\n
The fight is vital to stop the government developing tools of censorship that threaten \u201cthe security and private live\u201d of individuals, says Farieha Aziz, a member of the Bolo Bhi advocacy group that is closely following the case, which encompasses the YouTube ban. Software surveillance FinFisher, developed by British company Gamma and able to access content on personal computers, has been detected recently on Pakistani servers.<\/p>\n
Although it is unclear whether it has been deployed by Pakistan\u2019s own intelligence agencies or foreigners, the NSA scandal in the United States has heightened suspicions. In Pakistan, the cyberwar has only just begun.<\/p>\n