According to a research analysis conducted by Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) and Bytes for All Pakistan, it has been revealed that more than 200 URLs have been blocked in Pakistan in last 3 years. 22 internet service providers (ISPs) were involved to block these URLs.
According to the research report released on Wednesday, data from 2014 to 2017 was observed. This data shows that ISPs have blocked 210 URLs in last 3 years.
The purpose of this research is to observe efforts of internet censorship in Pakistan and 200 other countries all over the world. The OONI and Bytes for All Pakistan have mutually coordinated on the project to examine internet censorship in the country through analysis and network measurements.
The professionals involved in the project carried out several tests to confirm the blockage of URLs. The tests include header field manipulation, HTTP Invalid Request Line, and Vanilla Tor.
According to the report,
“Explicit block pages were observed for many of these URLs, while others were blocked by means of DNS tampering.”
The report revealing severe cases of blasphemous content states,
“Many of the blocked URLs were considered blasphemous under the Pakistan Penal Code for hosting content related to the controversial ‘Draw [Prophet] Muhammad Day’ campaign. Geopolitical power dynamics appear to be reinforced through the blocking of sites run by ethnic minority groups.”
Discussing how pages and sites were blocked, Mr. Haroon Baloch one of the report’s analyst said that people could report an objectionable page or link directly to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) by going to their website, while the PTA could approach ISPs to block a page directly or by tampering with the DNS.
PTA has endorsed ISPs on providing smart tools to block URLs spreading extremism, terrorism, and hate speech. “ISPs” have applied “smart filters” block access to selective web pages hosted on the unencrypted HTTP version of sites, rather than blocking access to entire domains. Thus HTTPS version of the site remains unblocked.
“On a positive note, popular communications apps, including WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, were accessible during the testing period. We find that the Tor network, which enables its users to browse the web anonymously, was most accessible,” the report added.
Pakistani digital analysts believe filtration of questionable content is there for quite a while and there are several other hundreds of URLs that have been blocked by PTA but are not in the report’s observations. Prevention of electronic crimes act had made it easier to ban/censor pages and websites. It is now easy to censor anything that hurts religion, national security, and military.
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