[tor-talk] New Report on Internet Censorship in Pakistan

[Kevin]

This is interesting data though not all that shocking when you take into 
account the general attitudes in that government.



On 10/18/2017 6:24 AM, Maria Xynou wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Today, in collaboration with Bytes for All Pakistan, the Open
> Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) published a research report
> examining internet censorship in Pakistan over the the last three years.
>
> The report, titled "Internet Censorship in Pakistan: Findings from
> 2014-2017", is available here:
> https://ooni.torproject.org/post/pakistan-internet-censorship/
>
> https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/920588717508751360
>
> This study includes an analysis of thousands of network measurements
> collected (through the use of OONI Probe) from 22 local vantage points
> in Pakistan over the last three years.
>
> We confirm the blocking of 210 URLs in Pakistan. Explicit blockpages
> were served for many of those URLs, while others were blocked by means
> of DNS tampering.
>
> In many cases, Pakistani ISPs appear to be applying "smart filters",
> selectively blocking access to specific webpages hosted on HTTP, rather
> than blocking access to entire domains. Overall, we only found ISPs to
> be blocking the HTTP version of sites, potentially enabling censorship
> circumvention over HTTPS (for sites that support encrypted HTTPS
> connections).
>
> We found a wide range of different types of sites to be blocked,
> including LGBT sites, communication tools, and pornography, amongst others.
>
> Notably, most of the blocked URLs include:
>
>    * Sites hosting content pertaining to the controversial "Everybody
>      Draw Mohammed Day"
>    * Web proxies
>
> The blocking of sites related to "Draw Mohammed Day" is legally
> justified under Pakistan's Penal Code, which prohibits blasphemy.
> Similarly, the blocking of other sites (such as pornography and other
> sites promoting provocative attire) can be justified under Pakistan's
> laws and regulations.
>
> However, we also found the sites of the Baluch and Hazara ethnic
> minority groups to be blocked**as well. According to human rights
> groups, these minorities have experienced discrimination and abuse by
> authorities. These censorship events may be politically motivated.
>
> On a positive note, we found popular communication tools, like WhatsApp
> and Facebook Messenger, to be accessible. Quite similarly, the Tor
> network was accessible in most networks throughout the testing period.
>
> All data collected from Pakistan is publicly available here:
> https://api.ooni.io/files/by_country/PK
>
> ~ The OONI team.
>
>
>



---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus