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Defence.pk is blocked in Pakistan

...Since the start of 2017, Pakistan has been witnessing a planned crackdown against social media activists, political workers and bloggers. The high handedness on human rights movement has manifested a rampant culture of impunity. Abduction of four bloggers namely Waqas Goraya, Asim Saeed, Ahmed Raza Naseer and Salman Haider are a few examples of this. After their release, these bloggers adversely suffered an online smear campaign that associated them with controversial and religiously sensitive content on social media pages.

Cases of forced disappearances are not reported, and those missing have not returned. Pakistan’s record in providing safety to activists, journalists, and civil society members who have been critical of the policies and growing religious radicalization is far from encouraging. A large number of such individuals have been routinely censored, intimidated, been under constant surveillance and attacked in the past. This has inevitably contributed to the narrowing of spaces for peaceful expression, debate, protest, and the exercise of civil liberties.

More recently, the government ordered the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to take action against social media activists who were criticising military. Subsequently, FIA prepared a list of 200 social media users, summoned them, and confiscated their devices for forensic analyses. This crackdown corroborates the fears that the PECA 2016 is being used to silence political dissent.

Press freedom is guaranteed under Article 19 of the Constitution, which is subject to a set of limitation which do not correspond to the guidelines provided under ICCPR. (See section Freedom of Expression). Print and electronic media in Pakistan are being regularized by state-owned regulators Press Council of Pakistan (PCP) and Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) established under PCP Ordinance 2002 and PEMRA Ordinance 2002. In August 2015, PEMRA formulated a media code of conduct, which is enforced on privately owned electronic media across the country. However, most observers noted that media professionalism and ethics would be more robust if it originated from self-regulatory codes by an independent media itself.

In reality, media regulators such as PEMRA and PCP are functioning as non-autonomous subordinates of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The government has not ensured that the mandates of media regulators remain autonomous.

In PECA 2016, sections 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 have been introduced, which are potential threat to investigative form of journalism as they not only restrict access to critical but public interest information or intelligence in digital forms, but also criminalize such form of access...

...PECA 2016 also legitimizes the state’s activities to snoop into digital communications of the citizens, retain personal data for up to one-year and share it with foreign governments and agencies. PECA 2016 poses a serious threat to the right to privacy as it permits the PTA and the designated investigation agency to access traffic data of telecommunication subscribers and confiscate data and devices without prior warrants from the court under Section 31. Moreover, Section 35 permits decryption of information, making it impossible for persons to be anonymous...

...the government has arbitrarily been blocking websites and blogs who would express political dissent online.

‘Khabaristan Times’ was an online portal until January 25, 2017, who produced regular blogs on major national developments in satirical style. Sources privy to PTA confirmed to Bytes for All that they blocked the website for unspecified objectionable content. Admins of Khabaristan Times’s Facebook page on January 30 updated its readers that their website was blocked by the authorities without serving any notice and giving chance to respond to the allegations.

‘The Baloch Hal’ is another example of crushing political dissent of an ethnicity in Pakistan by the State. PTA blocked the website in 2010 and the ban still continues. This portal was the first online English language newspaper of Baluchistan province, which was founded in November 2009. Because of its liberal point of view and touching upon the sensitive conflict related issues in Baluchistan, PTA put it offline. Subsequently, the editor-in-chief of the Baloch Hal, Malik Siraj Akbar allegedly received life threats from the government and intelligence agencies, forcing him to live in exile in the United States.

In April 2015, PTA also blocked a political forum Siasat.PK, which has a known anti-government stance. Siasat.pk is a famous platform where people express their criticism against the government. The case was reported in Pakistani media and after receiving public pressure, the government restored the forum.

Currently, there has been an ongoing crackdown against politico-religious dissent expressed on social media, which enjoys the patronage of the State. A mass censorship campaign is being pushed through a multi-actor approach where the ministry of interior, ministry of information technology and telecommunication, federal investigation agency, PTA and Islamabad High Court (IHC) are on the driving seat.

The State has taken a strict stance against online blasphemy and criticism on Pakistan military. A petition against online blasphemy and alleged involvement of four bloggers for expressing hate against Islam and military was registered in IHC. The court ordered the concerned departments to take stringent measures for protecting the sanctity of Islam and prophet Muhammad (PBUH). PTA, PEMRA and PCP ran a coordinated media campaign warning public to limit their expression according to Article 19, whereby any expression against “integrity of Islam” and “national security” is unlawful...In the absence of safeguards, such as judicial oversight, state institutions have been carrying out surveillance on digital communications of individuals, groups and organisations...

...Pakistani ISPs appear to be applying “smart filters”, selectively blocking specific HTTP web pages that host illegal or offensive content, rather than blocking entire services. This was particularly observed when such content is hosted on popular platforms, like youtube.com or twitter.com, potentially suggesting a certain social and/or political cost to implementing censorship. Many of those web pages now support HTTPS, enabling censorship circumvention. We didn’t find any HTTPS sites to be blocked during the testing period...

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Internet Censorship in Pakistan: Findings from 2014-2017
Haroon Baloch (Bytes for All Pakistan), Maria Xynou (OONI), Arturo Filastò (OONI)2017-10-18



 
Defence.pk is working fine on Fiberlink.
How good this Fiberlink is? does it disconnects like PTCL (esp during rainy days) how good is customer support and have you played any multiplayer games using this network? like Battlefield, COD etc how's the ping??

Off topic i know webby but just want to know few things
 
Some of the comments here are very nasty and defamatory of certain politicians and political parties in Pakistan. The forum should prohibit insulting and degrading terms being used
 
How good this Fiberlink is? does it disconnects like PTCL (esp during rainy days) how good is customer support and have you played any multiplayer games using this network? like Battlefield, COD etc how's the ping??

Off topic i know webby but just want to know few things

70% bad 30% good for most of the users in terms of support. There deployment time is worst and can take minimum 2 months to a year. I didn’t experience any major issues after that. There were some downtimes but those were due to cable cuts during road construction activities.

No it doesn’t disconnects like PTCL and I have heard good reviews in terms of game play because they are using transworld as backend. There packages are one of the best as you can get 200 mbps for around 6000 or 7000. You need to get a good router with 5GHz wifi and a gigabit port to fully utilize awesome speed.

If you need a stable connection then there are better alternatives available like storm fiber, optix, transworld and wateen.
 

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