September 24, 2005

“Without free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful.... Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the hope of the race,” wrote Charles Bradlaugh, an English political activist, more than two centuries ago.

Bradlaugh was right — being told what to say never did anybody any good. It merely taints one’s imagination permanently, rendering an individual incapable of thinking “out of the box”.

This really isn’t rocket science, but the government of Pakistan seems to think it is. Why else would they continue to impose a ban on “objectionable” websites? According to a newspaper report (Dawn, July 20), the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) has not lifted its ban on proscribed websites (having “blasphemous” or “explicit” material). If that wasn’t enough, the ban is now being extended to include a list of proxy servers that can be used to access such websites.

Now this is all very well, but it’s possible that in time this ban would be misused to block those websites that are detrimental to the interests of the authorities. This idea may seem far-fetched to many, but given the intense scrutiny that the press is subjected to, who is to say that blocking proxy servers is not a step in the wrong direction — a method for tightening the noose around internet users as well as online news resources.

“It is a pointless exercise and it will only slow down (internet) speed and cause further problems,” says V.A. Abdi, secretary of the Internet Service Providers of Pakistan (ISPAK).

It all began in August 2002 when the PTCL initiated a Rs147 million project known as the Pakistan Internet Exchange (PIE), the sole international access point for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the country. The result? It managed to route 99 per cent of the country’s internet traffic through this gateway, which supposedly meant that data transfer would become more efficient.

Of course, this was a time when the internet was a relatively new phenomenon in Pakistan and soon enough concerns about its misuse began surfacing. While pornographic video tapes and CDs are easily available at several stores (though one has to be very surreptitious while asking for such things), the virtual explosion of objectionable material and the inability to prevent access to them gave rise to the all too familiar apprehensions about moral decadence and the “erosion of societal values”.

Then, in April of 2003 a government directive came which asked the PTCL to block access to all the “pornographic” and “blasphemous” websites that could be accessed from within the country, much to the disappointment of the ISPs as well as internet users. Given the already repressive environment in the country, the internet was perhaps the only way for curious young men and women to explore, well, certain taboos. The PTCL ban actually made matters worse, as the desire to read and view porn and other objectionable content only increased.

There are, of course, ways to get around the system, one of them being the use of proxy servers. Using such servers, however, may not be possible for long if the PTCL succeeds in implementing the proposed ban.

Of course, it may not be the smartest thing that the PTCL has done in a while — several domain record-based surveys reveal that every week more than 50,000 websites are registered on the net, most of which can be accessed with the help of proxy servers. Thus, updating the list of proscribed websites would be nothing short of a Herculean task.

“Proxy servers basically have a URL, which can be used to direct you to a particular website,” explains Abdi. He points out that proxy servers are not the only way to access the objectionable websites, so the whole exercise may very well be futile.

“There are three ways to access blocked sites. First is through software that wraps IP addresses, that is, it generates a false address. Secondly, there are proxy servers that can be subscribed to and which facilitate both inbound and outbound traffic from blocked sites. Finally, there are proxies which are available free of cost,” he explains.

Clearly, blocking proxy servers will prove to be quite a challenge for the PTCL, because there are scores of servers available online that can be used to access various resources on the internet.

The PTCL moves sound reasonable in theory. Pornography and other explicit content are after all a growing concern for the self-righteous lot in the country. There is, however, the small matter of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” (Article 19)

Blocking objectionable websites, it seems, is only the tip of the iceberg, because what is “objectionable” and what is not can be twisted to include material that offer criticism on government’s policies.

Few can forget the not-too-recent ban that was imposed on the South Asia Tribune (SAT) by the government because the US-based website featured stories and opinions that were openly anti-Musharraf. Later, the authorities justified the ban by claiming that allowing access to the website in Pakistan was not in the “interest of the state”, a phrase that has been taken from the much-abused article 19 of the constitution, which reads: “Every citizen shall have the right to freedom of speech and expression and there shall be freedom of the press, subject to any reasonable restrictions imposed by law in the interest of the glory of Islam or the integrity, security or defence of Pakistan or any part thereof, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court or incitement of an offence.”

To make matters worse, Shaheen Sehbai, the editor of SAT, was implicated in a robbery case. “The report, lodged by the police obviously under pressure of the military authorities, is mala fide and direct victimization, because I have launched a newspaper which has exposed many scandals of the military government and its high-ups,” he was reported to have said in an article (Sept 16, 2002). Such high-handedness on the part of the government is bound to be commonplace if proxy servers are blocked thanks to this ban.

While most experts say it is simply impossible to impose such a ban, there is some talk of developing software which would assist in blocking proxy servers. In fact, the Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) even agreed to provide a grant of Rs7 million for the development of a web-filtering project, but these plans have yet to materialize.

“The fact is that we do not have the technology to block proxy servers, because such a project would require a lot of money,” says Ansar-ul-Haque, the chief operating officer of Cybernet and president of ISPAK.

“You have to understand that countries cannot block servers. They can merely make it difficult for the internet users to access certain websites.” There is a technology known as “anonymizers”, for instance, which can help in viewing objectionable websites.

“This is the technology that was used by many Indian users when Dawn’s website was blocked by the Indian government during the Kargil debacle,” adds Haque, who goes on to say that there is no way to “block” this technology because “anonymizers” are dynamic. They keep changing, quite like a virus that mutates and acquires different forms. So it is very difficult to keep track of them.

What is worse, the PTCL is fully aware of the futility of the exercise. In fact, in 2001 the ministry of science and technology (IT and telecommunications division) set up a committee to look into the control of internet content. The final report presented to the ministry in this regard conclusively states: “Only limited filtering will be possible through the firewall of PIE on the ISPs that are using bandwidth through this system at the cost of service quality… Blocking of proxy sites will create unnecessary interest by internet users… If all sites are blocked, these sites can be approached through indirect access or through other free proxy servers.”

The report further says that it is only through education that people can be warned of the harmful effects of pornography and perhaps other objectionable material. Thus, the inevitable conclusion drawn was that filtering internet content would not only be a waste of resources, it would also be “a logistical nightmare” and “would cause a lot of bad political allegations of news filtering.” It’s almost sad how the PTCL has failed to take notice of the recommendations made by the committee, which comprised highly qualified IT professionals.

In all honesty, the PTCL’s intentions may be noble. Websites that feature pornography and hate material may incite sexual deviancy and violence and the PTCL may be justified in filtering content to a certain extent. The problem here, however, lies in the way the technology (if ever developed properly) can be misused to prevent access to authentic and credible news resources that freely criticize the government.

There is no law at the moment to enforce and sustain such bans; there are no regulatory bodies to oversee the way filtering will be used. Manipulation, distortion and misuse are likely to be the order of the day. How? That remains to be seen, but for now the possibilities seem endless.

Barking up the wrong tree In the wake of PTCL’s renewed efforts to block “objectionable” websites, Sci-tech World carried out a snap survey to find out how people felt about the move. The survey involved some 60 respondents, including both professionals and students. 1. The first question in the questionnaire was: “Do you think banning ‘objectionable’ (pornographic and blasphemous) websites is the solution to the problem?” Thirty per cent of the respondents said “yes”, 60 per cent said “no” and 10 per cent said that the step resolved the problem only partially. 2. “Do you think banning online resources is justified?” Ten per cent of the respondents said “yes”, 50 per cent said “no”, and 40 per cent said it all depended on the content banned. 3. “Do you think blocking proxy servers would make a difference in any way?” Sixty per cent said “yes”, 25 per cent said “no” and 15 per cent said they were not sure. 4. “Do you think banning ‘pornographic’ and ‘blasphemous’ websites is justified?” Forty per cent said “no” and 60 per cent said “yes”. 5. “Do you think the technology used to ban such websites can be misused?” Fifteen per cent said “no”, 80 per cent said “yes” and five per cent weren’t sure. 6. “Do you think complete freedom of expression is our fundamental right?” About 55 per cent said “yes”, 35 per cent said “no” and 10 per cent said it all depended on the situation. While the survey probably wasn’t representative of the sentiments of the whole population, it did show that both teenagers and adults felt blocking or banning websites was hardly a solution to the problem at hand. The PTCL, it seems, is barking up the wrong tree. — SWP

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)