Censorship, Surveillance; mysterious firewall being installed to block content

Umar Cheema, a senior investigative reporter at The News, has revealed that a national firewall is being installed on different internet service providers (ISPs) to rein in social media. The filters will block unwanted content from reaching a wider audience online.

The Current also spoke with Shahbaz Rana, a senior journalist at The Tribune, to inquire about the details of the mysterious firewall. He stated, “This is a Chinese technology that the government is importing. It’s a $135 million project out of which some amount has been delivered and the remainder amount will be paid by next year.”

“It is already bought. Now it is being installed and commissioned,” said sources of The News.

“The national firewall will serve two purposes: identify the locations from where the propaganda material is being originated and the subsequent blockade or diminished coverage of those accounts”. He added: “But, I think the main focus will remain on locating the source of such propaganda to nip the evil in the bud”.

According to Cheema, there will be a keyword filtering system to detect content that is undesirable to the state of Pakistan. That type of content will likely be hidden and made invisible to outside users. In other words, dissenting voices will likely be passed through this inspection before they’re visible.

Preparation is also in progress to prevent the ‘misuse’ of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) as the government can declare it mandatory for citizens to inform the PTA about the VPNs they are using. Anyone failing to do that could land in trouble.

Previously, the government’s action against VPNs triggered a backlash from the corporate community as VPNs are primarily used by big businesses worldwide to protect their business secrets as their internal communication travels within a private network. It was due to this that action against VPNs was stopped for some time.

Blocking social media website X (formerly Twitter) has cut the users from 4.5 million to 2.4 million, a government official told The News. It has affected Twitter’s business in Pakistan and unlike in the past, the management of the social media company has also started paying heed to government demands.

For instance, blockade of an account of the Pakistan Ex-Servicemen Society (PESS). Maj (r) Adil Raja was using this account even after he was no longer an office-bearer of the PESS — and refused to return control of the account.
X (formerly Twitter) wouldn’t respond to requests generated through the PTA for a block on the account. However, it is now blocked on X.