Fwd: [pakistanictpolicy] PTA orders blockade of political webpages, discussion forums
Claude Almansi
letter asking ISPs to block these pages, with their exact URLs:
<http://www.dictatorshipwatch.com/2008/11/08/governor-punjab-salman-taseer-%E2%80%93-history.html>
<http://www.dictatorshipwatch.com/2008/11/06/leaders-of-a-nation-half-of-which-sleep-hungry.html>
<http://www.dictatorshipwatch.com/taseer/taseer.swf>
<http://www.makepakistanbetter.com/Why_how_what_forum.asp?PageNo=&GroupID=5&ArticleID=4315>
<http://www.friendskorner.com/forum/f137/governor-punjab-salman-taseer-his-family-77872/index3.html#post930756>
<http://www.buzzvines.com/node/3347>
So I dugg the last one, adding shortened versions of the former and a
suggestion to mirror the blocked pages at
<http://digg.com/politics/Governor_of_Punjab_Salman_Taseer_with_Family>.
Happy 2009
Claude Almansi
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Shahzad Ahmad
Date: Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 10:02 AM
Subject: [pakistanictpolicy] PTA orders blockade of political
webpages, discussion forums
To: pakistan...@yahoogroups.com
PTA orders blockade of political
webpages, discussion forums
Friday, January 02, 2009
By Urooj Zia, Karachi
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=155004
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) issued directives in
the last week of December to Internet Service Providers (ISPs),
ordering them to block a list of six webpages on the grounds that they
were "harmful for the integrity of the country."
The directive came on the orders of the Inter-Ministerial Committee
(IMC) for the Evaluation of Websites. The IMC constitutes
representatives of the Ministry of IT, PTA, Ministry of Interior and
Cabinet Division. Its charter is to monitor and block blasphemous,
pornographic, and anti-state or anti-Pakistan sites.
Three of the six webpages on the list issued by the PTA, however, are
from dictatorshipwatch.com, a website set up after November 3, 2007,
when then-President Gen (Retd) Pervez Musharraf implemented a state of
emergency in the country. One webpage is from makepakistanbetter.com,
a social and political discussion forum. The fifth page is from
friendskorner.com, a general discussion forum, while the sixth webpage
is a node from buzzvines.com. Most of the blocked webpages contained
articles which claimed to provide information about Punjab Governor
Salman Taseer's "history"; others had pictures of members of Taseer's
family at lavish parties thrown recently at the Punjab Governor House.
None had blasphemous material, or anything which could even remotely
be construed as "anti-Pakistan," unless criticism of one person is
considered an act of treason. The PTA circular, issued on December 26
by Enforcement Coordination Director Yawar Yasin, however, called for
the immediate blockage of these pages. An email was sent out on
December 29 to ISPs by Muhammad Shafiq, PTA Zonal Director
(Enforcement) at the Authority's Rawalpindi zonal office. The ISPs in
question were directed to comply with these orders immediately and
send a report to Shafiq by 3 pm the same day.
Meanwhile, the move to block political websites and webpages has been
lambasted by ISPs as well as internet users, many of whom have, on
various online discussion forums, compared this act with those under
the military dictatorship of Gen (retd) Musharraf.
"While these webpages have been classified as 'harmful for the
integrity of the country,' I don't believe this is the correct
classification. PTA as a regulator should not be involved in pushing
or blocking political agendas and should clearly rise above political
party favours and bias," the CEO of a Lahore-based ISP said. "We feel
that the criteria of blocking should be clearly defined and should not
side with any political party."
"This is a very repressive step and ISPAK condemns this act," Micronet
Broadband CEO and Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan
(ISPAK) convener Wahaj us Siraj told The News. "The IMC has no mandate
to block political web sites. The PTA apparently has less say in it
and just conveyed the directive of the IMC to the ISPs."
__._,_.___
Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to
Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe
Awab Alvi
Sharing a few more links as well - of a few articles I wrote on the topic
http://teeth.com.pk/blog/2009/01/01/pta-blocks-salman-taseer-pictures
http://dbtb.org/2009/01/03/pta-censors-salman-taseers-pictures/
Awab Alvi
Blog: http://teeth.com.pk/blog
Twitter: http://twitter.com/DrAwab
Claude Almansi
Sorry I missed your posts before, thanks for their URLs. I've
bookmarked them, with other pages about this censorship at Diigo.com
(and transitively, at del.icio.us and twitter.com).
Funny thing is that if you archive one of these blocked pages at
Webcitation.org, the archived page has the pictures too (see
<http://www.webcitation.org/5dYW4HjUB>, archived version of blocked
<http://www.buzzvines.com/node/3347>.
Better than having to download all pics and repost them in Picasa and
Flickr albums and on blogs, maybe. I fully agree with what you say on
<http://teeth.com.pk/blog/2009/01/01/pta-blocks-salman-taseer-pictures>:
"Though I still choose not to share those pictures myself but some
common sense needs to be knocked into PTA and our Governor that its
nearly impossible to totally block / censor content on the Internet as
even now a simple Google search will list a dozen more websites which
are also sharing the same images"
Powers-that-be have problems learning this simple lesson everywhere.
When a Swiss judge asked the FBI in October 2004 to seize the hard
disks with Indymedia pages concerning plainclothes policeman who were
inquiring about disturbances in Geneva during the Evian G8 summit, it
took me 30 seconds to find a mirror of that page - hosted on a
students' page at a US university....
Best
Claude
Claude Almansi
Claude Almansi
posts mentioned in Awab's message below:
1. http://www.dictatorshipwatch.com/2008/11/08/governor-punjab-salman-taseer-%E2%80%93-history.html
2. http://www.dictatorshipwatch.com/2008/11/06/leaders-of-a-nation-half-of-which-sleep-hungry.html
3. http://www. dictatorshipwatch.com/taseer/taseer.swf
4. http://www.makepakistanbetter.com/why_how_what_forum.asp?GroupID=5&Group_title=Pakistan%ArticalID=4297
5. http://www.friendskorner.com/forum/f137/governer-punjab-salman-taseer-his-family-77872/
6. http://www.buzzvines.com/node/3347
Would a circumventing tool allow the interaction (e.g. commenting or
evaluating) in pages 1, 2, 4, 5, 6?
Claude Almansi
Imia Familiya
> Would a circumventing tool allow the interaction (e.g. commenting or
> evaluating) in pages 1, 2, 4, 5, 6?
I can guarantee that a heavy-duty circumvention tool like Tor or a VPN like Hotspot Shield would, yes.
Whether a lighter-duty tool like psiphon2 would, I don't know (it should). Are you willing to try? I've sent you a psiphon access invitation link off-list. (Anyone else who wants a link, let me know and I'll send one. Psiphon2 is "by invitation only"--it's a "free proxy server" "like any other" except not like others because it's
--not public, thus much harder to detect & blacklist
--limited-access, thus it never gets overloaded
--managed, thus if "your" server is compromised, you'll get a new one.)
Best,
Eric
> -----Original Message-----
> From: AGA...@googlegroups.com [mailto:AGA...@googlegroups.com] On
> Behalf Of Claude Almansi
> Sent: Sunday, January 04, 2009 10:40 AM
> To: AGA...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: [AGABBIP] Re: Fwd: [pakistanictpolicy] PTA orders blockade of
> political webpages, discussion forums
>
>
Claude Almansi
I used psiphon 2 for
<http://www.friendskorner.com/forum/f137/governor-punjab-salman-taseer-his-family-77872/index3.html#post930756>
and was able to log in. I could have posted too, except that I had
nothing to add: that's great!
Unfortunately, in the meantime,
<http://www.dictatorshipwatch.com/2008/11/08/governor-punjab-salman-taseer-%E2%80%93-history.html>
<http://www.dictatorshipwatch.com/2008/11/06/leaders-of-a-nation-half-of-which-sleep-hungry.html>
<http://www.dictatorshipwatch.com/taseer/taseer.swf>
have been removed.
So maybe it's better to use both:
- webcitation.org to at least save content at risk of censorship by
removal (<http://www.webcitation.org/5dYTDSfWv>, the archived version
of <http://www.dictatorshipwatch.com/2008/11/08/governor-punjab-salman-taseer-%E2%80%93-history.html>,
still works: unfortunately I didn't think of archiving all the pages)
- a circumventing tool allowing interaction if censorship only blocks
access to a given page.
Belt and braces.
Best
Claude
2009/1/5 Imia Familiya <imiafa...@gmail.com>:
Imia Familiya
> I used psiphon 2 for
> and was able to log in. I could have posted too, except that I had
> nothing to add: that's great!
So we know psiphon2 works for accessing content, but we don't know the answer to your original question--would it work for creating content?
> - a circumventing tool allowing interaction if censorship only blocks
> access to a given page.
We've thought about this but haven't got to the point of trying to implement it.
Best,
Eric
Claude Almansi
Between your lines:
2009/1/6 Imia Familiya <imiafa...@gmail.com>:
>
> Hi Claude,
>
>> I used psiphon 2 for
>> and was able to log in. I could have posted too, except that I had
>> nothing to add: that's great!
>
> So we know psiphon2 works for accessing content, but we don't know the answer to your original question--would it work for creating content?
Sorry if I didn't explain this clearly. I'll try again: using psiphon
2, I was able to log in at the forum of http://www.friendskorner.com,
and all the posting options were available. I only tried the option of
answering the <http://www.friendskorner.com/forum/f137/governor-punjab-salman-taseer-his-family-77872/index3.html#post930756>
thread: the posting interface opened alright, but I didn't use it
because I didn't have anything to write.
I can make other attempts, for instance posting on a blog or wiki,
rather than just replying to a forum's thread.
>
>> - a circumventing tool allowing interaction if censorship only blocks
>> access to a given page.
>
> We've thought about this but haven't got to the point of trying to implement it.
Well, that is what I've now tried to redescribe about using the
friendskorner forum with psiphon2. Interaction and content creation
are possible with it, and it is very simple to use. The issues still
to be addressed seem to be:
- how to safely send invitations if e-mail traffic is heavily
monitored by censorship;
- how safe is the proxying;
Better not discuss those on this open list. And a minor issue that
doesn't need privacy:
- how to let people know that the link in the invitation will trigger
a phishing warning in some browsers because these browsers (firefox
for instance) do not recognise the security certificate of the page.
So people must add an exception for it - would a tutorial on adding
exceptions be needed?
Best
Claude
Imia Familiya
> - how to safely send invitations if e-mail traffic is heavily
> monitored by censorship;
We have to start somewhere--bootstrapping is one of the core issues in getting people onto circumvention. Generally when folks use gmail or hotmail or yahoo, there's less of a likelihood of heavily monitored e-mail. But we have built psiphon2 so that even if an invitation is intercepted (and thus a proxy server is compromised), current users will be issued a new proxy. It's a work in progress, but I think it's going to be hard to beat.
> - how safe is the proxying;
One can never know, can one. One must merely trust whoever's providing the proxy service. In theory it could be a honeypot, but I've never heard of any proxy being a honeypot. Presumably if we build up a reputation and a brand, we'll build trust too.
> - how to let people know that the link in the invitation will trigger
> a phishing warning in some browsers because these browsers (firefox
> for instance) do not recognise the security certificate of the page.
> So people must add an exception for it - would a tutorial on adding
> exceptions be needed?
Definitely a problem that we're thinking about. We'd like to simply solve the certificate "lack of trust" and we're talking with Firefox about that.
Best,
Eric
Awab Alvi
I used PsiPhon a few months back - tried it when it was Beta - I could use an invite to see if we can access various sites from Pakistan
As far as the website dictatorshipwatch and its posts are concerend, the webmaster yesterday contacted me saying they have removed the post ... there was a long spiel as to why it was removed, but yes it was removed deliberately.
Awab Alvi