All Answers: Re: [pakgrid] Re: A very happy Censorship and Block to 50 million URLs - National URL Filtering and Blocking System

Dear Wajah (a lengthy email but read once you have time and concentration)

I -- in principle -- do not agree with the so-called fancy term "Free Internet" because that does not exist. The word "Freedom" has at least two dimensions: (1) the freedom to access any informaton on the Internet; and (2) the gurantee that my privacy is not breached (while I a surfing) due to evaesdropping. No country (to the best of my knowledge) in the world gurantees both freedoms to its citizens (especially in post 9/11 arena). For example, in Germany nobody can say anything about "Holocast" because it is protected under a Law as an exception.

The constiution of a country defines (at least in the civilized world) everthing -- dos and do nots -- and our constiution says that "Pakistan is an Islamic Republic". In other word, our Parliment decided with the needed majority that we are not going to be a Secular country. Thoseof us who want to make Pakistan a Secular country should keep on following their struggle but until the Constiution is ammended, merely voicing concerns on Secular paradimgs is of little legal value.

Once we want to filter the contents three types of things -- based on our religion and culture -- come to ones mind: (1) contents related to Blasphemy; (2) pornogrpahic adulat content; and (3) Anti-state content. I belive our constiution allows us to block the first two types because of its foundation in religion; however, the anticiapted misuse (or fear of misuse) is blocking "anti-state content" (recall arena of dictators in Pakistan).

I suggest the following roadmap, if we were to have this system

1. RFP has given approximately 1 month to respond to the call. I have been writing ICTRDF proposal; therfore, rest assured that most of the proposals would be third party vendor solutions or adapting already developed solutions. Writing a knowledge-driven idea cannot happen within a month. This undue haste is creating the impression that the Board wants to favor some company that has already a solution (may be inappropriate for this purpose). If we have lived for 15 years without such a system, we could live for couple of more years as well but let us first develop consensus on the need and requirements of the system by consulting all stakeholders.

2. If we were to have that sytem ultimately deployed, then first bring all stakeholders on a table -- Politicians, Religioius Scholars, IT experts, Policy Analysts etc. Since PM is the chairman of the Board, an act of Parilment is the best option to back this solution. The same act could clearly identify a commitee -- consisting of 5 judges of Suprement Court nominated by the Judicial Commission -- that is authorized to issue an order to block the websites. No body in the establishment (Civil or Military) can be assigned this duty. This would ensure that if some agencies are pissed off with a site, they could not block it. Similary, the people in the government could not arbitrarly delcare a site as "anti-state" if it is criticizing the government.

To conclude, let us not put the "cart infront of the horse". Once the parliment has an act, I can say with pride that if the Parliment of Germany says "No comments on Holocast" as a Law and everyone respects that then everyone must respect the decision of the "Pakistani Parliment" as well. The technology can be developed later (or in parallel) once we have a consensus-driven legal framework. Last but not least, blocking the websites would not merely solve the problem because of mirror sites. The requirement to detect and classify banned content (an accurate content filtering system) is also needed. Just to highlight the challenge, we were unable to develop an accurate "skin filter" that has high detection accuracy and low false alarms. Such an intelligent system is a true challenge and falls with regular ICTRDF R & D proposals category as well.

I wish you and ICTRDF best of luck. I hope my suggestions would provide a comprehensive review to the problem and might help in developing and refining a better Website Blocking and Filtering law (or policy) and implementaton stratiges.

with kind regards

Dr. Muddassar Farooq,
Professor & Head (Department of Electrical Engineering),
Director, Next Generation Intelligent Networks Research Center [www.nexginrc.org],
FAST National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences,
A.K. Brohi Road, H-11/4,
Islamabad 44000,
Pakistan

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 8:13 PM, Ashar <ashar.ahmad@gmail.com> wrote:

Asalam-o-Alikum,
Blocking website is not solution, when cesorship start there is not end to it. The next day the goverment may decide that, they want to blook website becuase they have content that the goverment does not like.

To protect our youth we need to bring them up better, and make sure the know the diffence of right and wrong.

Regards
Ashar
On 26 February 2012 05:05, Hafiz M. Imran <engimran_uet@hotmail.com> wrote:

As'sala Mu Alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakutuh

Dears,
What wrong if our Govt. is taking some good step to block our young generation from bad activities. I thinks we should appreciate good effors made by Govt. Our teachers, parents as well as Govt. is responsible to teach and decide what is wrong and what is right. It is our badluck that we opened eyes in era when everywhere is curruption in Govt as well as outside but dears, beleive me this is not curruption. This will be great service if our Govt initiate this step as our young generation is now not following parents or teachers or elders and following bad activities due to just bad media... We all are supports of free +ve media but would you like to show porn websites to your youngers... Sure not..

So please support Govt in their +ve actions... Thanks!

I am in Saudia and here most of unwanted URLs are blocked but still people are accessing such stuff from other sources due to which now Saudi young generation is going far away from true teachings, so if Govt here will open all type of media for them, then think what will happen.. Hope you understand the situation.

Best Regards,

Hafiz Muhammad Imran
Project Manager IT

A L E X M A R
Al-Mousa Office Buildings, Olaya, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Voice: +966-1-4655723, Fax: +966-1-4655039, Cell: +966-55-7935356

Email: imran.hafiz@alexmar.com

URL: http://www.noc.alexmar.com

To: pakgrid@yahoogroups.com
From: nsaquib@yahoo.com
Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 13:34:07 +0000
Subject: [pakgrid] Re: A very happy Censorship and Block to 50 million URLs - National URL Filtering and Blocking System

Pakistan is not the only one even some so called mature democracies are also looking for such a control. Example from last few months are Bill in USA and ACTA in Europe. May be the only difference is that in USA and Europe due to public pressure both of the proposals pulled back. My career was born in Internet and i believe in free internet as innovation platform. We don't need some one in the Govt. to tell us what is right to do and what is not right over net. It is job of our parents and teachers to teach us.

Hopefully some one from Media and freedom of speech can take this up to stop such a B.S.

/n
http://techtalk-ns.blogspot.com/

--- In pakgrid@yahoogroups.com, Fouad Bajwa <fouadbajwa@...> wrote:
>
> This may interest many of you to understand how FoE and an open
> Internet is being captured in Pakistan. Feel free to be censored and
> blocked soon.
>
> http://ictrdf.org.pk/RFP-%20URL%20Filtering%20&%20Blocking.pdf
>
> This is what happens when corruption and only monetary interests drive
> business and industry. Imagine the companies that will be contributing
> to this process, will they be working in the interest or against the
> interest of the nation?
>
>
> --
> Regards.
> --------------------------
> Fouad
>

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