More than 200 URLs Blocked in Pakistan: OONI Report

According to a survey conducted by the Open Observatory of Network Interference, it has been found that more than 200 URLs have been blocked in Pakistan through random tests involving 22 internet service providers. More than 200 URLs Blocked in Pakistan: OONI Report.

More than 200 URLs Blocked in Pakistan: OONI Report

The survey report was released on Wednesday, and it observed the data from 2014 to 2017 and confirmed detection of 210 URLs in the country that were blocked by 22 ISPs.

In order to confirm the detection of blocked URLs several tests were conducted. These tests include the HTTP Invalid Request Line and header field manipulation and Vanilla Tor.

This study is basically the effort to look at internet censorship in Pakistan and more than 200 other countries around the world. The OONI worked on the project to examine internet censorship in the country through collection and analysis of network measurements.

According to the report:

Explicit blockpages were observed for many of these URLs, while others were blocked by means of DNS tampering. Many of the blocked URLs were considered blasphemous under the Pakistan Penal Code for hosting content related to the controversial ‘Draw [Prophet] Muhammad Day’ campaign. Geopolitical power dynamics appear to be reinforced through the blocking of sites run by ethnic minority groups.”

One of the report’s authors Haroon Baloch explained that people could report an objectionable page or link directly to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) by going to their website, while the PTA could approach ISPs to block a page directly or by tampering with the DNS.

This shows that Pakistan has been actively watching over the internet world and is making sure that it finds no way to contaminate people’s minds in any way.

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