TheCredibleTimes

23 March 2018 By Haroon Baloch, Journalist and Digital Rights Researcher In late February 2018, in a landmark judgment, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) ruled that shutting down telecom networks was illegal, rejecting the State’s rationale that security considerations made such shutdowns necessary. Pakistan has a history of network shutdowns during public gatherings and events. The court termed the shutdowns as ‘illegal’ and ‘inconsistent’ with legal provisions. For some years now, the prevailing practice in Pakistan has been that citing apprehensions of unforeseen security circumstances, including potential terrorist attacks. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the country’s telecom regulator, has suspended mobile networks in major cities. In some cases these suspensions have lasted for prolonged durations. The shutdowns are often unannounced. In 2016, with the help of four citizens, advocate...

November 17, 2017 By Haroon Baloch Pakistan submitted national report for its human rights review under a unique and important UN mechanism, the Universal Periodic Review. It presents a flowery picture of everything good in the country from civil and political rights to economic and cultural rights, gender rights and the rights of minorities. Then why do Pakistanis make such a hue and cry? Why televisions and newspapers are thronged with rights violations? And who brought them to the lime light? Definitely these liars have nothing to do with patriotism and the country — are they traitors? Attacks on journalists, kidnappings, torture and threats to them and their families are common in Pakistan, and these are done with absolute impunity The review is taking place in Geneva today, and Foreign Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif is leading a large Pakistani delegation at the Human Rights Council. Last time, former foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar presented this report and made sev...

October 18, 2017 By Haroon Baloch (Bytes for All Pakistan) Maria Xynou (OONI) Arturo Filastò (OONI) Islamabad: Political dissent in Pakistan under threat, government censors online content - PC: Haroon Baloch A research study by the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) and Bytes for All Pakistan. Table of contents Key Findings Introduction Background Network landscape and internet penetration Legal environment Freedom of expression Press freedom Access to information Privacy and digital surveillance Censorship Reported cases of internet censorship and surveillance Methodology: Measuring internet censorship in Pakistan Review of the Citizen Lab’s test list for Pakistan OONI network measurement tests Web Connectivity HTTP Invalid Request Line HTTP Header Field Manipulation Vanilla Tor test WhatsApp test Facebook Messenger test Data analysis Findings Minority groups Religious criti...