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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

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