Pakistans' Minister of Interior Rehman Malik recently announced a 14-year prison sentence for anyone found propagating SMS and emails ridiculing or making fun of the present Pakistani leadership and its elected government officials.   The statement issued by the Ministry of Interior, referenced the Cyber Crime Act of 2009 which apparently would subject the violators to a prison sentence of at least 14-years.

It has been a long time, the Government of Pakistan has been trying to enforce a cyber crime law which since 2007, when it was first initially tabled in the form of a draft by the Ministry of Information and Technology. The then Cyber Crime Ordinance of 2007 was critically evaluated by the IT community and was found to be unfair, practically giving all encompassing powers to the Federal Investigative Agency (FIA), the local intellegence agency, to be the judge jury and executor with very minimal protection to any innocent bystanders who may become prey to any unwarranted political intentions.

The civil society in 2007 was in outcry over the cyber crime draft, holding many awareness seminars and discussion panel and were successful in pushing the Ministry to accept some serious revisions of the controversial document with the hope of bringing it under proper international standards as agreed upon during the Cyber Crimes Convention in Budapest 2001. In an extensive meeting with the stakeholders the Ministry of IT were then presented with a long list of problems and it was primarily suggest to rewrite the entire document rather then accede to a patch up of a grossly irregular document which differed significantly from internationally accepted norms

Suddenly on 31st December 2007, the then President of Pakistan, General Prevaiz Musharraf quietly signed the un-revised ‘first draft' as an ordinance titling the new document as the Pakistan Electronic Crimes Ordinance of 2007. An Ordinance according to the Constitutional of Pakistan [Article 89] is a presidential injunction to force a law into effect for a period of four months [120 days] and before its expiry the bill has to be presented on the floor of the Parliament for vetting and debate before potentially voting it into a full fledged law only after a 2/3rd majority vote, historically Presidents of Pakistan have used ordinances for political intentions and for the mere continuation of the law the President merely re-signs the ordinance every four months extending its life for another 120 days without taking the time or making an effort to put it before the legislative body

Since the start of this newly elected government, the local leadership, namely the President of Pakistan Mr. Asif Zardari and Minister of Interior Rehman Malik have been at the receiving end of some very hard hitting gutt wrenching jokes, which in turn have resulted in a massive propagation of SMS's and emails, not only in Pakistan but also across the world. The local leadership have also not helped stop this flame war as they themselves provided fuel-to-the-fire with one funny blunder after another, from the God-Gaad misspelling controversy in September 2008 [while signing a guest book President Asif Ali Zardari accidentally misspelled God as ‘Gaad' and that turned out to be a serious cause of embarrassment for the President] or even the Sarah Palin gorgeous-n-hug comment in Washington [in an exclusive one-on-one meeting with Sarah Palin during her Vice-Presidential bid, Asif Zardari commented on Live TV to called her “gorgeous” and then goes on to flirt with Sarah Palin to say ‘if he’s insisting, I might hug'] such opportunities generally become the bane of all comical SMS's, emails and blog posts among Pakistanis

Seeing their local leadership at the base of many hard hitting jokes, the government decided to take such critical offenders to task. Here lies a very important problem, it is surprising to note that the Cyber Crime Act does even not exist, it is a fact that the Pakistan Electronic Crimes Ordinance of 2007 ironically had no mention of any crime related to SMS's, let alone punish a person for sending funny SMS's which may tarnish the image of the an ‘unspecified' local leadership, the maximum prison sentence in that 2007 bill for any cyber crime offense was set at a maximum of 7-years [10-years if it involved a minor].

Initially when the Minister of Interior announced the 14 year sentence people were shocked and taken aback, as it was assumed that the Pakistan Pakistan Electronic Crimes Ordinance of 2007 had lapsed, after 120 days, and there was no news about re-signing of a new Ordinance – soon APP provided us with the text of the Pakistan Electronic Crimes Ordinance of 2009 signed into effect on July 3rd 2009 which was identical word-for-word with the 2007 and there was no mention of an SMS crime let alone a 14 year sentence

The statements made by Ministry of Interior were challenged, and the only official response that has been received till now that the ‘correct draft has not yet been released to the public‘. It only seems that the politically motivated statement was more or less geared towards scaring the general public into submission and hopefully stopping political rivals from ridiculing them.

In a recent development the Supreme Court of Pakistan has nullified all actions taken by General Perzaiz Musharraf during the illegal Emergency that was imposed on November 3rd 2007, the court has in the order requested the parliament to regularize all ordinances enacted by General Pervaiz Musharraf which may actually mean that the Pakistan Electronic Crimes Ordinance of 2007 may stand to be jeopardized, the faith of its subsequent enactment by Mr. Asif Ali Zardari on July 3rd 2009 is still unknown, and hence we can assume that extensive lobbying is needed to undo this irresponsible law and help push the Ministry of IT to develop a document that adheres to the International standards across the world

As per the legal experts in Pakistan there is still no law that prevents the prorogation of funny SMS's and emails, ironically on the other hand the Government of Pakistan still chooses to say otherwise.

Three security sources, who are privy to the plan, revealed that Yar’adua last week approved the covert operation to stop websites and bloggers from influencing public opinion in Nigeria. The president’s Chief Economic Adviser, Tanimu Kurfi will source the funds for the operations.

On the one hand this is good news as the Nigerian government wakes up to the power of citizens media and that we are watching and reproting on their every step. On the other hand this is very dangerous for bloggers in the country and those outside who may wish to return home whether for a short holiday, work or permanently. We are all very much aware of what happened to two bloggers [Jonathan Elendu and Emeka Asiwe] last year who were met and detained by security officials as they landed at Abuja airport.

The plan by the government which sounds like something out of a spy movie [maybe there is much truth in those films] is to recruit ‘700′ Nigerians at home and abroad to ‘blog’ favorably about the President and his government. And like government agents world wide these people will be paid, in this case given “blogger allowances”.

“The government has decided to mobilize a few individuals to set up online forums that promise to extend the frontiers of online journalism,” said a security source. He added that, in the initial stages, these websites would release a few detailed and seemingly credible stories calculated to garner credibility for them as well as a wide readership. “But the ultimate objective is to fully divert the websites to the task of acting as attack dogs for the government’s online critics,” said a source. She added that the government plans to fund and roll out about 50 of such new websites between now and the beginning of serious campaigns for the next round of elections scheduled for 2011.

So what do we genuine bloggers do? First of all we will need be on the look out for these enemies of the people!. If you are a blogger writing lovely things about Yar’Adua and Goodluck, then it is possible you will be seen as a government ‘plant’ which is unfortunate as there just might be some deluded but genuine supporters of this most undemocratic of regimes. It is the pretense of democracy that is dangerous about this and the government of Obasanjo. It is therefore up to us bloggers and news sites to expose the lie of Nigeria as a democratic state with a free press. It is not. A government which sends out tanks and bombers on its own people is not a democratic govenrment. A government which sends out solidiers to attack the people and denies summary exeuctions by its armed forces which we all have witnessed on video is not democratic. What we do have is a corrupt government which is determined to dispossess the Niger Delta people of their resources and human rights.

Just as in Choba when pictures of solidiers raping women were denied by Obasanjo so too the army chooses to deny the excutuion of two young men. Would justice have not been better served if the army had chosen to investigate the exeuction by the JTF? Below is the response by the Nigeria Army Public Relations Unit to the video.

It has come to the knowledge of the Joint Task Force (JTF), Operation Restore Hope, that MEND, due to its failure in the use of violence and previous attempts in denting our names which equally failed, has embarked on yet another campaign of calumny against the security outfit and its commanders by circulating constructed and acted video clips to … Read Moredepict rape and extra-judicial killings by the JTF in the Niger Delta. These concocted clips are now being forwarded to international figures for sympathy, while the media they were using hitherto, are no longer sympathetic to their cause due to the criminality and campaign of calumny of this faceless body,” Abubakar. Col. Rabe Abubakar Commander Joint Task Force (JTF), Operation Restore Hope.

MEND [Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta] have called upon the UN to investigate the alleged extra-judicial killings and rape by the JTF during the recent miliatry operations Oporoza and other communities of Gbaramatu Kingdom, Delta State.

Introduction

The academic debate on deep packet inspection (DPI) centres on methods of network management and copyright protection and is directly linked to a wider debate on freedom of speech on the Internet. The debate is deeply rooted in an Anglo-Saxon perspective of the Internet and is frequently depicted as a titanic struggle for the right to fundamentally free and unfettered access to the Internet.2

This debate is to a great extent defined by commercial interests. These interests whether of copyright owners, Internet service providers, application developers or consumers, are all essentially economic. All of these groups have little commercial interest in restricting free speech as such. However some might well be prepared to accept a certain amount of ‘collateral damage’ to internet free speech in exchange for higher revenues.
It can be argued that more transparent and open practices from network service providers are needed regarding filtering policy and the technology used. Nevertheless these practises are unlikely to fundamentally endanger free speech. Within the international system however, there are a large number of actors who have a considerable interest in limiting free speech, most obviously states.

As this paper will argue, the link between deep packet inspection and internet censorship is of far greater concern for freedom of speech than its use in traffic shaping or preventing copyright infringement. At the present time many of the states censoring the internet are already known to use deep packet filtering.3

A further question that arises in this context is whether state actors which censor the internet are following the lead of non-state actors and modifying content within the data stream rather than just blocking it. As DPI opens the door for far more subtle censorship methods, it could lead to a move from filtering internet content to editing it.

This paper will start by providing a short overview of DPI and it’s technical capabilities, before discussing the motivations of state and non-state actors using DPI. A short sample of various actors using DPI for censorship purposes will be provided and various scenarios related to censorship which are enabled by DPI will be introduced. Finally, some preliminary conclusions will be drawn and technical and institutional responses to dpi will be sketched.

A short overview of deep packet inspection (DPI)

Deep packet inspection technology has been used in various forms since the late 1990s. Its initial development was closely linked to the security industry and early versions of DPI found their way into firewalls and other security software during this time.4

The rise of denial of service (DoS) attacks at the beginning of the 21st century further contributed to the rollout of DPI technology, as it was seen as an effective form of defence against this and other forms of attack.5 Advances both in processing power6 and in DPI technology allowed for the advent of security products including very advanced features such as “application intelligence.”7

“Generally speaking, DPI focuses on analyzing all the content of data packets passing through the network, the headers and the data protocol structures (as opposed to the prior “Shallow Packet Inspection” that would only analyze the packet header) and compares this content against rules or signatures (for example, virus signatures).”8

What Security Focus described as the “Firewall Evolution” in 2003 has quickly come to signify that a large number of security products and firewalls now incorporate DPI technology.9 The use of DPI solutions has become so widespread that it is now used by many major global internet service providers. Furthermore, the use of DPI technology has become pervasive across the Internet, with most users frequently completely unaware of its existence.10

Before discussing the implications of the widespread use of DPI, a detailed description of the technical capabilities of DPI will be provided.

Please Continue Reading Complete Report here (pdf), link to it and help disseminate this important information.

Table of contents

1. Introduction
2. A short overview of deep packet inspection (DPI)
3. Technical capabilities of DPI technology
4. Reasons for using DPI technology
5. Actors currently using DPI for censorship
6. Scenarios enabled by DPI technology
7. Preliminary Conclusions
8. References

—-
Notes:

[*] A first draft of this paper was presented at the 3rd Annual Giganet Symposium in December 2008 in Hyderabad, India. For their advice and support preparing this paper I would like to thank: Ralf Bendrath, Claus Wimmer, Geert Lovink, Manuel Kripp, Hermann Thoene, Paul Sterzel, David Herzog, Rainer Hülsse, Wolfgang Fänderl and Stefan Scholz.

[1] (Bendrath 2009)
[2] (Frieden 2008, 633-676; Goodin 2008; Lehr et al. 2007; Mueller 2007, 18; Zittrain 2008)
[3] For further examples see page 6
[4] (Theta Networks Inc 2008; Top Layer Networks 2008)
[5] (Houle and Weaver 2001, 21; Top Layer Networks 2008)
[6] (Cox 2008)
[7] (Leyden 2003)
[8] (Theta Networks Inc 2008)
[9] (Dubrawsky 2003-07-29)
[10] (Anderson 2008; Kassner 2008)

The Minister for Family Affairs Ursula von der Leyen kicked off and lead the discussions within the German Federal Government to block Internet sites in order to fight child pornography. The general idea is to build a censorship architecture enabling the government to block content containing child pornography. The Federal Office of Criminal Investigation (BKA) is to administer the lists of sites to be blocked and the internet providers obliged to erect the secret censorship architecture for the government.

A strong and still growing network opposing these ideas quickly formed within the German internet community. The protest has not been limited to hackers and digital activist but rather a mainstreamed effort widely supported by bloggers and twitter-users. The HashTag used by the protesters is #zensursula – a German mesh up of the Ministers name and the word censorship equivalent to #censursula.

As part of the public’s protest an official e-Petition directed at the German parliament was launched. Within three days 50,000 persons signed the petition - – the number required for the petition titled „No indexing and blocking of Internet sites“ to be heard by the parliament. The running time of an e-Petition in Germany is 6 weeks – within this time over 130,000 people signed making this e-Petition the most signed and most successful ever.

During the past weeks, protests became more and more creative – countless blogs and twitter-users followed and commented the discussions within governments and opposing arguments. Many mainstream media picked up on this and reported about the protest taking place on-line. A working group on censorship was founded and the protest coordinated with a wiki, mailing lists, chats and of course employing twitter and blogs. One website „Zeichnemit.de“ created a landing page explaining the complicated petitioning system and making signing the petition easier and more accessible for non net-experts.

Over 500 people attended the governments official press conference on the planed internet censorship – a number of whom used this occasion to demonstrate and voice their concerns. In fact, demonstrators began attending some of the Minister von der Leyens public appearances, carrying banners and signs to raise attention to the stifling of information freedom in Germany.

The net community did not only oppose the governments plans, but also made constructive suggestions how to deal with the problem of child pornography without introducing a censorship architecture and circumcising constitutional freedoms. The working group on censorship demonstrated the alternatives for instance by actually removing over 60 websites containing child pornographic content in 12 hours, simply by emailing the international providers who then removed this content from the net. The sites were identified through the black lists of other countries documented on Wikileaks. This demonstration underlines the protesters main arguments: instead of effectively investing time and efforts to have illegal content removed from the internet, the German government is choosing censorship and blocking – an easy and dangerous way out. The greatest fear of the protesters is that once in place, the infrastructure will be used to censor other forms of unwanted content, not only child pornography. German politicians already seem to be lining up with their wish-list of content to be censored in future – the suggestions ranging form gambling sites, islamist web pages, first person shooters, and the music industry cheering up with the thought of finally banning pirate bay and p2p.

You can find a detailed linklist of the zensursula-debate here (in german).
Thanks to Geraldine de Bastion for the translation.

Cross-posted at netzpolitik.org.

Minister of media and culture Mai Alkhalifa in her first interview with BNA (Bahrain News Agency) which is managed by her, again she threatening the online activism and said the blocking is the first step and we might take more steps to apply the roles “
خطوة الحجب جاءت كإجراء، وتدبير واحد من التدابير، ضمن مبادرات
ومشاريع لمعالجة هذا التدني واللامسؤولية في تجريح الآخرين، ونأمل
من منظمات المجتمع المدني أن تساعدنا في بقية التدابير والبدائل للحد
من هذه الظواهر أو تخفيفها، ونحن في حوار دائم حول هذه التجاوزات،
ونرصد أي مواقف ايجابية ونتفاعل معها. لدينا مراجعة منتظمة حتى
للمواقع المحجوبة من أجل فتحها حال التوافق على موقف مشترك من
التحريض. وقد فتحنا بالفعل عددا من المواقع، والرغبة مستمرة لتوسيع
الدائرة. ولا مانع من أن أفاتح الجميع أننا نفكر في اشراك ناشطين
سياسيين من مختلف الأطراف في مبادرات من أجل مناهضة التحريض
على النت، ومن أجل الكشف عن المخالفات للدستور والقيم المتعاقد عليها
بين المواطنين، ونفكر في إشراك أساتذة جامعات وإعلاميين
واختصاصيين كذلك - و أبوابنا مفتوحة.”

And following to this more sites been blocked yesterday like http://www.aafaq.org which is post a letter sent to the king of Bahrain by one of women activism who asked for real reform in the country and in women rights, also her blog blocked for the same reason

Also the most poplar blog aggregator site blocked www.bahrainblogs.org , this site is only pulling the registered blogs to make it easy for reading blogs about or from Bahrain

BCHR ( Bahrain Centre for Human Right) issued a statement about blocking the sites and said ” its an open war againest opposition websites)

This come after the minister of Media and Culture issued a memo that she is responsible for issuing a decesion of blocking the websites and open them, and also after the TRA ( telecommunication Regulation Authorities ) memo to open port for national security forces to spy on internet surfing and to keep a log file for around 3 years

]]> http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2009/05/11/bahrain-threatening-online-activism-and-blocking-more-sites/feed/ 0 http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2009/04/11/france-3-strikes-internet-piracy-law-defeated-in-parliament/ http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2009/04/11/france-3-strikes-internet-piracy-law-defeated-in-parliament/#comments Sat, 11 Apr 2009 10:41:05 +0000 Tal Pavel http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/?p=941 France's parliament rejected Hadopi (la Haute Autorité pour la diffusion des œuvres et la protection des droits sur internet) bill on Thursday (09.04.2009) with the ruling UMP party failure (21-15) to approve the law.

The law proposed two warnings and then, after a third violation, disconnection from the Internet for up to a year of Internet users caught illegally downloading files (music or films).

The bill was passed by both houses, and all that remained was for them each to ratify the final text, but “15 Socialists were hanging about in the hallway, charging in at the last minute to cast their votes and defeat the law”.

The music and movie industries push governments and internet service providers to terminate or suspend service of peer-to-peer file sharers since it hurt the revenues of artists and production companies, but the Failure came after similar rejections in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Germany and even the European Parliament.

In their part, Sarkozy said he was determined to see the law passed and accused the opposition of parliamentary maneuvering.

The Culture Minister plans to bring the bill back on April 27.

The International Federation for the Phonographic Industry and the worldwide counterpart to the RIAA, said it would continue lobbying for the French three-strikes law.

On March 30, the State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT) issued an administrative notice, “Concerning the tightening of management on Internet audio-visual content”, to provincial and muncipal level administrative bodies. In the notice, it states that, according to the Regulation on the management of Internet audio-visual service, the following content should be banned from the Internet:

1. against constitutional principle;
2. damaging to national unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity;
3. disclosure of state secret, harmful to state security, national honor and interest;
4. inciting ethic hatre, ethic discrimination, undermining ethic unity, culture and custom;
5. promoting cults and superstition;
6. disrupting social order and social stability;
7. inducing underage youth to commit crime; rendering violence, pornography, gambling and terrorist activities;
8. humiliating and slandering contents that violate citizen's privacy and rights;
9. harmful to social morale and national culture and tradition;
10. other contents that prohibited by other laws and regulations.

Under the regulation, Internet audio-visual content providers have to edit and delete the following content:

1. maliciously distorting Chinese culture, history and historical fact; maliciously distorting other countries' history and disrespectful to human civilization and other countries' civilization and customs;
2. deliberately ridiculing revolution leaders, heroic figures, significant historical figures, prominent figures inside and outside China;
3. maliciously ridiculing people's army, armed police, police, and judicial bodies; contents that show physical abuse and torturing of prisoners and criminals;
4. showing the arrogant and heroic side of criminal acts, details of crimes and investigation, image and voice of witnesses and whistle blowers;
5. advocating religious extremism, creating conflicts among different religions, sects, believers and non-believers that hurt people's feeling;
6. promoting fortune telling, fung-shui, exorcism treatment and other superstitious acts;
7. depicting nature disasters, accidents, terrorist acts, wars and disasters in a spoofing manner;
8. explicitly presenting promiscuity, rape, incest, necrophilia, prostitution, sexual perversion, masturbation and other similar acts;
9. showing or implicitly presenting sexual behavior and bodily intimacy;
10. deliberately exhibiting private parts of human bodies that covered up by body parts or small objects;
11. inducing sexual fantasy;
12. advocating unhealthy acts of extra marital sex, polygamy, one night stand, SM, exchanging partners, and etc.
13. titled and tagged with seductive words or pictures that associated with adult films, pornographic movies, AV, hidden video, nipple slip, and etc
14. agitating content related with homicide, extreme violence, abduction, drug, gambling, and supernatural phenomena;
15. excessive horrible image, subtitle, background music and sound effects;
16. demonstrating slaughtering of animals, and human consumption (eating) of protected animal species;
17. violating individual privacy;
18. positive presentation or presentation that encourage fight, humiliation and vulgar languages;
19. advocating negative and decadent life style, world view and value; exaggerating national backwardness and dark side of the society;
20. video clips that have been banned by SARFT;
21. violating the principle of relevant laws and regulations.

The regulation also demands all Internet audio-visual content providers to hire content management staffs for handling complaints and improve self-regulation system. Moreover, they have to apply for a number of permits from administration and abide to copyrights regulation.

According to Press reports, YouTube is ranked among the top 10 most popular sites in the UAE and news about its possible censorship has sparked debate in the blogosphere.

Fake Plastic Souks sounds the alarm, and writes:

Blocking YouTube will further deny Emirati, and other, youth here of the opportunity to embrace a range of technologies and changes in social behaviour that are revolutionising the world around us.

That we are even contemplating blocking sites that contain content we don't like is a deep concern - the trick is engaging in a conversation, taking part in the interplay of ideas and opinion that is driving the Internet - and the flow of public
opinion around the world today.

the grapeshisha blog wonders:

We heard these rumors in the past, but more and more people seem to be confirming that these aren’t just false alarms anymore and that YouTube will actually be banned officially in the UAE. We can’t be totally sure yet until the site is totally inaccessible for our friends and members there, and according to them no action has been taken yet (despite thousands of other sites being blocked) however many are expecting it. Will the ban fail like it did with Facebook? Is the UAE testing the waters with how much internet censorship it can get away with?

Local newspaper Khaleej Times reports that the UAE's Telecommunication Regulatory Authority has said that YouTube will not be completely banned in the country as its content is already regulated by the authority.

Dubai Jazz agrees that some of YouTube's content should be moderated. He notes:

There comes the inevitable question, is youtube totally ‘safe’? Of course not, and I wholeheartedly support censorship on some of its content. Especially the kind of hate inciting content. You might choose to believe otherwise, but WE DO NOT have democracy and total freedom of expression in the Arab World. We have a vicious Sunni-Shia sectarian strife. We have an intimidating rate of illiteracy. We have an intimidating rate of credulity. The stable and relatively prosperous Arab societies are stable because there are measures that ENSURE everything stays stable. Even when stability sometimes borders on stagnation….. in short, I am not worried about moral disintegration of societies, I am worried about strives and rifts. So for the time being, some of the content, in my opinion, may have to be censored.

Meanwhile, MMM reports that Flickr is now totally blocked in the UAE, after it was blocked by one Internet provider.

Today, Du followed the lead of Etisalat and went ahead and blocked the photo sharing service Flickr, meaning that Flickr is now no longer accessible from the UAE through any of the ISPs.
I’m guessing it’s because of all the x-rated material that is available on Flickr. But, it’s not like blocking Flickr is going to stop people who look for that kind of material from finding it.
This totally sucks! All my photos are hosted on Flickr where I have a pro account, and now I’m unable to access my photos or upload any new ones because of this.

MMM also posts a photograph of the ban order:

A photograph of the Du censorship message

Internet users in Bangladesh are not able to access YouTube since Friday (March 6, 2009) evening. Soon people discovered that other Social Media and file hosting/sharing sites like Esnips, mediafire etc. were also not accessible. Apparently these are blocked by the firewalls at IIG (International Internet Gateway) as these can be accessed by proxy.

Torpon appeals to the Bangladesh government not to takeaway the freedom of internet after providing some proofs of the filtering:

ঢাকায় ইউটিউবে ঢুকতে গিয়ে টাইম আউট হয়ে যাচ্ছিল দেখে অনেকে ভাবছিলেন যে ইউটিউবের সার্ভারের সমস্যা । এরপর দেখা যাচ্ছিল যে ইস্নিপস্ এও ঢোকা যাচ্ছে না । তখন সন্দেহ করা হলো যে সমস্যাটি অন্য কোন খানে । কোথাও ডেটা ব্লক হয়ে যাচ্ছে । প্রমাণ ছাড়া সরকার কে দোষ দেয়াটা অযৌক্তিক । কিন্তু অল্প কিছু সময়ের মধ্যে অভিজ্ঞ বাংলাদেশী নেটওয়ার্ক ইঞ্জিনিয়াররা বিভিন্ন জায়গা থেকে জানালেন সরকারী কোন সার্ভারের ফায়ারওয়ালে ইউটিউব সহ অনেক গুলো সাইট ব্লক করা হয়েছে।

Screenshot courtesy - Torpon

বাংলাদেশ লিনাক্স ইউজার গ্রুপের সার্ভার থেকে গুগল, ইউটিউব এবং ইস্নিপসের সাইটে ট্রেসরাউট কমান্ড দিয়ে দেখা গেছে, গুগল ঠিকই পৌছে যাচ্ছে গুগলের সার্ভারে কিন্তু বাকি দুটো আটকে গেছে বিটিটিবির ফায়ার ওয়ালে ।

Mango and BTCL (formerly BTTB) are the official IIGs (International Internet Gateway) in Bangladesh. Starting last April, by regulation, all Bangladeshis ISPs have to route their international traffic to either Mango, or BTCL, who send the traffic over either the submarine cable or the vsats.

The YouTube ban was confirmed [bn] by a Bangla Newspaper Prothom Alo. Twitter user Mahay Alam Khan reports on the ban on more sites:

mahayalamkhan: youtube, eSnips, midiafire, filefreak, upload-mp3 are banned or blocked in Bangladesh. Please, re-twitt.

Russell John speculates why the ban was executed:

Why did the Government do this? It's because of an audio recording that could “damage” the reputation of our great Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. For now they blocked YouTube and eSnips, but in the future there might be more sites. Maybe Facebook too? People shares a lot of stuff there.

After the recent BDR mutiny and massacre of army officers in Dhaka the Prime Minister met the aggrieved army officers in a confidential closed door meeting at Shenakunja where no press or outsiders were allowed. The conversions in the meeting and cellphone video recordings were leaked out, uploaded and shared using many file sharing sites including E-snips and YouTube. Unheard Voice blog discusses the issue of the leaked audio files which are being used by some quarters to create some political bickering and malign the army and the Prime Minister.

Dark ocean needs a lighthouse says:

If Bangladesh Govt thinks Internet is like Cellphone service then they are living in fools' paradise. There are many ways people can bypass the blockage. [..] In this particular case anyone can use Anonymous proxy and bypass firewall!

Youtube, eSnips etc are very common and useful services. If Bangladesh Govt think any particular Audio and Video harmful for our society they could directly request Youtube to remove them. Such wild blockage is not only stupidity but also raises question about Govt's intention.

Some bloggers like Kayes Mahmud are providing proxy links so that others can access the blocked contents. Razon Sun points out that the contents of the meeting at Shenakunjo have already been published in a local newspaper [bn]. So there is actually no logic to block the internet. It may be mentioned here that Bangladeshis outside Bangladesh can easily access to these contents, which can be downloaded and shared by email.

Sushanta says:

প্রচারনা বন্ধ করার আগে দেখেন কিভাবে এটা রেকর্ড হলো? প্রথমে কোন সাইটে এটা আপ্লোড হয়েছে। সেনাকুঞ্জের সভার ভিডিও টা দেখেন ভালো করে কোন সেনা কর্মকর্তা মোবাইল হাতে চুপেচাপে রেকর্ডিং করছে। এটা ধরা তেমন কঠিন কাজ না।

Russell vents his frustration:

What's ironical is that it's the same Government that talks about “Digital Bangladesh” all the time. We now know what Digital Bangladesh is like.

Now the question is how to unblock YouTube and other file sharing sites in Bangladesh. We have seen in previous cases that the authorities do not recognize that such bans were carried out in the first place shifting the blame to technical glitches. In the absence of ‘Right To Information Act' it is hard for a common citizen to ask why it was done. We hope that the authorities will unblock all these sites to prevent more controversies and bad publicity for the government.

Update (March 8, 2009):

Mash at Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying reports that “Bangladesh has blocked YouTube and some other file sharing websites after audio of a meeting between the Prime Minister and a large gathering of army senior officers was leaked and posted on YouTube.” Quoting news sources the blogger confirms that a government official defended blocking of YouTube and eSnips.

According to news reports, the Communications Ministry has received more than 1,000 complaints on websites which are considered offensive to the royal family. Thailand, a constitutional monarchy, has severe lese majeste laws that have custodial sentences of between 3 to 15 years for whoever “defames, insults or threatens the king, the queen, the heir to the throne or the Regent”. However, actual prosecutions are said to be rare.

Thailand is said to be already be blocking websites, although this is executed on a case-to-case basis by Internet service providers with reference to a blacklist furnished to them by the authorities. Furthermore, a Computer Crime Act, implemented last year, gives Thai police the power to enforce censorship of the Internet, and provides penalties for circumventing the provisions of the legislation.

However, the planned gateway to monitor and block online anti-monarchy sentiments will also do the same with pornographic or terrorism-related sites, according to Communications Minister Mun Patanotai. The project has an allocation of between 100 million and 500 million baht ($2.9 million and $14.6 million).

Mun was reported to have said that his ministry will also discuss the issue with intelligence units and state telecommunications companies. He also added that more than 80% of the offending websites are based outside Thailand.