Pakistani Court Says Internet Censorship Plan Is Unconstitutional

from the well-look-at-that dept

We recently wrote about Pakistan's attempts to build its own internet censorship regime, capable of blocking 50 million sites that the government doesn't like. However, a petition by civil rights groups has apparently resulted in a court ruling saying that such censorship is unconstitutional under the Pakistani constitution. Of course, from the writeup linked above (from Reporters Without Borders), it appears that there is at least some skepticism that the Pakistani government will obey its own court:

The high court’s ruling, if respected, would make it impossible for the government to introduce any nationwide website filtering system.

While welcoming the ruling, which penalizes the lack of transparency in the PTA’s past website blocking, Reporters Without Borders calls for vigilance because the PTA could try to circumvent it by devising a constitutional procedure based on the anti-blasphemy law and national security provisions.

Still, it's good to see courts around the globe pushing back on this desire to censor the internet.

Filed Under: censorship, pakistan, reporters without borders, transparency

Shocker: China Censors Report On China Censorship

from the you-were-expecting-otherwise dept

This probably won't come as much of a surprise to, well, anyone, but when Reporters Without Borders came out with a report on how China censors the internet, China ordered that the report be censored. Of course, to do that, China's censors issued a list of targeted keywords to various ISPs, and that list made its way back to Reporters Without Borders, who have published it. I'd imagine that will also be censored, and the whole cycle can repeat itself. Either way, it does show a little bit of how the Great Firewall of China actually works.

Filed Under: censorship, china, reporters without borders