The Toronto Star, Rick Westhead, June 20, 2013

A Toronto research group has found evidence that a Canadian firm is providing Internet surveillance and censorship technology to Pakistan.

In a report to be released Thursday, The Citizen Lab Internet research group, based at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, reveals it used computer servers in Pakistan and Canada earlier this month to learn what types of websites are being blocked by the Pakistan government.

The Citizen Lab said that 123 out of 1,465 URLS were blocked in Pakistan. The 1,465 included both globally recognized websites such as CNN.com, as well as local websites specific to Pakistan.
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In its report, “O Pakistan, We Stand on Guard for Thee,” The Citizen Lab said the Pakistan government blocked sites with technology provided by Guelph-based Netsweeper Inc. The blocked sites included ones that would be considered blasphemous by the government in the Muslim-majority country, as well as sites that featured pornography or political discourse, such as those that discussed separatist efforts in Pakistan’s Balochistan region.

The revelation that a Canadian firm is helping Pakistan censor the Internet comes amid growing scrutiny for issues including privacy and censorship on the Internet, following the revelation that the U.S. National Security Agency covertly collects private information from Internet users around the world.

“In the context of the NSA news, I think we’re seeing that when companies collude with governments with respect to privacy issues and access to information, they will be called to account,” said Ron Deibert, the Citizen Lab’s director.

Helmi Noman, a senior researcher with the lab based in the Middle East, said Netsweeper has sold censoring technology to governments in Yemen, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait and will likely be among those bidding for a similar contract in Bangladesh in coming months.

“I think it’s horrible news that this is happening,” Noman said. “I do care about content like pornography and protecting my children from it. But I want to make those decisions. I don’t want the state doing it for me.”

Netsweeper chief executive Perry Roach did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Deibert for several years has tried to raise awareness among politicians that western firms such as Netsweeper have been helping regimes around the world to crack down on voices of dissent.

In 2011, his Citizen Lab warned that the California-based company Blue Coat Systems’ products were being used by the Syrian government to track down its political opponents.

In recent months, Deibert said legislators in the U.S. and Europe have discussed introducing laws to oversee the sale of powerful censoring technology to governments such as Pakistan.

“I think in Canada we’re a few steps behind,” he said. “No one has been willing to have that conversation yet.”

Shahzad Ahmad, an official in Islamabad with the human rights group Bytes For All, said he’s dismayed that a Canadian firm would help Pakistan limit freedom of expression on the Internet.

“Pakistan has been a country for 65 years and for at least 44 of those, we have been ruled by dictatorships,” Ahmad said.

“Now, we have just gone through the first ever democratic transition to a new government that won power through the vote,” he said. “No company, from Canada or anywhere, should be helping the government introduce a kill switch on information. It’s anti-democratic.

“We live in a country where the government can easily manage the TV channels and newspapers. So much that they observe self-censorship, and that makes social media and sites like YouTube more important in Pakistan.”

Ahmad pointed to several recent examples of Internet censorship.

During a trip to the U.K., a protestor threw a shoe at former president Asif Zardari. The Pakistan government tried to block a YouTube video of the incident.

It tried the same thing in 2009 after videos surfaced that purported to show Pakistani military engaged in extrajudicial killings in the Swat Valley, Ahmad said.

“We know that the Pakistan government wants to stop information from being distributed,” Ahmad said. “And now we know Canada is helping it do that.”