Citizen South: An introduction.

As I write this, the Government of Pakistan plans to go ahead with new legislative rules that continue to sabotage the rights to freedom of expression and privacy of Pakistani citizens, and that will also make it difficult to and unattractive for tech companies to invest or develop in Pakistan. Those rules, known as the “Removal and Blocking of Online Content Rules 2020”, give the government the power to block the entire range of services provided by social media websites, if they do not appear to be adhering to Pakistan’s extremely broad and draconian cyber legislation, the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act. For more on this, this introductory newsletter will take a brief look at the “Removal and Blocking of Online Content Rules 2020” below.

The actions of the Pakistani government are part of a global trend of marrying the curbing of digital rights to national security and “protection the people from themselves” narratives that are present in countries across countries in Asia, Latin America, Africa and parts of Europe. Governments have been able to, or have tried to, curtail the right to freedom of expression, privacy and transparency. We have seen governments, especially in the Global South, plan national-wide surveillance of their citizens’ internet habits, to shutting down the internet on a regular basis when run of the mill censorship will not cut it.

In an article I co-wrote for the Dangerous Speech Project in 2016, in a “time of conflict and unrest it is understandable that governments will take steps to protect their people, but they must do so while respecting the civil liberties of their citizens.” The growing affordability and rise in different ways to access to the internet and has allowed citizens across the Global North and South to be more informed and connected then before, but it also means that authoritarian governments will crack down harder.

Citizen South is a newsletter that will review the state of digital rights in South Asia on a weekly and fortnightly basis, providing commentary, context and links to work by experts on the ground. As an introduction to CS, I have provided an overview on this week’s major story: The pushing ahead by the Government of Pakistan on its “Removal and Blocking of Online Content Rules 2020”, and what this can do to digital rights and international social media platforms currently operating – or thinking of operating – in Pakistan.

New Rules of Control

On November 18th 2020, the Government of Pakistan uploaded the Removal and Blocking of Online Content Rules 2020 (which I will refer to here on in as Rules) as per Section 37 of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA), the nation’s controversial and broadly sweeping cybercrime law, over a month after they were first notified by the government in October of this year.

What the Rules give the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) - the government regulatory body that oversees and determines what is permitted or otherwise online, especially with regard to social media – even more reach to its already extensive powers to block “objectionable” material, as per the PECA, with little to no true oversight.

Article 37 of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act gives the PTA and by extension the government the power to:

remove or block or issue directions for removal or blocking of access to an information through any information system if it considers it necessary in the interest of the glory of Islam or the integrity, security or defence of Pakistan or any part thereof, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court or commission of or incitement to an offence under this Act.

If this very broad purview were not already troubling enough, the Pakistani digital rights organisation Media Matters for Democracy (no relation to the American watchdog organisation of the same name) reported on the 18th of November that

Section 4 (1) of the rules creates an extended framework for censorship, giving PTA the authority to remove and block everything from criticism of governments and civil servants, information that can create ‘contempt, hatred or disaffection’ towards ruling governments to fake and false information. The Rules also allow PTA to remove content that is seen to be against decency and morality as defined in the Pakistan Penal Code. http://www.digitalrightsmonitor.pk/pta-empowered-to-block-online-speech-critical-of-government-gets-power-to-block-entire-online-systems/

In that same report, one of MMFD’s co-founders, Sadaf Khan, commented that to:

“convict anyone of a penal offense (sic), a judicial procedure is involved; the rules will allow PTA to make judgements about illegality of content, without involvement of the courts, essentially giving the authority powers that they are not granted in PECA.”

Section 8 - “Blocking of Online System” - gives the PTA the power to block the “entire online system, or any services provided” by social media platforms or service providers. What this means is that the government will have the power to block whole websites such as Twitter, Facebook etc, if the PTA decides that they are not following the (overly broad and generalised) letter of the PECA, and refuse (or are unable) to block anything “objectionable”.

The Rules also require that any social media company – domestic or international - with an upwards of half a million users register with the PTA. Coupled with Section 9(6) of the Rules – “The Service Provider and the Social Media Company shall not knowingly participate in any act which has the potential of contravening any provisions of the Act, or these rules or any other law for the time being enforced” – places liabilities and obligations at the feet of companies that may make it difficult or impossible to operated in Pakistan.

Section 9(7) requires that any social media company or service provider – as defined by the PECA – must provide any information or data contained in “any information system owned or managed by the respective Service Provider or Social Media company” in a “decrypted, readable and comprehensible or format or plain version in accordance with the provision of the Act.”

Concern over such aspects were raised in October of this year when the Rules – then known as the “Citizen Protection (Against Online Harms) Rules” caused the Asia Coalition – a tech industry organisation that includes Apple, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, Cloudflare and many other international tech companies – to release a statement saying that if the new rules were to be implemented, it could cause “international companies to re-evaluate their view of the regulatory environment in Pakistan, as well as their willingness to operate in the country.”

This is not the first time that the PTA and the Government of Pakistan have demanded decrypted access to data. The Monitoring and Reconciliation of Telephony Regulations 2010 (MRITT), allows the government to monitor and block encrypted digital traffic data, and to demand unfettered access to said data. In July 2015 I wrote about how the Canadian tech company Blackberry was in danger of being kicked out of the country for its refusal to hand over complete access to its Blackberry Enterprise Services. At the eleventh hour Blackberry reached an agreement with the Pakistani government to allow them to stay (and which to this day remains murky). As of this summer, furthermore, the PTA demanded that all VPN users register their VPNs with the government, which entails, according to a Digital Rights Foundation article, providing their “CNIC number, the purpose for which they would like to use a VPN, and which IP address they will be using their VPN with.” For those unfamiliar with Pakistan, a CNIC is a Computerised National Identity Card, and a CNIC number is the Pakistani equivalent of a Social Security number in the US or a National Insurance number in the UK.

Regardless of who is in in power, the Government of Pakistan ostensibly has the ambition to make Pakistan a digital powerhouse in the vein of Silicon Valley, and has long made noises in this general directionn. Such a goal may be difficult to realise when that same government enacts policies that not only make it difficult for companies to operate in the country, or may even discourage tech companies from investing in Pakistan in the first place.

In December 2018 I wrote that:

Pakistani activists and citizens that belong to or work with religious and ethnic minorities in Pakistan, are female and/or members of the country’s LGBTQ community, social media and digital spaces in general are among the few places where they have a degree of freedom of expression, even as those same spaces continue to shrink.

By dictating what is “objective” or “anti-state”, the PTA and the Government of Pakistan by extensive make it more difficult for Pakistani citizens to have freedom of expression, with draconian censorship measures that can put them in danger, as it becomes less and less tenable for social platforms to operate in Pakistan.

In 2018, I also wrote that unless the Government of Pakistan – now run by a party that in earlier years also called truth to power regarding the selective moral arbitration of another Pakistani regulatory body, PEMRA, while in opposition – listens to and respects the voices of Pakistani citizens, it “runs the risk of continuing a legacy of moral policing, censorship and control, at a time when the right to free expression continues to be under attack in Pakistan on all fronts, online and on the streets.”

By continue to make legislative moves that violate the right of Pakistani citizens to freedom of expression and to privacy – as laid out in the Constitution of Pakistan – it appears that the state, using the “protecting its citizens” canard, continues to reinforce that dark legacy.