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The Dawn Newspaper (LAHORE Thursday, 20 May, 2010): "The Government of Pakistan blocked on Wednesday access to Facebook after the Lahore High Court ordered closure of the social networking website until May 31 for holding a competition of blasphemous drawings. Justice Ijaz Ahmed Chaudhry asked Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Director Mudassar Husain to file a detailed report on the matter."
Facebook: After the court's decision, the PTA ordered all the operators in the country to block the website, www.facebook.com, until further orders. It said the directives had been issued by the ministry of information technology and telecommunication in view of the LHC's order. All the ISPs of Pakistan have blocked access to all the hosting servers of www.facebook.com.
BlackBerry Services: I would like to add some important information in the same context, that all the Mobile Network Operators of BlackBerry Services in Pakistan were also trying to block access to the Facebook.com but they could not do it because the Blackberry Services are routed through RIM. So, finally they have stopped BlackBerry Internet Services (GPRS) along with BlackBerry Services for devices. Now Blackberry services are totally stopped in Pakistan only voice (GSM) and text smsm services are working. Mobile Network Operators have not decided yet that how long Blackberry Services will remain closed. I think they will manage it by addition of scripting to IT Policy and Service Book entries for BES (Blackberry Enterprise Servers) & BIS (Blackberry Internet Servers) to stop all requests to the servers of Facebook.com.
YouTube: The latest notification is being publicized that www.youtube.com has also been blocked over "blasphemous" material until 31st May 2010 as directed by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA). Any representation of the Prophet Hazrat Mohammad (PBUH) is deemed un-Islamic and blasphemous by Muslims.
By Imran Ahmed Shah, IT Consultant
Related topics: Access Providers, Censorship, Internet Governance, Policy & Regulation, Web
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BlackBerry Services Revoked after 14 hours by all Mobile Network Operators of Pakistan as they have worked out that how to stop access to www.facebook.com
Pakistan has partially unblocked YouTube.com, only that part which is not displaying any sacrilegious or profane material.
Riyadh: Saudi Arabia's telecoms regulator has ordered local operators to freeze the BlackBerry Messenger function for BlackBerry users this month, industry sources said on Sunday.
Blackberry is a mobile phone device of Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian manufacturer of the smartphones. BlackBerry messaging is secure but encrypted mode service which is based on BlackBerry Internet (GPRS/EDGE). That mean the discussion cannot be traced through any text base searching tools configured by any ISP or regulatory authorities.
Last week a discussion was open by Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (TRA) with RIM to address issue of "social, judicial and national security."