Don’t Block the Blog

Google/Blogspot IP change results in Blogspot Ban in Pakistan
Download PDF Verison of the Press Release

It has being widely reported throughout Pakistan that access to the entire blogspot.com domain has yet again been blocked in Pakistan. For about four months (since May, 2007) Google fortunately had changed the IP address of its Blogspot servers. The new IP addresses were not demarcated as prohibited by the censorship filters located at the Pakistan Internet Exchange. Today, for some odd reason, Google has suddenly reverted back to its original IP address, which has been on the block list since March of 2006. This move has resulted in the blocking of all internet traffic to the blogspot.com domain. Millions of blog readers in Pakistan now are unable to read or and interact with any of these websites.

The block is apparent only on the large number of ISP’s that use the FLAG Backbone to connect to the World Wide Web. At the moment, Internet service provided by TransWorld is not affected as they have not yet completed the final stage of merging their traffic with the filters located with the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA), though there are rumours that they will be complying shortly.

For over the past eighteen months, the PTA has been actively blocking a number of websites after the Supreme Court of Pakistan ordered it to censor twelve specific websites. Upon its own initiative, in an apparent misapplication of the Supreme Court order, the PTA also blocked the entire blogspot.com domain which hosts over 20 million blogs.

Over the past year, the DON’T BLOCK THE BLOG campaign has been recognized both nationally and internationally as a credible organization highlighting free speech issues in Pakistan. The DBTB banner is hosted on a number of websites around the world, and is a testament that many people believe in supporting the cause of free speech in Pakistan.

We at Don’t Block the Blog continue to strongly opposes any form of internet censorship and request national and international bloggers, print media, and free speech organizations to help support our cause and to continue to highlight this issue of the unfair blanket ban of blogs for internet users in Pakistan. Alternatively, we may even urge the system administrators at Google, Inc to help the people of Pakistan by changing the IP addresses of their blogspot.com servers which may allow us unrestricted access to the blogspot domain

Background:

The PTA (Pakistan Telecommunication Authority) initially blocked access to the blogspot domain on the 3rd of March 2006, due to a Supreme Court decision dated 2nd March 2006 instructing the PTA to ban 12 offending websites which highlighted the blasphemous cartoons on the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). In adherence to the Supreme Court ruling, all 12 sites were blocked including one that was hosted on the blogspot domain. But rather than block the offending blogspot website, the PTA blocked the entire domain ( www.blogspot.com) which happens to be one of the most popular blog hosting domains hosting upwards of 8 million blogs globally, according to some estimates.

The Don’t Block the Blog (DBTB) campaign (http://www.help-pakistan.com/main/) was launched by the Alvi-e team, Dr. Awab Alvi and Omer Alvie, on 3rd March, 2006 in order to highlight the unfair blanket ban of the blogspot domain and additionally to show support for free internet speech in general. Approximately at the same time the Society Against Internet Censorship in Pakistan (formerly known as The Action Group Against Blogspot Ban in Pakistan - AGABBIP) ( http://groups.google.com/group/AGABBIP ), a mailing list with dozens of contributing members, also was formed to protest this form of censorship in Pakistan.

Yesterday a few concerned Pakistanis gathered together at The Second Floor to discuss the Cyber Crime Bill (Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2007). The event was hosted at T2F and sponsored by Alchemy Technologies allowing Barrister Zahid Jamil an opportunity to explain / interpret in simpler terms the impact of this bill on our daily lives once this bill has been promulgated into effect by the National Assembly.

To be honest when I was informed of the seminar I was interested to find out what the fuss was all about, the reading material provided was interesting but made little sense until Zahid explained the legal implications of such a bill if promulgated as is. After the two hours of understanding the problem I am worried enough to feel the need to push the government to revamp the bill and poses to be a very dangerous law for us all, forget the criminals with, it can easily affect innocent Pakistanis who use computers on a daily basis, very simple issues like the act of formatting your hard disk [Destruction of Data] can lead you to a seven years in jail &/or Rs. 1 Million in fines. The consequences appear to have far more serious implications then what Faisal Chohan faced in 2006

There are seemingly 21 ‘cyber’ issues ranging from Malicious code, Cyber Terrorism to spamming and spoofing, overtly it may seem to cover all aspects of the new digital era but a closer and detailed look shows quite the contrary, allow me to explain, as novice trying to decipher Zahid’s excellent explanation (For those bored by the technicality head down to the Call for Action section at the bottom)

1. Practically in all issues the government has gone the extra mile to reinvent a new definition, significantly deviating from the internationally accepted norms leaving more grey areas for confusion / exploitation within the law
2. There seems to be an elaborate play of words within the document, which does nothing, but allow room for the regulating body (FIA) to confuse and entrap the innocent people, a ‘book ‘em up’ charge sheet on all counts
3. The FIA, has been given complete and unrestricted control to arrest and confiscate material as they feel necessary, without forcing them to present a credible case before an arrest warrant is issued, if the FIA follows the law by the book they can pick up any person or property, hold them in custody for up to one year (extensions allowed) before even presenting the case in court. A very dangerous supposition as it opens the door for the rouge FIA agency to do as they please without any safeguards and protection for the innocent
4. I share with you one example of the hideous nature of the bill. The Government has literally attempted to insert a new word in the English language, when the bill discusses the law of Cyber Terrorism (item #17)
   

   Cyber Terrorism: Any person, group or organization who, with terroristic intent utilizes, accesses or causes to be accessed a computer or computer network or electronic system or electronic device or by any available means, and thereby knowingly engages in or attempts to engage in a terroristic act commits the offense of cyber terrorism.

   The word TERRORISTIC is without doubt a figment of their imagination vocabulary, hence they attempt to define the word, quite literally compounding the problem at hand

   Explanation 1.–For the purposes of this section the expression “terroristic intent” means to act with the purpose to alarm, frighten, disrupt, harm, damage, or carry out an act of violence against any segment of the population, the Government or entity associated therewith.

   Explanation 2.– For the purposes of this section the expression “terroristic act” includes, but is not limited to,–

   • (a) altering by addition, deletion, or change or attempting to alter information that may result in the imminent injury, sickness, or death to any segment of the population;
   • (b) transmission or attempted transmission o a harmful program with the purpose of substantially disrupting or disabling any computer network operated by the Government or any public entity;
   • (c) aiding the commission of or attempting to aid the commission of an act of violence against the sovereignty of Pakistan, whether or not the commission of such act of violence is actually completed; or
   • (d) stealing or copying, or attempting to steal or copy, or secure classified information or data necessary to manufacture any form of chemical, biological or nuclear weapon, or any other weapon of mass destruction.

   It seems the above example they have actually defined what real-life terrorism might be, but fail to explain what they mean by the word Cyber in cyber terrorism, if they hope to mean cyber-stalking, which incidentally is already covered as item #13 (this also has one too many loopholes). They could also be referring to the actual real-life Terrorism but that too as I am told is extensively covered in the Anti-Terrorism Ordinance of 1999. What I share is the concern that there happens to be no clear-cut explanation on how a Cyber Terrorism crime is committed.

This is only ONE example only, but actually there are gaping holes in practically all 21 items of the Digital Crimes Act. They even go to the extent that for eg. everyday usage of a Microsoft Windows software on your computer (which is famously known to be buggy) can land you with a punishable crime of seven years behind bars, How? Under the Malicious Code section [item 13] it seems that any code that crashes and damages the data on your computer can make you guilty of the crime. an oversimplified example

Call For Action (in development)

1. A pressure group must be created to contest this bill forcing a total write-up according to industry standardsAn online petition should be launched to promote this effort
2. Local and International media must be used to exert pressure on the Ministry of IT to readdress all genuine issues
3. T2F is arranging for a series of repeat seminars to better explain the impact of this draconian law
4. Creation of an online campaign, banners, buttons etc
5. Due to the complex nature of the argument, we would like to entertain ideas from willing film makers / animators to help us create a short documentary (10 minutes for YouTube) - URGENT CALL - Saturday 8th September 4:00pm at T2F
6. A website, (temporarily I have placed this issue on the Don’t Block the Blog - DBTB.org website until we decide to form something else), A mailing list.
7. These are just initial steps and I hope we can rally concerned Pakistanis for this cause

References:

• Prevention of Cyber Crimes Act 2007 - PDF
• Cyber Crime FAQ - DOC
• Letter to Cabinet - PDF

Zahid Jamil’s Presentation made at T2F

I must confess this presentation does little justice to his actual verbal comments but its important to understand the issue - Zahid has BOLDED the important words in the draft bill that are of serious concern

_{Disclaimer: This entire article is written with my own limited understanding of law and would gladly amend and correct mistakes if any}

Barely a few days earlier Turkey had gone through a similar blockage of the entire Wordpress.com domain being blocked for Turkish users. Reports are now coming in that Thailand has also sadly scummed to a similar bout of censorship effectively blocking the entire Wordpress.com domain for all internet users in Thailand since August 22nd

The team at Global Voices Advocacy Group has been on top of this issue and has confirmed from a prominent Thailand blogger newspaper Prachatai, that Thailand has indeed plunged into a era of Wordpress.com censorship

The blocked websites displays a splash screen in Thai which reads

“Sorry. TOT Plc., as an organization of Thai people, has restrained the access to this website as it contains content, text, and/or picture that is unappropriated which affects the mind of Thai people all over the country and cannot be accepted.” Screenshot

In an effort to raise awareness Freedom Against Censorship in Thailand (FACT) has launched an online petition do drop by and support the Thai Bloggers.

The entire Don’t Block the Blog team would like to join in this protest for all Thailand Bloggers and Blog readers in their battle for free speech.



– ALERT ! –
DON’T BLOCK THE BLOG CONDEMNS CENSORSHIP OF WORDPRESS.COM BY THE TURKISH GOVERNMENT

Download the PDF Version of the Press Release

Don’t Block the Blog would like to express its dissatisfaction at the recent development in Turkey where the Turkish Government has been served with a court order to enforce a blanket censorship on the entire Wordpress.com blog hosting website, forcing all Wordpress blogs to become inaccessible to the people of Turkey. This development occurred because one specific blog, AdnanOktar.wordpress.com, criticised Adnan Oktar (Haryun Yahya) a Turkish proponent of creationism in the debates of evolution vs. creationism. Oktar has put forth numerous books under the name Harun Yahya arguing against evolution, and has been widely criticized for his methods in promoting his religious viewpoints.

The lawyers of Adnan Oktar have accused a Turkish blogger, Edip Yuksel, of running a slander campaign against their client, Adnan Oktar. In this regard upholding their petition in court the Fatih 2nd Civil Court of First Instance, number 2007/195, has ordered the Turkish authorities to block all access to the entire Wordpress.com domain in Turkey. Oktar’s lawyers go on to argue with the administrators of the Wordpress organization to remove and prohibit any blogs on the site that may contain any reference to Adnan Oktar or his pen name Harun Yahya, or any combination of the four names.

This is an attack on the freedom of expression for the people of Turkey, and in this regard the Don’t Block the Blog organization strongly opposes this and all forms of censorships being enforced by the Turkish government, be it one site or a blanket ban on over 12 millions blogs on the free hosting servers.

The Don’t Block the Blog organization joins hands with millions of Turkish bloggers and blog readers to protest against this blatant suppression of free speech. Don’t Block the blog is now positioned as an international organization to protest against censorship of blogs worldwide We urge the Turkish authorities to undo this measure as it hinders free flow on information and also definitely casts a very negative image of Turkey to the world.

DON’T BLOCK THE BLOG strongly opposes any form of internet censorship, and requests the support of national and international bloggers, media, and free speech organizations to help our cause by continuing to highlight the issue of the unfair blanket ban of blogs

Background:

The DON’T BLOCK THE BLOG (DBTB) campaign (Help-Pakistan.com/main/) was launched by Dr. Awab Alvi and Omer Alvie on 3rd March, 2006 in order to highlight the unfair blanket ban of the blogspot domain and additionally to show support for free internet speech in general. It has slowly progressed to an more widespread international organization protesting against all forms of censorship of blogs the world over and in this effort has established itself on a new domain DBTB.org for this purpose

Mideast Youth has set up an online petition to unblock Wordpress in Turkey. Please take a moment to read and sign it.

Taking stride from our Don’t Block the Blog campaign that we launched for Pakistan back in march 2006. We would like to show our support for the ongoing problems faced by Turkish bloggers. A Pakistani blogger, Kyla Pasha from Islamabad has been kind enough to whip us a few campaign buttons so that the Don’t Block the Blog organization can express their support for the Turkish people

If you believe in Free Speech then please display this banner on your site and show your support

<a href="http://dbtb.org" target="_blank"><img src="http://dbtb.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/dbtb-turkey-support.png" border="0"></a>

Cross Posted at Teeth Maestro: A few months back in March there was a huge circus surrounding the decision by the Turkish government to block the entire YouTube website as it hosted a video which according to the official government statement was insulting Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. Unsurprisingly the same, modern Turkey was now up in arms protesting this blatant censorship and the hue can cry bore fruit as in two days the local court lifted the embargo.

Recently in yet another astonishing move, the new Turkish Pro-Islamic Government has now decided to clamp down on all blogs hosted on Wordpress.com and also on Blogcu.com since one specific site adnanoktar.wordpress.com had hurled insulting remarks against Adnan Oktar, a leading Muslim advocate of creationism who is an active leader in the creation vs. evolution debate subscribing to the Old Earth Creationism concept read more details on his Wikipedia article, but if you care to read a counter-perspective where Adnan Oktar is accused of pedophile acts, blackmail and slander, and leading a sect under the guise of the Science Research Foundation then read this article probably composed by his opposition its good to understand and appreciate both sides of an argument before making any assumptions or taking sides

For Pakistanis the censorship issue is nothing new and is like watching history repeat itself, for the record in 2006 our own government banned the entire blogspot domain simply because one blog hosted on a sub-domain on the blogspot.com site hosted controversial cartoon images of Prophet Muhammed, the out lash by our local Islamic Leadership led the supreme court to block millions of websites on the entire blogspot.com domain to the people of Pakistan. We objected to the censorship not on whether the images were right or not but more so on the issue of free speech and continued to urge our government to show restraint and let our people decide.

Some confusing signals are emerging from turkey, with some claiming that the ban is in effect while a few bloggers claim its been ordered to be lifted. Whatever may be the condition, I would like to show my support to the Turkish people and protest against any form of censorship as a convincing argument must be put forth to the bureaucracy that censorship itself does not solve the problem, the government cannot punish millions of innocent Turkish internet users simply for no fault of one their own.

Governments have to understand that pointing out the bad wolf in a bunch of sheep only attracts more attention ti the issue which would have generally would have traversed an noticed course to dies its own death.

Pakistanis fully support the Turkish people in their struggle for a free and unrestricted Internet

– ALERT ! –
PAKISTAN GOVERNMENT ISSUES FURTHER ORDERS TO CONTROL THE INTERNET IN PAKISTAN
Download the PDF Press Release

Don�t Block the Blog regrets to announce that the President of Pakistan, General Pervaiz Musharraf, has just signed into immediate effect measures which increase governmental control over the electronic media in Pakistan and which will further erode free speech by Pakistani citizens. The ordinance also extends the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority�s (PEMRA) control over both the Internet and all mobile services. We, as representatives of the Society Against Internet Censorship in Pakistan and also Don’t Block the Blog, are concerned that very soon a number of outspoken website which were without doubt a testimony to free speech in Pakistan will be silenced forever. Hence we fully condemn all actions taken by the government to censor and monitor all internet activity in Pakistan

Since March 9th 2007, which was a foiled bid by the President of Pakistan to unseat the Chief Justice of Pakistan, the electronic media has been openly suspicious about each move made by the military ruler. In response, the President of Pakistan has accused the media of sensationalism of all news items, and also blames the free press for destabilizing a positive image of Pakistan abroad.

The Internet in Pakistan has never been entirely free, as the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) has in the past enforced a blanket block on a number of websites including the entire blogspot.com domain. Network administrators at the PTA still enforce an IP address block on the Blogspot domain. However, a few months ago, Google, which sponsors the blogspot domain, went through an upgrade in which they changed the IP address. In this confusion, the PTA was caught sleeping. For over three months the internet surfing community was treated to unrestricted access to blogspot.com, as the PTA was under the misconception that it was still enforcing the block

The Society Against Internet Censorship in Pakistan, previously known as Action Group Against Blogspot ban in Pakistan, and the Don’t Block the Blog (DBTB) team, continues to highlight the issues which have plagued the Pakistani blogosphere since March of 2006, with updates issued to both the national and the international press. Since the blockade, a couple of savvy Pakistani programmers have created websites that help by-pass the unfair blanket ban for internet users in Pakistan.

DON�T BLOCK THE BLOG strongly opposes any form of internet censorship, and requests the support of national and international bloggers, media, and free speech organizations to help our cause by continuing to highlight the issue of the unfair blanket ban of blogs for the internet users in Pakistan.

Background:

The PTA (Pakistan Telecommunication Authority) had initially blocked access to the blogspot domain on the 3rd of March 2006, due to a Supreme Court decision dated 2nd March 2006 instructing the PTA to ban 12 offending websites which highlighted the blasphemous cartoons on the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). In adherence to the Supreme Court ruling, all 12 sites were blocked including one that was hosted on the blogspot domain. But rather than block the offending blogspot website, the PTA blocked the entire domain (www.blogspot.com) which happens to be one of the most popular blog hosting domains hosting upwards of 8 million blogs globally, according to some estimates.

The DON�T BLOCK THE BLOG (DBTB) campaign ( http://www.help-pakistan.com/main/ ) was launched by Dr. Awab Alvi and Omer Alvie on 3rd March, 2006 in order to highlight the unfair blanket ban of the blogspot domain and additionally to show support for free internet speech in general. Approximately at the same time the Society Against Internet Censorship in Pakistan (formerly known as The Action Group Against Blogspot Ban in Pakistan - AGABBIP) (http://groups.google.com/group/AGABBIP ), a mailing list with dozens of contributing members also was formed to protest this form of censorship in Pakistan.

This tutorial has been written and cross posted at Dont Block the Blog website courtesy Ovais Khan

In February 2006, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) -the Internet regulators in Pakistan asked the bandwidth providers and ISPs to block various web sites because they carried a variety of blasphemous material (See actual notification here). Two of these sites were hosted on blogger a popular blogging service (now acquired by Google). Since the PIE (Pakistan Internet Exchange - A PTCL subsidiary) as well as the other main providers of bandwidth like TW (Transworld) do not have any sophisticated means to block specific websites, they usually block the IP addresses associated with the websites. As a result, the whole blogspot domain was inaccessible for a long time.

However blogger.com remained accessible and people were able to post the blogs. Then in mid 2006, Google started blogger beta, but its server farm was the same as that of blogspot and thus was blocked. From that time until now, blogger.com as well as blogs hosted on blogspot.com gets blocked every now and then and many people are not able to access blogspot.com and blogger.com.

A friend asked me for a workaround, and this morning while I and my colleague were discussing the web based editors, I remembered that writely,(now purchased by Google and integrated into Google Docs) used to have a functionality to publish blog entries. I tried it and it worked without any issues on the new blogger.

The only negative point is that, blog title will not be set which you’ll need to go and set manually in blogger. Just to demonstrate, I am writing this blog entry from inside Google Docs.

Following is a summary of the steps you’ll need to perform:

• 1. Navigate to http://docs.google.com/ (if you are using it for the first time, you might need to provide some additional information)
• 2. Click on New Document link which is available in the top-left corner
• 3. A new window should appear, or if you use Firefox, it might be a new tab
• 4. Type your blog entry in writely and save it by using the save button available in the top section of the page
• 5. After you are done with the post, click on Publish link available in the top-right corner
• 6. Here, you’ll be able to provide your blog settings by clicking on set your blog site settings link
• 7. On clicking the link, a new window will appear displaying various options. Use the following settings:
• i. Select the radio button ‘Hosted provider‘
• ii. In provider combo box, select Blogger.com (beta version)‘ - (I also tried blogger.com and it works as well, so you can choose either)
• iii. In User Name and password text fields, enter your Google Account user name and password
• iv. In the Blog ID / Title text field, enter your Blog Title exactly as it is set, otherwise it’ll post the blog to the first available blog (if you have multiple)
• v. Select the check box Include the document title when posting (This has currently no affect, but just in case they implement it in future)
• 8. Click on test button to test the settings
• 9. Click on OK button to save the settings
• 10. After saving the settings, click on Post to blog link
• 11. Now go and check your blog, your post should be there

Below are some screen shots to explain the steps listed above
Read the rest of this entry »

I am sure many have heard and read about the Burqa clad women armed with sticks who were protesting in Islamabad. The set of images has been displayed across millions of websites showing yet another extremist element in Pakistan.

To make matters even worse the government has gone to the extent of literally unplugging the LalMasjid.org website which was being used to promote the struggle. A little investigation into the site goes to show that this website was barely created two months back on 19th Feb 2007 practically days before the Chief Justice of Pakistan controversy. Blocking the website was easy as it was being hosted on a local Pakistan based server at Comsats and all was needed was a stern warning out to the ISP which quickly resulted in a complete shutdown. At the moment the website is completely dead and displays a ‘Bad Request (Invalid Hostname)’ error.

A trace-route from within Pakistan shows it as being blocked by COMSATS (PIE) servers where the site seems to have been taken down probably on the directives of the government and PTA is not blocking the website, it probably now does not need to get involved since a gag-order has already been issued to Comsats

_{LalMasjid.org Registrant Contact Information:
Name: Abdul Rashid Ghazi
Organization: Markazi Jamia Masjid LAL MASJID
Address 1: Markazi Jamia Masjid Lal Masjid
Address 2: Markazi Jamia Masjid Lal Masjid
City: Islamabad
State: Capital
Zip: 44000
Country: PK
Phone: +92.512277313×1111
Fax: +92.512877418
Expiration Date: 2008-02-19 07:47:54
Creation Date: 2007-02-19 07:47:54}

Traceroute from WITHIN PAKISTAN
traceroute to lalmasjid.org (203.124.43.40), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 FE-3-0-100M-CORE.nexlinx.net.pk (202.59.80.2) 0.786 ms 0.608 ms 0.700 ms
2 10.10.80.1 (10.10.80.1) 2.091 ms 1.264 ms 1.269 ms
3 lhr63.pie.net.pk (202.125.147.5) 1.807 ms 2.355 ms 1.751 ms
4 g5-0-0lhr63c1.pie.net.pk (202.125.138.163) 1.703 ms 3.703 ms 2.037 ms
5 pos1-1.rwp44gsrc1.pie.net.pk (202.125.159.26) 7.590 ms 7.367 ms 7.638 ms
6 rwp44.pie.net.pk (202.125.159.82) 7.219 ms 8.428 ms 8.270 ms
7 Comsats-fa0-1.iba1d1.pie.net.pk (202.125.154.5) 7.126 ms 7.884 ms 8.271 ms
8 210.56.14.29 (210.56.14.29) 13.174 ms 12.136 ms 13.264 ms
9 * * *
10 * * *
11 * * *

Traceroute from OUTSIDE of PAKISTAN
1 161.58.14.161 (161.58.14.161) 0.460 ms 0.300 ms 0.248 ms
2 ge-1-1-0-278.r00.stngva01.us.wh.verio.net (204.2.123.185) 0.425 ms 0.360 ms 0.326 ms
3 vl-5.r03.stngva01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.27.215) 0.587 ms 0.364 ms 0.323 ms
4 xe-4-0-0.r21.asbnva01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.18) 0.686 ms 0.739 ms 0.710 ms
5 ae-0.r20.asbnva01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.16) 0.552 ms 0.533 ms 0.537 ms
6 p16-0.uunet.asbnva01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.8.2) 1.642 ms 1.590 ms 1.590 ms
7 0.so-1-1-0.XT2.DCA5.ALTER.NET (152.63.43.178) 1.683 ms 1.731 ms 1.645 ms
8 0.so-6-0-1.XT2.NYC8.ALTER.NET (152.63.3.178) 7.483 ms 7.470 ms 7.493 ms
9 0.so-3-0-0.XR2.NYC8.ALTER.NET (152.63.19.34) 7.553 ms 7.554 ms 7.579 ms
10 182.ATM6-0.IG3.NYC8.ALTER.NET (152.63.26.45) 7.737 ms 7.528 ms 83.ATM6-0.IG3.NYC8.ALTER.NET (152.63.26.49) 7.491 ms
11 pctl-gw.customer.alter.net (208.192.182.34) 230.705 ms 230.672 ms 230.692 ms
12 pos1-0.rwp44gsrc2.pie.net.pk (202.125.159.21) 251.171 ms 251.575 ms 251.725 ms
13 rwp44.pie.net.pk (202.125.159.250) 250.594 ms 250.694 ms 250.662 ms
14 Comsats-fa0-1.iba1d1.pie.net.pk (202.125.154.5) 251.075 ms 251.020 ms 250.991 ms
15 210.56.14.29 (210.56.14.29) 255.203 ms 254.757 ms 254.471 ms
16 * * *
17 * * *
18 * * *

We at Don’t Block the Blog in association with the Society Against Internet Censorship in Pakistan simply object to the blocking of websites and all types of free flow of information as it only makes matters worse. The world must know both sides of the story, and blocking it goes to prove that the government has something to hide, some information which it does not want the world to read. Chalk up yet another strike against the government of Pakistan

Latest Update: Lal Masjid organization have switched to a new domain lalmasjid.com and also have moved their servers to an international host to avoid such problems with the local government