'Big Brother' Pak using 'Netsweeper' for social, political filtering on Internet

Pakistan is implementing 'Netsweeper' technology for purposes of political and social filtering on the Internet.

The Citizen Lab, an interdisciplinary laboratory based at the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto, has revealed that Canada-based Netsweeper Internet filtering products have been installed at the national level in Pakistan.

According to the Express Tribune, the technology is being implemented in Pakistan for political and social filtering, including websites of secessionist movements, sensitive religious topics and independent media.

Pakistan is not only using Netsweeper technology to block websites, it is also using local ISPs and other less transparent methods such as DNS tampering to block content.

The report concluded that altogether, the evidence suggests that Netsweeper filtering devices are being actively used to censor content on an ISP-wide level in Pakistan, the report added.