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This is my entry for the contest Restricted & Unrestricted Internet - Freedom World hosted by @upmewhale. Before peeking into the main topic of this contest I would like to thanks @upmewhale for holding such a contest. A very good way to grab the attention of people on such an important topic and invited them to express their opinion.

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Here are my thoughts,

The Internet is quite popular in Pakistan. People spend hours surfing the internet. They spend many hours on social media, watching music videos, news, sports, Hollywood updates etc. The history of the Internet in Pakistan is quite interesting. Yes, you are reading it right. You might have been thinking interesting, why? Let me tell you why:

The Internet industry came to Pakistan between 1992 and 1993. I researched the history of the Internet in Pakistan before writing on this topic, so it was very new to me as well that the first internet connection was introduced by ImranNet and that was dialup email. Imrannet introduced it in between 1992-93. Afterwards, the Internet industry began growing rapidly.

Pakistan receives internet from undersea laid submarine cables (fibre optic cables). We all know these cables are interconnected with each other. We are connected with these cables from 2 points. One point is at Karachi port and the second one is at Gawadar port. These two ports further connect all Network Locally and that's how we get access to the Internet.

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Growth of internet in Pakistan

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Internet Civil Surveillance in Pakistan

I have been watching the drama of Internet Civil Surveillance since the day I began using the Internet. A lot of political interference is making it worse. Lately, Pakistani Authorities have been blocking certain websites accused of obscenity. But people disagree with such a statement as they have their valid reasons. I seriously don't know what the points of banning certain websites and platforms are? Does the government not understand that there are many other ways to use those banned sites? People can get access easily by using VPN's. I think all this democratic drama is trying to form online Political debates, and they want to hinder the public access to information.

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We are also hearing the news that the government is planning to get more control over Internet activities. For this purpose, they plan to use a federal web control system. The Pakistan government has made an agreement with a Canadian company and they will build a surveillance foundation so this way the government can monitor all incoming and outgoing Internet traffic. They will be providing many devices which will have the capability of redirecting or blocking the suspicious encrypted messages in real-time.

The government would have the control to intercept at any point and they can do anything with that. Now i am wondering if this will infringe on my privacy

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source

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Crptocurency future in Pakistan

I have found a perfect image to describe this point :P. Yes, the condition of crypto (virtual assets) is the same as the image is describing. Our government has jailed the cryptocurrency and the offence of cryptocurrency is it is a virtual currency, and it might take over the shit fiat. To save that fiat, the government has banned Cryptocurrency. Well that was a joke lets me narrate the exact point Why Cryptocurrency is banned in Pakistan

Before saying anything i want to ask this from the State bank of Pakistan or our government. Why we are following others? If Crypto is banned in China so we will be banning it too. Umm, China might have bigger plans? they might want to launch their own Cryptocurrency? who knows? I want to post this with the (Hashtag # Government of Pakistan) XD.

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Currently, i am not seeing a bright future of Crypto in my country. Literally, people don't even know what #Crypto is and what does it stands for. There is no knowledge about the blockchain. Very few people know about it. I, myself didn't know what a blockchain or crypto etc, was until i was introduced to the steem blockchain.

I want to share a little example of my family. My one cousin who had his own well-established business; he knew the worth of Bitcoin and he sold out everything and invested in Bitcoin. Umm well, when he invested it was pretty late though he has bought bitcoin when it was 17k$+ I think, and now he is holding bitcoin. He offered my brother to invest in but he didn't listen to him, the point is my brother didn't have any knowledge about it. Although my cousin is in a big loss right now he is calm and he is not frustrated, he has a belief that Bitcoin will hit its peak again.

My point of explaining all this is if few people know the worth of crypto then why is it so hard for our government. Our government has banned Bitcoin by saying that it will encourage money Laundering and illegal transactions for terrorist attempts. My point is crypto is banned here and still, our politicians are involved in money Laundering. They are looting the country and filling their Swiss bank accounts, aren't they? Yes, they are. And without allowing crypto still, the terrorists are making illegal transactions, aren't they? Yes, they are. Why did our government want to oppress their people? Now i get the reason why we are behind from world.

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Telegram remains banned in Pakistan

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A big example of Internet civil Surveillance is a telegram. I never used this app but for some certain tasks i needed to get access to telegram but i couldn't, reason Telegram is banned by our government. I got curious when we can use all chatting applications such as Instagram, WhatsApp, blah blah etc then why not a telegram.
Of course, to clear my confusion i googled and i got my answer. In the early days of a telegram, it was working perfectly but then suddenly it stopped working. No one knows the reality behind and people started to assume it is due to bug or something else. When people got realized the issue is getting prolonged they started tweeting under the tweets of telegram twitter. However, Later on, finally PTC(Pakistan telecommunication company) broke their so-called silence and revealed the reality that PTA(Pakistan telecommunication authority) has banned telegram because they couldn't get access to encrypted telegram chats LOL.

I tried to cover up all the points about the restricted Internet in my country. I think instead of being so conservative our government should think liberally. their aim should be how we can compete with the world in technology. People still have alternatives to get access to all the restricted websites and apps. Think out of the box that's all from my side.

Reference link to read more

https://www.ispak.pk/internet_pakistan.php