The X file

So the truth is finally out. Or rather, as close as one can get to the truth in a country where those who wish to survive, in any official capacity, must master the art of saying things without saying them. After several weeks of doing its best rendition of Jurassic Park’s ‘don’t move and the T-Rex won’t notice you are there’, the PTA has finally informed the Sindh High Court that it was asked to block access on February 17 under Section 5 (7) (ii) of the Removal and Blocking of Unlawful Online Content (Procedure, Oversight and Safeguards)Rules 2021, until further notice. Sadly, the T-Rex knew like everybody else that only the PTA had the power to cut-off X and hence, frozen as it was, it was never out of sight. This blockage was apparently prompted by reports the interior ministry received from security agencies. As the sporadic outage enters its fifth week, whatever threats were highlighted in the reports to the interior ministry over a month ago are apparently still around and still merit access to X being restricted.

Notice how a law that pertains to online content is suddenly repurposed to block off an entire site which has many different kinds of content. Does having some unlawful content make the entire platform unlawful? Also how does the PTA account for the fact that there have been periods where access was seemingly restored only to be down again? At times, a VPN would do the trick and other times nothing would. Were there days where the unspecified content, no doubt specified in the aforementioned reports, disappeared only to reappear within the span of a few hours? These revelations appear to have led to even more questions than answers.

The minister in charge of the ministry that seems to have initiated the blocking action claimed earlier this week that the country needs better laws on online speech. Or, maybe the authorities just need to do what the current laws say and not what they imagine them to say or what they believe they ought to say? “Expression is fine, but making false allegations against people is wrong” says the interior minister. Is this why X is down? Because false allegations were made against people? Which people? If slander, defamation or inflammatory comments were the problem, it would have been simpler to just go after those comments. Why did the entire site have to be closed to the people? Also, things posted on the internet are, for better or for worse, forever. Does this mean restrictions can also be indefinite? We will likely never get the answer to most or maybe even any of these questions. Unfortunately, those at the top seem to have realized they answer to no one.