PML-N lawmaker makes baseless claims to suit party narrative; here’s what he said

A ruling lawmaker from the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) recently asserted that the United States and the United Kingdom have implemented state-level firewalls to filter social media content. This claim has been debunked by experts.

On July 23, during a show on a private television channel, Danyal Chaudhary, a PML-N lawmaker, was questioned about the government’s alleged deployment of a “firewall” to restrict social media in Pakistan further.

Chaudhary responded, “A firewall is not a physical wall. It is used to filter content when social media is used against institutions or to propagate anti-state agendas. Such firewalls are employed globally, including in the United States and the United Kingdom.”

When the host challenged this statement, pointing out that such firewalls did not exist in the named countries, Chaudhary maintained that firewalls were present in “almost every country.”

In a similar vein, Muhammad Azam Mughal, an executive board member of the Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA), made a comparable claim. On July 27, during an interview with a private television channel, Mughal explained the purpose of firewalls, stating that they enable governments to filter out disinformation and content that could lead to anarchy. He added, “These controls exist in China and, if you consider America or Europe, such systems are also present there.”

However, digital rights activists and experts have confirmed that no such state-level firewalls are deployed in the UK or the US. Jason Pielemeier, the executive director of the US-based Global Network Initiative (GNI), an alliance of tech companies and civil society organizations that protect and advance freedom of expression in the tech sector, clarified this in an email, as reported by a private news channel.

Pielemeier stated, “The United States does not have a national firewall system like China’s. The only firewalls I am aware of within the US are internal to specific intranets or private networks. Many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have filters to address spam, phishing attacks, and other unwanted content, but these are all private companies.”

He emphasized that there is no single, national, government-imposed set of restrictions at the border gateways or elsewhere.

Pielemeier further explained, “Users in the US generally have access via private devices and networks to whatever content they wish to see and can post whatever content they wish to post. Of course, users may be prosecuted for posting illegal content, in accordance with due process standards.”

Raman Jit Singh Chima, the Asia Pacific policy director and senior international counsel for Access Now, a US-based digital rights advocacy group, corroborated this view. In an email, replying to a query from a local private news channel, Chima stated that neither the US nor the UK has a firewall comparable to China’s.

He explained, “Certain types of illegal material are blocked or filtered; for example, specific pages with abusive material would be blocked, and material subject to copyright claims may be taken down following orders from the relevant authorities. However, the system is nothing like the large-scale, opaque, systemic, and infrastructural restriction on access to certain platforms or content as in China, or as is seemingly being sought to be done in Pakistan.”

Chima concluded by highlighting that such firewalls represent a form of pre-censorship, which should have no place in a democracy.