THE state minister in charge of IT keeps vacillating. Returning to television on Sunday, Shaza Fatima Khawaja vehemently denied that her government was to blame for the poor internet connections that millions of people nationwide are currently seeing.
The minister stated that more people were using VPNs to access the internet, which was the real cause of the frequent, unexpected drops in internet connectivity that were thought to be caused by the state’s covert use of opaque firewall technology.
Ms. Khawaja emphasized, “I can say under oath that the government neither shut down nor slowed down the internet.” The minister then said that the matter had been rectified and that a meeting with the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority was scheduled for this week in order to “guarantee that users in the country do not face similar problems again”. But why contact the PTA if the problem was just that more people were using VPNs?
The general public has continued to be extremely skeptical of the government’s statements and deeds precisely because of this obscurity surrounding the new system that is being implemented. It is still unclear exactly what the authorities hope to accomplish, even with the substantial interruptions that have already been incurred. when the new “web management” system will be fully installed, and what common users might anticipate during that period.
Take into consideration X, which has been inaccessible in Pakistan for the most of this year without a valid explanation from the government. Since everyone from state ministries to the prime minister has reportedly been using VPNs to access and post on X, it appears that the government itself does not believe in the ban on the network. How can the state expect the people to obey these rules when it itself is acting indifferently toward them? This is the primary cause of VPNs’ unexpected rise in popularity. They were once exclusively used by people trying to get around censorship or access services that were morally dubious, but regular users are now adopting them as well. Even people who just want to check out what people are talking about on big social media platforms or post a multimedia message on WhatsApp these days need to use a VPN to tunnel through to the worldwide internet.
Consequently, even while the government can claim that VPNs are to blame for the internet’s slowdown, it ought to admit that its own regulations have led some individuals in this direction. The people should be treated better than to have their inadequate internet connectivity explained away to them by naive leaders. Given that the public is not being involved in the process of altering the internet, there is, at the very least, a great deal more transparency required.
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