Pakistan plans system to filter and block websites

Pakistan has floated a request for proposal for a system to filter and block websites, some months after curbing the use of encryption on the Internet, and toying with the idea of filtering and blocking SMS (short message service) messages in the country.

With the country scheduled to hold elections in 2013, the Internet is likely to be a key casualty, said Shahzad Ahmad, country coordinator for Bytes for All, Pakistan. Bytes for All is a human rights organization focused on Internet freedom. The proposed National URL Filtering and Blocking System should be capable of URL (uniform resource locator) filtering and blocking, from domain level to sub-folder, file levels and file types, and each hardware box in the modular architecture should be able to handle a block list of up to 50 million URLs with processing delay of not more than 1 milliseconds, according to the RFP posted on its website by the National ICT R&D Fund of the country's ministry of information technology.