Pakistan To Ban Encryption Software And VPN Connections Within Country

Pakistan's Telecommunication Authority (PTA) , a governing body in Pakistan which looks after and maintains country's network traffi...

Pakistan's Telecommunication Authority (PTA), a governing body in Pakistan which looks after and maintains country's network traffic and also examines website structure and its access points within country has blocked encryption VPN connection in Pakistan due to terrorism and other hacking activities. It’s not a first time that Pakistan has banned any particular website or connection, In past Pakistan and PTA had also banned popular social networking website "Facebook” because of blasphemous material about the religion on Facebook.

According to the Guardian report, the banned was made over encryption and VPN connections specifically targeting Virtual Private Network (VPN) in country. All internet traffic in the country travels through the Pakistan Internet Exchange, which can be intercepted by the military and civil intelligence agencies. The move echoes a crackdown against encrypted communications across the border in India and in China. 

People have been using VPNs to bypass the filters, access data, and send private communications, but the PTA is requiring ISPs to report customers who are still using this technology. In Pakistan most of the company's owners are not happy with this step from PTA because in Pakistan many local and international companies use VPN technology in order to maintain an end-to-end tunnel that can be used to encrypt sensitive data between branch offices, and those connections will fall under this ban. According to the PTA note people can request waivers to this ban, but it is unclear how that process will work and who will be allowed to apply for these exceptions.

The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority legal notice urged ISPs to report customers using "all such mechanisms including EVPNs [encrypted virtual private networks] which conceal communication to the extent that prohibits monitoring". Anyone needing to use this technology needs to apply for special permission