Access now calls for an end to Pakistan’s firewall: 20 million silenced

Access, global movement for digital freedom, have launched a campaign to pressure international companies not to bid for Pakistan’s pending firewall. Our partners, in the campaign, Business Human Rights Resource Centre , were able to get four international companies to commit not to apply for government’s proposal for a URL filtering and blocking system. However, we have until friday the 16th of March’2012 to build pressure on the remaining companies.

Please sign the access now petition and join in the struggle to end internet censorship in Pakistan, 20 million online voices may be silenced:

What if one morning you woke up one morning and couldn’t access Facebook? YouTube? Wikipedia? Even Google?

The government of Pakistan is attempting to bolster their existing internet filtering system and creating a national Chinese-style censorship firewall that would censor 20 million internet users in one go! What’s more, in a shocking display of arrogance, they put an ad in their national papers asking for companies to submit proposals to help them build it!

But we can do something about it — put pressure on technology companies to not respond. No corporations to build it, no censorship system! At least five western IT companies have already said they won’t participate (Websense, Cisco, Verizon, Sandvine, and OpenDNS). Now we need to help persuade other firms to urgently follow suit before the bidding deadline of next Friday.

I’ve already signed the Access petition urging corporations to publicly denounce the project and vow not to submit proposals to build this outrageous censorship system. And I think you should too. Add your name to the petition below calling upon Bluecoat, Huawei, McAfee, Netsweeper, ZTE, and all other bidders to refuse to play a role in putting up the walls of censorship.

Sign now: http://www.accessnow.org/20-million-silenced

Share:  20M silenced in Pakistan? Sign @accessnow petition 2 #stopcensoringpk:bit.ly/wKCfis @mcafee @bluecoatnews @huaweipress @ztepress

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