Pakistan YouTube Block Breaks the World

Allen54 noted a followup to yesterday's story about Pakistan's decision to block YouTube. He notes that "The telecom company that carries most of Pakistan's traffic, PCCW, has found it necessary to shut Pakistan off from the Internet while they filter out the malicious routes that a Pakistani ISP, PieNet, announced earlier today. Evidently PieNet took this step to enforce a decree from the Pakistani government that ISP's must block access to YouTube because it was a source of blasphemous content. YouTube has announced more granular routes so that at least in the US they supercede the routes announced by PieNet. The rest of the world is still struggling."

Comments

But how did they do it?

[suso]

So the article isn't clear on it. Does this ISP have an AS number that allows them to upload global routes? I would say that they should lose it. I can't think of another way that a single ISP could take out the whole internet's access to something. Pretty crazy.

Re:But how did they do it?

[Aladrin]

Or maybe they aren't as stupid as we think... Maybe, just maybe... They did this on purpose to give global awareness to this censorship.

Maybe I give them too much credit... But it's possible.

Re:But how did they do it?

[Brian Gordon]

Not to mention that they should keep ALL manner of global routing out of countries that censor the internet.. it's just a no-brainer. Probably should move a lot out of America too..

Re:But how did they do it?

[Atlantis-Rising]

The problem is that if they did that, they'd have nowhere to put it.

Unless you want to create an international organization with its own territory (sort of like the UN headquarters) that controls global routing- it can't be subject to any national law because it's got its own extraterritoriality (although international lawyers would tell me it's not true extraterritoriality, blah blah blah).

But somebody has to control THAT organization, and unless its mandate is simply to maintain the internet routing in a transparent manner between national-level routing domains...

Re:But how did they do it?

[greedyturtle]

FYI: This YouTube video is just anti-Islamic propaganda, and unrelated to the subjects at hand. Don't waste your time on it, unless you feel like watching yet another technically-true, obviously-slanted video. I've had my fill of those from the election.

I guess I should mention that if you haven't yet bothered to get a little background on the widely accepted facts of the prophet's political barbarism, you should look into it... just don't do your research with crappy YouTube videos. And you should also be sure to follow up with Christianity's ascent to mainstream popularity.

Re:But how did they do it?

[kalirion]

So basically internet routing functions on the honor system?

Re:But how did they do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you already know whose IP address are whose

You don't need to know whose IP addresses are whose, you only need to know what your customers addresses are and filter out anything that doesn't match but that came from that customer, if everyone did that, then the core routers would be able to trust each other without problems like this occurring. In other words, the router in Korea which received the original bad route from the client ISP in Pakistan should have said "hey wait, this ISP is in Pakistan and doesn't serve youtube, why am I getting announcements for youtube's address" and shitcanned it.

It's similar to the egress filtering ISPs should do, which would block off a large chunk of ddos attack traffic originating from some guy's cablemodem in florida but with a source address of somewhere in argentina. The ISP should know where their traffic is supposed to be coming from and block anything that isn't.

Re:But how did they do it?

[Zeinfeld]

No, I doubt that the reason for blocking YouTube was motivated by the purported concern for the prophet.

Rather more likely is that this has something to do with the recent elections in Pakistan. The Musharaf just lost the election he had hoped would allow him to complete his transition from dictatorship to elected President. Instead he lost control of the process with the assassination of Bhutto.

Independent TV is a much bigger threat to the regime than independent press. Blogs have rather less credibility than actual video of a demonstration.

I suspect that the ISP chose this method of blocking the traffic for precisely the reason that it would cause the maximum notice. Implement a local block in Pakistan and the Pakistanis complain. Implement the block in such a way that it affects the whole region and you have so many more people working to circumvent the censorship.

BGP security has been a big concern for me for some time. In fact it is such a concern that it is one of the issues I did not address in my book on Internet crime precisely because I did not want to give people ideas.

CBG

[Zedekiah]

Worst. Title. Ever.

Re:CBG

[Shakrai]

Closely followed by the award for most incomprehensible summary. I've re-read it twice. I have no idea what is happening

Basically a Pakistani ISP decided to implement the block of Youtube by announcing a new route for the IP addresses owned by Youtube that presumably directed all of that traffic into /dev/null or elsewhere. By accident (one would presume -- there is no reason to do this on purpose) those routes were announced outside of Pakistan by said ISP, whose upstream provider then relayed them to the rest of the internet (sheer stupidity on their part -- their configuration should have prevented this). Said upstream provider then decided to cut Pakistan off until they are able to correct the problem.

All I know is living in the UK I'm in no position to criticize the Pakistanis, because their country is much freer than mine.

Yeah, I can't help but remember how Gordon Brown seized power in a military coup and allowed a leading member of the opposition to be brutally assassinated by extremists. It's amazing how far the UK has fallen, isn't it?

C'mon! As an American I can certainly sympathize with your disillusionment over your own Government's policies but get some perspective. It's not yet that bad. Freedom in the United States or United Kingdom isn't dead until people stop fighting for it and become as apathetic as you sound when you make statements like that.

Your country gave us the Common Law, the Magna Carta and the foundations of Representative Democracy. You stood alone against Hitler for all those lonely months between the Fall of France and the involvement of the Soviet Union and United States. That stand likely saved Western Democracy from Communism or Fascism. Start fighting for your freedoms instead of whining online about how much better Pakistan is. I suspect that the people fighting and dying for Democracy right now within Pakistan would have zero sympathy for your point of view.

Re:CBG

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Yeah, I can't help but remember how Gordon Brown seized power in a military coup and allowed a leading member of the opposition to be brutally assassinated by extremists.

Brown didn't have to seize power in a military coup, as our entirely undemocratic electoral system gave it to him anyway. No-one ever voted for him or his administration, other than whatever internal politics may have happened within his party. His predecessor was elected on one of the smallest proportions of the popular vote in history, and even then it was on the basis of a clear promise that he would serve a full term (and therefore that people were explicitly not voting for a party that would have Brown as leader before the next general election). And yet, despite all of this, Brown now commands an absolute majority in Parliament.

As for assassination, we don't do that sort of thing yet. Well, unless you get on the Tube, anyway. Then it's OK for the police to shoot you, and face no real consequences. We don't silence government critics, either. Unless you're a long-standing member of the party and Holocaust survivor with the audacity to shout a one-word heckle during your party conference, in which case you must be removed by several heavies and then barred from re-entering as a terrorist threat. But don't worry, if you keep your head down you'll be fine. Unless someone mistakes your mobile phone for a gun, in which case you'll be arrested at gunpoint and have a permanent record placed on file of not only your DNA but also the fact that you were suspected of a firearms offence so if the police ever visit you in future they'll come with guns every time. Fortunately, we have the IPCC to challenge the police when they do abuse their authority, and the effectiveness of that particular check on the power of the elite is clearly demonstrated by the way 100 of their legal team just resigned in protest at the absurd incompetence/corruption in the organisation's leadership. Anyway, those records are just another precaution the government need to take, like wanting the DNA of every citizen on file. That solved a couple of murders this week! And it's never abused, and mistakes are never made with data. Unless you're one of 25,000,000 people whose personal data was lost by the child benefit people, say. That was only enough for any identity thief to completely take over someone's life, but don't worry, we have an Information Commissioner to help ensure personal data is properly handled, even if his department is massively underfunded and when he warns about all these problems with the surveillance/database state people nod but nothing changes. And hey, even if that fails, we can just declare an arbitrary state of emergency, at which point the law says the government can restrict freedom of movement and association, confiscate property without compensation, and all sorts of other things in violation of what we used to call basic human rights.

So no, it's not really a free country we live in. The state can and has killed people, silenced critics, and instituted quite literally the most privacy-invading surveillance regime in the world. There is way too much summary justice and far too few checks and balances that still carry any real weight if you find yourself on the wrong side of the system because someone made a mistake. And neither the political leaders nor their instruments in the police and security services have any real accountability to the people for any of it. The only difference between the current regime in the UK and some of the more obviously abusive ones in other countries is one of scale.

For whatever it's worth, some of us in the UK do still care about democracy, privacy, freedom and the like. But the kind of principled leadership that once led to fighting the good fight and establishing basic laws in the interests of justice such as those you mentioned has been sadly lacking of late. Until we can get rid of the current wave of unrepresentative politics,

Re:CBG

[Shakrai]

How, exactly, are citizens of the UK (and less so the USA) supposed to fight for their rights again?

Maybe by using the freedom of speech that our forefathers died to give us? Maybe by holding our Congressman/MPs accountable to the voters instead of the corporations/lobbyists that donated money to their political campaigns? Maybe by doing what we can to limit the power of the party (be it the Republican/Conservative/Democratic/Labour one) at the expense of the people? Maybe by getting people involved in the process again?

I'm working with the Barack Obama campaign here in the United States. He has generated a lot of excitement and gotten a lot of new people involved with politics. One of the things that I'm trying to do is encourage all of those people to remain involved with the political process after the election. We can bemoan the state of affairs in Washington/London until we are blue in the face but nobody has bothered getting involved with the process and trying to change that state of affairs. If there is anything that we should have learned from the past it's that our involvement with Representative Democracy does not end at the ballot box.

Re:CBG

[Shakrai]

Woah... time to dust off your history book.

After the French Armistice on 22 June 1940 the UK, alongside the Commonwealth (Canada, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa) was the sole remaining major power that was still fighting Nazi Germany. She did fight alongside the other nations that were invaded (Greece comes to mind) but those nations capitulated fairly quickly, leaving the UK to fight on alone.

The UK remained alone until the launch of Barbarossa exactly one year (22 June 1941) after the signing of the French Armistice. Even at that, it seemed likely (at the time) that Germany would beat the Soviet Union and Churchill wasn't sure the Allies would win until after Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war.

So yes, I give the UK a lot of respect for standing alone against the Nazi War Machine during that period. It was arguably the finest moment in British history and likely saved the Western Democracies from becoming conquered slave-states to Nazi Germany or Communist Satellites of the Soviet Union.

Re:CBG

[mike2R]

This is more than a little silly:

Brown didn't have to seize power in a military coup, as our entirely undemocratic electoral system gave it to him anyway. No-one ever voted for him or his administration, other than whatever internal politics may have happened within his party.

He's an elected Member of Parliament, and supported by a majority in the Commons, which makes him Prime Minister. He could be turfed out tomorrow if he loses a motion of confidence, and parlimentary elections MUST take place by 2011.

His predecessor was elected on one of the smallest proportions of the popular vote in history,

OK, the first past the post system can throw out some weird results, and Labour does happen to get the best of them. Sixteen years of Tory government hints that this isn't a huge issue however.

and even then it was on the basis of a clear promise that he would serve a full term (and therefore that people were explicitly not voting for a party that would have Brown as leader before the next general election).

That is an issue of whether the Labour party has broken a commitment - this can be judged by voters at the next election or by MPs any time.

Well, unless you get on the Tube, anyway. Then it's OK for the police to shoot you, and face no real consequences.

That was horrendous I agree, and the investigation after it not a great deal better. That said, it did happen 1 day after an attempted suicide bombing of the tube, and 1 month after a successful one. If the police where ever going to overreact it was then.

Unless you're a long-standing member of the party and Holocaust survivor with the audacity to shout a one-word heckle during your party conference, in which case you must be removed by several heavies and then barred from re-entering as a terrorist threat.

And will later be featured on national news, and (even before that) receive a grovelling apology from the Home Secretary. The reason that one went away was because the apology was accepted - maybe it shouldn't been but as you said the chap was a lifelong Labour member, and he can make his own decisions.

Agree with you on the DNA thing, but you don't help your argument by starting off with a badly supported rant.

Re:CBG

[Cederic]

You mention Bloody Sunday yet omit the Omagh bombing which killed more people. You mention shoot-to-kill yet fail to mention the Australian backpackers killed by an IRA bomb in Holland. You mention internment without trial yet fail to mention kneecapping, the murder of informants, the Remembrance Day bombing of Enniskillen..

At least share both sides of the story. The British behaviour in Ireland may not be admirable but the actions of the Irish are at least as bad.

"malicious" routes

[br00tus]

I should also note that while the Slashdot story says these routes were maliciously announced, there is no evidence of this. This type of thing has happened before by accident many times. That it was accidental makes more sense anyhow - which is more probable, that there are a bunch of network wizards in Pakistan with state-of-the-art equipment decided to take out Youtube, or that a handful of overworked and undereducated network technicians in Pakistan were told by management that they had to block Youtube immediately, and in their haste their blocked route accidentally leaked to the outside world? I would say the latter, especially considering that they stopped advertising the route soon after they began getting a lot of complaints.

I should also point out that while bureaucrats in Pakistan may be bone-headed for blocking content, companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, Cisco and so forth are the ones who built things like the "Great Firewall of China". Lots of Americans like the point their finger at governments like China, whereas they could actually have more of an effect in making companies in their own countries stop building this sort of stuff.

Re:"malicious" routes

[STrinity]

I should also note that while the Slashdot story says these routes were maliciously announced, there is no evidence of this. This type of thing has happened before by accident many times. That it was accidental makes more sense anyhow

Propagating the change to the rest of the world may have been accidental, but the purpose -- to block YouTube throughout Pakistan -- counts as malicious in my book.

Religious purification

[TheHawke]

Sounds familiar, right along with the right to sentence to long jail terms, a few victims that got raped, letting the rapists go nearly scot-free.
They might as well isolate the country, keeping them from experiencing the interwebs altogether, it'll be impossible to keep their youth from being corrupted.

What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[goldspider]

To the people here in the U.S. who consider the Bush administration an oppressive theocratic regime, pay attention. This is the sort of thing an ACTUAL oppressive theocratic regime does.

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because other crap smells worse doesn't mean my own crap doesn't stink anymore. All oppression needs fighting, not just the blatant stuff.

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[lixee]

Tu quoque? This idiotic line is getting old. Yes, we get it. The US is better than the scum of the Earth that is al-Qaeda and their supporters. But for the love of God, quit justifying wars of aggression and other unconstitutional acts by see, it could be worse. It's only works with mentally challenged people.

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[Reality Master 201]

Actually, your post (and the explanation of it) are a rationalization of the actions of the Bush administration.

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

[aicrules]

Islam has various doctrines that are meant to be trials for those who subscribe to that faith. Ramadan is meant to teach patience and improve ones ability to resist temptation. If those temptations are removed by theocratic/governmental policing, the whole point is lost. Yes, a person may not have access to one area of temptation and therefore won't succumb because there's nothing to succumb to, but just like a butterfly emerging from the cocoon; if you see it struggle and decide to help it out, it won't have the ability to survive on its own later. If a muslim never even has the opportunity to face temptation because they are shielded from it at every turn, then on the likely chance that in their adult life they suddenly have multiple temptations blinding-siding them, they will have no internal facility to deal with it other than to cave in. I think the "Islam is evil" thing you're so sure is going to happen is because of how evil the intentions the governmental bodies that try to enforce it are. This is why separation church and state is so important in this respect. It was huge in christianity during the crusades. Fortunately many have seen the light and no longer impose faith as a law.

obQuote

[Speare]

Evidently PieNet took this step to enforce a decree from the Pakistani government that ISP's must block access to YouTube because it was a source of blasphemous content.

The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man.
--Thomas Jefferson

First article (Third link) is not bull

[ruinevil]

The telecommunication authorities are claiming in Pakistan that YouTube was blocked for featuring allegedly blasphemous documentaries. While this move if triggered by this motive is as foolish as burning an entire library just because on a page of one of the books someone has scribbled a couple of words against you, it is far from truth. Actually Musharraf is a very self centered and insecure man these days and has recently learned from his sycophants that YouTube carries many videos critical of his government especially his torture on lawyers and political captives and since during this campaign technology played critical role in influencing people he wants to block out every kind of criticism. This is exactly what I'm talking about.

Re:How Does One ISP Poison Everything?

[Shakrai]

I cannot imagine that BGP allows IP-address hijacking

That's exactly what it allows, if your upstream provider isn't smart enough to filter the routes that you are allowed to announce. In theory your upstream provider won't accept any routes for IP addresses you don't own. In practice that isn't always the case, apparently.

They don't have any authority over that resource/address-space, so how and why are they allowed to create a black hole affecting the entire net?

Because their upstream provider is apparently too stupid or lazy to filter the networks they can announce. Once you get to a certain point (peering links between Tier 1 providers for example) it may be easier to just trust the people you are peering with and accept everything -- but to accept all routes announced by a leaf link is just plain stupidity. I'm really kind of surprised that this happened.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Blaspheme doubtful

[Rampantbaboon]

Pakistan is generally a pretty tolerant country when it comes to matters involving religion. After all, they elected a woman as PM awhile ago. Musharaf is however a hardline dictator who has the power to greatly improve his country by setting a precedent for stepping down gracefully, but apparently like any other dictator, he's going down swinging. The US in praticular has a way of framing any problem with the middle east as a religious issue. It's a region with a whole hell of a lot of problems, religion being just one of them. I'm not defending any actions taken by their gov't, just trying to understand the situation. While not Arab or the first islamic nation to hold free elections, this situation has the potential to set a lot of progressive reforms on the Middle East.

Re:Blaspheme doubtful

[colfer]

You got it right, politics is too harsh for people to believe, so they key on superficial cultural stuff.

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really follow everything the book says, Islam IS evil, and so is Christianity and Judaism, and Hinduism. Buddhism is okay though, i think.

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

[mapkinase]

"If those temptations are removed by theocratic/governmental policing, the whole point is lost." No, it is not. There are natural temptations and there are temptations society could avoid.

That is why Islam has social laws against bad public behavior.

Religion as a cover for Political Censorship

[billstewart]

Pakistan isn't a theocracy. Pakistan is an occasional-democracy heavily-tribal state ruled by a military dictator who's in serious trouble trying to retain power when lots of people want to get rid of him. Musharraff is a Muslim, but his religiousity goes about deep enough to get him a Muslim funeral when he dies, if his body doesn't get blown up into too many little pieces to bother burying.

So if an Islamic court has any authority to order the PTT to block YouTube because of "blasphemy", it's because YouTube is carrying political news about the situation in Pakistan that Musharraff doesn't want people in Pakistan watching. If Iran had tried that kind of thing, that really would be a theocratic problem, but that's not the issue here. If they implemented it in a way that blocks YouTube from the rest of the world, it's because of incompetence, not malice. (That kind of thing happens a lot, usually because somebody does a bad job of router configuration, but usually ISPs filter out incorrect advertisements; their upstream provider didn't do a good enough job here.)

So in some sense it is similar to Bush in the US - pandering to the religious right wingers as a way to get radical right-wing politics done.

Will somebody please. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

+5 Insightful?

Will somebody please mod this person correctly?

How many documented civilian deaths since 2003 is Pakistan responsible for? (In ONLY one other country?) --For that matter, what percentage of its own citizenry does Pakistan keep in prison as compared to the U.S.?

Just because our TVs are filled with lots of colorful distractions, and our homes are nicely replete with Walmart furnishings, it does not stand true that all is right with the world. The Military Industrial Complex requires for effective functioning that a portion of its gear box be well-oiled. If you were a good little rally-attending German citizen, then life in the late thirties was also pretty good. If one is to guage the state of our governments, one needs to care about how people other than ourselves are being treated by those governments.

Also. . . People in North America are concerned about such disturbing trends as the large number of empty prison camps built on U.S. soil, and the whole Black Water thing.

I can see many reasons for people to be concerned about the U.S. government. Outward shows of totalitarianism, like having the internet lock up for a day because of religious/political dogmatic beliefs, are certainly impressive. I can't find anything in the news to soften my own reaction to the Pakistani government. But "Who is worse" arguments seem to me a distraction. There are problems all over which should all be recognized. Getting caught up in nationalism is a great way to lose focus on the actual issue.

-FL

Re:Will somebody please. . .

[XchristX]

How many documented civilian deaths since 2003 is Pakistan responsible for Try 3 million in 1971 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Bangladesh_atrocities), and 500-3000 women a year (http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/south/12/11/pakistan.women/), and numerous religious minorities. There is a difference between people killed in the exigencies of war (as in US involvement in Iraq), a transient phenomenon, and the pervasive intolerance and violence all across Pakistan, which lasts for decades.

Re: Barack

[Shakrai]

he advocates serious restrictions on the exercise of the *only* civil right that ultimately insures the government's observation of all the others.

Hey, I didn't say he was perfect. I'm generally not in favor of Gun Control at all, which probably makes me an oddity amongst Democrats, but there you go.

Gun control will probably be one of the easiest issues for the country find common ground on. Most Democrats aren't married to the idea of restrictive gun control as a one-size-fits-all solution for the whole country. Most Republicans probably don't want to see explosive armor piercing cop-killing rounds in general circulation either. As usual an effective solution will require (*gasp*) compromise on both sides and that won't happen unless the citizenry speaks out and marginalizes the extremists on both sides of the issue.

I'm generally of the opinion that any citizen not convicted of a crime should have the right to own any semi-automatic weapon. I get nervous when the Government decides to go after "assault weapons" as though they are some special class more deadly then others. I get real nervous when the burden is shifted to the citizen to prove that he can own a gun, rather then the Government having to prove that he can't.

Fully-automatic weapons is a discussion worth having -- anybody with access to a machine shop and some basic skills can turn a semi into a full-auto, so any ban isn't really effective... But the regulation of fully-automatic weapons goes back a few decades and might actually serve a purpose.

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

[trytoguess]

If a work of literature isn't supposed to be taken literally, who decides what's the "correct" interpretation? I'm sorry, but the views of the extremeists are equally as vaild as the most liberal in any religion. Sure, the liberal views are more moral for us, but what does God think? I dunno, and therin lies the conundrum.

Re:Common law

[Shakrai]

I don't think you realise what you are advocating. Or are you an anarchist?

*sigh*, I think you largely missed the point. Let me spell it out for you using the words of Thomas Jefferson:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it

(emphasis mine)

Every law, by its very nature, takes away the rights of the people. The only way for a government not to take away rights is to abolish all laws.

That's such a blatant oversimplification that I hardly know where to respond. The spirit of our Declaration of Independence (and all those other documents I referenced earlier) is that the Government exists to secure our rights -- my right not to be murdered by you trumps your right to do whatever you want. The Government derives it's power from the consent of the Governed and not the other way around.

How soon we forget our own history.