What's the easiest way to compile a global list of pornographic websites? Ask a 15-year-old boy to do it for you.
That's exactly what the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) did as part of an effort to clean up the Muslim country's browsing habits.
Ghazi Muhammad Abdullah proved tireless in his search, finding almost 780,000 adult pages in six months.
"I consider this as my religious and national task to do. If my elders don't do this for my generation, than I will do it for mine and forthcoming generations," he told The Daily Telegraph.
Pakistani model and actress Veena Malik, who was recently in the news for a controversy over her nude image on FHM magazine cover, says she is uncomfortable in stripping for a film.
The actress, who is playing a sex worker in Rajeev Ruia's "Zindagi 50:50," says there are some "bold scenes" in the movie, but they are very "aesthetically shot."
While speaking to a leading daily, Veena said, "When Rajeev approached me with the role, he wasn't very confident about whether I would be able to pull it off. I prefer playing a bad girl rather than a cute, bubbly one. My ideal role has to be negative, strong and performance-driven," Zee News reported.
However, when asked about the rumors that she would be going naked in the movie, the actress replied, "I'm not stripping for any film. I have never gone nude nor does the film have such scenes. "
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In an effort to tighten its control over the Internet, the government recently published a public tender for the “development, deployment and operation of a national-level URL filtering and blocking system.”
Technology companies, academic institutions and other interested parties have until March 16 to submit proposals for the $10 million project, but anger about it has been growing both inside and outside Pakistan.
Censorship of the Web is nothing new in Pakistan, which, like other countries in the region, says it wants to uphold public morality, protect national security or prevent blasphemy. The government has blocked access to pornographic sites, as well as, from time to time, mainstream services like Facebook and YouTube.
Until now, however, Pakistan has done so in a makeshift way, demanding that Internet service providers cut off access to specific sites upon request. With Internet use growing rapidly, the censors are struggling to keep up, so the government wants to build an automatic blocking and filtering system, like the so-called Great Firewall of China.
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- Tech savvy sex workers say their business has increased since the police cannot track them and they do not need pimps anymore
- Experts say more and more people being lured into the skin trade because of increase in sexual exploitation, use of social media and telecommunication
LAHORE - Phones make me feel safe. The police can’t catch me and people don’t get to waste my time. I don’t have to wait for clients on the roads or pay chunks of my income to my pimp and nobody gets to find out what I do for a living, everyone wins,” Razia, a sex worker from Lahore, candidly talks to Pakistan Today about how her mobile phone has made her profession easier.
“I got a call on the Valentine’s Day, went to a rest house, did my job, took the money and left,” she says, “It is that simple.”
Dubbing it as ‘secure, lucrative and easy,’ the sex workers in the city have left the traditional path of hiring a pimp or waiting for their clients on the roads and are using modern tools like the social media and the internet to expand their business. International donor agencies working on sex trade in Lahore have pointed to the link between the increase in mobile phone and internet usage by the prostitutes and the expansion of their business. Other Non-Government Organisations engaged in the spread of HIV and AIDS in the prostitutes have registered an increase in prostitution also since the phones and the internet provide a good ‘cover up’ to the women.
Owners of brothels have also claimed that the use of technology has made their job easier since it gets harder for the police to track them and they are just ‘a few buttons away’ from their clients. Sources privy to Punjab AIDS Control Programme told Pakistan Today that another reason for the ‘increase’ in sex workers could be the fact that the international donor agencies compel the government to use the term ‘sex workers’ instead of prostitutes and no health or social organisation could claim to ‘help’ the illegal trade.
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