Internet disrupted in Pakistan amid arrest of former PM Imran Khan

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NetBlocks metrics confirm the disruption of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube on multiple internet providers in Pakistan on Tuesday 9 May 2023. Additionally, total internet shutdowns have been observed on mobile networks in some regions. The disruptions come amid the arrest of former Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Real-time network data show the disruption in effect on some but not all mobile and fixed-line internet providers in Pakistan at the time of writing. The study is taken from a sample size of 120 measurements from 60 vantage points across Pakistan. This class of disruption can be worked around using VPN services, which are able to circumvent government internet censorship measures. However, the mobile broadband disruptions cannot be circumvented and will be experienced as a total internet shutdown by those affected.

The observed disruptions have continued into Thursday, in some cases intensifying, with hundreds of protesters reportedly detained during the information blackout. Some Instagram servers have also become unreachable from Wednesday.

NetBlocks recommends against the use of network disruptions and social media restrictions to limit political speech, given their disproportionate impact to fundamental rights including freedom of expression and freedom of assembly.

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Methodology

Internet performance and service reachability are determined via NetBlocks web probe privacy-preserving analytics. Each measurement consists of latency round trip time, outage type and autonomous system number aggregated in real-time to assess service availability and latency in a given country. Network providers and locations are enumerated as vantage point pairs. The root cause of a service outage may be additionally corroborated by means of traffic analysis and manual testing as detailed in the report.

NetBlocks diffscans, which map the IP address space of a country in real time, show internet connectivity levels and corresponding outages. Purposeful internet outages may have a distinct network pattern used by NetBlocks to determine and attribute the root cause of an outage, a process known as attribution which follows detection and classification stages.

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