Court-blocked!

As I read the news of a Lahore High Court order directing that access to Facebook be blocked, I was reminded of a rather different day. It was a foggy morning in December, 2010 and I was sitting in the front row of a courtroom in the Lahore High Court. The WikiLeaks saga had just taken the world by storm and many in Pakistan were speculating how the government might react to some embarrassing disclosures. A colleague and I were debating the issue when a lawyer stepped up to the lectern and added a different kind of chill to our morning by announcing that he had filed a petition praying (i.e. requesting the court) for access to WikiLeaks to be blocked.
His argument was that the leaked material adversely affected Pakistan’s reputation in the international community and that ‘the nation’ was being defamed. As is the norm these days in Pakistani courts the lawyer did not bother with any legal niceties by bothering to explain which ‘fundamental right’ was being infringed or what illegality he wanted cured. Thankfully, it was not going to be his day. The judge in that particular case was His Lordship Sheikh Azmat Saeed. He heard the petitioner but then dismissed the petition while observing, among other things, the danger of what we often call the slippery slope in such matters.
The court observed that if WikiLeaks were to be blocked/if access were to be denied to it that would not really solve anything since considering the age we live in the same information would become available to the public through internet search engines, online blogs, newspapers and satellite news channels. This was a refreshingly brave decision by the Honourable Lahore High Court. It may seem a regular occurrence to many in the world but in a country where nationalism and religion are popular slogans, we can take nothing for granted.
Even in December, 2010 I remember comparing the order in the WikiLeaks petition with another Lahore High Court order issued In May, 2010 in the wake of the ‘Draw Mohammed Day’ controversy. In the latter case, the High Court had ordered Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to ban access to Facebook since a competition inviting cartoons of the Holy Prophet was blasphemous. That order hardly achieved anything if its purpose was to block access to allegedly blasphemous material.
In any case, I disagree that it is the courts’ job to deny or allow access to websites and/or social networking sites. As the same court noted in the WikiLeaks Order access to information these days is not limited to one particular method—if you do not have Facebook then you have Google and if you do not have Google you will find something else. The slippery slope, of course, becomes relevant when we start considering the extent to which we would go to deny access to information that some may find offensive. That is where the real danger is and that is what the courts should be thinking about, i.e. what do you open to the doors to by a particular ruling?
The recent order by the High Court to deny access to Facebook is ostensibly based on the fact that certain pages on Facebook were being used to spread religious hatred. Even if that were true, I still do not see how a few pages on Facebook or even a few websites on the internet interfere with any Pakistani’s freedom to profess, propagate and propagate his religion under Article 20 of the Constitution of Pakistan. Also worrying about the latest order blocking Facebook is that it is clear that the Honourable Court did not grasp how Facebook works. It is not as if when you sign onto Facebook a page is thrust into your face. You have to click on things to access them; in effect you have to go looking for them. If someone does not want to access a particular page he should simply not search for/click on it! Exercising that ‘freedom’ of not clicking would save everyone’s liberty.
This ruling is not just disappointing but also dangerous for future times. If Facebook can be banned/blocked then what reasons can any Court in Pakistan advance not to block Google? Unless the courts grasp how the internet works, the danger remains that people in Pakistan, like those in China, will lose access to Facebook and Google (only for different reasons).
Blocking access to Facebook and Google firstly will not solve anything and it will also interfere with the fundamental right of speech and expression of many Pakistanis (a large number of whom are Muslims). Not only can people protest against alleged religious hatred and/or offensive material on Facebook (by creating their own pages/petitions) but think about disadvantaged social and political groups that can use the internet to effectively communicate their point of view. The cost is simply too great.
I am not even asking you to tolerate material that you find offensive. The internet allows you to simply ignore it without the need to block it. If there are ten signs on a street and one of them offends you, it does not make sense to block access to the street — simply do not make the turn that leads to that allegedly offensive sign and you have that choice. The internet gives you that power. It would be sad and dangerous if our courts made us powerless and took away our most basic freedoms.

The writer is a Barrister and an Advocate of the High Courts. He has a special interest in Antitrust law and is currently pursuing an LLM at a law school in Cambridge, Massachusetts.