Fact-check: PML-N lawmaker's firewall claim debunked. US, UK are not using national firewalls

A lawmaker from the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) has claimed that the United States and United Kingdom have deployed firewalls at the state level to filter content on social media.

The claim is baseless.

Claim

On July 23, during a show on a private television channel, Danyal Chaudhary, a PML-N lawmaker, was asked about the government's deployment of a “firewall” to further restrict social media in Pakistan.

Chaudhary responded: “A firewall is not a wall as such. Basically, it is [installed] to filter when [social media] is being used against institutions and to weaken them or propaganda against the country. Such [firewalls] are used across the world, like in the United States and the United Kingdom.”

When reminded by the host that firewalls did not exist in the countries he named, the lawmaker insisted that they were installed “in almost every country”.

A similar statement was made by Muhammad Azam Mughal, an executive board member of the Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA), the trade association for the IT industry in Pakistan.

On July 27, in an interview with a private television channel, Mughal was asked to explain what a firewall was used for.

Mughal explained that firewalls allow governments to filter out disinformation and “information that may be against the state which can lead to anarchy.” He then claimed: “There are such controls in China, and if you talk about America or Europe, then there are such systems present there too.”

Fact

Digital rights activists and experts have confirmed to Geo Fact Check that there are no state-level firewalls deployed in the UK or the US.

Jason Pielemeier, the executive director of the US-based Global Network Initiative (GNI), a global alliance of tech companies and civil society organisations that works to protect and advance freedom of expression in the tech sector, told Geo Fact Check via email that that the United States does not have a national firewall system similar to that of countries like China.

“The only firewalls that I am aware of within the US are those that are internal to specific intranets (ie, private networks),” he added, “Many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) also have filters or use different technologies to address spam, phishing attacks, and other unwanted content, but these are all private companies.”

He reiterated that there was “no single, national, government-imposed set of restrictions being enforced at the border gateways or otherwise.”

“Users [in the US] generally can have access via private devices and networks to whatever content they wish to see and can post whatever content they wish to post,” he explained, “Of course, users may be prosecuted for posting illegal content, in accordance with due process standards.”

Raman Jit Singh Chima, the Asia Pacific policy director and the senior international counsel for the US-based Access Now, a digital rights advocacy watchdog group, confirmed the same.

Chima told Geo Fact Check in an email that neither the US nor the UK have a firewall akin to that of China.

“Certain types of illegal material are blocked or filtered, for instance, specific pages with abusive material would be blocked and material subject to copyright claims may be taken down following orders from the relevant authorities,” he said, “but the system is nothing like the large- scale, opaque, systemic and infrastructural restriction on access to certain platforms or content as in China, or as is seemingly being sought to be done in Pakistan.”

He added that such firewalls are essentially a form of pre-censorship, which should have no place in a democracy.

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