Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day | Hacker News Reader

Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

techcrunch.com

206 pointsmoose44209 comments

2018 Algeria shut down internet during school exam season.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/21/algeria-shuts-...

"Algeria is not, however, the only country to take such radical steps during exam season: Syria, Iraq, Mauritania, Uzbekistan and several Indian states reportedly block access to the internet. Ethiopia shuts down social media."

How do you study then?

with a book? Or notes from class? Asking someone educated on the topic?

Text books are still used in many parts of the world and all the course material are covered by those prescribed text books.

At least in Algeria, they only did it during 2-3 hours of the day when the tests were taken.

> It published a timetable of the shutdown schedule: three one-hour blackouts, coinciding with the first hour of each baccalaureate exam, on Wednesday, and two each on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

How to study during an exam? I think you'd be taking it, not studying.

You're not serious, are you? Books? Notebooks? Even downloading to your reading device? Screenshots if everything else fails?

You forgot that papers and pens ceased to work the second laptops showed up because that's how technology works.

Some people on this site are just idiots and need note-taking apps for a "productivity boost", whereas I can go to the store with a written list of everything I need. They think everyone should be hamstrung the same way they are.

Algerian here, they do it almost every year when the Bac exams starts.

South Korea shuts down air travel during the nation wide university entrance examination.

I was curious, so I googled…

- “The government grounds aircraft or reroutes flights to keep students from getting distracted during the biggest test of their lives.”

- “ On the streets Thursday morning, you could hear more sirens than usual, because anyone running late to the competitive exam can call for a free police escort to rush them straight to the test site.”

- “Success is defined narrowly. Get a high score on the Suneung to get into a high-ranked school. Go to a good school to get hired at a South Korean chaebol — the term for a mighty mega-conglomerate, like Samsung. They power the Korean economy.”

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/11/12/455708201/...

This test seems to control your trajectory in Korean society to a very high degree, which seems like overkill in my view, because a test can only be so reflective of real-life skills. I have a family member who did very well on the test and got into Seoul National University, which is reputed to be the best university in Korea. According to them, their IQ is "only" 120-130, but they have very good memory, and are able to study endlessly without tiring. Are those useful skills? Yes, for many things, but not for everything.

Standardized testing does not aim to be a perfect evaluation, it aims to be a good enough evaluation that can be made highly resistant to corruption/bribery relative to its qualitative alternatives.

They could divide it into 5-10 different test, administered over the course of several years. Anything but what they are doing now, which sounds like it was custom designed to encourage drug abuse and suicide.

Can you write out the detailed arguments as to how that would be a net benefit?

For a start, you don't permanently mess up your life if you are sick/distracted by personal issues for that one exam.

You need to factor in all pros and cons in order to arrive at a net positive or negative in the first place.

now your stress is over several years, and if you fail an early one, what motivation do you have to keep on going?

plus as children / young adults, many are still developing so you want to push testing as late as possible

The stress is distributed over time, so lower peak stress, and for those who are not cut out for this, they will find out much more quickly, which minimizes their time wasted studying. They could invest their times instead into a trade school etc., which will be of greater benefit to society.

Is it pass/fail? I figure if you fuck up on one test then you have several others to look forward to and improve. And each individual test could be more focused, so easier to study for. Just have a test at the end of every year from ~13-18 instead of one ultra-test that makes or breaks your entire existence. Sounds dystopian. And also completely detached form how reality works. Unless you're in the Olympics, no one cares how you perform once. They care about how you perform and will perform over months and years.

Drug abuse is rare and severely punished. You go to prison if you're Korean, you did drugs recently and got caught in Korea. It doesn't matter if you've smoked pot overseas, flew back to Korea, got tested and the drug test came out positive. They'll still throw you in prison.

When do they test you?

It's mostly illegal to purchase in the first place iirc.

Random tests at the airport for instance, or more recently when you enroll for military service, as all males are required to.

The "resourceful youth" have to deal with a competitive environment, highschool bullying, exams, so they have a lot to do.

Prison sentence for drug use is up to 5 years.

I highly doubt the resourceful youth of Korea have not discovered several ways to find and abuse stimulants to help them study.

Just curious, what is the average prison sentence in Korea for a 16-year old found guilty of buying Adderall online?

Six months of time and >$1.5m gone from lifetime earnings? Definitely needs clarification from Korean guys, though.

Unless you're a celebrity, in which case you get "special treatment."

And they say drug prohibition can’t work.

100% agree There's a simple statistical argument behind it: the variance drops as you increase the number of tests.

Let's say your true ability is A and you have one measurement M1. The variance (or, let's put it in another way: the probability that your M1 is waaaay different from your A) goes down if you also get M2, M3, M4 and take an average.

In other words: your measurements become more precise and the stress goes down a lot

One could say that grades are an even better metric! They measure all manner of academic topics over many years and across many different instructors.

Only if the grades are assigned in a standardized manner across all candidates, which they definitely are not.

Taking four independent samples isn’t the same as taking one sample and cutting it into four.

Happiness index for Korea is 6 Happiness index for US is 6.9

Suicide rate in Korea is 21.2 per 100k Suicide rate in US is 14.5 per 100k

Drug death rate in Korea is 0.16 per 100k Drug death rate in US is 18.83 per 100k

And I only did the US and Korea because I only know the US. My conclusion is South Koreans feel about the same as Americans but do way less drugs.

Having the same suicide rate as the US is not indicative of a healthy culture, especially in a country without easy access to guns.

It’s not even remotely the same, it’s nearly 50% higher than the US (which isn’t doing that great either).

South Korea has the 10th highest suicide rate in the world.

On the flip side, how much as South Korean society managed to advance in the 50 years compared to “happy America?”

Other countries have managed economic miracles without mass suicidal tendencies.

Plus, that explosive growth has ended. South Korea escaped poverty and now its growth rate is comparable to western countries with much better suicide rates.

The US government gave South Korean manufacturers access to the US market as part of the US strategy to fight the Cold War. Would South Korea have been able to get rich fast without that access?

You can hardly compare growth between economies in extremely different development stages directly.

Also the gap between Korea has remained constant since the 90s (in fact it even widened over the last 15 years or so)

> how much as South Korean society managed to advance in the 50 years compared to “happy America?”

It's apples and oranges. Compared to the U.S., how much did western Europe and Japan advance in the half-century preceding 2000, relative to where they started in 1945?

It’s not apples and oranges. America was far more prosperous than South Korea or Japan in 1945. But it didn’t get that way by being happy.

I think you missed my point: In 1945, western Europe and Japan were largely in ruins, so they could rebuild with then-modern technology and not be held back by the curse of the installed base.

(What have you got against being happy?)

Isn't SAT tests in US exactly the same as the Korean system?

The Korean test is significantly more difficult, if for no other reason, it takes significantly more time than the SAT to complete. Also, the maximum question difficulty is said to be much harder.

I don't see why there won't be a test taking arms race with SAT tests, that happened in all of CJK countries - the test has to have a dynamic range, and it's going to be golden tickets for upper middle classes, so it's going to be heavily gamed, and so the difficulty must monotonically grow to match.

That you can take SAT tests multiple times as pointed out in sibling comment, that could change the dynamic but doesn't seem like a fundamental change, I think there is still the path for "the test" to become such.

You can take the SAT as many times as you want and only submit your best score, so the pressure isn't the same.

Or, like me, you can completely abscond from the test and still achieve

This is not a criticism on standardized testing per se. But the methodology could use a serious upgrade in the 21st century.

Korea has a long history (along with China) on using tests to determine your place in society. Korea's version of the civil service examinations (known as the gwageo) have been around for like a milleniun, and it was pretty much your only way into the middle and upper class of society. The university entrance exams is just the modern cultural continuation of it.

Which is why Korea has historically spent an inordinate proportion of its intellectual capital trying to pass an exam rather than innovating. Modern Korea is much better than that, but there is still room for improvement.

Sometimes it seems like half the stuff I own is from Korea. I’d say they’re innovating just fine.

Any test that is so big that it requires shutting down large sections of society is way, way too big. And I mean, WAY too big, like grotesquely so. Just imagining that level of stress stresses me out.

Korean education has fallen down the slippery slope of "perfection". Mainly due to there being not enough jobs at the end of the tunnel as they do not count "real jobs" as labour or creative roles, which make up huge percentages of a happy society's workforce.

Stress isn't the enemy, it's the balance of priorities and what is better for society. Just on the virtue of you being stressed is not an argument for or against this.

No, the argument against it is the suicide rate and the lack of sex and dating and the fact that, all things considered, judging people on one gargantuan, life-determining test has no intrinsic value compared to the myriad other ways to assess knowledge and skills.

Most countries in South, South East Asia have made exams as a make and break deal for every student. In India, there are so many kids staying away from home in cities which are just exam preparation centres, with routine news of suicides.

Looking back on my life I think we asians have definitely stretched this way too far. Unfortunately, in high & young population countries like ours these exams are perceived as the only non corrupt way of moving out of low income trap. So this will go on :-(

It's still crazy but more reasonable to shut it down for exams than elections

I wonder if exam season is just a convenient excuse to test the system in case it needs to be deployed for civic unrest.

I wonder how long exam season is... If it's a 3 hour period it's quite different than a 3 month period.

One of the many issues with censorship

People can just sleep off 3 hours. If it were three months people would be finding another way within the first 7 days most likely less.

Maybe, but in all these countries it happens that this happens with specific exams that are national and are very core to student's future. This does not have an equivalent in most of the western countries (probably all?). I wonder if these exams were in the western countries, what would their approach to prevent mass cheating on national scale?

That's a whole lot of value being attributed to exams.

On one hand, this is a classic dictatorship move. Senegal just did the same just after postponing elections.

On the other hand, Pakistan really did have terrorist attacks just before the election, targeted at the election. So taking heavy handed steps to protect the election integrity can be explained.

As an idea, media moratoriums immediately prior to elections seems fairly sensible. AI and disinformation attacks are likely to be 'last minute'. Maybe the entire phone and Internet system is going a bit far. Also, obtaining broad consensus for just muting the main social media channels doesn't seem that unreasonable. My thought is, unless gunmen are showing up at polling stations, what exactly is so urgent to discuss that people haven't already made up their minds about in 24 hours? Here's a few pro and anti standpoints [0..3].

[0] https://tech-ish.com/2024/01/12/2024-elections-internet-blac...

[1] https://www.axios.com/2020/09/25/majority-polled-back-a-soci...

[2] https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-on-the-week-of-the-elect...

[3] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/election-disinfo/

"As an idea, media moratoriums immediately prior to elections seems fairly sensible. AI and disinformation attacks are likely to be 'last minute'."

Not just for misinformation, but for true information that can inject bias into the decision. Many people use polls leading up to an election to pick the winner. Primaries are an institutionalized version of this where the first few states get greater influence of the options available in the others. If we actually want to pick the best people, then we should be working to eliminate bias.

I would love to see heavy restrictions in campaign advertising, the creation of a central campaign website on which every registered candidate gets a page to design, same day national primaries, some implementation of ranked choice voting, and restrictions on predictive polling or other predictive reporting that can influence the result. Although these raise many first amendment questions around legality.

I think looking at actions around elections in Pakistan through a western lens can lead to false conclusions easily. Let me try and explain through an analogy.

Suppose a US political party (A) decided it wanted to win the US elections no matter what. And it had enough clout, "campaign contributions", among the various government agencies (courts, police, FBI) to make it happen. But it just didn't have the votes to make it happen. So it used the court system to declare an entire opposite party (B) as in-eligible to run the country. If you support Republicans/Trump, think Trump is found in-eligible and the entire Republican party is too. If you support Democrats, think Biden and the entire Democrat party are banned from running in elections. That means every single member of the house that claims to be from party B is banned as running for that party. And this isn't done 2 years in advance, but mere days/weeks from the election.

That sounds entirely undemocratic, right?

Now the party B figures out that it represents the will of the people enough and it has enough votes that it could not only run but has a decent chance at winning. So, the members decide to run as Independents. How do you communicate this to the voters quickly? When Charlie goes in to vote for someone from B, how does he find out who to vote for?

Now, add another issue to the mix. Party A really wants to win (when it can't in an ideal democracy) so it makes it difficult to vote for people in districts where it knows it is unpopular. Alice, Bob and Charlie can be living in the same household but get assigned 3 different voting locations. Imagine they all live in Dallas, TX and get asked to vote in 3 different locations in Fort-Worth, Garland and Irving.

Now, the only way Charlie can still vote for the candidate that he thinks represents his views the best is to make use of websites to look up where to vote and which candidate is associated with the now-banned party B. Without internet and other sources of instant and mass communication, Charlie can't do that.

As a result of these actions, party B loses the election and party A wins.

Please note this is a very biased - but plausible - way to interpret the events around the current elections in Pakistan. But hopefully that perspective helps on why blocking the internet and controlling the means of communication is so important to certain individuals, companies, and political parties in Pakistan. And also why we can't look at the situation from the outside and fully understand the nuances at play.

Hmm, I tried to follow but that seemed a little elaborate. I think if someone tried to pull-off what you described (declaring a candidate disqualified within a week of an election) you'd have civil unrest or worse on your hands regardless any information flows.

Like I said, it is one plausible interpretation of events. It started almost a year ago, and it's been reaching a crescendo roughly last week. And since this is Pakistan, civil unrest is quite common anyway. Heck, there's an entire article on the start of this election cycle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022%E2%80%932023_Pakistan_pol...

Specific sources to back up my claims:

- "So it used the court system to declare an entire opposite party (B) as in-eligible to run the country" and "And this isn't done 2 years in advance, but mere days/weeks from the election"

  https://time.com/6556335/pakistan-election-imran-khan-nawaz-sharif-military-pti/:
  
  > On Monday [Jan 15, 2024], Khan’s PTI party was banned from using its iconic cricket bat logo on ballot papers, significantly hampering its chances amongst an electorate which is up to 40% illiterate. Most crucially, it effectively bans the PTI as a party and means its candidates will likely have to stand as independents, who will reportedly use a range of symbols ranging from a rollercoaster to a goat. “The election symbol is an integral component of fair elections,” Raoof Hasan, PTI’s principal spokesman and a former special assistant to Khan, tells TIME. “It’s rendering the party toothless.”

  And similarly, a previously-disqulified party leader (think Trump/Biden) was suddenly eligible to run again. https://apnews.com/article/pakistan-elections-timeline-36ed1d7bc77e78e630044d33ef624454:

  > Jan. 8, 2024 — The Supreme Court scraps a lifetime ban on politicians with criminal convictions from contesting elections, clearing the way for Nawaz Sharif to seek a fourth term in office

- "The members decide to run as Independents. How do you communicate this to the voters quickly? When Charlie goes in to vote for someone from B, how does he find out who to vote for?"

  https://twitter.com/PTIofficial/status/1748893680084111408?lang=en:

  > Following website will provide you information about Elections 2024: https://insaf.pk/election2024
  >
  > Type in your Halqa/Constituency Number to find:
  > - Name of Imran Khan’s designated candidate
  > -  Electoral symbol name & picture
  > -  A WhatsApp channel link for the respective Halqa/Constituency, to get timely information

Sorry I did not realise you are describing a sequence of events that actually happened/are happening. Yes I am looking though my (UK) lens of a slightly saner election (I hope), not one where civil unrest is already the backdrop.

> you'd have civil unrest or worse on your hands regardless any information flows.

In a normal state sure. In a semi-failed state which no sane person would consider a democracy? Probably not so much..

Not if you can't have civil unrest. This has been happening in Russia for like every election cycle, and people do try to protest, but those protests are being quickly suppressed, each year more and more violently.

Sadly, it isn’t that hard to imagine these kinds of tactics being used in a western democracy. I don’t want to weigh in on the specific controversies but you’ve basically described small extrapolations from various tactics both US parties have variously been accused of trying.

> My thought is, unless gunmen are showing up at polling stations, what exactly is so urgent to discuss that people haven't already made up their minds about in 24 hours?

If they got blasted with misinformation 24/7 before election day, how much will those 24 hours help them make an informed opinion? It might stop last minute attempts at swaying the election. But it will not stop long running campaigns.

That is indeed a different and separate problem in a different information space. Personally, I don't think any kind of censorship is useful or justified there.

Hearing from friends that there were a lot of last minute shenanigans like poll locations getting changed, candidates election symbols getting changed (important given the lack of literacy).

Some countries including my home country Poland impose a ban on political agitation on the election day. It means that no political content may be published on that day, but whatever has been published before that is allowed to stay. This is an old law which predates the Internet, so anything from social media posts to hanging up election posters is liable to be prosecuted and the authorities frequently do so. It's less drastic than in Pakistan, more drastic than in the West, but it certainly does cause a chilling effect on people when they know they may lose a few thousands if they get caught.

Wait, do Polish people not consider themselves part of the West?

Genuine question. I've met and worked with quite a few Poles since moving to the EU and my current takeaway is that it's in a really interesting fusion time between West, East, and some more mysterious third thing.

I guess it was a shorthand for western Europe.

"The West" is a very murky sort of definition. Arguably the colloquial "Cultural West" is what is on the Western side of what used to be called the Iron Curtain. Poland was definitely on the Eastern side of that.

I think being strongly Catholic draws Poland into the Western sphere in spite of the Cold War divisions.

Iron Curtain was a political, not cultural border. Western civilization usually includes all European catholic countries, i. e. also Poland. (Huntington is a notorious example)

>Western civilization usually includes all European catholic countries, i. e. also Poland. (Huntington is a notorious example)

What about European Orthodox countries? Does civilization only tie to catholic religion?

Only person I know to try to actually sit down and draw civilization borders was Huntington and put the Orthodox on a separate but linked civilization to the Western world, but even he admitted that's arguable.

Although even then Poland counts as West.

It’s no coincidence that the term “Eastern Orthodox” is widely used for that communion of churches; while the Orthodox world is still traditionally considered part of Christendom, it is still distinguished from the “West”.

Yeah of course it was a political border but it absolutely had cultural consequences.

You can literally see the difference in Berlin on either side of the wall. The Eastern side is similar but still different to the Western, culturally.

Even the architecture is still quite different between the two sides.

You can see stronger cultural differences within western Germany (or any country, really), e.g. between Bavaria and North Germany.

One of the classic dividing lines between East and West, the Hajnal line, goes straight through modern Poland. It’s closer to the historic border between Poland and Germany though.

> One of the classic dividing lines between East and West, the Hajnal line

Hajnal line is pretty controversial / outright rejected by many academics.

Irrespective of whether it is true or not, the idea that this should be somehow defining the border of (Aryan) West and (Slavic/Untermensch) East was pushed by Nazis. Otherwise it's just one line out of thousands without special merit.

Hajnal himself was a refugee from Nazi Germany of Hungarian Jewish descent; it’s offensive and glib of you to dismiss him, of all people, as a Nazi.

Historically, Poland was both and is a transition region between central and Eastern Europe.

Even when Poland was conquered, it was still the interface between a central/western empire (Reich Germany) an eastern empire (Russia) and an in-between empire (Austria-Hungary) but I would certainly call a city like Białystok ‘eastern’, but not necessarily Warsaw, Krakow or Wrocław.

The trouble is that what counts as ‘Eastern’ Europe can be demarcated by several large historical events (Mongols, flavour of Christianity, Communism, etc) so a definitive answer is hard to give.

On the other hand an American (migrant) doing an about face about a group of people based on preconceived notions is completely expected.

It is complicated. Most people in Poland do consider themselves part of Europe, sometimes even part of the West. At the same time people in Poland often contrast the West (as in Western Europe and US) with Poland and perceive west as something different and better. It is sort of post colonial mentality but with a twist, because it is not tied to race. This idealised “West” is often very far from real situation in Western Europe. On the other part of the spectrum you got polish conservatives who see west as degraded and fallen. They used to say things like: France no longer exists. Meaning France is not what it used to be; it is not true west because they lost the spirit of real west.

Genuinely very curious what you (and more generally other Poles) think of that? Also is it effective (of course you have no control case for comparison)? Thanks.

Not OP but we have the same regulation in Italy, coupled with one that forbids sharing opinion polls some days before the elections.

People don't particularly care either way.

They were somewhat effective pre-social media, but they relied also on a certain amount of fair play which is no longer as common as it once was.

Same here in France, and I guess most developed countries.

People go around it by sharing "vegetable prices" on Twitter. It's not very effective, but at least prevents stunts outside voting places.

We have similar restrictions in the UK. In the weeks before an election, government ministers and civil servants are not allowed to announce new policies or spending. On polling day, broadcast media cannot report on political matters or speculate about the outcome of the election. We also have extremely strict limits on campaign finance.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn05...

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/11/media/uk-election-reporti...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50170067

Thanks dietrich, and for the helpful links to make the case. I may revise the blog post to incorporate those points.

Famously the BBC shows pictures of dogs at polling stations on election day so it's not political.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-61333251

On the one hand, maybe. On the other hand you lose democracy “bragging rights” when you have to protect the soft skulls of your subjects.

Yes there's some of loss of the sense of absolute democratic purity. But then Aristotle saw that tradeoff against real polity quite some time back.

I think your point (that people ought to be smart and strong enough to withstand all and any malign influence(?)) made a lot more sense 20 years ago. In the Internet and AI influence age I think things have significantly changed. It's the integrity of the democratic process rather than the "soft skills" that requires a little more protection.

“Disinformation” is always a smokescreen. All nominal (keyword) democratic processes are filled with disinformation: standard advertisement. Those who want peace, lay down your own arms as well (no takers).

Like almost 2 years of election circus in the US federal election.

> I think your point (that people ought to be smart and strong enough to withstand all and any malign influence(?))

That’s absurd. I don’t conceptualize “people” as some not-me group.

Well I’m not Indian^W Pakistani but the principle is universal.

Here's a document I am currently reading for my research [0]. It contains some interesting definitions I hope you find helpful.

[0] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2021/6536...

Helpful?

> Here, disinformation refers to false, inaccurate or misleading information designed, presented and promoted intentionally to cause public harm or make a profit.

Is campaigning on lies a form of profit? You might win. These hypocrites really dare to present this as novel? Lying in politics?

What’s really the practical difference between this ostensibly oh-so clearly demarcated “disinformation” and less outright other-information? The difference is having a discourse fog which makes it practically impossible to conclude anything without sinking into a quagmire of rhetoric.

Here’s a “Beijing” statement, hypothetical:

> We the people of China

Ah! the eggheads exclaim. Propaganda! Clear disinformation since China is an authoritarian state (sorry, regime)—it can’t be a state “of the people”.

Here’s a “Washington” statement:

> The President does not suffer symptoms of senility

What is this? This is twenty different articles and op-eds back and forth on this topic:

- Well he went to the doctor 15 years ago and he said he was fine

- My good friend Joe Biden would never become demented—he would rather [redacted]

- I respect the President but it’s time for some young blood in leadership

- As a close aide to the President, blah blah

- He might not seem as sharp as 12 years ago but [diversion tactic]

Isn’t it amazing—you cannot peddle outright disinformation if you are sufficiently powerful, almost by definition; there is always some clown who will bat for you. And the result? A discourse fog. No one is a liar. No one is peddling “disinformation for profit.”

In conclusion: what we do are varying levels of information. But what these foreign forces do (because they are not here to defend themselves, and anyone who defends them (or just has a nuanced point of view) is just <regime>-puppet anyway) is disinformation because they clearly are X while they claim to be Y.

It seems natural that those who have power get to proclaim what is 'true' and what is 'false'. Foucault, Wittgenstein, Ayer, Chomsky, practically everyone who spared it a thought would agree with you.

That's a fundamental misunderstanding around the word "authority" (which we confuse with power in "western" language)

Firstly, what power says is immaterial with regard to actual truth or falsehood. That's why people wear T-shirts that say "Science is a bitch huh?". Certainly, millions may die because a man with a big gun, a big ego and a small penis swears that black is white, but ain't it always been so? Tomorrow you get to hold the gun, and suddenly you're "right".

But most importantly, "disinformation" has nothing to do with truth or falsehood. It's about intent. The word "intention" is right there. Otherwise what you have is "misinformation".

What pleases me about the linked definition is that profit and harm are deemed unacceptable intents. That scoops up every lying advertiser, every manipulative Big-Tech company, and every lying domestic politician into the "disinformation" net too, and for me that makes the world a better place. YMMV.

Indonesia's election is next week and they also impose 3 day "quiet day" where no political campaign may occur. I don't know if we'll have internet shutdown though.

How does cutting off communications prevent terrorist cells from executing their planned attacks?

The real reason is obviously that the ruling elite usurped and imprisoned Pakistan's most popular leader, which means the political situation is very volatile.

Bombs with mobile phones attached designed to trigger when the phone is called/texted?

Cheap battery powered mesh radio devices could just as easily trigger something, and be difficult to trace.

These are terror attacks, not three people trying to shoot the same target in a motorcade.

It impedes their situational awareness. If they're waiting on signals that never come, you win. If you capture one, he can't warn the others.

You know what they say about plans and first contact with the enemy...

I guess it's not a terrorist attack if nobody knows about it. Imagine you see the news "Poll site in the Bronx firebombed" right before you head out to vote. You're going to think twice about voting. But if you don't see that news story, you'll just go vote, because you don't know there's a risk of being killed.

The logic makes sense but I wouldn't like to see a media ban here. "Congress shall make no law..."

IN Pakistan army decides and is the real ruler. Elections are only a face to appear as a democratic sate. In fact Pakistan elite (including army higher ranks) just is there to milk the country and build estates outside (West/UAE/etc).

Isnt it also true that no democratically elected or coup-installed Prime Minister in Pakistan's history has ever successfully completed a single full term in office, ever since their independence[1]?

And if that is true, isn't Pakistan a glorified tin-pot republic, thats democracy only on paper & manages to stay alive at the mercy of the propping-up prowess of U.S. and U.K., to act as a lily pad[2] of sorts in the region?

[1]

Every time the gov’t topples (no Pakistani Prime Minister has completed 5 years in office), corruption/looting reaches even higher levels… …to replenish and grow the bounty that was paid to buy out votes in elections and in the parliament. Sad, but v familiar to Pakistanis. 12:08 PM · Apr 9, 2022

https://twitter.com/bznotes/status/1512870199338287106

[2] Cooperative security location

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_security_location

Funny way to express the $65 billion of FDI that China's put into Pakistan, along with joint development of the JF-17 and 47% of China's arms exports as a whole, isn't it?

Or has the near-total cut in US military aid to Pakistan over 2018-2022 been a delayed coup de grace, and should we expect the country to implode at any minute?

Nobody can afford Pakistan to implode I think. The fact they have nuclear weapons is like a giant blackmail file on the entire world.

This dynamics is the underlying principle of every democracy. Only the sophistication of the civilian facade differs.

If you want to see how fast things show their true colors stop paying "your" soldiers. When it happens due to breakdown of government-nation relationship coup or military pacification of civilians is imminent.

> ... every democracy ... If you want to see how fast things show their true colors stop paying "your" soldiers.

Laying off soldiers and officers have been quite common in democracies. It is not really a problem. I guess it is mainly a problem if there is social unrest to begin with and the layoffs are a spark and maybe not done in an orderly manor.

Laying off some soldiers is ok when done by soldiers.

The problem with social unrest is that government loses capability of collecting taxes and stops paying all soldiers and the military can't have that.

No.

More specifically, shouldn't this be "Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services for civilians on election day"?

I assume law enforcement, the military, and government officials are free to communicate and coordinate today.

There were reports throughout the day, that Polling station officials who were having difficulties, had no way of contacting the Election Commission or other important government offices, because of this ban.

Pakistan's neighbor, India, has also been shutting off the internet quite a bit. 84 times in 2022:

- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/25/a-tool-of-poli...

And Punjab had its internet severely restricted last March:

- https://www.wired.com/story/india-activist-manhunt-sikh-acti...

- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/21/punjab-interne...

(I post this as someone who loves the subcontinent.)

Read the article and comment is misleading.

It happened in very very few cities and for times when riots were being incited.

On other hand, Pakistan is all country internet washout and that multiple days in same week. Number is more than 100 in 365 days.

> It happened in very very few cities and for times when riots were being incited.

I mean, it's still bad. Not as bad as Pakistan, but still.

It'd be so cool if all our phones & laptops could have globally-unique addresses and talk to one another directly in a big global mesh.

You'd still need cables and satellites to deal with rural areas and to cross oceans, but you couldn't really switch that off.

Free speech would go through the roof!

Globally-unique addresses are also easier to censor

If devices talk directly to one another there's very little a central authority could do to censor communication

It might be true that devices could connect across the US-Canadian border, but most borders are dead spots.

I suspect that, when territory was being scammed, stolen, claimed, fought over, whatever... borders tend to develop in those places where there isn't a big population. And those borders have tended to remain empty. There will be exceptions, but not enough to matter.

Short of science fiction devices, I dunno wormholes or split-particle pairs or whatever, I don't think this is viable.

True, most connections would be within individual cities, so you would definitely need it to hook servers and satellites into the mesh so you can cross dead zones. But that would already be a huge win for humanity.

Presumably the people who control the data links between population centers could just cut off the Internet, no? Doesn't that largely defeat the anti-censorship advantages of something like this?

At worst, the mesh is no worse than what we have right now.

In reality there will always be some people moving around between cities, satellites and drones passing overhead, and enthusiasts setting up antennas.

If mesh devices become ubiquitous, and they will, it’ll be almost impossible to control.

> At worst, the mesh is no worse than what we have right now.

No, it won't make it easier to censor--no one is arguing that.

> In reality there will always be some people moving around between cities, satellites and drones passing overhead, and enthusiasts setting up antennas.

It's trivial for a regime to find people who are illicitly operating wireless backbone infrastructure (backbone is the stuff that connects a mesh cluster to the rest of the Internet); they're broadcasting a big, loud signal. And if it's not wireless backbone infrastructure, it's physical and thus the same problems present as today. And this is assuming the regime won't just forbid mesh devices, full stop (sure, a few might be smuggled in, but they're easily located and useless without mass adoption).

> If mesh devices become ubiquitous, and they will,

This is extremely unlikely. The arc of the Internet has bent toward centralization. Mesh implies tradeoffs, especially with respect to performance, and the overwhelming majority of consumers (and businesses) are going to pick performance over the abstract benefits of decentralization--mesh is unlikely to achieve the mass adoption necessary to make it useful even in a basic capacity.

There's still plenty a central authority could do, for example (1) banning mesh equipment altogether or (2) requiring that nodes in the mesh implement the government blacklist (and they could run nodes in the mesh to audit compliance). Pretty sure you need something more than mesh networking to make this work--you need an anonymous routing protocol so nodes in the middle don't know the address of the origin or destination nodes.

The users would need an incentive to relay others' traffic and run down their batteries faster. Mesh is also extremely slow. Just try using Tor as an example.

BitTorrent offered up the incentive of free downloads of copyrighted media. Bitcoin offered money.

You’re right - we’re many years of tech progress away from this dream. But it might become the standard new way of getting on the internet in future. Ubiquitous, always on, secure, and probably almost free.

Amateur radio exists.

Yes but not for high-speed data transfer

Seems like a normal practice for dictatorship-like countries. Happened too in Belarus in 2020: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_Belarusian_p...

Back in the days before teh interwebz were invented...

What if the gov't could shut off political advertising on TV for (say) 48 hours before any national election ? Candidates fall back on print(ed) media and radio. This would cut off many problems (imho).

Opportunity missed. And, too late now.

> Candidates fall back on print(ed) media and radio

Back in the day before the interwebz the army would just jail those in the media who didn't toe the line, and curtail access of the printed word.

The internet offered a way to disseminate information independent of other more controlled ways.

This has been a standard practice in many countries

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_silence

I don't understand what the government's story is here. How exactly does shutting down cell service "combat possible threats"?

It seems an interesting idea in a weird way.

Maybe redirect everything to the list of election programs.

I would first get mad then read them.

This is not uncommon across the border in the Indian territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Some years have seen dozens of connectivity blackouts with the stated goals of maintaining peace and order or disrupting terrorism.

Wow, thinking of the actually talented distributed workers in that part of the world.

> Pakistan has temporarily suspended mobile phone network

And not the fixed one?

The intent isn't to block voice calls, but (probably) spreading of misinformation via social networks and group chat apps.

Where the definition of "misinformation" is up to the government.

> The intent isn't to block voice calls

Then I wonder why they are blocking voice calls.

The idea is to stop people from encouraging others to vote. So they can keep the turnout as low as possible. Usually people who are politically motivated force their friends or relatives to cast vote.

I read the comments you guys probably have no idea what is going on in here. Let's talk about it from the start. It's 2021 and Imran Khan is the PM of Pakistan and US is leaving Afghanistan. Now US would certainly want to have their military airbases in Pakistan to keep an eye on Taliban government, they made an undercover request which was denied by Imran Khan on a Tv interview[1]. Which really unpleased the Biden Government. And then they started to hatch a plan to oust him. It finally started to happen in the start of 2022. The plan was to remove him through vote of no confidence. But Imran Khan found out, a US official formally asked to Pakistan Ambassador for removing him as PM through VONC, otherwise Pakistan will face consequences. Which happened in the most dramatic way by buying the members of Imran Khans party. You will be surprised to know that Pakistan Army was on paper with US. And that cipher was actually for Qamar Jawad Bajwa the Army chief of Pakistan forces. Well he was ousted.

He was ousted but not defeated. The day he was removed masses protested on the streets of Pakistan. He just wanted them to hold elections so that people can get to choose. For that he resolved his 2 provincial assemblies. In the mean while he survived 2 assassination attempts one time narrowly escaped the gun shots and second time planned killing by a moob.

According to Pakistani law after the dissolving assemblies Election commission has to hold elections within 90 days which did not happen until 2 years. And in 2023 August National Assemblies also completed its tenure. Which supposed to get members within 90 days. Which did not happen as well. Again abrogation of law.

During this time, as Imran Khan party named PTI (Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf) was popular. They tried to break his party through false flag operations against him accusing him for the master planner of attach on a military houses(termed 9th May) by his supporters who were protesting against his illegal arrest from the courtyard of High Court Islamabad. Hence they dismantled his party in a the most funny way possible. They will hostage someone and ask him to do press conference and confess that Imran Khan is the planner for 9th May. Thousand of supporters including women and party members was arrested and lots disappeared.

And then the announced the elections on 8th Feb. But they sentenced him for 24 years in different cases and dissolved their marriage accusing him for marrying his current wife before his period is done and sentenced 7 years both him and his wife. And Pakistan Supreme court took his party official sign for voters and declared each of his candidates contesting as independent.

So today was 8th February and election day, to prevent his voters from voting they turned of Mobile service which is still of at the time of writing and you will be surprised to know his party won with simple majority and election results are still awaiting.

You may get an Idea what is happening in here. And you will be surprised to know this 21st century regime change operation is going in Pakistan with the help of Pakistan Army by USA. And since then whenever us official were asked about Pakistan they replied this is according to the Laws of Pakistan. But they do not reply the same for Iran or Venezuela.

We want people to raise the voice of Pakistanis.

[1]: https://www.dawn.com/news/1630278

Sounds like a movie script.

I experience it, Imran Khan is former Cricket player and cricket worldcup winning captain he certainly give the big fight. Still not losing. Trust me he made Pakistani politics more entertaining than Netflix.

I bet some researcher will create a paper on productivity increase due to internet cut off days

How else to prevent misinformation?

The craziest thing is that Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And not only that, the weapons are at the disposal of the local (very high ranking) commanders. It also is a country where the military is really in charge, only occasionally giving back the control to a civilian government.

Sometimes people think that Eastern Europe is the most likely place to get nuked, or perhaps some American carrier off the coast of China. But in reality it's both Pakistan and India.

> in reality it's both Pakistan and India

Pakistan’s top brass is anti-India. They’re also somewhat rational. If Pakistan’s nukes are launched, it’s because the zealots took control. At that point, I’m betting on Israel or even one of the Arab monarchies (if not Islamabad itself) [1].

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cf/Sh...

>They’re also somewhat rational

It only takes one generation to forget everything.

> Pakistan’s top brass is anti-India

The top brass tried to negotiate a normalization of relations with India in 2019 at the behest of the UAE and Saudi.

It was supposed to be a legacy making policy of the former Chief of Army Staff Bajwa [0] but was scuttled by Imran Khan [1]

There is a bit of Qatar+Turkiye versus Saudi+UAE intrigue in this as well, as Imran Khan leaned pro-Qatar and helped them bypass the Saudi+UAE lead blockade on Qatar [2], which was a no-no for Saudi and the UAE.

Imran Khan had a decent domestic policy, but his foreign policy was basically pissing everyone off - from Saudi to UAE to India to the USA - and was what lead to his demise.

[0] - https://tribune.com.pk/story/2417903/gen-bajwas-india-peace-...

[1] - https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/imran-...

[2] - https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-east/2018-06-...

Well, one of those two countries has a no-first-use nuclear doctrine, so I imagine there's a probability conditional there.

TIL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_first_use#Countries_against...

Russia has a lot of unacknowledged "lost" soviet-era nukes that are actually still in its control.

I could see them detonating one in India/Pakistan as a false flag to try and kick off a broader exchange to distract the West from Ukraine.

What an insane conspiracy. They already invaded Ukraine what more distraction could they need.

You mean "conspiracy theory".

>What an insane conspiracy

Is english your second language? Conspiracy is not an accurate term for that, we are discussing hypothetical geopolitical strategy not something that might have happened.

>They already invaded Ukraine what more distraction could they need.

Please re-read my comment again, the context is obviously completely lost on you. The ukraine debacle is precisely what russia wants to distract _from_. Kicking off another major geopolitical crisis (tiawan invasion, india/pakistan exchange, war in gaza) are all things that would/are benefiting russia as it splits western focus.

And since you're so keyed in on the "conspiracy" word, I think it might surprise you to learn the the russian government/FSB is actively _conspiring_ to win their war in ukraine, just as ukraine is conspiring to not lose.

Doctrine is just a paper. It's not even constitution. It could be changed in a minute if necessary (or even post-factum or some sketchy justifications could be made up).

It surprises me sometimes, how much value people put in some documents, disregarding those who can change or ignore those documents.

Everything is just paper or words. The constitution? Words. Only power is power. Only shackles constrain. Even computer code is just code. But in my experience, documents count for something because of the result of violating the documents. If your experience is that nothing you've said or written holds water, then so be it. We will see, in time, whose approach leads whom to a better life.

The constitution holds power because the judiciary is independent from the executive and congress. This friendly adversarial tension creates belief in the constitution (similar to social belief in currency) which makes it harder to dislodge. That goes out the window in a dictatorship. It becomes more about the self interest of one person, and if the piece of paper is against that then they'll throw it out.

It's just words. If the President marched the army into the court, the judiciary would capitulate. Books won't protect them.

Not in Pakistan. Pakistan has had 40 years of direct marshal laws, 35 years of indirect marshal laws since 1947. Pakistan Army operate a state within the state. Where what constitution says matters less than what an army chief says. They control the judiciary by blackmailing them by their corruption charges or recording them necked, whom they can't control are forced to resign, who do not comply to pressure they storm the courts with the militant wings. They change sentiments and spread fear but using them for a suicide attack.

But this time, things changed. Public get to know what has been happening to their country since last 75 years.

> But in my experience, documents count for something because of the result of violating the documents.

I'll bite - what's the "result" of violating a "no first use of nuclear weapons" statement?

There are two cases. In one case, you got nuked back. In the other, the folks that you nuked aren't in much of a position to do anything, having been nuked and all.

What is the "result" in both cases? (If said result requires someone doing something, who is that said someone and why/how are they going to act against an entity that has used nukes recently?)

The result is that no one else can tolerate your nuclear ability after that. You don't become just an enemy of the guys you nuked, but everyone else as well. And nuclear weapons are far more capable than conventional weapons but you can survive being nuked. It's not the end of the world.

The problem follows after, when India can no longer convince America, Russia, or China that they can be trusted with nuclear weapons.

Economic sanctions would be devastating. India has limited fossil fuels and as of now a not yet fully indigenous defence industry. Being irresponsible nuclear users means all major powers will cut them off because they're a danger to all.

It isn't even clear that other world powers will settle for isolation. They may well require disarmament.

Credibility matters. One of the important aspects of having nuclear weapons is laying out the conditions in which you expect to use them, and a lot of international relations theory, especially in the military sphere, is about trying to analyze how you would expect states to respond to different situations.

I don't think anyone seriously expects a nuclear state threatened with imminent destruction to forgo use of nuclear weapons (even in the presence of a non-first use statement). The question is how close to that condition does a state have to be in before it decides to use nuclear weapons. For the states with explicit non-first use policies, the expectation is that it is very close indeed. By contrast, Pakistan has effectively an explicit first use policy: it will resort to nuclear weapons very early in a war. The US has a particularly mealy-mouthed policy, saying that it will only use nuclear weapons against nuclear states, but heavy vacillation on the threshold of their use in such conflicts. All of the other nuclear states basically state that their nuclear weapons are solely a defensive measure.

Would the country with a no first use happen to be the country with a prime minister and governors that encourage killing of their own country men with a different religion. Color me skeptical

> one of those two countries has a no-first-use nuclear doctrine

They're thinking about doing away with it in India due to the China factor (though politicians will always say it's because of Pakistan) [0][1].

It's kind of scary tbh. China expands it's arsenal to compete with the US. India gets scared and starts expanding it's arsenal in turn. Pakistan gets scared and they start expanding their arsenal as well. And this has caused all 3 countries to enter an arms race that is not going to slowdown anytime soon.

It's already having a destabilizing effect in Myanmar, Bangladesh, Maldives, Nepal, Afghanistan, Eastern Africa, etc

[0] - https://www.orfonline.org/research/nuclear-rethink-a-change-...

[1] - https://www.livemint.com/news/india/india-s-no-first-use-nuc...

This stuff is what keeps me awake at night.

"No rational person would use nuclear weapons first" Well, who's to say that the people in charge of the nukes are rational? All it takes is one madman and we could have one of the biggest disasters in human history. We tend to underestimate the likelihood of such disasters and don't prepare for them (COVID is one example.) One day, someone will fire a nuclear weapon at civilians and we just have to hope it isn't in our lifetime.

Nuke-wielding dictatorships are the scariest because they can eliminate the checks and balances in the way of a launch. If Putin falls ill tomorrow and thinks the Americans poisoned him, what's to say he won't nuke them as final revenge? What about Kim Jong Un? What about Xi Jinping?

> One day, someone will fire a nuclear weapon at civilians and we just have to hope it isn't in our lifetime.

Guessing you're not Japanese?

> But in reality it's both Pakistan and India

If you want to stay up at night - India, Pakistan, and China basically had a Cuban Missle Crisis level event in 2019-2020.

India and Pakistan almost went to war in 2019 after the Pulwama attack [0] and then India and China were a trigger away from starting a war over the Galwan river [1].

[0] - https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/25/india-pakistan-came...

[1] - https://theprint.in/defence/nearing-breaking-point-gen-narav...

There are disputed border areas between India and China, and the two countries have had multiple skirmishes there, but to prevent any serious escalation, the two countries have mutually agreed not to use firearms, so they mostly fight with melee weapons. This is to avoid escalation.

> the two countries have mutually agreed not to use firearms

The Border Peace and Tranquility Agreement from 1993 is over now after the intial clash on the confluence of Shyok and Galwan River, leaving casualties on both sides.

Indian and Chinese soldiers now patrol armed again.

After that initial clash, several additional clashes started, both India and China began mobilizing, and India considered launching artillery strikes on Chinese positions.

Read the article - it's written by the General Naravane, who was commanding the Indian Army at the time.

Oh no

This is pretty indefensible and indicates the results of this 'election' are likely fixed.

It is known that they are, given the main opposition party's leader is jailed and they're not allowed to campaign.

Why does it indicate that?

Every election in every country took place without Internet or (meaningful amounts of) cell phone service not that long ago.

Because in modern day the only reason to take that action is to manipulate votes.

i'm trying to understand how or why you would manipulate votes like this

call me crazy but i think mass-scale communication is a better way to manipulate votes, it allows people far away from each other to coordinate their numbers

but if you cut off their coordination mechanism they can't exchange information, and perhaps they might fear pushing out fake numbers in case the numbers of them plus a few others look strange. the best defense would be honesty

If people are going to vote a certain way out of fear or due to having been misled, cutting off communication is a safeguard against those people caning their minds or being convinced by facts. Just for one example.

i guess if they're making up their mind at the last minute

Looking at least at the US elections, I think there are plenty of people that do. Look at the whole Hillary's e-mails thing for example.

You don't need access to a phone to vote for whoever you were going to vote for anyway.

If you're making your choice based on breaking news on election day, you're the one being manipulated.

Pakistan is a sad tale. A country of 200 million+ with almost no future.

The elites are busy milking what’s left of the country before it flames out. The idiotic IMF continues giving them loans to support the extremely corrupt system..the US government also supports the extremely corrupt military.

This is what happens when corruption is built into the culture of your society and religious/tribal hullabaloo is more prioritized than economic and social development.

Just wait until the elites figure out they can also milk China for port access that doesn't require transiting the south china sea?

There's just the small matter of the Himilayas dividing mainland China from Pakistani ports.

If you wanted to build a cargo connection, the Himalayas would be a problem.

If you only want to siphon off construction funds, the Himalayas provide an excellent excuse for any lack of progress.

> A country of 200 million+ with almost no future.

It has great future, as China's vassal state.

The issue is foundational cannot be changed.

From Abottabad to Worse https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/07/osama-bin-laden-2011...

Corruption is a symptom of Pakistan's deeper systematic problems, not the cause. Whole books have been written about this. Unless you define corruption = anything bad that someone with power does.

It's also apparent that whenever democratic forces have been allowed to fix public systems in some small amount, corruption has gone down, or the system has become much more pleasant and efficient for the public to use.

Please don't take HN threads on generic flamewar tangents—and especially not nationalistic ones, regardless of which country you have a problem with.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: you've been breaking the site guidelines so often that I've banned the account. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39307588.

Well if you look at the US it's not like anyone can honestly say that the internet has had a very positive impact on the democratic process ...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com