Pakistan to monitor Google, other sites for 'blasphemy'

Pakistani authorities on Friday put seven major websites, including Google and YouTube, under watch for containing material deemed offensive to Muslims, officials said.

Judge Mazhar Iqbal ordered Pakistan's Telecommunications Authority (PTA) to block the websites due to "material against the fundamental principals of Islam and its preaching," according to a copy of the judgment obtained by AFP.

Pakistan shut off Facebook for nearly two weeks last month in a storm of controversy about a competition to draw the Prophet Mohammad and has restricted access to hundreds of online links because of perceived blasphemy.

While the PTA quickly implemented the earlier ban against Facebook, regulators told AFP on Thursday that they had yet to receive the order.

"We have not yet received any directives from the ministry of information technology. The ministry is the decision-making authority," Khurram Mehran, a PTA spokesman, told AFP.

Blasphemy is a sensitive issue in Pakistan. Five people were killed in protests in 2006 over the publication of cartoons deemed blasphemous in Danish newspapers a year earlier.

Latif Khosa, adviser to the prime minister on information technology, said the government had monitored websites for any material prejudicial to the "security of Pakistan."

Agencies