But that’s where the other three factors kick in. It’s like they all had an epiphany — at the same time, on the same issue. The political mainstreaming of social media and the like has helped make it a target for a certain, cleansing sort. There’s few easier than the world of online. But then politicians got on the Internet bandwagon and turned social media into a battleground.Now, it’s the State with powerful surveillance tools and the individual citizen under threat.By arrangement with Dawn.But while demand is limited and production unlikely in the extreme, the oversight game has caught up and done what all overseers do when confronted by technological change: stirred panic over what they don’t understand and then latched on to the panic to justify extending their control.Internet use is climbing due to cheaper devices, faster access, more content — and also because of policy tweaks like infrastructure spending and 3G/4G licensing. New powers in the hands of old curmudgeons can have funny effects. More Pakistanis are going online.

And that’s never a good place for freedom to find itself here. There’s no real market for it and, more to the point, no real producers of it in the counter-culture. What’s happening?With so many different strands, some random, several opportunistic, and the mixing of the old with the new, a coherent tale is hard to find. More interesting are the attacks on the alleged transmitter of the latest alleged mischief: the world of online.That’s not really surprising. It could, though, just as easily have resulted in confusion.Thrilled, scared, flummoxed, aghast — if the mainstream political stuff can leave both participant and observer reeling, you can guess the impact that the farther reaches of the Internet could have on the puritanical voyeur. Like the occasional rants against cheap overnight mobile phone calls corrupting the youth and the half-hearted war on porn, the puritans and the corrupt could have continued to coexist in society.It’s happened all over the world, but there’s a local flavour to it here. The most basic difference being how the Internet works.You can’t bypass the State. Rewind to the early days of the private-TV boom. From that perspective, there is a need to reassert the perceived foundations of the State. But it’s not just that the Internet has gone mainstream, it’s that the battles online have gone mainstream.

As is now well known, the fear of being infected by an Indian perspective and the realisation of the nationalist potential of private media triggered a revolution, which was messy at first, but control was eventually mastered.The same impetus to control is again evident, but it sits at the confluence of different factors.Religion under threat is as old as, well, religion.Judges running amok, politicians moralising, the State crusading. There’s at least four of them, one of which is obvious.TV could be unleashed because the means to eventually harness it were obvious too.On to the confluence of the other new factors.Whatever the reasons, the infrastructure of surveillance has grown significantly.The surveillance State has grown. With the Internet you can, or can try to. Online went from something some people were doing to something everyone was talking about. From that perspective, there is a need to find easy targets. The misuse of religion for political and terroristic ends can now, in the softest, most incipient of ways, be called out.There is no evidence, none that has been publicly offered or credibly advanced in private, that there has been a surge in counter-religious narratives online. Flip it around — militants are misguided, but ultimately men of chemical anchors for sale faith who can be shown the right path with patience and through dialogue. There are only so many channels, owners and anchors, and few means of distribution.The need for control quickly became apparent. But zoom out a bit and it’s there all right