Cisco, Mcafee, Websense Decide Not to Help Pakistan

[Xahid]

Western Media has gone crazy with heroic news stories portraying superlative character of security companies, such as Cisco, Mcafee, Websense, Verizon and Sandvine ? who have decided not to submit proposals for upcoming centralized URL filtering system of Pakistan.

A blog at New York times writes:

In less than a month, five of eight companies have said they will not respond to Pakistan?s request for proposals, known as an RFP.

This was real funny, for those at least who had few minutes to read the RFP floated by ICT R&D Fund.

Here?s why: Check below highlighted text taken from RFP for National URL Filtering System:

So the tip for the best technology journalists and bloggers of west: Please spare few minutes and read the RFP carefully. These humongous security companies were never invited for the task in the first place.

I guess it was simple to understand.

You can view RFP here, and FAQs here.

By the way Cisco, Websense and Mcafee voicing against web censorship is even more hilarious, especially when:

• China?s great firewall is managed by Cisco
  
• Mcafee is offering URL filtering services in Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Iran, and Oman
  
• Websense is offering URL filtering services in Yemen
  

Check below tweet to see when Mcafee was caught with pants down

Source: ProPakistni.pk

[HawkMan]

They could still apply, they would just have to set up an office in Pakistan to develop the localized Pakistani deployment, which th would have to do anyway, and which was the purpose of that requirement, not that the whole solution had to be coded from scratch in Pakistan.