Big brother: Experts term Pakistan ‘most watched country’

Senate’s defence committee sensitises journalists about cyber breaches.

ISLAMABAD:

The 2013 global surveillance disclosure by a former contractor for the United States of America’s (USA) National Security Agency (NSA) revealed that the agency has also been tapping the phones and hacking the emails of thousands of Pakistanis.

The whistleblower claimed that the US was intensely spying on Pakistanis’ online communication systems, with 13.5 billion pieces of email, phone and fax communications intercepted.

Edward Snowden’s disclosure shows that although the journalists here are among the worst affected by illegal snooping, they still lack the knowledge to deal with the problem in future.



Pakistan is also considered one of the most dangerous countries for journalists and ranked 8th on Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) 2013 impunity index which spotlights countries where the killers of slain journalists go unpunished. Meanwhile, for its press freedom, Reporters without Borders Press Freedom Index 2013 has ranked it 159th out of 179 countries reviewed.

A study by Internews titled ‘Digital Security and Journalists --- A snapshot of awareness and practice in Pakistan’noted that journalists in the country are facing considerably high security threats, but they still seem laidback about their digital security despite the fact that digital communication breaches could seriously affect their physical security.

In the wake of Snowden’s revelation, the Senate Standing Committee on Defence held a workshop on Monday to sensitise media personnel and provided them with a Cyber Security Manual wherein the former NSA contractor is quoted as saying, “There were people in news organisations who didn’t recognise that any unencrypted message sent over the internet is being delivered to every intelligence service in the world. In the wake of this year’s disclosures, it should be clear that unencrypted journalist-source communication is unforgivably reckless.”



Addressing the participants of ‘Cyber Security for Journalists’ organised in collaboration with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung for defence reporters, Senate Standing Committee on Defence Chairman Mushahid Hussain Syed said that the training workshop was a step forward to involve journalists not only as stakeholders, but as partners in the endeavour regarding cyber security as well.

“This first of its kind seminar addresses our first line of defence in cyber security --- the media. Through such efforts we can neutralise one of today’s top unconventional threats to Pakistan’s secrets,” he told The Express Tribune.

He added that in these changing times, national security has to be redefined globally in general and locally in particular so that the approach is both transparent and inclusive while the media and the parliament should be considered the primary civilian stakeholders in the new policies.

“It is imperative to have discussions of this sort in Pakistan. Until recently, these issues were not very visible,” said Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung’s Resident Representative Ronny Heine while referring to Snowden’s revelations. He said that the idea behind having this session was to enlighten the media personnel that “Pakistan is the most watched country.”

Centre for Advanced Research in Engineering (CARE) Chief Executive Officer Dr Shahid Malik was also of the opinion that it was about time the country formulated its own indigenous national cyber policy.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 19^th, 2013.