Fair Trial Bill: The end of privacy?
Laughably enough, FIA was struck off the bill and now only the police, ISI and IB can apply for warrants.
KARACHI:
The passage of the Fair Trial Bill in the National Assembly this week may mark the official death of privacy in Pakistan.
While the government introduced the bill citing that there were no comprehensive laws for surveillance and investigation, there are several questions on how the new law will be implemented.
That there is a need for a law on electronic surveillance isn’t disputed. A comprehensive law would allow the police to actually track down – without having to request the Inter-Services Intelligence, as it currently has to do – the electronic chain of communication used by suspects in cases of terrorism and crime. But, as experts have pointed out, this law is far from that. The process of how warrants will be obtained is not transparent at all, and requires little initial evidence for a government agency to request a warrant.
It could also make for a severe infringement of privacy of citizens, given that it would collect video recordings, telephonic conversations, e-mails and text messages, in fact any transactions at all.
It would also include the use of “human intelligence” – putting spies on the case.
While the initial draft of the bill allowed every law-enforcement and intelligence agency, as well as agencies who work on breaches of national security and any agencies that the government notified in the future, to obtain warrants, the bill that has passed cut down on this number dramatically. Laughably enough, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) was struck off the bill and now only the police, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Intelligence Bureau (IB) can apply for warrants. This would then either lead other agencies to use alternate routes to obtain surveillance, or limit their investigations. The amended bill also removes the use of ‘bugging’ for surveillance, but the government can approach telephone service providers for information and interception.
The larger question is whether the government can implement this bill. Current laws – such as the Criminal Procedure Code and the Anti-Terrorism Act – require amendments to make them up to date, and many clauses of these laws are not in practice or are ignored.
Secondly, are law-enforcement agencies even equipped to carry out electronic surveillance?
At present, the level of investigation in Pakistan by law-enforcement agencies is shoddy at best and negligent at worst, failing to take into account witnesses, concrete evidence and the paper trail. Extrajudicial confessions are nearly acceptable in Anti-Terrorism Courts, and the way evidence is handled at crime scenes would make anyone cringe: bystanders are allowed to walk over the scene, handle (and even take away) evidence, fingerprints are not collected properly and the police is able to obtain phone records and emails by requesting the ISI to provide them with data.
Use of surveillance and phone taps has been used against politicians for many years, most recently in the Memogate scandal with the use of alleged BlackBerry Messenger conversations between Mansoor Ijaz and then ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani. There have often been reports of agencies allegedly collecting data on parliamentarians, and, in 2011, two female MNAs complained in the National Assembly that their phones were tapped by law-enforcement agencies.
(Read: Big Brother Inc.)
Published in The Express Tribune, December 22nd, 2012.
The passage of the Fair Trial Bill in the National Assembly this week may mark the official death of privacy in Pakistan.
While the government introduced the bill citing that there were no comprehensive laws for surveillance and investigation, there are several questions on how the new law will be implemented.
That there is a need for a law on electronic surveillance isn’t disputed. A comprehensive law would allow the police to actually track down – without having to request the Inter-Services Intelligence, as it currently has to do – the electronic chain of communication used by suspects in cases of terrorism and crime. But, as experts have pointed out, this law is far from that. The process of how warrants will be obtained is not transparent at all, and requires little initial evidence for a government agency to request a warrant.
It could also make for a severe infringement of privacy of citizens, given that it would collect video recordings, telephonic conversations, e-mails and text messages, in fact any transactions at all.
It would also include the use of “human intelligence” – putting spies on the case.
While the initial draft of the bill allowed every law-enforcement and intelligence agency, as well as agencies who work on breaches of national security and any agencies that the government notified in the future, to obtain warrants, the bill that has passed cut down on this number dramatically. Laughably enough, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) was struck off the bill and now only the police, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Intelligence Bureau (IB) can apply for warrants. This would then either lead other agencies to use alternate routes to obtain surveillance, or limit their investigations. The amended bill also removes the use of ‘bugging’ for surveillance, but the government can approach telephone service providers for information and interception.
The larger question is whether the government can implement this bill. Current laws – such as the Criminal Procedure Code and the Anti-Terrorism Act – require amendments to make them up to date, and many clauses of these laws are not in practice or are ignored.
Secondly, are law-enforcement agencies even equipped to carry out electronic surveillance?
At present, the level of investigation in Pakistan by law-enforcement agencies is shoddy at best and negligent at worst, failing to take into account witnesses, concrete evidence and the paper trail. Extrajudicial confessions are nearly acceptable in Anti-Terrorism Courts, and the way evidence is handled at crime scenes would make anyone cringe: bystanders are allowed to walk over the scene, handle (and even take away) evidence, fingerprints are not collected properly and the police is able to obtain phone records and emails by requesting the ISI to provide them with data.
Use of surveillance and phone taps has been used against politicians for many years, most recently in the Memogate scandal with the use of alleged BlackBerry Messenger conversations between Mansoor Ijaz and then ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani. There have often been reports of agencies allegedly collecting data on parliamentarians, and, in 2011, two female MNAs complained in the National Assembly that their phones were tapped by law-enforcement agencies.
(Read: Big Brother Inc.)
Published in The Express Tribune, December 22nd, 2012.