Curbing infiltration: Cybercrime draft bill ready, govt tells Senate

Senators suggest establishment of Inter-Service Cyber Command.

ISLAMABAD:

A draft legislative bill aimed at containing cybercrimes has been finalised and will be tabled in the house soon, the government informed the Senate on Monday.

State Minister for Interior Balighur Rehman made this announcement as he responded to lawmakers who expressed their apprehension over the increasing rate of cybercrime in the country and the absence of any related law. A motion was tabled by PPP Senator Karim Ahmed Khawaja in the upper house that triggered the debate.

The previous cybercrime law lapsed in November 2009 and since then, no legislation has come about to check burgeoning cyber espionage and crime. “But the present government prepared a comprehensive draft bill soon after it took power,” he maintained.

Presently, there is a special wing in the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to address the issue, however, the minister said that the increasing occurrences of cybercrime and the rapid advancement in technology calls for urgent and effective legislation.

He also informed the house that the FIA has succeeded in curbing tax evasion worth Rs1.5 billion by controlling grey trafficking during the last eight months.

Earlier, senators decried the rise in cybercrime and the absence of any proper law to check it.

Senator Mushahid Hussain Syed, who is the chairman of Senate Standing Committee on Defence, said that Pakistan is at the top on US security surveillance, which poses a serious threat to our internal security. He called for the urgent drafting of a national cyber security strategy to rein in the various forms of cybercrime.

He suggested that there should be an Inter-Service Cyber Command to secure the country from cyber infiltration. He said terrorists are now using Facebook, Skype and Twitter to coordinate terrorist acts, and this is difficult to check and monitor without proper legislation and implementation of laws.

Mushahid pointed out that Pakistan does not have its own internet server and this exposes the country to espionage as using servers of other countries is extremely insecure in terms of national secrecy and national security.

Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl group’s senator Talha Mehmood said the FIA wing is insufficient and ill-equipped to overcome the growing challenges of containing cybercrime and there is a need to establish a separate division equipped with the latest technology and subject-matter experts.

Condolence reference

The house paid rich tribute to former senator and seasoned journalist Fasih Iqbal, Haji Abdul Razzaq Yaqoob, the founding chairman of ARY Group, and the mother of Senator Rubina Khalid who passed away recently.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 25^th, 2014.