PPP says penalties too stiff under cybercrime bill

Shazia Marri also voices concern about powers given to investigation agency official

ISLAMABAD: Opposition Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) said on Friday that it is vehemently against the jail terms and penalties proposed in the finalised draft of the new cybercrime law for certain offences like cyber-stalking and unauthorised access.

With a majority in the upper house of parliament, the party’s support is critical for the government to pass the “Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill, 2015”.

PPP legislator Shazia Marri, who has also been part of the sub-committee that approved the draft law, has written a letter to the head of the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Information Technology Capt (retd) Muhammad Safdar Awan, expressing concern over the stiff penalties proposed in the law.

“To date, three meetings of this subcommittee have been held, but I strongly feel that further deliberations on the Bill are required until a reasonable consensus is reached,” she wrote. Marri voiced concern, in particular, about the powers given to an authorised officer of the investigation agency to enter a premise without warrant.



“Given the fundamental rights guaranteed in the constitution, ideally I feel that a warrant must be required to enter premises,” she wrote to the chairman of the committee.

The lawmaker said the age limit for the “offenders” of the law must be raised from the proposed 13 years owing to the fact that the use and accessibility of the internet is extremely common among children.

She objected to the imprisonment penalty imposed on the offences like “unauthorized access to information system or data” and unauthorised copying or transmission of data and suggested that only a fine be imposed.

Expressing serious concerns over a two-year jail-term for cyber-stalking she said, “I feel that people need to be reformed, and not just severely punished, in addition to which the PPC already addresses harassment. This section should either be deleted, or imprisonment removed and fine revisited. The punishment must be commensurate to the crime,” she added.

The legislator also called for rephrasing the section on ‘offences against modesty of a natural person or minor’, terming the language of the law ambiguous. She also suggested to re-define the service provider. “I feel that any public place that offers internet as a facility, may it be a restaurant, a coffee shop or library, etc, cannot be considered a service provider and treated as such.

Marri also objected to the authority given to PTA under section 34 of the draft law to block any website that violates the provisions of Article 19 of the Constitution (fundamental rights and principles of policy).

Published in The Express Tribune, September 12^th,  2015.