Cyber Crime Act — blurred lines leave no room for peaceful dissent

Karachi

With the controversial Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill, 2015 officially becoming an Act, civil society activists were still putting in all possible efforts to pressurise the government authorities into reconsidering the decision, or at the least introducing necessary amendments in it.

Passed by the National Assembly and signed by the President of Pakistan last month, it seemed that users of the cyberspace were blissfully unaware of the consequences of the law.

In an attempt to create awareness regarding the bill and its impact on political and social discourse, the National Students’ Federation (NSF) held a session at the University of Karachi (KU), on Friday.

Explaining the process of changes brought about in the bill and the concerned authority’s lack of seriousness over it, digital rights foundation Bolo Bhi’s director Fareiha Aziz stated that following the National Action Plan, the initially prepared 44-page cyber crime bill was replaced with a 13-page document, by the government.

However, she added that, “Protests by civil society representatives and opposition parties in assemblies resulted in the bill being revised, but not whole-heartedly; the entire exercise it seemed was done to prove that the reservations were taken into consideration.”

Given that the attendees were mostly students who frequently use the cyberspace, Fareiha got them to understand the dangers that followed with the passing of the law which included severe consequences of merely liking, commenting or re-tweeting a post.

“If someone shares a post about a political idea which is dubbed anti-state, then the person posting it as well as the person engaging with the post in any manner would both be punished.” The same procedure would follow for memes which usually go viral owing to a sense of humour attached to them, but they could now easily be equated to ‘harming a person’s reputation’, she added.

Speaking of blanket banning of websites through keywords, a common practice of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), she informed that in an incident some medical students had contacted the digital rights organisation complaining of their inability to access a website for cancer research.

The website, it turned out, had been blocked by the authority since the content included names of female reproductive organs, the mere mention of which is otherwise deemed ‘objectionable’ in our society, the Bolo Bhi director added.

Further highlighting the Act’s shortcomings, she informed that “Under the guise of blasphemy, hate speech, pornography, the law will make people who had not even committed the crimes vulnerable owing to its vague language.”

With people heavily relying on WiFi networks today, it was to be noted that authorities could extract information from any IP address through which any ‘objectionable’ information was learned to have been shared. To add to that, information stored on the IP over the past one year could be extracted against an otherwise time frame of 90 days.

“Through traffic data, the content of any user can be taken for surveillance purposes rather if a user connects to a different ISP address, the holder of that address would be accountable for the sites accessed by the other user.”

Although the bill has become a law, it can always be challenged in court which is why people ought to know about the clauses not made public earlier on, Farieha observed. “We would keep trying to make the law beneficial for people instead of shutting any space for dissent,” she added.

Correlating the bill with the current political scenario of the country, former NSF central organiser Khurram Ali, said any attempts to force-feed people a single narrative would only widen the rift between the state and its people.

“Our history has taught us how use of coercion as a means to quell dissent resulted in. It only inflames mistrust among the people who always resort to violence later.”

We need to realise that exactly as print media once had significance, social media today enjoyed the same standing, and so instead of putting a muzzle, the state should give room to mixed opinions because otherwise the youth and society would both relapse, he added.

Even after seven decades since the country’s inception, Ali said that people could still not discuss some institutions let alone criticise them.

“Targeting political parties would never help the state until and unless other state institutions including the armed forces are questioned.”

Laws forcing people to align with the narrative of the state instead of their own, would not prove fruitful; instead would culminate in those exercising freedom of speech being harassed which would naturally lead to frustration and violence, Ali added.

He encouraged students to take initiatives and create awareness regarding such laws because in this digital age where information was only one touch away, creating impediments in its access would mean living in times bygone while the entire world progressed.