Policing our cyberspace

The new cyber-crime bill, hastily approved by the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Information Technology, now awaits ratification by parliament. Once it becomes law, it will equip the state with unfettered powers to police the hitherto free realm of social media.
Political caricaturing, criticism, dissent will become criminal offences under this proposed law. It will also introduce a state-approved benchmark of morality into the Pakistani cyberspace, without defining the basis of such a moral code. More ominous is the removal from the bill of the checks and balances that would prevent investigating agencies from misusing the powers vested with them under the proposed law to prosecute individuals who in turn will have no recourse under that very law to argue their innocence. Arrest, prosecution and conviction will be determined, therefore, on the whims of the investigating officers, rather than proof, which they are not required to provide under the proposed law.
The government’s official response to criticisms of the bill from civil society, NGOs and media, has come in the form of customary denials and platitudes that the bill as a well-thought-out document aims at promoting the welfare of the masses through the protection of their religious and political susceptibilities, which till now, were open to exploitation by unknown miscreants prowling the cyber landscape. The official statement also assures us that somehow, the logical outcome of the enactment of this law shall be the lifting of the ban on YouTube, and the introduction of a sterilised version of the popular internet video database – adapted to the conservative Pakistani palette.
Together with other recent draconian measures, such as the removal of the moratorium on the death penalty, the setting up of military courts and the attempts to interfere with and muzzle the freedom of the electronic media, this is yet another important and significant step in our regression into a state that aims to secure its political and economic power through the coercion of its citizens’ right to challenge, debate and influence public policy.
We are increasingly becoming a sham democratic state, with the powers that be apparently eager to transport us back in time to the Pakistan of the 1980s, when General Ziaul Haq consolidated his hold over the country by clamping down on freedom of speech, thought and any and all political action.
What the government needs to pause and consider is how it will fare after the bill becomes law, and when eventually it is perhaps no longer clasping the reins of power. Will the party in power then not use this very law to ensure that all opposition measures, to canvas support in the public sphere, through the medium of social media, are summarily outlawed with no recourse to the fundamental right of political dissent? Not only will members of the opposition political parties be targeted under the current version of the law, which requires no evidence that may normally be upheld in a court of law, but also those members of civil society who choose to advocate the opposing political view.
And what of the military establishment engaged as it is in an existential fight against terrorist groups across the length and breadth of the country challenging the writ of the state? Will it not consider it expedient to utilise this law in the interests of ‘national stability’?
What of our youth who have grown up in the world of information technology, through the agency of which, for the first time in Pakistan’s history, they are slowly but surely developing a political consciousness? Is the government ready to have its name written in history as the political party that prematurely aborted the growth of that political consciousness, essential as it is to ensuring that Pakistan develops into a mature progressive, free and liberal democratic state? What answers will the members of parliament, who may eventually ratify this law, give to the aggrieved families whose unsuspecting children may be picked up under this law and prosecuted for merely voicing their opinions?
And what of extremists, the real miscreants who lurk in our tangible physical real-space, ever on the lookout for opportunities to murder innocent men, women and children? Will this law not provide them with further outreach to exact mayhem and destruction through the agency of certain laws? Will it not facilitate these anti-state thugs to also police our cyberspace and impose their narrow agenda through terror tactics, such as those being used by Daesh in the Middle East?
As I write this the government has succeeded miraculously in securing $42 billion of investment from China to catalyse economic progress in Pakistan. It is a landmark achievement and the government deserves credit for its hard work and sound planning in engaging the interest of our Chinese neighbour in such a concrete manner. It is positive measures like these that seek to alleviate the plight of the masses of Pakistan, serve to uplift our status as a modern democratic state, and demonstrate the ability of the current government to engage in rational, intellectual and unbiased thinking which ought to be promoted.
The converse: the enactment of retrogressive, coercive laws in the public sphere ought to be anathema to a government that claims to work solely for the interest of the people of Pakistan. The cyber-crime bill must be critically analysed and amended to include the necessary safeguards for the protection of the peoples’ democratic right to dissent and freedom of speech, and to ensure that cyberspace and social media remain open for intellectual debate on social, moral and political issues as in other progressive and enlightened societies of the world.
Let parliament see to it that no unjust law passes into the statute book and people’s rights are firmly protected.
The writer is a freelance columnist.
Email: kmushir@hotmail.com
Twitter: @kmushir