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November 26, 2015 - Comments Off on The Sorry Tale of the PECB, Pakistan’s Terrible Electronic Crime Bill

The Sorry Tale of the PECB, Pakistan’s Terrible Electronic Crime Bill

This blog post was originally published on Electronic Frontier Foundation's website.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a government, in the wake of a national security crisis—or hostage to the perceived threat of one—will pursue and in many cases enact legislation that is claimed to protect its citizens from danger, actual or otherwise. These security laws often include wide-ranging provisions that do anything but protect their citizens' rights or their safety. We have seen this happen time and time again, with the US and its PATRIOT Act, to Canada's recently implemented and draconian C-51. The latest wave of statements by politicians after the Paris bombing implies that we will see more of the same, very soon.

Not keen to be left out, Pakistan has now joined the ranks of countries using “cybercrime” and terrorism to rewrite the protections for their nationals' privacy and right to free expression. In January 2015 the Government of Pakistan drafted the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill (PECB). Ostensibly, the PECB was written to address pressing new digital issues, such as cyberstalking, forgery, and online harassment. The reality is the PECB contains such broad legal provisions that that it would criminalize everyday acts of expression while undermining the right to privacy of Pakistani citizens.

The PECB was introduced very shortly after the government of Pakistan established its National Action Plan, a comprehensive state-level project to combat terrorism after armed men linked to the Taliban attacked an Army-run school in the city of Peshawar, killing 141 people, 132 of whom were children, in December 2014. The PECB, thus, became part of the NAP: a political product intended to make control of political expression an official role of the government.

Much like its international counterparts, the PECB skews in favour of national security—loosely defined—while ignoring civil liberties. Section 34 of the PECB, for example, gives the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) powers to block objectionable content and websites, with very vague, unclear ideas as to what constitutes ‘objectionable'. If the PTA determines that it is “necessary in the interest of the glory of Islam or the integrity, security or defence of Pakistan or any part thereof, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency or morality,” then the authorities can censor it.

Do you pass messages via Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms? Under the PECB, if those messages are “obscene” or “immoral”, you may be committing a criminal offence—again, there is no clear definition of what constitutes either “obscene” or “immoral.” . Even if one does manage to think clean thoughts, sending an email or a message without the recipients permission is a criminal offence, under Section 21. A lack of clearly defined clarifications and explanations gives sweeping power to investigating agencies, with the ability to implicate, fine and imprison anyone for sending a single email without prior consent.

These provisions and others in the drafted bill have led to condemnation from Pakistani rights organizations, international groups including Article 19, Human Rights Watch and Privacy International, and from Pakistan's legal and media communities.

My own organization and many others have been pushing Pakistan's government to retract the drafted PECB, and to include amendments that incorporate civil liberties concerns. The political atmosphere has the government generally reluctant to open up the drafting process to civil society. Organizations, activists and members of Pakistan's nascent tech industry spent most of 2015 calling upon the Pakistan National Assembly's Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecommunication to withdraw the drafted PECB for further study and amendments.

On September 17th, however, the Standing Committee decided to approve the draft and send it on its way to the National Assembly. Actually, to be more precise: copies of the draft were not given by the drafters to other committee members. When they objected, and stressed that the drafted bill could not be approved without review, they were overruled by the committee chair, who said that as he had seen the draft, that would be sufficient to pass it onto the National Assembly.

Anusha Rehman, the Minister of State for IT & Telecommunications, has defended the PECB, asserting that “safeguards have been ensured against any expected misuse.” But as it is currently written, the PECB contains little in the way of safeguards. Suggestions by civil society and lawyers have been consistently ignored.

There is hope, however:  a growing number of government officials have not only come to realise how draconian the drafted legislation could be, but have publicly come out against it. Senator Shahi Syed, the new chairman of the Standing Committee, declared on January 9th 2016 that he would not pass the bill when it come to the Senate, as he stated that it was badly flawed, had been passed in haste without consultation, and against freedom of speech. It is tentative, as we have only just begun the new year, but it is a glimmer of hope nonetheless.

What Pakistan needs is a cybercrime bill that progressively and effectively balances security and civil liberties. The current PECB text, badly drafted and politically compromised, is so far away from that goal that it needs a complete overhaul.

Pakistan's lawmakers need to know how broken the PECB is. EFF and Digital Rights Foundation have created a tool that lets you send a message to key Senators and Members of the National Assembly via Twitter.

Take action now, and stop the PECB from undermining Pakistan's online future.

This guest post was written by Nighat Dad, the founder and executive director of Pakistan's Digital Rights Foundation, and research associate Adnan Chaudhri.

November 15, 2015 - Comments Off on Facebook’s 2015 Global Government Requests Report Highlights Growing No. of Demands by Pak Govt

Facebook’s 2015 Global Government Requests Report Highlights Growing No. of Demands by Pak Govt

No. of User/Account requests made by the Pakistani Govt between January - June2015

The no. of user/account requests made by the Pakistani government between January - June 2015. For earlier Pakistan government requests, please click on the image.

In the wake of Snowden, it has become important for large tech corporations to be transparent about their interactions with governments ie requests to either access or remove data from particular social media or websites. Facebook and Google have in recent years released transparency reports that announce the number of data removal/access requests by governments.

On Wednesday 11th 2015 Facebook released their newest Global Government Requests Report, “as part of a broader effort to reform government surveillance in countries around the world by providing more transparency" on a country by country basis. The report can be found here.

Relating to Pakistan in particular, it was revealed that for the period January 2015 – June 2015 there were 192 government requests, with 275 users/accounts requested, with 58.33% of these requests resulting with some “data...produced.” This is an increase from the July 2014 – December 2014 reporting period, where 100 requests were made, 152 users/accounts data requested, and 42% of requests resulting in some data. Going by the increase in current and past government request data, it is more than likely that the number of requests by governments will increase over time.

Facebook and other tech corporations may be taking steps to prove their commitment to respect and protect their users, but it is not enough to take them at their word. While one can approve of this action being taken by Facebook and other corporations, we must be cautious and restrained in our praise. Facebook and other large tech corporations are usually reliant on these same governments to allow them to operate in non-US territories. The 2013 Snowden leaks also revealed that Facebook was an active participant in the NSA's PRISM surveillance programme, wherein information was shared by tech companies with US intelligence agencies, ostensibly to detect foreign threats to the United States of America. And in 2010, let us not forget, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said that privacy was no longer a “social norm”.

The 2015 Corporate Accountability Index released by Ranking Digital Rights – designed to evaluate “world’s most powerful Internet and telecommunications companies on their public commitments and disclosed policies affecting users’ freedom of expression and privacy “ - ranks the commitment of Facebook and others in regards to the quality of those steps being taken. In regards to Facebook, it found that its transparency efforts were not factoring in Instagram and Whatsapp data – two platforms that it purchased in 2012 and 2014, respectively, with a combined global user-base of 13 million users. Ranking Digital Rights gave Facebook an overall score of 41%, which breaks down into 62% for commitment, 35% for freedom of expression, and 36% for privacy. Its score places Facebook 6th out of the 16 corporations evaluated. The 2015 Corporate Accountability Index can be found here.

As Ranking Digital Rights and other watchdog organisations observe, tech corporations “exert growing influence over the political and civil lives of people all over the world”, and a result these “companies share a responsibility to respect human rights.” Facebook and its fellow tech companies must do more to shoulder that responsibility, and must do more to prove that the safety, welfare and rights of their users matter to them, or else they could face a growing backlash from the users, their customer base.