On April 16 2015, the National Assembly IT Standing Committee passed Version 4 of the draft of the Pakistan Electronic Cybercrimes Bill. The current revision of the bill, now known as the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill, is linked below. Post-2014, the consultation process was undertaken behind closed doors without the necessary public oversight and consultation from civil society stakeholders. Along with other rights groups, we are disturbed at the manner in which the bill has been revised, in effect criminalising freedom of expression, the right to privacy, and curtailing civil liberties.

Article 34, for example, permits “authorised” officers of the state to block or remove any information if the state:

“considers it 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.”

Given that the government has not permitted civil stakeholders from providing input, how these terms have been defined in the context of the bill is problematic, and possibly subject to broad interpretations that may not permit in-depth critical analysis of the failures of this bill.

Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill 2015

After the expiry of Pakistan Electronic Crimes Ordinance in November 2009, there was certainly a need to have a comprehensive law to deal with crimes committed over the Internet. It was, however, not high in the government's priority list. But after a slumber of 5 years, the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication finally got to work and prepared a draft bill (Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2014) in February last year.

Last month, it was reported that after one year of preparing the draft "in consultation with other stakeholders" the Ministry was planning to send it to the Prime Minister to table it in the National Assembly.

Except that consultations—before and after the bill was drafted—were largely ignored.

Rights groups, including our own, had raised several reservations on last year's draft, which the current version of the bill didn't take into consideration. Keeping this in view, the Chairman of the National Assembly Standing Committee on IT has now formed a 4-member sub-committee of MNAs to review, amend and finalize the bill within 14 days so that it can be tabled in the Assembly.

We have been working with international organizations, including Article 19 and Privacy International, to dissect the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2014 over the past one year and propose these changes in the draft to bring it up to par with International human rights laws.

We reiterate that the lack of procedural safeguards against surveillance activities carried out by intelligence agencies poses a serious threat to human rights, especially the right to privacy; we also emphasise the importance of establishing a competent independent oversight mechanism that has the ability to access all potentially relevant information about state actions. Further, we highlight the lack of clear definitions in the draft law, rendering it open to abuse in its application, and are concerned by the overly broad offence of cyber-terrorism it would

In addition, we have the following four separate comments on the draft law and its implications for the

1. Information-sharing with foreign governments and entities should be regulated by specific laws and subject to independent oversight

2. A clear and accessible legal regime should govern any data copied and retained by state authorities

3. Requiring mandatory data retention by service providers threatens the right to privacy

4. Service providers should not be required to keep the fact of real-time collection and recording of data secret indefinitely

The current revision of the draft bill is embedded below. Please feel free to send us your comments, we'll try to submit those, along with our own, to the sub-committee reviewing the draft.

The Draft Bill

Our Detailed Comments

Date: 21-23 January 2015
Place: Brussels, Belgium

Computers, Privacy & Data Protection (CPDP) is a non-profit platform originally founded in 2007 by research groups from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Université de Namur and Tilburg University. The platform was joined in the following years by the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique and the Fraunhofer Institut für System und Innovationsforschung and has now grown into a platform carried by 20 academic centers of excellence from the EU, the US and beyond.

As a world-leading multidisciplinary conference CPDP offers the cutting edge in legal, regulatory, academic and technological development in privacy and data protection. Within an atmosphere of independence and mutual respect, CPDP gathers academics, lawyers, practitioners, policy-makers, computer scientists and civil society from all over the world to exchange ideas and discuss the latest emerging issues and trends. This unique multidisciplinary formula has served to make CPDP one of the leading data protection and privacy conferences in Europe and around the world. The panels of CPDP2015 will focus on key issues that cover all current debates: the data protection reform in the EU: European and Global developments, mobility (mobile technologies, wearable technologies, border surveillance), EU-US developments concerning the regulation of government surveillance, e-health, love and lust in the digital age, internet governance and privacy, and much, much more.

For more information and registration: cpdpconferences.org. Follow CPDP on Facebook (CPDPconferencesBrussels) and Twitter (@ cpdpconferences). Contact: info@cpdpconferences.org

Cross-posted from Jasoosi Band Karo

Many of us, no matter where in the world we live, are a target of mass surveillance, one way or the other. Either by our own government or by the governments of other countries where our Internet communications reside or pass through, or by both. Is it really necessary to surveil everyone? How does the human right to privacy hold up? Shouldn’t this be public knowledge if blanket mass scale surveillance is being carried out on our communication?

Questions like these made Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to lead a global effort to apply existing human rights laws in the context of this age of surveillance that we live in. The collective effort, comprising of “over a year of consultation among civil society, privacy and technology experts,” resulted in the publication of International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance. Called the 13 Principles for short, the document which lists a set of rules for the world governments to adhere to if they must engage in mass surveillance, was formally launched in September last year.

Today marks the beginning of a week dedicated to the anniversary of the publication of the principles. Digital Rights Foundation is also one of the signatories of the 13 Principles. As a signatory, we want to take this opportunity to share the principles with the broader public in Pakistan. Every day from today, Sep 15, till Friday, Sep 19, we will be speaking about the principles in the Pakistani context. The aim is nothing but to secure the privacy that you, us, and everyone deserves. You should follow the conversation on our Twitter and Facebook feeds, if you don’t already.