Staff Report
ISLAMABAD: National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Defence was on Monday briefed over compliance from Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and other social media platforms besides action against cybercrime acts in the country.
During the meeting headed by MNA Amjad Khan, it was briefed that 94,000 complaints regarding cybercrime were reported in the country last year. “We are looking into every complaint and will not spare anyone,” the secretary interior said. NACTA officials while briefing the National Assembly’s standing committee lamented that social media platforms are least interested in responding to their requests for action.
“Facebook even does not respond to our requests,” the NACTA official said while also lamenting the absence of data protection law and urging lawmakers to play their role in this regard.
The PTA officials during the hearing said that they act mainly on the directives of the FIA and had so far shut down all major obscene websites in the country. “The complaints regarding blasphemy cases have also declined after effective measures,” the official said. He further shared that TikTok responds to their 64 percent requests, following by 35 percent compliance from Twitter.
The FIA official during the meeting of the National Assembly’s standing committee on Defence said that they were conducting training of the officials, however, the process has hit the snags as currently they only have the option of online training.
“Classroom and foreign training have been suspended owing to COVID-19,” he said adding that online training has not yielded that much positive result.
Earlier in March, the Peshawar High Court (PHC) had ordered the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to ban TikTok (later the ban was lifted), the popular social media platform for entertainment videos, over proliferation of videos “spreading obscenity in society”.
PHC Chief Justice Qaiser Rashid Khan gave the order while hearing a petition against the social media platform. PTA Director Kamran Gandapur and deputy attorney generals Amir Javed and Asghar Kundi were also present in court. Justice Khan said videos being uploaded to TikTok were “unacceptable for Pakistani society”. “TikTok is affecting most of the youth. Reports being received about the platform in Peshawar are sad.”
