A joint statement from international and domestic civil society organisations on Tuesday expressed serious concerns on the ‘Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill 2015’ – currently awaiting debate in the National Assembly – and demanded the bill be scrapped along with initiation of a “process of creating a new bill that reflects international human rights standards and respects the Constitution of Pakistan.”
The statement highlights the forcing of the bill through the NA’s Information Technology Standing Committee as an indication of the lack of consensus about the bill’s effectiveness in combating cybercrime in line with fundamental rights.
The statement reiterates that many of the provisions of the bill continue to pose a risk to, among other rights, the right to privacy.
The amended bill continues to mandate that service providers retain data about Pakistanis’ telephone and email communications for a minimum of one year.
“This requirement drastically expands the surveillance powers of the Pakistan government and goes against the growing consensus that the blanket retention of all subscribers’ data is an unlawful and disproportionate interference with the right to privacy,” reads the statement.
The bill also maintains provisions that allow for unchecked intelligence sharing with foreign governments. The bill would allow the federal government to unilaterally share intelligence gathered from investigations with foreign intelligence agencies without any independent oversight – an explicit violation of human rights, adds the statement.
Organisations demanding the bill be scrapped include: Privacy International, Article 19, Human Rights Watch, Association for Progressive Communications, Digital Rights Foundation, and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan among others.
The draft cybercrime bill was forcefully cleared by the National Assembly Standing Committee on Information Technology in September.
When the committee met two months ago, a copy of the final draft prepared by a sub-committee was put only before retired Capt Mohammad Safdar, the chairman of the committee.
From the moment the meeting commenced, Mr Safdar pushed the members to vote so that it could be sent to the parliament without a further delay.
However, PPP MNAs Shazia Marri and Nauman Islam Sheikh objected that they could not approve the draft bill until they read the final copy. PML-N MNA Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari also registered a complaint with the chair that like all other members he too did not get a copy of the draft bill to go through it.
