KARACHI: National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) has developed a smartphone app ‘Chaukas’ under its Tat’heer programme, aimed at countering online hate speech in Pakistan, according to a local English daily.
Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal, launched the app at the Nacta headquarters on Monday under Tat’heer’s Surfsafe portal.
“Surfsafe” is an online reporting portal for Pakistanis to report extremist online content freely, securely and anonymously. The other purpose of the responsive web portal was to create eyes and ears in cyber-sphere to counter radical and extremist ideology in the online realm.
Tat’heer, which means “to sanitise”, has been conceived to counter radicalism and extremism on the internet — which roughly 35 million Pakistanis have access to.
The implementation status (NACTA Review – December 2017) of the National Action Plan (NAP) revealed that the mission of surfsafer (https://surfsafe.pk) is to counter online extremism, map and eliminate extremist content, help victims of extremism by regaining space for values of moderation, love and fraternity in cyber-sphere through community participation and ultimately making the internet a safer place for everyone.
However, Digital Rights Foundation’s Nighat Dad claimed that the app was not easy to use.
