ISLAMABAD: The National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) has developed an online reporting portal, aimed at countering online extremism, abuse of internet and social media.
Surf safe is an online reporting portal for Pakistanis to report extremist online-content freely, securely and anonymously. The other purpose of the web portal is to create eyes and ears in cyber-sphere to counter radical and extremist ideology in the online realm.
The implementation status (NACTA Review – December 2017) of National Action Plan (NAP) has revealed that the mission of Surfsafe 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 make internet a safer place for everyone.
It said in order to filter social media sites and enable vigilance against cyber-crimes, ‘Prevention of Electronic Crime’ Act-2016 was passed by the parliament and constant vigilance of internet traffic has resulted in the blocking of 1447 URLs which hosted extremist content.
NACTA and Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) are continuously coordinating on this issue.
The Review further revealed that a mobile application has been developed and is available at Google Play Store and Apple Store.
NACTA’s Android and iOS applications are mobile-based user-friendly systems which enable a common citizen to report any incidence of hate speech or extremist content in the form of video, audio, photo and URL/text visible to them online.