Cyber Crime Bill ready to be sent to cabinet soon
ISLAMABAD: The draft of much-needed Cyber Crime Bill has finally been prepared and now it would be sent to the federal cabinet for approval in next a few days, sources told The News here on Sunday.
The sources said the Law Ministry had thoroughly reviewed each and every clause of the bill and after approval from the federal cabinet it would be presented in Parliament.“We have also approached International Telecom Union (ITU) before giving final shape to draft of the bill and now it can be said that it carries all necessary clauses that can help prevent cyber crimes in all possible manners,” an official said.
The draft of the bill focuses on financial crimes, cyber terrorism, defamation, data damage, electronic fraud, intellectual property crimes, email spoofing, cyber stalking, forgery, unauthorised access to computer systems/networks, theft of information contained in electronic form, virus/worm attacks, logic bombs, trojan attacks and password cracking.
The new law would not only extend to whole Pakistan but also to all such persons who commit an offence having detrimental effect on the security of Pakistan and its nationals or national harmony or any property or any electronic system or data in Pakistan at the time of commission of the offence.
All service providers would be required to retain traffic data for a specific time period for purposes of providing it to the investigation agencies that would be authorised to seek such data according to their requirements.
The sources said the Ministry of Information Technology had earlier sent a letter to all the ministries and state run institutions and asked them to give their suggestions and recommendations for cyber crime bill.
“More than fifty proposals and suggestions were received from the federal ministries and other public sector institutions. The ministry tried its best to incorporate all these suggestions in the bill that would be an all-inclusive bill to combat cyber crimes that are posing grave threats even to our security,” the sources said.
On December 31, 2007, the then president Pervez Musharraf promulgated a law called The Prevention of Electronic Crimes Ordinance 2007. However, this bill was not passed by the Parliament.
Talking to The News Minister of State for Information Technology and Telecommunication Anusha Rehman Khan said Cyber Crime Bill would be highly important in combating cyber crimes so they have tried their best to obtain input from all stakeholders.
“We have not only obtained proposals from the federal ministries but also approached ITU that practically helped a lot in preparing a much better draft of the bill,” she said. Anusha said now they were sending draft of the bill to the federal cabinet for final approval after which it would be presented in the Parliament.
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