Govt making rules to curb social media propaganda
ISLAMABAD: The Ministry of Information Technology has told a parliamentary panel that it has started chalking out rules to combat false propaganda spread through social media platforms.
The National Assembly Standing Committee on Information Technology was told on Wednesday that PC-1 for a project aimed at preventing cybercrime has also been approved.
The NA panel, chaired by MNA Ali Khan Jadoon later constituted a subcommittee under MNA Zain Qureshi to review the Electronic Transactions (Amendments) Bill 2019 presented by MNA Fakhar Imam. The subcommittee after reviewing the bill will present its report in the next meeting of the committee.
Female members of the committee observed that parliamentarians were also subjected to cybercrimes committed through social media sites, including Facebook.
Naz Baloch of the PPP said the opposition parliamentarians including Nafisa Shah, Azma Bukhari and Shagufta Jumani have been a target of social media propaganda and Shah was recently presented as a beneficiary of the Benazir Income Support Programme, which offers stipend to poor households.
Baloch also asked the chairman if the government had accepted resignation of the IT minister Khalid Maqbool. The chairman said it was the NA speaker who could answer her question.
Siddiqui, convener of the MQM-P – an ally of the federal government at the Centre, had handed in his resignation last week over the government’s failure to fulfill its promises to the MQM-P. He had, however, made it clear that his party would continue to support the federal government.
Information Technology Secretary Shoaib Siddiqui briefed the committee and said work on the national roaming policy is under way for which advice and recommendations are being sought from the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) chairman.
He said under the new rules titled “Online Harm to Person”, false social media propagandists will be apprehended. The PTA chairman also briefed the panel and said the authority had taken action against two companies after they ran misleading campaign about 5G products.
The standing committee also raised questions about competency of Tania Aidrus, a former Google staffer, who has been hired by the prime minister to lead Pakistan’s digital initiatives.
Committee member Maiza Hameed and Naz Baloch demanded that Tania be summoned to the committee for a briefing with a report on her plans.
The IT secretary responded that Tania had proposed a five-pillar approach for revolutionizing Pakistan’s digital landscape. Dissatisfied with the response, Baloch said the policy of ‘pick and choose’ is not appropriate as the government offices, including that of the PM Office, are funded by public money.
“There must be an explanation for the entire nation even if anyone is called from abroad to serve the country,” she said.
The committee expressed its grave concerns over the absence of Ministry of Interior federal secretary in the third consecutive meeting of the committee. The chairman asked the committee’s secretary to summon the IT secretary and additional secretary so that the panel’s agenda could proceed.
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