Pakistan’s cyber dilemma
Our leaders are a group of professional thinkers and planners. This has been proved by the ridiculous plans that they come up with to curtail terrorism. Everyone had laughed at our ex- Interior Minister Malik for suddenly closing down cellular phone services whenever ‘HE’ thought the country was at risk, I am sure he took millions from these companies to not ban them completely. Such actions might be used as a stop gap procedure but cannot be used for long term restricting of terrorism.
Now we hear the announcement that WhatsApp, Viber, Tango, Skype, etc will be banned for three months in Pakistan. I really want to share my views on this. It has been a year long since YouTube has been banned here. My question is has this ban really benefitted us? Well, I think it hasn’t. How come these terrorists have such advance IT knowledge that they can use all these applications to promote violence, then why can’t our agencies use the same tool to catch them? How come there have been no terrorists apprehended in the last one decade?
The only people who benefitted from the YouTube ban were our corrupt politicians whose corruption videos were uploaded. Was that the reason for closing YouTube for one year? Banning Skype, Viber, WhatsApp, Tango etc will do the same. Think about the students from abroad who have come to study to Pakistan, a country plagued by unrest. These services and social media help them stay in touch with their families.
I use WhatsApp and it is indeed a very helpful application. If I run out of credit, I can easily text through WhatsApp in an emergency. I can call my friends or relatives abroad through Skype. The rest of the developed world uses Cyber Cops to locate and arrest cyber criminals, in Pakistan we BAN social media, when will we grow up?
IBTISAM ZAHID KHANZADA,
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