ISLAMABAD: Federal Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has called on media houses Wednesday to blacklist terrorists by devising a media code of conduct. Addressing a meeting of parliamentary leaders held at the Prime Minister House, he said that misuse of media by the terrorist outfits should end and this can be easily done if […]
By: Irfan-Siddiqui The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Friday registered a first information report (FIR) against an unidentified accused for writing a column and publishing it on social media in the name of known columnist and Prime Minister’s Special Adviser on National Affairs Irfan Siddiqui. The FIA Cyber Crime Wing initiated investigation on the application […]
By: Malik Asad ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Monday restrained the inter-ministerial committee for the evaluation of websites (IMCEW) from blocking websites, including that of a non-governmental organisation (NGO) working for the rights of internet users. Justice Athar Minallah issued the order on a petition filed by ‘Bolo Bhi’. The committee was restrained […]
IN an effort towards greater transparency, social networking giant Facebook released its latest ‘Government Requests Report’ containing bare-bones data on requests they receive from countries for access to user account data, and requests to restrict access to content. The current January-June 2014 report is the third such dataset Facebook has released, and, staying true to […]
The rise and rise of the internet over the last 20 years to the point of its ubiquity today is both boon and bane for governments everywhere. In large part, this is because the internet is the complete antithesis of government. It is in many ways unregulated and extremely difficult to control where it has […]
Does social media improve communications? Has social media’s personal and professional impact been advantageous or detrimental? The predicament here is that there is no right or wrong answer. It is difficult to take a rigid stance on the benefits or disadvantages of social media because this particular argument comprises several grey areas. From a professional […]
Worrying accounts of online abuse faced by women in Pakistan have been revealed by human rights organisation and Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) think tank Bytes For All. According to them the threat against women being made prey to online stalkers and blackmailers is real and very dangerous. They have given examples ranging from online […]
ISLAMABAD: Internet abuse of women in Pakistan is triggering real-world violence against them, but major social media companies, such as Facebook and Twitter, are moving too slowly to stop it, according to internet rights group Bytes for All. Women face online threats globally, but they run a unique risk in Pakistan, where there is a […]
In the past week, the recent scandal of leaked nude photographs of famous celebrities including Jennifer Lawrence has quite literally hogged the information space. Many of us have reacted by dismissively changing the channel or scoffing about how gossip-infused the world has become. However, we fail to recognise that the leakage of these photographs via […]
KARACHI: Placing an online ad on websites like OLX or Facebook to sell items is a good way to attract buyers, but it may also attract robbers and gangs. A worrying crime trend has emerged in the city; criminals and gangs involved in muggings and street crimes are now scouring such websites in search of […]
RAWALPINDI: The Pir Mehr Ali Shah Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi has imposed a ban on the use of social media on the campus. Earlier, the students were allowed to use Facebook and Twitter through the university’s WI-Fi and servers. However, last month, the popular social networking services were blocked. The students termed the university management’s […]
In the United States, everyone — from a school girl to Lady Gaga, from a young boy to President Barack Obama — posts stories from their lives on social media outlets. Even the Central Intelligence Agency, one of the world’s top spy agencies, got itself a Twitter account recently. But Pakistanis can only dream about […]
“Twitter Institutes Country Withheld Content Tool in Pakistan for the First Time,” read the headline of a post published on the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse website on May 18, 2014. In it were details of five requests made to Twitter by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), seeking to restrict `blasphemous’ and`unethical’ tweets and user accounts, which […]
ISLAMABAD: The government holds no plan to restrict important services such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Viber and Skype after spectrum auction of multi-billion dollars 3G and 4G technologies in Pakistan, official sources confirmed to The News on Friday. The Cellular companies are worried about streams of their cash-inflows in terms of their voice services as increased […]
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