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| September 23, 2005 | Friday | Sha'aban 18, 1426 |
FIA’s cyber crime units become functional
LAHORE, Sept 22: The Cyber Crime Unit of Federal Investigation Agency in the city has been made functional. The CCUs have been set up at all zonal offices of the agency, including Peshawar, Karachi, Queta and Lahore, besides its headquarters at Islamabad. In Lahore, the unit will operate under the supervision of Viqar Mahmood Khilji, a deputy director of corporate crime circle, and Zia Islam, an assistant director, will be its in charge.
The unit will initiate inquiries and investigate those accused of committing cyber crimes under the Electronic Transactions Ordinance (ETO)’s sections 36 and 37.
Under section 36, any person who gains or attempts to gain access to any system with or without intent to acquire the information contained therein or gains knowledge of such information, whether or not being aware of the nature or contents of such information, without being authorized to do so, shall be guilty of an offence punishable with either description of a term not exceeding seven years, or fine which may extend to Rs1 million or both.
Similarly, under section 37 of the ETO, any person who does or attempts to do any act with intent to alter, modify, delete, remove, generate, transmit or store any information through or in any information system knowingly that he\she is not authorized to do any of the foregoing, shall be guilty of an offence punishable with either description of a term not exceeding seven years, or fine which may extend to Rs1 million or both.
The CCU will also deal with the crimes related to credit cards, plastic money fraud, unauthorized usage of ATM cards and computer networking.
The FIA director-general has also authorized the corporate crime circle to investigate and prosecute violation of intellectual property rights (copyrights act) which includes unauthorized copying, printing or publishing of cinematographic material, books, paintings, logos and music.
At present, reportedly, there is no special agency working to combat cyber crime in the country. Police had established an electronic crime unit a couple of years ago in Punjab which had only three investigation officers to check such crime. This unit is no more functional owing to lack of affective network of human intelligence, trained officials and modern technology. — Zulqernain Tahir
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