IN the past few years, increased taxes and poor law and order have resulted in losses for cellular network operators, while ban on Internet content has decreased revenues of ISPs and submarine fibre optic cable operators in Pakistan.

Much has been said about all this and other challenges facing the telecommunications industry but the nation has another challenge awaiting, that is cyber crime laws.

Pakistan must align its local laws and collaborate globally. Individuals, private corporations and government organisations are becoming targets of cyber crimes.

At an international level, we know that that America’s National Security Agency (NSA) was spying on Pakistan through the Internet and online communication.

Our Senate Committee on Defence and Defence Production identified cyber warfare as a new, non - military security threat to the country. In short, technology and penetration of Internet usage has introduced problems spanning from petty cyber crimes to grave international issues.

Moreover, YouTube, now banned, was once widely used for educational purposes. Google has very little to lose from the ban of YouTube since the revenue it derived from Pakistan’s digital marketing is comparably insignificant.

It is Pakistan that loses out and suffers. On top of all that, the Pakistan Telecommunications Authotity (PTA) deployed the grey traffic monitoring system that detects illegal international voice calls and automatically blocks the IPs not in PTA’s white list.

Now white - listing of IPs is being done but this process has also been reported to be causing problems for telecommunications companies and their customers.

On its transparency report webpage, Google discloses information regarding requests received from governments and actions it takes in response to such requests.

Google’s community guidelines and violation of local laws usually form basis of content removal. However, the government is finally working on new legislation to deal with cyber crime.

The ministry of information technology and telecommunications has taken up the long pending cyber crime bill to finally finalise it. This brings us the opportunity to define our local laws keeping in view present and future challenges. This will pave the way to deal with issues at the international level.

Google states that 47 YouTube videos from India were restricted from local view because they violated local (Indian) laws. Objectionable content that we are unable to filter, a specific webpage or a particular video, can be removed by Google given that our local laws are streamlined in the light of such challenges.

In a press statement, Google had declared it an objective to offer local versions of YouTube but for that they look at local laws. We need to take the correct measures rather than blocking websites and IPs.

We need to define laws that cater for future challenges and provide an atmosphere for investment. Legislation is the need of the hour; transforming challenges into opportunity is a choice.

AMMAR KAZI

Islamabad