AS the dust settles on yet another bomb blast that has been described as a major crossroads for Pakistan, and our much vaunted security apparatus takes on even more powers under the pretext of fighting the never-ending behemoth that is ‘terrorism’, a piece of legislation has been passed with perhaps more significant long-term effects than even the draconian National Action Plan.

The Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill 2015 (PECB) was finally signed into law yesterday, more than 18 months after it was originally tabled in the National Assembly. Those who argue for the supremacy of parliament should feel vindicated by the fact that the bill was repeatedly vetted by both the upper and lower houses, that a variety of lobbyists remained part of the process throughout, and that the process as a whole was relatively transparent.

But there is no vindication in what the bill actually signifies.

In short, state functionaries are now legally empowered to clamp down on any form of speech over the internet that they deem to be a threat to the proverbial ‘greater national interest’. The language of the bill allows an incredible amount of discretionary power — in the worst-case scenario, an individual and/or organisations publishing written materials online can be tried for ‘terrorism’ and punished accordingly.

There is no vindication in what the PECB actually signifies.

On the surface of it, many informed readers might counter that we live in exactly that kind of an age where crimes against humanity can be fomented by a random individual inciting others to violence over the internet. This is true, but the question is not whether something should be done to prevent what can clearly be discerned as socially destructive conduct, but how. According the coercive apparatus of the state, unlimited powers to regulate what we think and say will take us further rather than closer to peace, freedom and security.

The PECB is hardly an anomalous piece of legislation under the current global political climate. Over the past few years, states all around the world have arrogated to themselves greater powers under the guise of the ‘new’ kind of threat that is international terrorism. Perhaps we could all agree that individuals like Osama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri constitute unambiguous threats to our world. But when we think of how states define ‘cybercrime’, the individuals that come to mind are of the Julian Assange and Edward Snowden variety. Surely most of us would not bracket these last two individuals into the same category as the former.

Yet by accepting laws like the PECB, we are effectively allowing the state to conflate genuine threats with our individual and collective freedoms, with voices that demand accountability of the world’s most powerful people and institutions. Whether or not we all agree on the historic role of the state in the modern world, we surely cannot deny the need for the state to be held to account — it is, after all, one of the cardinal principles of political modernity that the state be answerable to the people in whose name it exercises power.

It is impossible to say what the world will look like in, say, 100 years’ time. But the manner in which online technologies are affecting social relations suggest that the battle for the future of the world is going to be heavily conditioned by what is called virtual reality. Many of the present generation of young people harbour something resembling euphoria vis-à-vis the internet and its power to change the world. I am more circumspect, but what I do know is that attempts to regulate what can and cannot be said over the internet constitute a problem either way.

This is because the internet now represents by far the biggest single platform for the exchange — and battle — of ideas. Back in the era of revolutionary idealism at the end of the 19th century, the print press became a means to popularise ideas; the great theorist of nationalism Benedict Anderson argued that ‘print capitalism’ was indeed the progenitor of the nation-state idea.

That was when the number of people in society who could read and write was still limited — in today’s world the internet allows even those who are not as ‘educated’ to participate in the exchange of ideas. It is not by chance that the world’s major political personalities spend much time cultivating their image online and are, one after the other, making the internet their primary tool of communication with (potential) supporters.

Contemplate a world in which Donald Trump’s tweets are allowed free rein but criticisms of the American military-industrial complex are highly regulated because they constitute a ‘threat’ to the peace. That sounds like a 21st-century version of George Orwell’s 1984 — a story in which an omnipotent higher power (read: the state) watches over everyone in the name of guaranteeing ‘the peace’. Is that progress?

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, August 12th, 2016