Arrests for cybercrimes: The PECA opening a new chapter?

There is no doubt that technology has coalesced with our lives in such a manner and to such an extent that life cannot be thought of, divorced from it. The advent of social media applications and the ease of communication they permit has undoubtedly been a benediction. But like all stories, this too has an “other” side which allows for new harms and new ways of causing harm.

Therefore, Prevention of Electronics Crimes Act, 2016 was much needed piece of legislation to deal with this novel approach to the commission of crimes.

So to begin with, what is exactly a ‘Cybercrime’?

Cybercrimes are criminal offences committed via internet or otherwise aided by various forms of computer technology. Electronic or cybercrimes are committed against individuals, groups of people, corporate entities, institutions or organizations with a criminal intention to injure the reputation of the target, to cause mental agony and financial loss, to get pecuniary and other benefits and to destabilize or undermine the state institutions through the medium of technology.

On August 11, 2016 the National Assembly passed a controversial cybercrime law called the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016. The reasons for the surrounding controversy was the legally binding advances made by the act against fundamental freedoms, especially the freedom of speech and expression. It is a Federal Law hence it extends to the whole of Pakistan. According to the Preamble of this Act, the object and purpose of legislation is “to prevent unauthorized acts with respect to information systems and provide for related offences as well as for their investigation, prosecution and trial.” The Act introduces wide range of offences including cyber terrorism (sec.10), spamming (sec.22), spoofing (sec.22), unauthorized access(Sec.3), cyber stalking (sec.21), transmission copying(Sec.4), interference in an information system or data(Sec.5) and producing, distributing, possessing, or procuring online child pornography (sec.19) with imprisonment and fines mandated for all of these.

The most notable offence covered by this act was that dealing with a very pervasive problem in Pakistan which involves transgressing against the modesty of a natural person. Considering the low threshold of the Pakistani society for derogation from prescriptions of modesty, many individuals, especially females have been victimized by fake images, constructed to ensure public backlash. The most common form of this is by superimposing the image of a person onto sexually explicit images and videos. This leads to victims being blackmailed and many fearing public shaming are often pushed to take their own lives.

A recent example of this is Naila Rind, an honors student pursuing a masters degree, who committed suicide after prolonged cyber blackmail. Such instances have been specifically addressed by section 19 of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act.

But Naila’s case highlights a failing impeding the act’s pursuit of cyber crime. The enforcement of this law had been assigned to a federal agency which did not have an office in Jamshoro, the city where Naila resided. This prevented her from having access to its protections and is likely to continue to fail victims because of the geographical limitations of its enforcers. Unless this problem is fixed such cases will continue to emerge and the Act is likely to turn into another useless piece of legislation.

Pakistan has experienced a recent surge in cybercrimes. According to the Cyber Crime Unit (CCU) (a branch of Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) which has been specifically constructed to deal with offences under this act) 62 cases were reported to the unit in 2007, 287 cases in 2008 while the ratio decreased in 2009, in 2010 more than 312 cases were registered in different categories of cybercrimes. This has been the conclusion despite majority of cybercrimes going unreported.

To facilitate the Act and the larger goal to eliminate cybercrimes the National Response Center for Cyber Crimes has been established. This department shares the burden of the CCU and the Federal Investigating Agency (FIA) unit in targeting cybercrimes. This institution has over 40 proclaimed offenders (POs) on its list while two were added during the year 2015, and out of total 46, only six accused were arrested and 40 POs are still at large. Nine court absconders were forwarded and they are yet to be arrested. This information is indicative to the challenges the persecution of Cyber Crime is likely to face. The law, as substantive it cannot be effective if the remaining instruments of crime prosecution are not functioning successfully.

Multiple arrests have been made pursuant to this act. On 25th March,2017 the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) arrested a Pakistani woman for blackmailing activities on social media, which makes her first female to be taken into custody under the recently passed cyber-crime law. The woman namely Sadia Mirza has been accused of blackmailing Ahsan Rana, a resident of London. Hassan Rana, the latter’s brother, filed the complaint and alleged that Sadia had sent messages to Rana over social networking website Facebook, demanding money. According to First Information Report, Sadia has been charged with “sending threatening, abusive, and lewd messages.” Subsequently the case has been registered according to the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016 clauses 20 (1) and 24 (b)(c). This development comes as part of measures carried out by the Federal Government in an effort to control crimes related social media in Pakistan. Despite its flaws, this does show the act to be opening a new chapter as far as Cyber Crimes are concerned because never has the country, been so fierce or resolute in its pursuit of such crimes.

In addition to the aforementioned flaws, the requisite mechanism for the implementation of this law does not exist. More than 100 million people use mobile phones and more than 30 million people use the internet, thus a massive number of complaints are expected. No experts have been brought in to train officers of the law to recognize how certain offences are constituted or pursued by using specialized technology. Also, owing to the unique nature of such crimes, no proper mechanism for investigation and prosecution for existing complaints. This needs to be fixed immediately if this any good expected of this new chapter authored by the PECA.