LAHORE: The cybercrime rate in Pakistan was increased more than five timesin the year 2020 despite technological innovation and existence of relevantlaws, Pakistan Today learnt on Sunday.
The lack of enforcement of laws is said to be one of the major reasons forincreased cybercrime in the country.
According to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), its cybercrime winghandled around 94,227 complaints of online crimes, including financialfraud, sexual harassment, cyber stalking and access to unauthorisedaccounts last year.
As a result of the complaints, 621 accused from 22 different groups werearrested and more than 20,000 electronic devices were confiscated by theagency last year.
According to data, the cybercrime wing also conducted specialinvestigations into financial, defamation and harassment of women, childpornography and other high-profile cases last year.
A senior official of the agency informed that since the enactment of thePrevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) in 2016, the FIA has receivedthousands of complaints from across the country and most of the cases havebeen registered.
The official said that there are a total of 24 sections in the PECA andsections 10, 21 and 22 deal with non-bailable offenses. Section 10 dealswith cyber-terrorism, 21 with spreading of porn images or videos of someoneand 22 with making and disseminating porn images and videos of children,the official explained.
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“The sale of illegal SIMs is an arrestable offense while illegal access tosomeone’s computer or mobile phone, defining or refining crimes in relationto terrorism or banned organisations, hate speeches or writing, electronicfraud or tampering, stealing and illegally using the identities of others,including bank account and national identity card numbers, are alsoconsidered cybercrimes according to the Act. Cyber stalking, that isstalking or harassing someone by sending repeated messages on the phone orthe Internet without the recipient’s consent, is also a crime under theAct,” the official added.
He informed that 6.1 million dollars were flown out of the country in 90minutes after the security breach of Bank Islami, adding that “During thelockdown, 8,000 complaints were received from Habib Bank alone. There aremany kinds of crimes that can be committed with the help of gadgets. Wehave adopted e-commerce but we have not been made aware of it. Moneytransfer accounts have been opened but the relevant SOPs are not working.”
The official said, “The FIA has the highest number of cases of financialcrimes, such as bank fraud, credit card and ATM card theft, and there isalso an increase in complaints about child pornography. The conviction ratein cybercrime cases is very low, which is one of the reasons for theincrease in crimes. The cybercrime wing faces various difficulties. In thecases of complaints filed regarding social media, the data is not availableas it is not handled properly by the mobile companies. The financialinstitutions, like banks, delay in providing information and there is nocentral data bank, from where all the accounts of an identity card can bechecked.”
On the other hand, an assistant director (AD) of the agency, said one ofthe reasons for the rising rate of cybercrime is the growing publicawareness of online crimes. “The cybercrime rate could rise further in thenext two years. Where technology comes with facilities, criminals alsostart using it for negative purposes. In the days of lockdown, there was afear that due to increasing reliance on online shopping and banking,cybercrimes would increase in the country as well as around the world.Fortunately, it did not happen. One of the major reasons for this was thatwe had issued timely instructions to consumers to be vigilant and thePakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) had also warned that the peopleshould avoid using public Wi-Fi as criminals can increase cybercrime byswindling coronavirus information,” he said.
“A special operation against child sexual abuse was launched last year as atotal of 24 criminal cases were registered and 26 accused were arrested.Three major gangs involved in crimes were also arrested. The cybercrimewing is trying to create awareness among the public about cybercrimesthrough its social media accounts. Various guidelines are also issued onthe FIA’s website.”
