ISLAMABAD – National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) has developed anonline reporting portal, aimed at countering online extremism, abuse ofinternet and social media.
“Surfsafer “is an online reporting portal for Pakistanis to reportextremist online-content freely, securely
and anonymously as well.The other purpose of responsive web portal is to create eyes and ears incyber-sphere to counter radical and extremism ideology in online realm.
The implementation status (NACTA Review – December 2017)of National Action Plan (NAP) on Tuesday revealed that the mission ofsurfsafer (link) is to counter online extremism, map andeliminate extremist content, help victims of extremism by regaining spacefor values of moderation, love and fraternity in cyber-sphere throughcommunity participation and ultimately make internet a safer place foreveryone.
It said in order to filter social media sites and enable vigilance againstcyber-crimes, `Prevention of Electronic Crime’ Act-2016 has already beenpassed by parliament and constant vigilance of internet traffic hasresulted in blocking of 1447 URLs which hosted extremist content.
NACTA and Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) are continuously coordinatingon this issue.
The Review further revealed that mobile applications are also beingdeveloped and in their final stages. These are scheduled to be launched onGoogle Play Store and Apple Store soon.
NACTA’s Android and iOS applications (Tat’heer apps) are mobile-baseduser-friendly systems which will enable a common citizen to report anyincidence of hate speech or extremist content in form of video, audio,photo and URL/text visible to them on cyber-sphere.
Tat’heer (literal meaning “to sanitize”) is a multi-pronged CyberCounter-Terrorism (Cyber CT) drive by NACTA which includes mapping ofradical content available on internet/social media, and measures to countersuch content and its spread and dissemination.
It is mentioned here that social media and the internet have a significantimpact on way of life, enabling access to information and audio-visualmedia, among other resources, for everyone.
However, these modern tools are now used to promote, recruitand train militants besides funds collection and transfers. As such thissector has been given special emphasis in the NAP.