ISLAMABAD – In order to facilitate the citizens to lodge their complaintsand halt the offenses taking place through computers, mobile phones, andthe internet in Pakistan, cybercrime centers have been established in 15cities across the country with plans of further expansion in future, saidAdditional Director of Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) Cyber Winglink Sindh Faizullah Korejo.
While speaking to an awareness seminar titled* “Cyber Crime: Laws &Responsibilities of Citizens” *held at University of Sindh, Jamshororecently, Mr. Korejo warned the participants of using social mediacarefully to keep themselves at arm’s length from falling prey to cybercrimes as the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) 2016linkisintact with strict punishments for the individuals found involved in theoffenses.
While elaborating the sections and proposed punishments under PECA 2016act, the additional director said that these days hackers could steal morewith a computer than a robber with a gun adding that tomorrow’s terroristmight be able to do more damage with a keyboard than a bomb. For instance,the official explained;
*“A person in China could break into a bank’s electronic vault hosted on acomputer in the USA and transfer millions of dollars to another bank inSwitzerland within minutes. All he will need is simply a laptop, computeror a cell phone.”*
Faizullah also talked about the worldwide stats of cyber crimes and saidthat around one million people are being victimized through the offenseevery hour, whereas hackers who commit cybercrime have made an amount of$274 billion altogether until now.
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The Additional Director also remarked that social media is widely misusedin Pakistan and most offenses are related to blasphemy, anti-stateactivities, money laundering, business frauds, hate speech, violence, andterrorism, etc.
While explaining the domain of cybercrime in Pakistan under PECA 2016 act,he said that hacking, identity theft, cyberbullying, stalking, financialfraud, digital piracy, computer viruses, malicious software, intellectualproperty rights, money laundering, electronic terrorism; extortion andvandalism are the major offenses that fall under cybercrime law.
Meanwhile, FIA’s recent findings have indicated that some banned outfitshave also been using social media in Pakistan to spread hate speech andviolence, the official noted.
