In 2017 Pakistan internet landscape observes bigger threats. Apart from the fact that 2017 was a great year for the tech industry of Pakistan still Pakistan is one of those countries which are facing stern threats to their internet landscape.
Even though, government and private organization tried their best and made a lot of efforts in this regard to provide a better ecosystem for internet landscape, yet the country is still going through bad circumstances.
In Pakistan, Internet landscape is exposed to threats counting random administrative shutdowns, misplaced judicial activism against the freedom of the internet, increase in cyber crimes, and imposed disappearances of activists plus the abuse of cybercrime law, as highlighted by Bytes for All in Internet Landscape of Pakistan 2017 report.
This report shows an original effort to bring to light the challenges effecting digital and human rights in Pakistan. The country has faced huge internet outages in the year 2017 which spots towards the call for competition in internet providers.
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The arbitrariness of available legal frameworks and misconception of laws by judiciary has caused increased restriction on Internet’s landscape.
The report indicates that the year 2017 particularly brought lots of challenges and disturbing rage in the existing landscape of the internet in Pakistan.
As it states,
“As anticipated, terrible consequences emerged with the enactment of Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016. Several bloggers were abducted allegedly by the state authorities and many social media activists and journalists have been summoned by the investigation agencies for their online political expression. This trend has cultivated a climate of fear, self-censorship and further strengthened the culture of impunity.”
Furthermore, the report cites a major boost in internet saturation after the auction of 3G and 4G spectrums in Pakistan. This resulted into greater than before internet access with a greater entry of online crimes against social media users and political activists with rebel voices.
Another upsetting fact exposed in the report is regarding cyber-armies either hired by the government or working independently, used an effectual tool to restrain freedom of expression, views and also troubled progressive account in online platforms.
