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Fighting cyber crime remains an elusive enterprise
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Karachi, April : The government has announced that it will
install high technology mechanisms at the National Response Center of the
Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to counter cyber-terrorism but what cannot be
ignored is that the existing Cyber Crime Wing of the FIA lacks not only the
advanced technology, but is devoid of any infrastructure as
well. |
Launched on March 13, 2003, the Cyber Crime Wing was established
after the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl. In this case, Pakistani
agencies had to rely on American investigators to trace the e-mails sent to the
media by his abductors. That is when the need was felt for such a unit.
The Pakistan government was criticized at that time heavily by certain
quarters of the Western media, as controversies kept on pouring from all corners
over the circumstances in which the murder took place.
Born out of this
need, the Cyber Crime Wing was launched with a bang - soliciting international
coverage, as well as accolades for this initiative. However it never evolved
completely as an independent unit and remained under the Crime Circle of FIA.
Yes it is not a separate set up and is still in the offing, and working under
crime circle, said Deputy Director FIA Immigration, Khalique-uz-Zaman.
Such programmes take time and investment, he said, admitting that the
current Cyber Crime Wing, despite the huge publicity it received from the media,
is not effective "even after three years of its
launch."
Khalique-uz-Zaman, who solved the first cyber crime case
involving Western Union where Rs5 to 6 million were laundered, thinks that cyber
crime is not a very common type of crime in Pakistan. This crime is still few
and far between, but creating a separate facility will help us control and
handle such crime effectively in the future, he disclosed.
However,
another official belonging to the Personal Identification Secure Comparison and
Evaluation System (PICES) department of FIA, contradicts this. He says that the
problem is that of detection. He says that the problem of cyber crime is that it
is disguised and people cannot distinguish between regular and internet based
crime.
With its headquarters in Islamabad and zonal directorates in the
provincial capitals, the current Cyber Crime Wing is in dire need of technical
staff to carry out raids and solve complicated net crimes. It took more than
three years for the government of Pakistan to finally allocate a budget of
approximately Rs181.42 million to establish a separate and fully equipped
facility. To tackle this fast growing crime in the country, many in the FIA hope
for a speedy clearance of this budget to start building the facility
soon.
Mehmud-ul-Hasan, the Deputy Director for National Response Center
for Cyber Crime (NRSCC), talking to us during his recent visit to Karachi
from the capital, said that since its launch in 2003, no technical or additional
staff has been hired for this wing and it stands in urgent need of trained
manpower.
We used to function from the office of crime wing because we
did not have either the set up or the manpower, he stated, adding there was no
appointment as such except that of Ammar Hussain Jaffery, Director NRSCC and
myself were assigned to handle crime related to the Internet, he said.
The new set up, as promised, will offer state of the art facilities
including a forensic lab and a staff of 184 trained personnel. But this is still
a dream.
The current staff will also be imparted training. Currently the
US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) is providing training whenever needed,
under an MOU signed between the two agencies in 2005. While cyber crime has
evidently increased over the years, only 33 cases were registered in 2006 due to
lack of public awareness about the existence of this wing.
Yes people do
not know about cyber crime wing because there has been no proper publicity to
acquaint the masses with the department, he said.
A large chunk of the
budget will now be allocated to educate citizens about the new facility of Cyber
Crime Wing and its working. A mass awareness campaign would be launched to
enlighten the public on the concept of cyber crime and the existence of a
facility where they can lodge their complaints, said the enthusiastic Hasan.
However he feels that such awareness should not be limited to the media alone
but should be included in school curricula as well.
The allocation of
this huge budget is no surprise to anyone because right after the US invasion of
Afghanistan, US officials had claimed that the next attack on its soil could be
in the form of cyber terrorism. On account of being a close ally on War against
terrorism, Pakistan had to focus its attention too towards this area.
Pakistan too is also a victim of cyber terror. Hacking of official
government websites is also reported to have increased in Pakistan since
September 11, 2001 attacks and later the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq by
American forces, making Pakistan also vulnerable to cyber terrorism.
Right after the US invasion of Afghanistan, some pro-Taliban Pakistani
hackers entered the official websites of India and left threatening messages,
reported a website.
Hasan agreed that hacking of official websites was
also a concern for developing this new facility, along with other Internet based
crimes which ranged from financial crimes to criminal act of aggression, both
against the state and against the citizens. He, however refrained from giving
any more information regarding e-crimes committed against the Pakistani
government.
As for how many Pakistani websites have been hacked since
then, Hasan again refused to give details but agreed that some important
websites have been hacked in the past. It is interesting to mention here that
despite the immense growth that Pakistan has made in the IT sector, Pakistan
government websites are not hosted locally.
Yes we are on foreign
servers and have to rely on them in case of break down, Hasan accepted
reluctantly, adding, we have been asking to host our websites locally but to no
avail. While cyber crime was earlier limited to financial crimes which included
credit card theft, illegal transactions through online banking and money
laundering, it has now reached new heights and creates new concerns amongst the
government and masses alike.
The new worries are pornography,
email-spoofing and cyber defamation which has increased here over the years but
have gone unpunished in absence of a separate facility and lack of
awareness.
A recent addition to the cyber crime, which requires the
attention of authorities here in Pakistan is the telecom sector through which
crime has increased.
With the boom in the cell phone business, many
consumers are complaining of their accounts being misused or their amount being
unduly deducted by the phone companies. Such theft usually goes unreported
because people do not know where to lodge complaints, he informed adding, and
this is s very lucrative crime for some companies.
Hasan explained that
even if 10 rupees, which a very small amount for a user, was illegally deducted
from one subscriber, imagine the huge amount of money that would come in given
the large number of users in the country. This is a big scam we are talking
about.
The new facility promises to control this and many other Cyber
Crime being committed everday. But all this depends on when the promised money
will come through and whether it will be used for the purpose earmarked.
By Husna Ali(The News)
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