The National Assembly on Thursday passed a controversial amendment bill to the country\u2019s cybercrime laws amid a walkout by PTI lawmakers and journalists from the proceedings.<\/p>\n
The latest draft of changes to the cybercrime laws, seen by Dawn.com and titled \u201cThe Prevention of Electronic Crimes (Amendment) Bill, 2025\u201d, was tabled in the National Assembly a day ago by Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar and referred to the standing committee.<\/p>\n
Journalists staged a walkout today from the press gallery in protest of the bill\u2019s passage after it was presented by Federal Minister for Industries and Production Rana Tanveer Hussain.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers from the opposition Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam Fazl also opposed the bill.<\/p>\n
The National Assembly also passed\u201cThe Digital Nation Pakistan Bill, 2024\u201c which was moved by Minister of State for Information Technology and Telecommunication Shaza Fatima Khawaja. The bill aims to create a digital identity for citizens \u2014 to centralise social, economic and governance data \u2014 and to provide for the transformation of Pakistan into a digital nation, enabling a digital society, digital economy and digital governance.<\/p>\n
The PTI lawmakers had already walked out earlier after protesting against party founder Imran Khan\u2019s incarceration and saying they would not allow the house\u2019s proceedings to go ahead.<\/p>\n
The bill, a copy of which is available with Dawn.com, proposes a new provision, Section 26(A), to Peca, to penalise perpetrators of \u201cfake news\u201d online, that said: \u201cWhoever intentionally disseminates, publicly exhibits, or transmits any information through any information system, that he knows or has reason to believe to be false or fake and likely to cause or create a sense of fear, panic or disorder or unrest in general public or society shall be punished with imprisonment which may extend upto three years or with fine which may extend to Rs2m or with both.\u201d<\/p>\n
It also proposes the establishment of the Social Media Protection and Regulatory Authority which would perform a range of functions related to social media such as education, awareness, training, regulation, enlistment, blocking and more.<\/p>\n
It said that anyone \u201caggrieved by fake and false information\u201d would be able to approach the authority to remove or block access to the content in question, adding that the authority would issue orders no later than 24 hours after the request.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The National Assembly on Thursday passed a controversial amendment bill to the country\u2019s cybercrime laws amid a walkout by PTI lawmakers and journalists from the proceedings. The latest draft of changes to the cybercrime laws, seen by Dawn.com and titled \u201cThe Prevention of Electronic Crimes (Amendment) Bill, 2025\u201d, was tabled in the National Assembly a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5020,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5019"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5021,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5019\/revisions\/5021"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}