News Desk
ISLAMABAD: The controversial Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill 2015 was approved in the National Assembly (NA) on Wednesday. The bill must also be approved by Senate before it can be signed into law.
In April last year, the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Information Technology had approved ‘controversial legislation’ on cyber terrorism and had referred it to parliament for final approval.
The parliamentary panel had adopted the Cyber Crimes Bill 2015 without considering objections as serious or merited. The ‘draconian’ bill was heavily criticised by the IT industry as well as civil society for curbing human rights and giving overreaching powers to law enforcement agencies.
Speaking on the occasion, the Minister of State said discussion on this important bill continued for the last many years and credit goes to all the political parties for giving their valuable inputs on it.
She said the bill will also help protect critical infrastructure existing on the cyber space like that of the NADRA database.
The legislation will effectively prevent cyber-crimes and contribute to the national security. It will also provide an enable a secure environment for investment in IT, e-commerce and e-payment systems.
The House also passed two other bills the Foreign Exchange Regulation (Amendment) Bill 2014 moved by Parliamentary Secretary for Finance Rana Muhammad Afzal and the Foreigners (Amendment) Bill 2016 moved by Parliamentary Secretary for Interior Maryam Aurangzeb.