Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has been given instructions to make improve its monetary cyberspace regulations by the Ministry of Interior. It is given another ultimatum of 3 months. A new mechanism has to be designed by the agency which integrates with the ministry’s demand of operations against corruption, human smuggling and financial irregularities in this time.
It has been brought into consideration in meeting of Ministry of Interior and top FIA officials that a database of smugglers and human traffickers need to be maintained to keep track of their illegal activities and financial activities. Minister Chaudhary Nisar Ali Khan was in the chair for this meeting. It is also stressed by the Ministry that FIA has failed to perform well and could not reduce or stop corruption. FIA’s efforts against human smugglers were appreciated and many of these groups were arrested.
Defending the agency, the officials said that due to the additional duties like cyberspace monitoring and law enforcement it was difficult to reduce human smugglers and corruption.
FIA is important in restoring the confidences of companies in entering various Pakistani markets namely IT, media etc., The agency has to block unwanted traffic channels through the country assisting the security and transparency of Government to assist the international companies.
During 2014, 60 raids were made by FIA against cybercrime out of which 50 belonging to illegal telecom exchanges which are trouble for communication service providers stealing international call revenue that is supposed to reach the service providers through proper tax channels.
It is the duty of FIA to stem the unauthorized DTH services through the country and was instructed to stop their payments and hardware networks in Pakistan. These DTH licenses are subject to the cooperation from the government.
FIA’s control has been extended to monetary cyberspace and enforcing a safer environment for international financial organizations investing in the country with the recent cyber crime bill. Director FIA, Usman Anwar had this to say on the matter:
Cyber Crime is not about running illegal exchanges for grey calls only but it also includes credit card swaps, hacking Facebook accounts, robbing any digital data, defrauding using internet and all such criminal activity that falls under the category of electronic crime and theft. In Pakistan, the backbone of this crime is the misuse of voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).
