FIA to Increase Cyber Crime Reporting Centers in Pakistan [Adds Digital Forensics]

The Cyber Crime Unit of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has recently announced to increase the number of Cyber Crime Reporting Centers within Pakistan from 5 to 15.

FIA is now looking to further increase the strength of its investigator officers to meet the growing challenge of cyber complaints in Pakistan.

In order to complete this huge target, the FIA is now planning to equip the entire Cyber Crime Reporting Centers with the art of digital forensic capabilities.

The good news is that now these complaint centers will be able to have the capabilities to conduct the forensic analysis of laptops, computers, mobile, iPad etc.

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FIA is also planning to make few changes to the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) 2016.

“FIA has neither preventive mandate nor legal monitoring of cybercrimes, but post crime mandate, resulting in obstruction in controlling cybercrimes”, officials added.

FIA, currently has only investigation power and are not able to initiate an inquiry on their own unless they receive any complaints from someone and or any organization.

However, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA( has opposed further amendments in the Cyber Crime Bill 2016, saying that no further amendments with regard to blocking/removal of unlawful online content are required.

I would like to mention here that unlike other countries like South Asian and Gulf, Pakistan also doesn’t have any access to cybercrime data, due to the absence of Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) with the US where the data resides.