It should be encouraging that out of the many problems that our parliament still has to legislate about, they can find time to single out and propose seemingly innovative ways to curb cyber-crime through the ICT Act.
At the end of the day, there is little point in trying to further complicate a situation and find more ways to bolster a draconian law.
If enabling arrest without warrant, simply at the whim of law enforcement, was not enough, now the new proposal is to use national identity cards or any other identity mechanism for logging into Facebook and other social network accounts.
Already faced with negativism from the BTRC chairman, the simple existence of the idea paints a sorry picture for our lawmakers. It is expected that people who are entrusted to be able pass legislation regarding the protection of citizen rights are aware of the boundaries of law and the parameters of right to privacy and freedom of expression, and act accordingly.
Our efforts should be directed towards scrapping or dramatically rewriting draconian laws like the ICT Act. No civilised nation should infringe citizen’s rights in this manner.
Regardless of the technological absurdity this “innovative” idea encompasses, we would rather that our lawmakers emphasised on the more pressing national issues that remain unsolved instead of trying to prosecute people who might object to the government’s point of view in their personal social network pages.
