Post Event Report on “Countering extremism on Social media in Pakistan”

Post Event Report

Topic: Countering extremism on Social media in Pakistan

Organized by NIOC, CSAP, PISA

Date: 8-1-2021

Panelists:

Ammar Jaffri Founder Cybersecurity alliance of Pakistan

Mr. Tariq Khosa Former IG Police and DG FIA Director NIOC

 

Syed Tahsin Shah Former Director General FIA

 

Shahzada sultan Commandant, police training college, Lahore

 

Prof. Dr. Qamar ul Arafeen Forensic Advisor

Rafi us shan Chief cybersecurity KP cyber emergency response centre

 

Muhammad Munaf Technical director and CEO Server4sale

 

Discussion:

First Panelist: Ammar Jaffri

Topic: Cybersecurity and threats

Recommendations made by panelist:

• There are two sort of extremisms that prevails in the society i.e. political extremism and religious extremism, along with that its sub-branches are also observed. If we fail to counter these extremisms, then it will pose a great danger to society. We all need to input our collaborative efforts to design a framework to remove these threats of extremisms.
• We are entering into the era of hybrid wars, where the minds of people will be manipulated, and they will be encouraged to be a part of the crime. We need to plan a strategy for community outreach in which people from universities, psychologists and other individuals will do a combine effort that will eliminate the chances of crime in a community.

Second Panelist: Tariq khosa

Topic: National security policy

Recommendations made by panelist:

• The social contract between Pakistan’s state and society is weakened which needs to be addressed and this issue pertains to national security policy that should be formulated.
• Pakistan needs to put forward a debate in the parliament for national security policy that will address the human development issue.
• Countering violent extremism strategy needs to be developed to counter act all the extremist issues raised by certain individuals. And also we need to focus on our internal fault lines.

Third panelist: Tahsin Shah

Topic: Social media extremism

Recommendations made by panelist:

• There are two strategies for countering extremism on social media, one is negative strategy while the other is positive strategy. Negative strategy banning out the social media or filtering out the extremist content, which is not right as per the reaction of public. While positive strategy is dealing with the narrative of social media terrorists that they use against public.
• On the basis of solid proof, a counter narrative could be proposed for the narrative of extremists on social media which would be acceptable enough to implement.
• State should completely disengage itself from extremism of any sort if they want to work on countering the extremism and violence of social media. The impact of militarized operation is very limited as we have observed while Zarb-e-azab, the investment made in these operations was very costly. We need to put our efforts also in the police sector to counter act the violence on social media

Fourth panelist: Dr. Qmar-ul-arafeen

Topic: Training of police officers for social media counter terrorism

Recommendations made by the panelist:

• Training to young police officers are given to better understand the crime event and situation. As previously we have observed many cases where crime was recorded but was not presented in the judicial courts that eventually leads to the bail of the criminal.
• Along with other trainings, technical training should be provided to police in order to better deal with the cases and social media crimes. We must create awareness in the society against such crimes in order to control and prevention of further crimes.

Fifth panelist: Shehzada Sultan

Topic: Proper well-defined statement on cyber security

Recommendations made by panelist:

• Online extremism is a powerful weapon for the extremists. We need to have a national security policy to design our motives and plan a strategy to counter act the threats.
• We need to have a clearly defined statement and position on the breaking of these laws, only then we can strategize our plans and aims.
• The response to the crimes and violation of laws must be effective and well designed.

Sixth Panelist: Dr. Rafi-us-Shaan

Topic: Hybrid approach towards cyber threats

Recommendations made by the panelist:

• Hybrid approach is the need of the hour to counteract the social extremism observed around the country. We need to have some broader policy; it is not as simple as it seems to develop.
• Intrusion of the privacy is a big issue that needs to be addressed, WhatsApp data is now linked with Facebooks, and everything that a user shared on his/her WhatsApp is also shared on Facebook that is breaching the privacy of the users.
• We need to crack the data governance when we will be implementing on the designed policy and strategies, without it will not be possible. Mutual collaborations with the country or companies where will discuss the issues with them on the common ground to protect the privacy of the people and eliminating the social harm.

Seventh Panelist: Mohammad Munaf

Topic: Dialogue between social media companies

Recommendations made by the panelist:

• We have no access to control the social media and the company is not paying heed to our concerns. We use a commanding language that the other person straight out refuses. Firstly, we need to strengthen our communication skills and language that will compel the controlling company to listen to us.
• The moderator or the admin of the group on Facebook where the social violence is being observed should be accountable to that. They must control what things or speech needs to be shared and what must not.
• Beside the government, there should be a private group that will negotiates and talk with the government behind the curtain to create some laws to prevent the breaching of privacy of people.

Take away from the event:

Pakistan is facing a lot of social media threats that are proving to be a danger for our youth and for national security. We must design certain policies and strategies to counter act these threats.