STATEMDNTo F OBJECTS ANI) ITIiAS o NS
Currently Pakistan has no law to comprehensively deal with the
growing threat of cybercrime. The centuries old criminal juetice legal
hamework ie inadequate and ill equipped to addreee the sophisticated online
threate of the 21"t Century cyber age. While this rew age haa exacerbated
both existing crimee when colducted with the use of the Internet, which arc
adequately addreesed by the application of the Electronic Tlansactions
Ordinance, 2002 in conjuncti,rn with existing criminal justice legislation, it
has aleo grven birth to comp letely new $rpes of cybercriue and criminals
which cannot be elfectively dealt with through the use of exiting iegislation.
The latter cannot be addreesed einply by amending exieting legislation or
through a patchwork of enarling provisions. 1'he unique nature of these
crimes filde no adequate or analogous provisiona in existing legislation that
deal with trafitional olTline crime. Effectivoly addressing these unique and
unprecedented crimes with similarly unique and necesaary procedural
powere, requires a completely uew and comprehensive legal framework that
focuses on online conduct of :.ndividuala/ortanizations
in the virtual world.
The legislation therefore, establishee new offencos inclufing illegal access of
data (hackiug), ae well as ini.erference with data and informatior Bystems
@OS and DDOS attacks), specialized cyber related electronic forgery and
electronic fraud, cyber terrorism (electronic or cyber attack on the critical
information i.ofrastructure), ulrauthorized ilterception conducted by civili.ans,
use of malicious code viruses, ilentity theft etc.
The legielation providee new inveetigative powers hitherto unavailable
euch aa eearch anil seiz\rre ol'digital forensic evidence ueing technological
neans, production ordere f,rr electronic evidence, electronic
evidence
preservation ordere, partial di:closure of traffic data, real time coliection of
data under certain circumstances and other enabling powere which are
necsaaary to effectively invesl,igate cyber crime casee. The very technical
oature of the new powera that are neceasary to inve8tigate and proaecute
these crimes require their exerciee to be proportionate with the civil liberty