“The PTA could not go beyond its legal mandate to fix an age verification mechanism”, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) said in its reply submitted to the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Thursday.The high court hearing a petition seeking regulation of the social media use by children below 16 years of age. “No law of the land exists to ban the use of social media by children,” PTA said in its reply to the court. The regulator, however, highlighted the need of a new legal and policy framework to protect children from cyber threats.

“A Social Media Protection and Regulatory Authority being established under the PECA Amendment Act,” PTA said.PTA said that the legal action against cybercrimes and immodest material is the mandate of the NCCIA. Describing its performance the PTA said that the authority has reviewed over 17,89,000 links and URLs and blocked over 15,77,000 illegal URLs over online violations.It further said that the social media firms have not been registered in Pakistan neither they are bound to the local laws.

“It has become impossible to block individual content owing to the HTTPS encryption”. “We had requested these firms for appointment of local compliance and grievance officer, but no positive response received”, PTA said. PTA said that the awareness campaigns have been launched in collaboration with the UNICEF, TikTok, Meta and GSMA. “A Toll-Free Helpline has also been active with regard to children’s online exploitation,” regulator said.

A safety feature for teen accounts has been launched on Instagram, especially for Pakistani subscribers, according to the PTA. It pleaded to the court to partially dismiss the plea, with respect to seeking relief beyond the legal mandate. In a previous hearing petitioner Waqas Nasir’s lawyers Muhammad Jalal Haider and Yahya Farid Khawaja pleaded for an effective age verification system for social media accounts users.

The court had issued notices to the ministries of Information Technology, Information, Interior, Law, the PTA and the PEMRA and summoned their reply. Petitioners requested for a court order for legislation protecting children from cyber bullying, online harassment and safety from hazardous online material and also pleaded for devising a comprehensive legal and regulatory framework for online protection of children.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan (INP)