Fake News Crackdown Leads to Blocking of 80000 SIMs

Sajid Mehdi, the Cabinet Division Parliamentary Secretary, informed the National Assembly on Wednesday that the federal government had disabled around 80,000 mobile SIMs for propagating fake news.

In response to an assembly calling attention notice on the issue of social media fake news, the secretary stated that the government has taken various steps to combat this problem.

He talked about the creation of a joint task force and said that the task force had given its report to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

To address this issue more effectively, he also emphasized the need to amend the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA), 2016. He felt that changes were necessary to speed up the trial of instances involving the dissemination of false news.

In addition, he brought attention to the measure of registering Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) in order to combat the problem of false news and improve monitoring of internet activity.

According to the secretary, these steps will help reduce the spread of false news. He further mentioned that an awareness campaign has been initiated to inform the public about the risks and outcomes of spreading false information.