“The Ministry of Home Affairs (MOHA) issued its notification only for the good of the public as part of its social responsibility,” said a senior official at the Ministry. [break]“The state needs a huge assemblage of resources and concerted functioning of all concerned bodies to minimize this problem.”
He admitted that the recent notification was for cautioning the public in general with reference to the existing law--Electronic Transactions Act 2063 BS. The ministry on Sunday had warned of legal action against those involved in broadcasting and transmitting material that violate ´public decency and courtesy´ through internet media including social network sites like Facebook and Twitter.
The government, however, has not framed any action plan to enforce the laws concerned except for a decision on employing the Nepal Telecommunication Authority (NTA) to monitor Internet Service Providers (ISP). “The government takes action only when ISPs do not obey NTA directives,” said Jay Mukunda Khanal, MOHA spokesperson.
The agenda of banning porn sites in Nepal had landed at MOHA last year when Bam Dev Gautam was home minister in the then Maoist-led government. “It was floated as a popular agenda but there has been little attention to how intensive its implementation would be,” said an official.
“It is not going to be only about blocking particular websites out of the oceanic internet. When it comes to blocking searches with certain key words, it is also not necessarily going to be fair. You cannot be foiling all searches under ´sex´ because the word does not only have vulgar connotations,” said an official.
“The main problem is that the government leadership does not understand the enormity of the agenda,” he added. “Internet nowadays is part of modern literacy and awareness is more needed than any kind of execution.”
Spokesman Khanal said the government simply wanted to minimize public usage of porn sites. “We would like to assure that one could not open the ´most prevalent´ sites so easily," he added.
According to officials, the Home Ministry had also directed the Nepal Police to conduct raids at cyber cafes in the capital a few days ago but withdrew the directive immediately after realizing that it was the ISPs that could curb specific web searches.
“Blocking web searches is common globally but developed countries are much more specific about it. But here the government is indefinite,” said officials. “In an age when one can get into anything through tunneling proxy sites, indefinite monitoring is very ineffective.”
Misplaced priority!
Metropolitan Police Crime Division (MPCD), the only body actively dealing with complaints about cyber offences, frequently receives complaints about ´impersonated accounts´ (fake accounts created by other than original users).
“They do not know that a social networking site blocks impersonated accounts if the person impersonated makes a complaint,” said an official at MPCD.
The government in its notice also said that those committing fraud like impersonation on social networking sites would be punished according to the Electronic Transactions Act. “But nowhere in the world is a complaint of impersonation entertained by state agencies,” he said.
“Our leadership is not adequately up-to-date about cyber issues,” he added.
“Crucial issues such as how we fail to locate the internet protocols of certain emails and also how these are being used by criminals have not yet been addressed by the government,” said an information technology expert with Nepal Police.
“The government´s priority should be to curb those cyber channels that have openly helped criminals hide themselves instead of blocking a handful of porn sites and going after social networking sites,” he added.
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