ECP Bans Social Media and YouTube Usage in its offices

Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) issued a notice today to ban the usage of all social media platforms and YouTube in ECP offices across Pakistan. Following these orders, social media websites Facebook, YouTube and Twitter will be blocked in ECP’s national secretariat in Islamabad and also in its all provincial offices. ECP Bans Social Media and YouTube Usage in its offices.

ECP Bans Social Media and YouTube Usage in its offices

The Deputy Director of ECP Syed A Rahman Zafar, in the official letter sent to provincial election commissioners of Punjab, Sindh, KPK and Balochistan explained that:

“Banning social media and video streaming sites on ECP networks will actually reduce cyber attacks and also ensure the discipline of using electronic resources up to the optimum level”.

He also said that:

“The Competent Authority has directed to block social media websites (ie Youtube, Facebook, Twitter etc) on all networks of ECP secretariat as well as PEC offices.”

The official orders also directed the provincial election commissioners to fulfill these order as soon as possible while taking help from National Telecommunication Corporation (NTC) and PTCL.

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Banning social media to reduce the threats of cyber attacks makes no sense. There must be a system that can protect ECP servers from such attacks. Hence, we expect that this ban is for a limited time period until an effective system is being developed by Government.