IT minister to implement strong data protection laws in Pakistan

Minister for Science and Technology Chaudhry Fawad Hussain said that his ministry is working on implementing  strong privacy laws to maintain the cyber security of the citizens.

Under the latest policies introduced by the messaging app Whatsapp, the company will also begin exchanging users’ personal data with its parent company, Facebook, including phone numbers and locations.

In a tweet, the IT minister said,”These policy changes should’ve been introduced after wider consultation rather than pursuing a unilateral approach.”

IT minister further added that,” WhatsApp may have said that for promotional purposes they might enable other sister companies such as Facebook to access the data of certain users. But once security is disabled, WhatsApp’s sister companies will have access to all user information.”

Particularly concerning is the fact that these proposed conditions do not extend to customers in the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe, defining the new policy as biased against countries that do not have data privacy regulations in effect.

WhatsApp has maintained that with end-to-end encryption, the users’ sensitive messages would be secure and not even WhatsApp itself will access them. Even so, other data will be exchanged with Facebook, such as location, IP addresses, operating systems, IMEI information.