Monitoring social media sites a challenge: CEO

The National Information and Communication Technology Authority (NICTA) does not have the capacity to monitor social media sites hosted outside of Papua New Guinea.

NICTA CEO, Charles Punaha, said: “The issue we have is some of these social media website are hosted locally and overseas.

“Those that are hosted locally are much easy to manage, like in the case of PNG Loop, from responses that we have from them, they have their own internal code of ethics for reporters when reporting on certain issues. 

“Some of the blogs that are hosted overseas are a challenge for us,” said Punaha.

They can only identify them once the cybercrime legislation is certified.

“We will have a training program we have developed for police and members of the judicial services, experts will come in to use ICT devices to detect the sources,” Punaha explained.

He said getting a Court order to get Internet Service Providers to help law enforcers track the location will be the avenue used to restrict abuse of social media.       

“Part of the process, go to court, get a court order, go to the service provider and have access to how this particular account has been created, to help identify the IP address and also track it back to the IT device,” the CEO said.  

“We also need the judiciary to understand the terms in the Act (National Cybercrime Act 2016) because it’s technical in nature,” Punaha said.

Author: 
Charles Yapumi