FIA/PTA and IT Industry - Part 2

Here is the second in the part of events that we are publishing

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This is Part 2 in the series of events that have unfolded in Pakistan and have brought to point the serious crisis facing the IT industry. Today, PASHA (Pak Software Houses Association), ISPAK (Internet Service Provider Association of Pakistan) and PSEB (Pak Software Export Board) stand together against the strong pigheadedness of FIA and PTA atrocities. May Allah help us all... Ameen

The most ironic part of this debate is that Minister of IT, Owais Leghari, has been too busy for the whole week to meet any representatives from the industry. The crisis lingers on with the government not cooperating.

Here is the latest ....
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Today, December 10, the CEO of the IT company was sent on judicial remand to Adiala Jail in RWP (from physical remand/custody of FIA). Given the legality of our judicial system, this was maximum success that we could have achieved today.

It was really shocking and sad to see him in handcuffs, a young an innocent looking CS professional with tears in his eyes, chained up for a ‘so-called crime’ that he and his team never committed. Even the Judge couldn’t bear this and ordered removal of his handcuffs in the court room telling the accompanying FIA Inspector that ‘He would not run away’.

On Monday, his bail application would be moved to Session Court and hopefully, he would be bailed out of jail by sometimes next week inshallah.

FIA failed to present any findings and evidence to the Court today. PTCL and PTA opted not to make a presence in the court. FIA asked for additional remand of 5 days of Faisal to gather more evidence. FIA said that they’re waiting for technical analysis from PTA in the light of which they would do more investigations with him. Judge snubbed this demand by saying that if PTA hasn’t yet provide you any evidence, how you expect more evidence to be forthcoming in next few days. So there wasn’t an iota of evidence with FIA on the case (no gateways, no SIMs, nothing..).

On the question of making outbound test calls using VOIP, the defendent lawyer presented to the Court a Determination of PTA of December 2002 in which PTA has determined that Net2Phone service was to become legal effective 01 Jan 03, the date PTCL’s monopoly over basic telephony expired. So PTA itself has determined that VOIP (PC to phone) calls were legal and there was no question about ‘illegality’ of the same.

The following equipment was confiscated from the IT company in raid on 05 Dec 06:

- One Notebook PC
- Two 8 Port LAN Switches
- One AZTECH ADSL Router
- One P-II 400 Mhz PC running Linux and Asterisk
- One P-III PC running Asterisk
- One PC running squid (web proxy server) server (this machine was called gateway by the young guys at the company and when PTA officials during raid were frantically asking for gateway or SIMs, the poor guys pointed to this machine as ‘gateway’ and FIA team happily confiscated that.
- One Desktop PC with monitor, web cam, key board, etc.

They had one 512 kbps/12 Gb DSL connection and their monthly consumption never exceeded this limit. They had only four PTCL phone lines with normal monthly billing.

Even an idiot can tell that this setup doesn’t work for a voice termination/origination gateway setup.

This shows that iron hand of law is only for small and helpless people in this part of the world. No one dares to take action against big names. They found an escape goat in the name of a small IT Company. This is the reason that bright and creative minded young professionals opt to leave this country and settle abroad, depriving the country of talent which is very hard to acquire these days.

Developed and bigger nations protect their citizen. Mirza Tahir, a Pakistani born British citizen waiting for his death sentence in same jail where our young IT guy would be spending first night of his jailed life at a horrible place, was bailed out and flown to London by personal efforts of Tony Blair and Prince Charles, even though he was not ‘White British’. On a contrast, our Government puts its own innocent computer professionals behind bars, what an ‘enlightenment’!

There has to be vocal joint action at all forums and legal suit of damages and criminal proceedings against the responsible and defaulting officials who violently and blatantly stepped out of their jurisdiction and abused the public powers.

Minister for IT has not yet found time out of his busy schedule for this burning issue of the Ministry of ‘IT’ that he’s supposedly heading.

Justice... where is justice in Pakistan?