In light of the recent stock market debacle the government is attempting to prevent incidents like these from happening again. Today a news report appeared in Daily Times where the usage of SMS in spreading disinformation about the stock market are deemed as a Cyber Crime and ironically the FIA has been entrusted to ensure that it does not happen in the future.

Overtly it may seem to be an interesting way to solve the panic of any future stock market debacle, but I personally see it as an odd way to solve the underlying problem. One could argue that if a simple SMS message communication to my broker to “SELL SELL SELL” can be attributed to a punishable cyber crime. Then we should hold liable all phone calls made during the stock-market-rumor-mongering period as an equally important punishable crime.

• Fundamentally I believe you cannot condemn the usage of a specific medium (in this case SMS) for its probable repercussions, instead its imperative to develop safe guards to instead hold the traders on the trading floor directly responsible for their actions which may contribute to panic. Deny all you might we all some how knew that this over inflated stock market bubble was going to burst which was all the more evident considering the miserable economic indicators within Pakistan, suffice to say it was on the cards
• Secondly I shudder to see an even more powerful FIA entrusted with dispensing the Cyber Crime law at its own free will, considering the drafted of the Cyber Crime law was shady at best as it failed to provide safe guards for the innocent.

Manipulation of stocks with SMS now a cyber crime ^[1]

ISLAMABAD: Manipulation of the stock exchange market through short messaging services (SMS) from mobile phones will be treated as a cyber crime, the federal government decided on Sunday.

The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) will deal with creating disinformation about the stock markets through SMS. The government has also directed the agency to take immediate notice of such cases in future.

The decision to bring the practice under the agency’s supervision comes in the backdrop of a major stock market decline last week, which saw small investors, the most affected by the slide, demonstrating violently outside the major exchanges at Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore.

Would anyone have a different twist to this recent development