When Pakistan's parliament rushed the Prevention of Electronic Crimes (Amendment) Act through both houses in January 2025, the country's largest press unions walked out in protest before the gavel even fell. Within weeks, journalists, YouTubers and ordinary social-media users were being summoned by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA). By spring 2026, the Islamabad High Court is still hearing a stack of constitutional petitions challenging the law — and Pakistan's open internet hangs in the balance.
The amendments rewrite the 2016 PECA in three consequential ways. They insert a new Section 26A criminalizing the dissemination of "false or fake information" likely to cause "fear, panic, disorder or unrest," punishable by up to three years' imprisonment and a fine of PKR 2 million (roughly USD 7,200). They create the Social Media Protection and Regulatory Authority (SMPRA), a new regulator with sweeping powers to register platforms, order takedowns and block accounts. And they establish a dedicated Social Media Protection Tribunal to fast-track cases — bypassing the ordinary criminal courts that have historically been slower to convict speech offences.
Why the law is constitutionally fragile
Three features of Section 26A have drawn the heaviest legal fire. First, the offence has no requirement of intent to deceive — a person can be prosecuted for sharing a post they genuinely believed was true. Second, "false information" is left undefined, leaving truth itself to be adjudicated by a state-appointed tribunal. Third, the offence is cognizable and non-bailable, meaning the FIA can arrest without a warrant and detain suspects before any judicial finding that a crime occurred.
The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ), the Joint Action Committee of press bodies, and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) have argued in petitions before the Islamabad High Court that the amendments violate Article 19 (freedom of speech) and Article 19A (right to information) of Pakistan's constitution, as well as the proportionality requirements the Supreme Court itself laid down in cases challenging the original PECA in 2017–2020.
Their argument is not abstract. By the Committee to Protect Journalists' tracking, dozens of journalists and online commentators have been booked under the amended provisions during 2025, and several have been held in pre-trial detention. International press-freedom groups including Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty International have called for the law's repeal, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has urged Islamabad to bring it into line with international standards.
The economic cost of vague speech laws
Pro-innovation policymakers should be just as alarmed as civil-liberties advocates — and not only because free speech is itself a precondition for healthy digital markets. Pakistan has spent the past decade trying to build a credible IT-export sector; the Pakistan Software Export Board reports the industry now generates several billion dollars annually and employs hundreds of thousands of young engineers. That ecosystem depends on three things SMPRA threatens: platform stability, predictable rules, and the ability of founders, freelancers and content creators to speak publicly about their work without fear of arbitrary prosecution.
Pakistan has also repeatedly throttled or blocked X (formerly Twitter) since early 2024, and YouTube and TikTok have each been suspended at various points over the past decade. Each blackout costs the freelance economy real money: the Sustainable Development Policy Institute has estimated that recent X restrictions alone have cost Pakistan's IT and freelance sectors hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue and platform access. Adding a regulator empowered to block content and de-register entire platforms at SMPRA's discretion increases that tail risk dramatically.
A better template exists — and Pakistan helped invent it
The case against PECA's amendments is not a case against all online regulation. Pakistan has legitimate concerns: incitement to communal violence, organised disinformation campaigns from hostile actors, and online harms against women and minors are real problems that demand serious policy responses. But the global evidence is clear that broad "fake news" criminalization is the wrong tool. The EU's Digital Services Act, for instance, focuses on transparency, risk assessments and notice-and-action procedures — leaving truth determinations to journalism, fact-checkers and civil courts, not police.
Pakistan's own 2017 Supreme Court guidance on PECA emphasized that any restriction on speech must satisfy a strict necessity-and-proportionality test. The 2025 amendments do not even attempt that test. A more defensible reform would (a) confine criminal liability to knowing dissemination of materially false information that causes concrete harm, (b) replace SMPRA's takedown powers with court-supervised orders subject to appeal, and (c) protect journalistic and good-faith commentary through an explicit public-interest defence — all standard features of speech-protective regimes from Karachi to Berlin.
What to watch next
The Islamabad High Court's rulings on the consolidated petitions, expected over the coming months, will signal whether Pakistan's judiciary is willing to defend its 2017 jurisprudence. Even a partial reading-down of Section 26A — to require intent, or to carve out journalistic commentary — would meaningfully narrow the chilling effect. A full strike-down is unlikely but not impossible; the IHC has previously held related PECA provisions unconstitutional. Meanwhile, the FIA's continued use of the new powers is itself the policy on the ground.
The lesson for the wider region is sobering. India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have each flirted with "fake news" criminalization in recent years; Pakistan's experiment is now showing in real time what such laws produce when paired with a regulator unconstrained by independent courts. The open internet does not need governments deciding which posts are true. It needs governments enforcing narrowly drawn, proportionate rules — and trusting their citizens, courts and journalists to do the rest.