PNG authorities moving towards addressing abuse of Social Media

The National Information and Communications Technology Authority, NICTA is taking steps towards addressing the gross misuse and abuse of social media in Papua New Guinea.

Chief Executive Officer Charles Punaha said, this will involve print media, advertisements,outlining Criminal offences relating to the new Cybercrime Code Act 2016 amongst others.

He said “Currently NICTA does not have any specific powers to order an ICT service provider to block off their website,the responsibility has to be given to the Police department and other law enforcement agencies.

NICTA will assist in the event that an aggrieved person or victim of an allegation makes a formal complaint with the Police.

Because of the number of numerous complaints that we are receiving, we've decided to initiate dialogue with the industry and we are working towards developing an industry code of standards that will govern the use of ICT services, especially internet services.

The minimum that we have requested from all the ISP’s is that on the interim they must appoint administrator’s that will monitor and screen and all that is appearing on the websites and take appropriate action” NBC/ONEPNG