
A senior information technology (IT) sector officially cautioned today that catching individuals engaged in illegal activities using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) may remain challenging, even with registration.
The IT official added that implementing this policy could have far-reaching consequences, potentially dealing a major economic blow to the country's 2.3 million IT workers.
Speaking to Geo News, Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA) Chairman Sajjad Mustafa Syed stated: “When you are connected to a VPN, it has a secure transaction. Nobody knows what data is going through this VPN, so catching this is not easy."
While talking about whether perpetrators using VPNs could not be caught and what the use of the registration process was, Syed said the country would only end up creating classes of digital haves and have-nots.
"Some people would be able to access the digital world, and the rest will not be able to," Syed added.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) announced a streamlined process for legitimate users to register their VPNs on November 13. The development came days after the regulatory body started blocking unregistered VPNs in Pakistan to "regulate internet security and ensure the safety of users."
Read more: P@sha warns VPN ban, internet restrictions devastating for IT industry
According to the sources, unregistered VPNs pose a significant security risk, as they might allow unauthorised access to sensitive data. Moreover, they could potentially provide access to illegal content.
Talking about VPN registration, the P@SHA chairman stated that registration for VPN results in the PTA registering a static IP of a user or the site the user wanted to access — either end would have to be registered with the PTA for access.
"Here arises the problem, because our (IT) industry cannot do this, as whenever you connect with a VPN, you get a new IP address, and the registration process, as per the PTA, would take about eight hours. Such a lengthy process would delay the work of online freelancers, and companies would then prefer other countries for this job."
"As far as static IP addresses are concerned, you do not have such a large number of addresses that a multitude of internet users could utilise. So, it is next to impossible to implement this policy," P@SHA chairman added.
Meanwhile, he said, as per the estimate, the restriction would cause a $1 billion annual loss to the country’s IT exports. Moreover, he said, some large international companies did not want the sharing of IP addresses — whether of the company or the one they were working with — a third party.
The P@SHA chairman alerted that the VPN restriction could deal an economic blow to 2.3 million IT workers in the country.