Taking photos of people who get injured or killed in accidents and publicizing them on social media present a serious misuse of technology. Such acts of people create social problems and difficult situation for the victims and their families.

This is the reason that many authorities in Qatar are considering once again for banning the act of taking and sharing such photos of accidents victims. This amendment was first introduced several years ago because of the complaints of annoying invasions of privacy by the people. Recently, a Cabinet in Qatar has put forward draft legislation to the Advisory Council for modification of the Law No. 11 of 2004.

According to the amendments in the law, a strict punishment will be given to the person who will violate the regulations. No person will be allowed for capturing any scenes without the permission of the representatives. The authorities will place legal charges against those who will not respect other people’s privacy.

The Detentions:

Because of the increasing use of smart phone devices, such incidents have been occurring round the clock and people are getting irritated by the misuse of pictures and video clips of their loved ones. So there was a dire need to regulate the development of social media and the advanced smartphone usage in the country.

Also Qatar Cybercrime authorities have prohibited publishing of such content that encroaches upon the privacy of social values of other people. This amendment of law was forced to introduce mainly because of the two accidents that occurred in Qatar and attracted much publicity.

One of the accidents that grabbed the attention of many of the authorities was the clash between two teenage boys and a sewage tanker in October. One person shared the horrific footage of the deadly traffic accident and was arrested later on. Another accident of a young man smashing into a Rolls Royce at the Grand Doha Hotel a month later made the authorities arrest two people as they posted the videos online.

Such cases create unrest among the families of the victims and they often get a huge shock after seeing the clips of their loved ones. In an urge to capture the images near the accidents sites people hamper the attempts of the rescuers who are there to save lives. They make it difficult for rescuers to reach the injured people and sometimes lose precious lives because of onlooker’s obsession of taking exclusive pictures. This law will definitely help the authorities to do their job more successfully.

Such laws should also be introduced in Pakistan where accident places have become a hot spot for onlookers to capture images instead of helping the victims. The onlookers are left with less sympathy for people and have become more obsessed with the appreciation they want from their social media friends. Such strict laws will discourage the people to post videos and photographs on the most commonly used social media which is Facebook.

We need to ensure this in social media in Pakistan as well, no accident, blood pictures should be allowed to be posted online.