Malaysian Government Decides To Dump Its Terrible Anti-Fake News Law

from the UN-letter-writing-campaign-works dept

Malaysia's government seized upon the term "fake news" as a way to silence coverage of internal corruption. The new law gave the government a way to steer narratives and control negative coverage, going beyond its already-tight control of local media. It would have worked out well for Prime Minister Najib Razak, who was facing a lot of negative coverage over the sudden and unexplained appearance of $700 million in his bank account.

Razak is no longer Prime Minister. His replacement, Mahathir Mohamad, claimed he would abolish the law if elected. Once elected, Mohamad walked back his promise, replacing "abolish" with "modify." In the meantime, the law had already claimed at least one victim, a Danish national visiting Malaysia who made dubious claims on YouTube about police response time following the shooting of an activist.

UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, David Kaye, had already officially complained to Malaysia's government about its "fake news" law and the damage it would do free speech. The government appeared to have ignored this in favor of protecting itself from free speech. The outgoing prime minister may not have needed this "protection" following his ejection from the public sector, but the new boss seemingly was in no hurry to give up this new power over the press.

Surprise, surprise! David Kaye now reports the Malaysian government is dumping this terrible law, effective almost immediately. In a letter to Kaye, Malaysia's UN ambassador states the government had reversed course on punishing fake news.

I wish to inform you that the new Government of Malaysia has decided to repeal the Anti-Fake News Act 2018. The process to do so has already begun, and a specific proposal is expected to be tabled during the upcoming Parliamentary session beginning on 16 July 2018.

This may be Prime Minister Mohamad belatedly making good on his campaign promise -- one he had broken immediately after taking office by offering to "redefine" the law rather than repeal it. This is good news for Malaysian journalists (as well as Dutch visitors), who may now avoid jail sentences or fines for publishing stuff the government doesn't agree with.

Filed Under: fake news, free speech, malaysia

Uganda Bans VPNs To Prevent Users From Dodging Its Absurd New Social Media Tax

from the kick-'em-when-they're-down dept

Countries around the world continue to wage their not so subtle war on the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) and encryption. In Russia, the government has all but banned the use of VPNs by layering all manner of obnoxious restrictions and caveats on VPN operators. The goal, as we've seen in China and countless other countries, is to ban VPN use without making it explicitly clear you're banning VPN use. The deeper goal is always the same: less privacy and online freedom for users who use such tools to dodge surveillance or other, even dumber government policies.

Case in point: Uganda recently decided it would be a great idea to impose a new 200 Uganda shilling ($0.05) tax on the use of social networking websites. President Yoweri Museveni pushed for the changes to combat what he calls "gossip," and now users have to pay the 200 shilling fee each day just to access websites and services like Facebook, Whatsapp, and Twitter. $20 more per year is not an insubstantial sum in a country where the average income is around $600, and the average Ugandan survives on usually less than a dollar per day.

The tax is, not surprisingly, not being received well:

The nation's wireless carriers were quick to comply, informing users they should use mobile payment services to pay the government tax:

Shockingly, VPN use has soared in the country as users try to dodge the new tax. Predicting this, Uganda's government has doubled down on bad ideas, and has been pressuring ISPs to ban VPN use. In a statement posted at Facebook (200 Uganda shillings, please), the Ugandan government tries to deter VPN use by trying to claim using VPNs will cost more than the cost of bandwidth and the social media tax, since VPN encryption utilizes slightly more bandwidth and most user connections have caps and overage fees:

"...if you think it is cheaper to use VPN than paying Shs 200/day, I think it is very unwise to think that because the data consumption under VPN is very high, I think you’re aware of that. We have technology that will block the VPN services so that no one dodges the taxes. Different VPN systems continue to come with more advanced features to circumvent government crackdowns but governments around the world have continued to block them."

Let the game of Whac-a-Mole commence.

Filed Under: censorship, free speech, social media tax, uganda, vpns