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Malaysia Uses Anti-Terrorism Laws To Stop Bloggers
Academiphiliac writes to mention the BBC reported in an article this morning that the Malaysian government may start using tough anti-terror laws to censor bloggers who insult either Islam or the country's king. "The move comes as one of Malaysia's leading online commentators has been questioned by police following a complaint by the main governing party. The new rules would allow a suspect to be detained indefinitely, without being charged or put on trial. But officials insist the law is not intended to strangle internet freedom."
According to his latest blog entry, he has been released after 8 hrs, and the reason for his temp detention was comments made on the website
The intent of the law doesn't matter one iota. What matters is what it allows. If it can be abused, then its very likely that it will be at some point. Even if the guys currently in charge use it responsibly, there is no guarantee that it will remain that way when leadership changes hands.
Of course, it's always disheartening to see things like this:
"I was alleged to have insulted the king, and also Islam and incite racial hatred, so I am going in there to reply to all these charges. I promise I'm going to give them a hell of a tough time," he told the BBC before he turned himself in.Freedom of speech, except for the speech we don't like. Somehow their assurances concerning the intent of the law don't give me much confidence.
The problem with insulting Islam is...
That it's far too easy to do!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
if I post a cartoon of me fucking Mohammed up the arse, that makes me a terrorist?
No, that makes you gay.
In case you were confused about that.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Not true.
Until 9/11 the biggest act of terror committed on US soil was the Oaklahoma City bombing, committed by a right wing white supremacist. The act of terror that caused greatest loss of life in Europe is still the Bolgona railway station bombing perpetrated by a neo-facist right wing group.
Islamic terrorism is relatively new. The PLO was secular. Their friends, the Baader Meinhof gang and Action Directe were communists.
Most religious terrorism is sectarian, Catholics against Protestants, Protestants against Catholics, Sunni against Shi'ia, Shi'ia against Sunnis.
And since we are on the subject of terrorism, what do you call a government that employs torture, detention without trial, starts wars, disegards international law and treaties? Perhaps the term is not terrorist, but the corrupt crew are still a bunch of totally evil bastards regardless.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
You know, back in the days of the Cold War, it used to be that in the "West" Communists were feared. In the USSR, it was the "Spreaders of American Imperialism". It would seem that history is repeating itself, but with the added proviso of having a unified enemy. One that can literally be indistinguishable from the common person, and even more disturbing, cannot be defeated. Now, I know that is nothing new in this crowd, but think about it, a Communist can be defeated, I would say for the most part they have been. The USSR fell, Cuba has its own problems with Castro falling to old age, China a communist country in name, now has "capitalist zones" throughout -- Communism is a dead horse and it has been flogged to death.
Terrorism, however, is a bird of a different colour. How would you defeat Terrorism? Overthrow the state that the Terrorists occupy? Nope, look at Iraq. Do you put up a cute little "Terror Alert Scale"? Oh yeah, that was really effective! Nope, you can't "defeat it", and anyone saying you can has not thought enough about the concept. Regardless, however, it would seem that many (frivolous) laws are being put in place to combat terror, even in countries one wouldn't expect this in (Say Canada, for example...). What is perhaps scariest is that these laws will probably not go away quickly -- giving anyone who wants to abuse them more than enough chance to get away with it and cover up evidence.
By no means, am I advocating that there was some "master plan" by some Evil Genius(tm), instead I think it is just a general ideology that comes with the times. What disturbs me is in this enlightened age, we seem to completely avert our eyes to the consequences of these laws. While some might ultimately get repealed, most will not and some may even snowball into much bigger, much badder laws that essentially go from government monitoring, to Government Sanctioned Living(tm).
I am also not, by any means, saying that I have all the answers -- which always seemed like a cop out to me, to criticize without at least adding your own view and possible solution -- but I do have a couple of thoughts.
*Every law should have a sunset clause -- an expiration date, if you will. This would be an immutable amount of time (say five years), and the law would be required to be reviewed and passed through whatever checks and balances exist (if any). The law could of course be repealed, but it could not be extended anymore than 5 years from the date of review. This would still be open to abuse, but would certainly stop a lot of the stupid laws that stay on the books and are used solely for abusive purposes by law enforcement or Government Men (tm).
*Laws should be "subdivided" into categories. So laws dealing with "Terrorism" would all be put into that category and that way one could remove them from the system wholesale. No need to go hunting and pecking. Obviously, this too would present problems, but I think it would simply things.
*Lastly -- every law should be understandable at a (4/5/6/7/8th) grade reading level, written in plain English. If the common man (and yes, I am inferring that the common man isn't the "sharpest knife in the drawer") can't read it, it can't pass.
Anyway, yeah, pipe dream.
Lesson (which should have already been) learned: It doesn't matter what the law was intended to do, but rather what the law can be twisted to imply. If a law can be interpreted in a manner, it will be interpreted manner. That's the most important thing to understand from this article.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
I'm sure any sane person would rather vote for a new government than take up arms and shoot people (and get shot at) to achieve a new government. It's just a matter of when "enough is enough", and enough people have decided it's time for the latter.
In western countries with representative democracies, we still have the faint hope that we can vote our way to a better government. As bad as Bush is, unless he decides to unilaterally declare himself dictator, or call off elections and declare himself President until he decides to step down, he's going to be out in 18 months.
And we still have things like freedom of speech, for the most part. There's some bad things, like the government being able to see which books I check out from the library without a warrant, but that's really nothing like being jailed indefinitely just for insulting a stupid religion.
In these other countries, things aren't like this. Not only can they be jailed for insulting a stupid religion, their government is a monarchy, so they can't ever change it.
However, we have lots of issues to clean-up "back at home", if we want to preach to Malaysia about such issues.
For example in the UK
"More important still, the government's draconian antiterrorism laws have already been used by the police last month to arrest 144 people protesting against an arms fair in London. The civil rights group Liberty has challenged the use of emergency powers contained in sections 44 (1) and 44 (2) of the Terrorism Act 2000 as illegal. Liberty's court action has revealed that on two occasions--from August 13 for 28 days and from September 11 for 28 days--the Metropolitan Police had unrestrained power to treat everyone in London as a terrorist, and stop, search and hold them without cause or reasonable suspicion. The Met. has already declared that the provisions of the legislation could be used against those demonstrating against President Bush's November 19 state visit to Britain, which will be policed by up to 250 armed officers under the leadership of London's head of antiterrorist and security operations, David Veness."
NPOV link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSEi#Protests
But you are surely not in agreement with the principles of Sharia law? As in, everyone who doesn't believe in the correct magical superman is murdered by the State? You wouldn't want that in your own country, right?
Sharia law is evil in exactly the same sense that Communism and Nazism are evil. Exchange worship of a Stalin/Mao figure for a deity, and change a few economic policies, and you have exactly the same thing. People are required to think certain thoughts and adopt certain lifestyles, and punished by death if they do not. Any thinking person should be strongly opposed to such an idea. But then, all religions know how to brainwash people so that they cannot think critically about their own faith.
We criticise and challenge Christians about silly beliefs like Creationism, and Christians ignore us and go on believing what they want. Fine. We should criticise and challenge Muslims about their silly beliefs too. But (at least in my country) no-one dares to do that, because the Muslims won't just ignore it.
>north
You're an immobile computer, remember?
Huh? Sure we do, at least a lot more than most other countries.
First, there's the other branches of government. They don't have to go along with the President, especially since they control the purse-strings. That's how we finally got out of Vietnam, remember.
Second, there's the military. The President can't stay in power, in contravention of the Constitution, without support from the military. Most countries are this way, since the military usually has all the guns.
Lastly, there's the citizens. Many of us are armed, unlike in many other countries. The military may be powerful, but it's nowhere near as large as the citizenry. And Iraq is showing us every day exactly how effective guerrilla insurgents with improvised explosives and small arms can be against the world's most powerful military force. Besides, it's not likely most of the military would voluntarily go against their own countrymen.
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If the people that I know in the military are any indication, then the day a President unilaterally declares himself king/emperor/dictator for life is the day that some missiles are "accidentally" launched at said dictator. There are a lot of military folks who take that "uphold the Constitution" part of their duty very very seriously.