Malaysia Mulls Compulsory Registration of Tech Workers

Viceice writes "Hot on the heels of recently passed legislation further restricting Freedom of Assembly, the National Front-led Malaysian Government is now working to make the registration of all tech workers mandatory, making it an offence punishable by a stiff fine and jail for anyone to plan, deploy, service and maintain any computing system without a license. A leaked draft of the legislation has ignited a backlash among the IT community, which fear the law, when passed, will be devastating to the tech industry in Malaysia."

Comments

Malaysia also has institutionalized racism

[circletimessquare]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism#Malaysian_institutional_racism

its the reason Singapore exists (a Chinese dominated enclave that was not exactly going to submit to the concept)

Please plug in your brain...

[Frosty Piss]

Whats wrong with requiring tech people to be licenced, we require it of doctors, lawyers, teachers, police need a warrant ..so why not IT tech workers.

Quality of service in not why they want to regulate people that work with computers. It's a matter of controlling communication, repressing opposition views.

Draft Bill

[Viceice]

The leaked draft bill is here:

http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/75107593?access_key=key-22cz53lb62552asmdd43

The pertinent part is paragraph 18.

Re:Draft Bill

[Anonymous Coward]

Pertinent part is section 2:

"This Act applies to the Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII)."
"“Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII)” refers to those assets, systems and functions that are vital to the nation that their incapacity or destruction would have a devastating impact on National economic strength or National image or National defense and security or Government capability to function or Public health and safety;"

It makes perfect sense to require companies and entities dealing with CNII to be evaluated and certified as competent.

A lot of things are wrong in Malaysia's political landscape, but this bill is a bad example of it. The government (the same political party in power since independence 54 year ago) is rotten by corruption and cronyism, it supports within the population has been going downhill in recent years as more and more corruption scandals have been exposed (thanks in great part to the internet - the local press is self-censored and owned by the political parties in power, most other publications are banned). With the next general election expected within months, the people are quick to bash the government for any proposed law or act that attacks their freedom. Most of the time, they are right to complain, the Peaceful Assembly Act the TFA briefly mention is a very good example of how the Malaysian government wants to control and restrict the freedom of speech and movement of their citizen, but that IT bill, well, it is not.

Living in Malaysia for 5 years now, it's a very nice and friendly country. Not what some people here may say. It's a muslim majority country, but very moderate and multi-ethnic. There are racial-based laws in effects which grants financial advantages, preference in employment and education, to the Malay (and Muslim) majority, corruption exists at every level of power and cronyism is a real plague. These are the real problem. Yet, Malaysia has a lot of potential and its people, the younger generation especially, is looking forward to make it a better place. I'm pretty confident they will.

New Jersey Tried a Law Like That Once

[billstewart]

It was back in the 90s, if I remember correctly, and unlike some licensing laws that were passed to protect special interest groups, this was just because a legislator had met a licensed civil engineer at a party who was complaining about how he needed a license to build bridges and buildings, but people could design safety-critical software without knowing what they were doing. It seemed like a good idea at the time, so the legislator cribbed the state's civil engineering licensing laws, turned them into software engineering licensing laws, and by the time she was done you couldn't operate a microwave oven without a four-year degree from an accredited software engineering program, much less tell a web site designer what you wanted your web site to look like. And because she was in the majority political party in the state assembly, it not only passed her committee without any intelligent thought being applied to it, but also passed the state House. (And after all, most of the legislators were lawyers who also needed licenses to practice, so it didn't occur to them that this actually mattered.) Fortunately, a reporter from the Bergen Record saw the bill, thought about what it might mean, and asked the PR person from a major high-tech firm in the state what their opinion was. They looked at it, said "[expletive deleted]!!", told their friends, and all of them told their state senate contacts to kill the bill or it would cripple all the high-tech business in the state, and it died quietly.

Re:One step away from IT Unions

[codegen]

Except that doctors lawyers and engineers are licensed by a professional body, not by the government. And there is a professional code of conduct that they must adhere to. Teachers and police are a certification, not a license (despite the name). You do not have to be a member of the professional body to practice.

Re:One step away from IT Unions

[jcr]

Precisely. The purpose of all trade licensing is to raise barriers to entry to protect the incompetent from competitors. It benefits the cartel at the expense of the public.

-jcr

Re:One step away from IT Unions

[Khyber]

"The purpose of all trade licensing is to raise barriers to entry to protect the incompetent from competitors"

And this is where you just fell flat on your face. We require food handling licenses in California because people are fucking incompetent and don't know the first fucking thing about cross-contamination of food products.