Its executive director Eric Paulsen praised Gobind for getting MCMC to improve and regulate the communications and multimedia industry instead of allowing it to be used as a political tool, as he said was done under the previous administration.
He also hailed Gobind’s plans to repeal the Anti-Fake News Act 2018 and investigate the block on Malaysiakini’s live election results site, as well as the mysterious bot attacks against politicians on election day.
In a statement, he said Gobind should also uncover “further wrongdoings” by the MCMC and ensure it becomes accountable to the public.
He also urged the minister to investigate the October 2017 personal data breach expose of over 46 million mobile phone subscribers, in addition to other personal medical and employment records from Jobstreet.com and various medical associations, that were compromised and sold.
“The now-infamous largest data breach in Malaysian history has been traced back to MCMC’s outsourcing of a phone-blocking system to the little-known company Neumera Sdn Bhd, and until today MCMC has not come clean on the scandal.
“Further, we fully expect MCMC’s investigation and prosecution policies to be updated and revamped to prevent the widespread abuse of power that we saw under the previous BN administration, when these powers were misused to clamp down on political opponents and dissidents online.”
Paulsen said Section 233 of the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 (CMA), which had been the basis for “many frivolous arrests and prosecutions” relating to social media comments, must be amended as soon as possible to specify the scope of the offence.
“In our view, the offence should only be limited to serious and well-defined online threats, harassment or bullying against a weaker party, an ordinary individual, and cannot be used by government leaders or officials against dissidents or political opponents as was the practice under the previous BN administration.”
He welcomed the move to unblock Sarawak Report, Asia Sentinel, Medium and other websites and blogs that were blocked due to their critical content against the BN administration.
However, he said, LFL was concerned that this power to block had been too easily abused and might be illegal as there was no legislative provision in the CMA empowering MCMC to do so.
“We would therefore strongly urge the minister to instruct MCMC not to block anymore websites until legislative amendments can be done, and clear guidelines put in place in order to better define the scope and powers of the MCMC when dealing with websites or contents that they view as illegal or prejudicial to public order or security.”