At least they are disguising it. Australia has, in the state of SA the "Police Complaints and Discipline Act 2016", that expressly allows police officers to investigate their own corruption, and when they inevitably conclude they did nothing illegal, anyone who complains to anyone other including human right's organisations will be arrested and charged.
Source: I was arrested by my ex-wife's boyfriend, who denied all my human rights in detention. All his ridiculous charges were thrown out, but he, and his police partner was allowed to investigate himself as to whether he violated any laws. I then received a threatening letter from the Attorney-General telling me I would be charged if I brought it up the particulars of it with anyone.
Why is this surprising to anyone? When the government is corrupt, the laws are just a convenient cover for doing whatever you wanted to do anyway.
Secondly, which countries does the article mention? Nigeria, Pakistan, Georgia, Turkey, and Jordan. Such countries strain the definition of "government" let alone "law".
People will abuse any law they can.
> "Any proposal must be viewed as follows. Do not pay overly much attention to the benefits that might be delivered were the law in question to be properly enforced, rather one needs to consider the harm done by the improper enforcement of this particular piece of legislation, whatever it might be."
-Lyndon B. Johnson
This is why I harp about platforms needing to become decentralised and un-censorable. I was hoping the fediverse could become something in that direction but I'd also had hopes for things like IPFS, Matrix (Element I think used to host videos), DLive, SteemIT, etc. User adoption and network effects are really the only limiting factors - but as people get more disillusioned with Meta and X, there is always a space for competing platforms.
I take an Occam's Razor to the usual arguments against it - the problems these create (fake news, slander, etc) are already prominent in regulated media platforms, which also rely on community moderation as a result. The solutions it enables (space for fearless/citizen reporting, Streisand effects for censorship rather than big-tech powered banhammers) are wholly absent in regulated media.
Besides tech, and going by the press freedom index, one's only hope for good journalism today would be to incorporate in New Zealand. But you'd still have to face the odds of your content being banned in the countries they report on.
The other issue with the anti-press efforts by governments is that it weaponises the state against on-ground journalism and ends up encouraging out-of-country reporting as a result.
"US declines to join more than 70 countries in signing UN cybercrime treaty", 200 comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45760328
the first global framework “for the collection, sharing and use of electronic evidence for all serious offenses”.. the first global treaty to criminalize crimes that depend on the internet.. [it] has been heavily criticized by the tech industry, which has warned that it criminalizes cybersecurity research and exposes companies to legally thorny data requests. Human rights groups warned.. [it] forces member states to create a broad electronic surveillance dragnet that would include crimes that have nothing to do with technology
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/the-un...
> states parties are obligated to establish laws in their domestic system to “compel” service providers to “collect or record” real-time traffic or content data. Many of the states behind the original drive to establish this convention have long sought this power over private firms.
These aren't really cybercrime laws as such; they're cybercrime statutes that include defamation and misinformation laws; it's those speech restrictions, which are explicit and not a knock-on consequences of fighting what we consider "cybercrime", that are the root of this reporting.
> One provision in particular—Section 24, which made it illegal to publish false information online that was deemed to be “grossly offensive,” “indecent,” or even merely an “annoyance”—has been especially ripe for abuse
I mean how is this surprising to anyone?
Grossly offensive is in the eye of the beholder
200 good software and marketing engineers that ignore studies and fight for a good, evolutionary rational cause ... as good as they make proxy farms for scraping ... damn ... so much after work, so much to write about, so much to critique, so. much. capital.
Any instrument that can be used to repress opposition should be minimal, transparent, and tightly limited if it must exist at all. When power gets new levers, it always finds new ways to pull them.
But in this case it may be designed for that purpose.
Welcome to Earth! Some people really enjoy exploiting legal loopholes.
Two years ago, I was sued for $10,000 in copyright infringement for embedding a YouTube video on my website. They filed a lawsuit by describing the word “embed” as if it were “upload.” But they are two different things. I won the case. But I realized that others didn't.
I learned that the company filed lawsuits against dozens of websites, especially Blogspot sites. I even heard a rumor.
They share content on social media and community sites in a way that entices people, focusing on areas that remain in a gray zone and where few people know it's illegal.
For example, “Embed movies from YouTube and share them on your website. You'll make a lot of money. If I knew how to program, I would do it.” This is just one example. There are many different examples. By the way, my site wasn't a movie site.
They apparently file lawsuits like clockwork against anyone who triggers their radar with the right keywords via Google Alerts.
Cybercrimes are just another reflection of this. If I could, I'd share more, but I don't want to go to jail. Freedom of expression isn't exactly welcomed everywhere on the internet.
I won't be surprised if governments start outlawing journalism.
>Well meaning
yeah, right
It is a paradox that laws can be abused by enforcement. Similar to who watches the watchers and turtles.
> Across the world, well-meaning laws intended to reduce online fraud and other scourges of the internet are being put to a very different use.
If only someone, anyone, could have foreseen this /s. I read so many HN comments about the "slippery slope fallacy," back when the powers that be were censoring the people that they didn't like. I bet they'll be right back where they were next time the government is going after the "misinformation" they don't like.
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Laws by definition are capsules of power. Some laws give more power to government and some laws give power to some sections of people, such as gender-based or cast-based laws, renter-vs-landlord rules etc. Such laws are easy to be weaponized by the party whom the law favors. Such laws actually increase crime through fake cases. In some Western countries, teen gangs create so much terror, only because they are immune to punishment by law.
What’s the principled line between journalism and crime, if there is one that isn’t just opinion? Often journalists are not just protecting sources but guiding them or encouraging them. And those sources are sometimes committing crimes like leaking trade secrets or other confidential info.
US federal regulations are full of laws that take something minor or completely legal, and add huge punishments because someone used technology. All the way back in 1952, fraud punishments were worse if someone used a telephone to commit fraud. In 1982 the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act added even more punishment, if someone used a computer.
Fraud is bad, and it should be illegal, but why have different punishments based on what technology someone used?
Laws like this go outside of fraud, and often are clearly unconstitutional, like the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, which made lawful gambling illegal too, until it was effectively overturned with Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association in 2018.