Internet in Malaysia "partly free", says foreign report

The annual report Freedom on the Net 2013 said, while Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak publicly promotes internet freedom, there were several areas where the country fell short of international standards.

“In the past two years, with elections looming, officials reinforced commitments to not censor the internet, prosecuted fewer bloggers and pledged legislative reforms. When these reforms materialised in 2012, however, they fell short of international standards,” said the report.

The report highlighted that Malaysia saw “cyber attacks against regime critics” and “paid pro-government commentors”, especially in the run up to the country’s 13th general election that was held in May. These were among the 10 most commonly used types of internet control worldwide.

The level of internet and digital media freedom in 60 countries were measured with Malaysia receiving a score of 44, a point lower from last year’s 43.

A numerical score of 0 denotes the ‘most free’ while 100 was the ‘least free’. Countries with scores between 31 and 60 points were categorised as ‘partly free’.

Iceland topped the list as having the most internet freedom while Iran came in last. In Asia, only Japan and Philippines were listed as fully free.

While internet penetration is listed at 66 percent of the 29 million population, the study found Malaysia's press freedom as ‘not free’.

The report noted attempts to manipulate online discourse. It also noted a “palpable increase in the presence of ‘cybertroopers’, commentators paid by political parties on all sides to attack their opponents.”

The amendment to the Evidence Act 1950, which holds website owners liable for seditious comments posted by users that took effect in July, also affected Malaysia’s score.

The study noted several online news outlets covering the opposition had faced disruption of their servers and came under attacks.

Other areas included police charging a blogger with criticising the Johor sultan and a discovery by a Canadian-based university in finding spyware, which might have allowed the authorities to spy on its citizens.

Freedom House noted that legal harassment was the main way for the authorities to intimidate critical bloggers in 2012 and April 2013.

“Online reporting – some from the past year – helped expose the government’s multi-million dollar sponsorship of pro-Najib articles published by supposedly objective international blogs and news outlets since 2008.”

The report also noted that in mid 2013, Toronto-based Citizen Lab reported that at least one electronic document containing election-related information in Malay appeared to be spreading spyware to recipients.

These were among the key reasons for the country’s seemingly low ranking.

The study noted that broad surveillance, new laws controlling web content and growing arrests of social-media users drove a worldwide decline in internet freedom in the past year.

However, the report found that activists were becoming more effective at raising awareness of emerging threats.