I do not mean conventional piracy, but rather means of deliberate deception and recruitment on cyberspace.
I received a phone call a few days ago from a legal expert in the office of one of the ministers. He thanked me for the effort I put into writing my articles and conveyed to me the greetings of the minister, and then asked whether I had a Twitter account. The account he was referring to was created using an alias, with no information about the person concerned.
I said no. I have only one account in my name, the pen name I use in my columns, “Pen Ink”.
“This is strange, he said, “When we asked about the account we were told it was yours”.
I thanked him for his interest and inquiries and for drawing my attention to the Twitter account. I repeated that I had only one account in my name.
I mention this to show the chaos reigning in the media in general and the fact that this media is sometimes used to harm individuals. The situation is worse in state affairs in the absence of rules and regulations for social media, in which anyone can create an account simply by giving an email address, regardless of whether the email address is in his name or someone else’s name.
Social media lack the necessary regulations, accountability and legal redress for violations. However, some violations are not easy to discover, even for IT organisations across the world, particularly if they are related to national security.
Mercenaries hide behind fake accounts and borrowed names. They use other people’s names or names and logos of institutions to commit gross violations. They pretend to be someone else and spread hatred between individuals and groups, and thus can have social, political and security implications for nations. The security implications of these violations are the most dangerous part of it. This opens the way for cyberspace gangs and the use of cyber-mercenaries by some countries.
Tunisian radio Mosaic launched a campaign on its website on April 12 against those using a Facebook campaign to attack Qatar.
Two days later, on April 14, Italian newspaper Giornale il Referendum carried a report by Valeria Velucci titled “Anonymous announced that their next cyberspace target will be Qatar”.
According to the newspaper, this announcement was also carried on the Facebook page of the Tunisian group targeting Qatar.
Mercenaries in other sister countries have aimed their insults and attacks at Qatar. It is unfortunate to see Twitter turned from a peaceful dove into an aggressive hawk.
This is a strange cyberspace attack. We believe that the media should be free, but slandering and defamation of others have nothing to do with freedom. Service providers and users need to know that freedom in cyberspace is not mean to turn communication companies into political tools, to undermine professional regulations or create divisions and hatreds. It should not also mean deceit and swindling of individuals.
I remember the Pentagon’s decision to prevent American soldiers and Pentagon personnel from logging onto Facebook from Pentagon computers and through its host servers under the pretext that this website is not secure.
The fact that this decision was taken by a country where Facebook and Twitter has been created and this make it necessary for our government institutions to be cautious, not only as far as social media is concerned, but also as far as sending information through email addresses whose servers exist in the countries.
There is also a growing need for creating mechanisms to counter cyberspace piracy in relation to the main servers in all institutions.
This is a crazy world, where political chicanery thrives and schemes aiming at creating disunity between the peoples of the same countries and tensions among different countries flourish in a blatant violation of all international norms and rights defended inside the United Nations.
According to the International declaration on Human Rights, international agreements ratified by the international l community, there is need for social media companies to create binding standards for the registration of individuals, including basic information, their addresses and countries. Equally important is also the professional code for social media companies similar to the traditional media code for newspapers and satellite broadcasting.
Media and freedoms are being reformulated everywhere in the world according to personal identities, for avoiding ambiguity, opacity and plagiarism.
Freedom should bloom within a specific regulated framework. Any violation in this regard should be treated on equal footing with international piracy, something that should entail punishment.
I need to remind with what have stipulated in the Universal Declaration for Human Rights, article 19, says, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; right to believe, to obtain information, and to disseminate opinion using any means without restrictions.
Moreover, Article 19 of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights underlines the following restrictions to the exercise of the rights:
A - Respect for the rights or reputations of others;
B – The protection of national security or public order, or of public health or morals.
Article 20 added: “Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred is prohibited by law as they are considered incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.”
Dear United Nations, what is happening now is exactly what these conventions and declarations prohibit. Why should not countries regulate the tools that have turned the world into an arena for fighting?
The United Nations has moral and legal responsibilities to move, to oblige social media companies to respect rules that require individuals to register within the framework of specific professional codes, and according to international conventions. Because these agreements are made to protect individuals and people’s rights and grant freedoms and privacies.
Procrastination in taking the aforementioned steps can only be interpreted as either failure or intentional recklessness aimed at turning social media into a political arena for fighting and chaos.
