Singapore’s ostensible solution to the proliferation of fake news and hoaxes, the Protection From Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Bill — which gives ministers broad powers “to stop the dissemination of online falsehoods and punish those who create and spread them” — is being roundly slammed in some corners for its potential for misuse and infringement upon freedom of expression.
The latest activist group to speak out against the bill is Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the Paris-based NGO focused on advocating for press freedoms that also creates the annual World Press Freedom Index (in which Singapore most recently ranked 151 out of 180 countries).
In a statement released yesterday, RSF outlined its criticisms of the bill, which it referred to as “a major obstacle to the freedom to inform.”
In their analysis, RSF argues that the bill gives government officials “an almost entirely free hand to control content circulating online” and warns that, in its current form, it could be used as a tool to censor and intimidate online media outlets and Internet users.”
“It is not up to the government to arbitrarily determine what is and is not true,” Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk, says in the release. “In its current form, this Orwellian law establishes nothing less than a ‘ministry of truth’ that would be free to silence independent voices and impose the ruling party’s line. We condemn this bill in the strongest possible terms because, in both form and substance, it poses unacceptable obstacles to the free flow of journalistically verified information.”
The NGO argues that the bill combines “loose wording with catch-all formulations that extend the range of applicability of the penalties to absolutely all content circulating online,” essentially granting all government ministers the ability to censor, correct, or block access to any online content that the minister considers a threat to “the public interest.”
RSF also notes that the bill currently allows ministers to take measures against any entity in order to “prevent a diminution of public confidence in […] the government [or] an organ of state,” raising the possibility of the law being used against those with legitimate criticisms of the government.
Their analysis argues that the bill makes it difficult for entities or citizens to challenge a minister’s decision, requiring them to either entreat the minister to rescind their decision or attempt a legal challenge in the high court.
RSF also interviewed some of the media and tech industry representatives that were invited by a special governmental committee, set up March 2018, to offer their insights and recommendations on the bill. According to the NGO, the committee mischaracterized the views of many of those representatives who had been critical of the bill in their final report.
Besides activists, global tech giants including Facebook and Twitter have also expressed their concern about the bill and argued that there are already enough regulations in place to address concerns about fake news.
The government has not specifically addressed RSF’s statement on the bill, but last Monday, Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam responded to concerns regarding the bill’s definition of falsehood and its potential for infringing on freedom of speech, with the minister arguing that the bill actually “encourages free speech because there are more viewpoints for you to have rather than be restricted and what is said to be just false.”
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