A landmark judgment banning a man from using social media should spark a discussion on what our internet rights are and to what extent citizens should be limited from surfing the net, according to an IT law expert.
The court last month banned a 22-year-old man from Qormi from using social media sites for three years after he wrote on Facebook about a “plan” to kill the Prime Minister. The man, who is under psychiatric care, was placed under a treatment order and sentenced for six months in jail, suspended for four years.
Antonio Ghio, a lecturer in ICT law and cyber crime at the University of Malta, said the first question that sprang to his mind was: under what article of the Criminal Code could one limit a person’s use of the internet?
Article 412, which deals with protection orders, gave a magistrate such powers, Dr Ghio said. As well as a physical protection order, forbidding a person from ap-proaching another, the magistrate could issue what could be termed an online protection order.
“Magistrate Francesco Depas-quale was correct in the way he applied the law,” Dr Ghio pointed out. “It is a very important judgment because it recognises the importance social media has in our lives.”
As with any other protection order, the question that arose was one of enforceability because a person could set up a fake account, making it harder for him to be identified. Additionally, the law did not yet encapsulate a definition for social media.
In 2012, Dr Ghio pointed out, the government started a consultation exercise on digital rights. This resurfaced in 2014, when the Nationalist Party in Opposition presented a White Paper.
The consultation document proposed that digital rights should be constitutionally enforceable.
This would include the right to access the internet and to accessinformation.
It was time to move away from a general law and have specialised, detailed legislation in place, Dr Ghio said.
“We need to start by understanding what our rights are.
“Do we have a right to access the internet? Only if that becomes a constitutionally accepted right can the debate then evolve to whether such a judgment would restrict these rights too much.”
If, for instance, a person was addicted to Facebook and interacted with people almost exclusively through this channel, such a judgment would effectively sever his or her communication with others. “We also need a better understanding of what we can and cannot do online,” Dr Ghio said.“We very often take the internet for granted,” he added.
Landmark EU ruling on American data snooping
In a landmark decision last week, the European Court of Justice ruled that an EU law that allowed the transfer of data to US firms did not prevent snooping by the American government.
The Safe Harbour agreement, in place since 2000, allows companies to transfer European citizens’ private data to the USif they vouch for adequate privacy protection.
The European Court ruling will hit all US firms dealing with Europeans’ data, including Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Yahoo. The decision came as a direct result of the revelations by US whistleblower Edward Snowden of the US National Security Agency routinely intercepting data from e-mails, social media and telephones.
An Austrian lawyer, Maximilian Schrems, took Facebook to court in Ireland, arguing the social media site was violating his privacy by retaining his data in the US, including material he himself had deleted.
Mr Snowden welcomed the judgment, congratulating Mr Schrems “for changing the world for the better”. “Europe’s high court just struck down a major law routinely abused for surveillance. We are all safer as a result,” Mr Snowden tweeted.