Following the policy decision to revoke the controversial Cyber Security Act (CSA), the government has prepared a draft of a new relevant law named ‘Cyber Protection Ordinance, 2024’. The controversial provisions in the existing law have been excluded from the primary draft of the new law.
Earlier, law adviser Asif Nazrul said there would be no provision in the new law on cyber security where a person can be sued for his words. There would be punishment for actual cybercrime-related-offences only.
Analysing the draft for the new law, it has been found that there is no provision which can be used to term freedom of speech as an offence. In the existing law, there is a provision of punishment for spreading derogatory information and running misleading campaigns against the liberation war, national flag and Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. However, the provisions are not definitive and there is vagueness in these provisions. Many people were imprisoned taking advantage of this vagueness of the law.
Earlier, in September last year, the then Awami League government revoked the highly criticised and controversial Digital Security Act-2018 and passed a new law titled “Cyber Security Act – 2023”. The human rights agencies and activists across the world termed it as old repressive law with a new label. The Centre for Governance Studies (CGS) published a research titled “The Ordeal: Five years of the Digital Security Act 2018-2023”. The study analysed information of a total of 1,436 cases filed under the DSA Act from October 2018 to September 2023.
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