06/12: Cops probing 5 cases of slanderous bloggers

Fu: Cops probing 5 cases of slanderous bloggers
B.Suresh Ram

KUALA LUMPUR (Dec 5, 2007): Five cases of slanderous contents involving blogs managed by locals are currently being investigated by the police, said Internal Security Deputy Minister, Datuk Fu Ah Kiow.

He said to date only one arrest had been made involving seditious articles in blogs and the investigation in the case is in the final stages.

"The police are looking at whether to proceed with prosecution or not in this case, involving Nathaniel Tan over a posting in his website Jelas.info." he said in reply to a supplementary question from Raime Unggi (BN-Tenom) in the Dewan Rakyat (Parliament) today.

The other cases investigated involved a private company director over a seditious posting in his company website, Dr Ng Seng over a posting on the Prime Minister Department’s website, Wee Meng Chee on his NegaraKuku posting in YouTube and an email containing seditious material involving racial sentiments.

Earlier, to an original question from Raime, Fu said any action on blogs or bloggers is limited to sites which have extreme seditious contents and which have the potential to affect the country’s peace," he said.

Fu said the limitation was due to the huge number of websites and blogs. "The government also did not want to impede people’s freedom of speech."

"We cannot breach our pledge under the Bill of Guarantee launched for the Multimedia Super Corridor," he said.

Fu added that if any was blogger found to have misused blogs to spread slander and twist facts can be charged under the Sedition Act 1948, Penal Code and the Communication and Multimedia Act 1998.

He said the Cyber and Multimedia Criminal Investigations Unit had been set up under the police Commercial Crime Division to monitor new developments in the internet.

The monitoring focused on blogs and discussion forums, he said, adding that despite the establishment of the unit, there is still difficulty in identifying the wrongdoers.

"There are several reasons … they do not use their own name and the server host is located abroad," Fu said.

To a supplementary question from Datuk Kamaruddin Jaafar (BN-Tumpat) that the government could avoid such slanderous comments and information being put up in the internet, Fu said the government at all times is transparent in the administration.

"However, there are information that are related to internal security and national security which could not be made public," he said.