When can your Facebook post land you in jail?

Facebook users in the UAE have been once again reminded by the country’s regulatory authority to adhere to stipulated guidelines.

No users below 13; no hate speech, not even a re-post of a post that includes hate speech or something that can incite violence or threatens or contains graphic or gratuitous violence; no pornographic stuff or anything that contains nudity.

You are not allowed to operate any application which contains alcohol-related, dating or other mature content without appropriate restrictions. And no tagging others’ pictures without consent.

There are also restrictions and guidelines on the offering of competitions, promotions and other commercial communications, like spam messages.

“These restrictions are no more than [what] users should expect under the laws of the UAE, which prohibit the publication of content which is contrary to public morals, the principles of Islam and the social and moral welfare of the UAE,” the Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRA) said in its White Paper

The paper states it was originally published in December 2012.

According to the TRA, users should not tag other users without their consent. Besides, users should not share their password or otherwise do anything that might jeopardise the security of their account. Also, ‘Facebook’ has broad rights to use the content which users post, and the right to use them in any way it wants.

UAE’s Cyber Crimes Law makes it pretty clear that infringing someone else’s privacy, including taking and distributing pictures without consent, is a criminal offense and punishable.

In 2012 the government issued Federal Legal Decree No. 5 on combating cybercrimes and further incorporated amendments to Federal Legal Decree No. 2 issued in 2006 on cybercrimes.

The decree criminalises activities by any person who creates or runs any electronic site to send, transmit, publish or promote online any pornographic material, gambling activities and any other indecent acts.

It also imposes punishment for anyone for using an electronic network or any information technology means for the unwarranted violation of the privacy of others by eavesdropping, intercepting, recording or disclosing conversations, communications, audio and video material; taking photographs of others, creating electronic photos of others, disclosing, copying or saving them; publishing news, electronic photographs or photographs or scenes, comments, data and information even if they are authentic.

New UAE cybercrime laws: Jail for indecent posts

According to the TRAm it is not just Facebook, but the same rules apply to all social networking sites including Twitter; Instagram; YouTube; Yahoo/Flickr; LinkedIn; Gmail; Microsoft Outlook; Apple Store; Blackberry and Keek.

For those of you with a large number of Facebook friends, living abroad and not necessarily bound by these regulations, beware before you like or retweet or share posts that you think could be violating these regulations.

 

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