Myanmar: Digital Content Proposals Note: This sort of public interest defence for expression crimes is necessary to balance the protection of national security and other interests with the right to freedom of expression. 3. The Electronic Transactions Law Existing Provisions 33. Whoever commits any of the following acts by using electronic transactions technology shall, on conviction be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend from a minimum of 7 years to a maximum of 15 years and may also be liable to a fine: (a) doing any act detrimental to the security of the State or prevalence of law and order or community peace and tranquillity or national solidarity or national economy or national culture. (b) receiving or sending and distributing any information relating to secrets of the security of the State or prevalence of law and order or community peace and tranquillity or national solidarity or national economy or national culture. 34. Whoever commits any of the following acts shall, on conviction be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 5 years or with fine or with both: (a) sending, hacking, modifying, altering, destroying, stealing, or causing loss and damage to the electronic record, electronic data message, or the whole or part of the computer programme dishonestly; (b) intercepting of any communication within the computer network, using or giving access to any person of any fact in any communication without permission of the originator and the addressee; (c) communicating to any other person directly or indirectly with a security number, password or electronic signature of any person without permission or consent of such person; (d) creating, modifying or altering of information or distributing of information created, modified or altered by electronic technology to be detrimental to the interest of or to lower the dignity of any organization or any person. 38. Whoever attempts to commit any offence of this Law or conspires amounting to an offence or abets the commission of an offence shall be punished with the punishment provided for such offence in this Law. Our Proposals 33. Whoever commits any of the following acts by using electronic transactions technology shall on conviction be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to a maximum of 7 years or with a fine or with both: (a) carrying out any act with the intention and likely effect of posing a serious risk of harm to national security or to the maintenance of law and order. Note: The minimum penalty has been removed (these are highly problematical outside of offences which are always very serious such as murder or rape) and a lower maximum penalty has been added to reflect the level of seriousness of the crime. The requirements of intent and creating an actual risk of serious harm have been added. References to “community peace and tranquillity or national solidarity or national economy or national culture” have been removed as being overbroad and unnecessary. (b) distributing any information which is identified as secret with the intention -6-