106 Dictating the Internet: (b) Emerging legal frameworks vi. Laws which aim to regulate information online Laws enacted or promulgated to regulate information online towards the purported aims of protecting users of online networks and platforms and ensuring security of online platforms have been invoked to impermissibly restrict free expression and information. Laws in Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Cambodia have adopted similar frameworks to the laws previously covered in this paper – by targeting expression or information alleged to be defamatory, seditious, or detrimental to the security or interests of the nation. Laws and regulations controlling the dissemination of information online have been misused to target individuals, independent media outlets and journalists reporting on matters of public interest and concern. As noted in Section III(a), Myanmar’s Telecommunications Law was promulgated to “protect telecommunications service providers and users” and “supervise telecommunications service, network facilities and telecommunications equipment for national peace and tranquility and for public security”; Thailand’s CCA regulates the online sphere to prevent “computer data… likely to cause damage to the protection of national security, public safety… or cause panic to the general public”; and Indonesia’s UU ITE was brought into force to ensure the “use and utilization of Information Technology to maintain and strengthen the national union and unity in the national interest” and “prevent misuse with due regard to religious and social-cultural values of Indonesian society”.393 They have all been used to mount or support criminal defamation charges against individuals who merely exercised their fundamental freedoms online. Similarly, the CMA has been used in Malaysia along with sedition charges to curtail freedom of expression and information online.394 While these laws have already been discussed above to show how they have supplemented older laws in the region, this section now focuses on how key provisions have, in recent years, been crafted to directly address issues that have emerged in the digital age. Unfortunately, the patterns of abuse and their impacts are troublingly similar from a human rights perspective. 393 Telecommunications Law, sections 4(d), 4(e); CCA, section 14(2); UU ITE, introductory paras (d), (f). 394 See Sections III (ii), III (iii) above.