Curtailing Free Expression, Opinion and Information Online in Southeast Asia are difficult to regulate. In some cases, they should not be the subject of regulation.8 Moreover, use of the internet exposes users to violations and abuses of their rights, including the rights to privacy and security, whether through surveillance by State authorities or the use of personal data by companies for commercial purposes. Cyber-attacks on State and other organizational online infrastructure also demand a genuine law and policy response. These problems pose threats to the exercise of the rights to freedom of expression, opinion and information, privacy, religious freedom and belief, and public participation, among other rights.9 In Southeast Asia, these problems are particularly acute due to a variety of factors. The region has more than 400 million internet users.10 At the same time, there are enormous disparities across and within countries when it comes to access to social media. Access to the internet has exposed previously isolated communities to the full weight of the global media ecosystem with little preparation. In some cases, this has happened over a period of just a few years. The region also has a diverse range of governance regimes, including authoritarian States that exercise near total control over public discourse. Many of these governments have been unprepared for the profound impact that internet access has had on their ability to control their populations and suppress public expression, which may include speech that is critical of State authorities. This has led to a proliferation of laws ostensibly meant to address issues of legitimate concern, such as hate speech, defamation, electoral security and cybersecurity, but which have more often been used to target critics and constrain civic space. The rise of internet-based communications and social media have exacerbated existing social tensions, and provided new tools for powerful State and non-State actors to exploit and introduced new vulnerabilities for civil society, judiciaries and other institutions that require open discourse 8 9 10 In a 2017 joint declaration, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression and three regional rapporteurs with equivalent mandates noted that “disinformation and propaganda are often designed and implemented so as to mislead a population, as well as to interfere with the public’s right to know and the right of individuals to seek and receive, as well as to impart, information and ideas of all kinds”, and “some forms of disinformation and propaganda may harm individual reputations and privacy, or incite to violence, discrimination or hostility against identifiable groups in society”. See the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Representative on Freedom of the Media, the Organization of American States (OAS) Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information, ‘Joint Declaration on Freedom of Expression and “Fake News”, Disinformation and Propaganda’, 3 March 2017, Available at: https://www.osce.org/fom/302796?download=true A/HRC/38/35, para 5. ASEAN UP, ‘Southeast Asia digital, social and mobile 2019’, 31 July 2019, Available at: https:// aseanup.com/southeast-asia-digital-social-mobile/ 9