Myanmar: Analysis of Draft Cyber Security Law can arrest a suspect without a warrant and initiate an investigation without court authorisation. This category is normally reserved for more serious offences. While some of the offences envisaged in these provisions, for example relating to child pornography, are indeed very serious, others are not. Some minimum standard should be established before an offence is able to be treated as cognisable. Recommendations: ! Section 29 should be removed in its entirety from the law. If any provision along these lines is retained, it should cover only content which international law allows restricting and which is unique to the online context so as to justify such a special online restriction. ! Sections 64, 65 and 68 should also be removed. ! Section 85 should either be removed entirely or amended so that only more serious crimes are classified as cognisable. 4. Other Criminal Rules A large number of provisions in the draft Law create offences for various forms of online behaviour, a lot of which falls under the generic description of hacking although a number of other forms of behaviour are also covered. It is beyond the scope of this Analysis to analyse each of these provisions in detail. However, a few general comments are in order. First, there is a tremendous amount of overlap among these provisions. For example, sections 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 59 and 60 all deal with broadly similar offences (mostly relating to different forms of hacking). It is not clear what the structural distinction is between provisions in Chapter 11 (which contains sections 36, 37, 38, 40 and 41 from among those mentioned above) and Chapter 15 (which contains sections 59 and 60). The latter have specific penalties attached to them but otherwise overlap broadly with the former. Apart from this form of duplication, especially in different chapters of the draft Law, just being poor legal drafting and style, a number of problems may arise from it. It could create confusion for both those tasked with applying the law and those subject to it, leading to misapplications of the law or applications in ways that were not intended. Those responsible for applying the law may seek to interpret it in ways that differentiate the various provisions, so as to give them each a separate meaning, which could result in overextension of the law. Different provisions may be applied to the same sort of behaviour but lead to different results, given the slight differences in wording, resulting in injustice. Second, given the nature of online behaviour, innocent but innovative or exploratory behaviour can lead to results that look like hacking or other forms of wrongdoing, for example where a programmer stumbles into an unauthorised space. As a result, clear and specific intent The Centre for Law and Democracy is a non-profit human rights organisation working internationally to provide legal expertise on foundational rights for democracy -9-