ASEAN Regional Coalition to #StopDigitalDictatorship Rapid test method - © Heru sutimbul (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hasil_Rapid_Test.jpg) 💉 Digital Dictators take advantage of the masses during times of heightened uncertainty, paranoia, and fear, for example, during the COVID-19 Pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic undeniably increased anxiety, paranoia, and fear levels for people all across the globe. Southeast Asia is no exception. While Southeast Asian governments responded to the people’s emergency needs to an extent, many simultaneously took the pandemic, particularly during the global lockdown period, as an opportunity to impose more restrictions on their peoples’ freedoms. The increased practice of ‘social distancing’ and ‘work-and-learn-from-home’ practices led to more human reliance on the internet, online platforms, and information technology in general. Because of this reliance, digital dictators were effectively able to exploit IT for mass digital dictatorship. This took the forms of passing and abusing State of Emergency Decrees (such as in Cambodia, Malaysia, and Thailand), creating specialised COVID-19 ‘task forces’ (such as in Laos, Thailand, and Indonesia), increasing surveillance of people’s public as well as private movements using software (such as in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam), and justifying information takedowns and restrictions on people’s freedoms as their way of ‘combating the spread of false information about COVID-19’ ((such as in Lao PDR, Myanmar, the Philippines). To read more, please see our ’PANDEMIC POLITICS’ discussion boxes included in each country chapter. Fig. B1: Digital Dictators take advantage of the masses during times of heightened uncertainty, paranoia, and fear, for example, during the COVID-19 Pandemic. 13