* A belated entry which had been sitting in my draft bin for quite some time...
I chuckled when I first heard the news from hubby. I just came back from the hospital, while hubby stayed home that day, not visiting Huzaifah because he himself was not feeling well.
“Ofis lama Haida kena pantau blog-blog pulak…”
Eh, eh, pulak dah…
Hubby was referring to a nwspaper article stating that the Malaysian Cabinet had directed KTAK (as in K.T.A.K, not ktak, or even katak - it used to be KTKM, which were often confused with KTMB, but when the Water related functions were introduced, became KTAK. There had been some efforts to change the abbreviation to KKTA or KKAT, but the request had been turned down by the Cabinet...) to monitor blogs. The Communications department of the Ministry functions according to the provisions of Communications and Multimedia Acts 1998. And Section 3 (3) of CMA 1998 expressly stated that "Nothing in this Act shall be construed as permitting the censorship of the Internet.” . So, why should blogs be monitored when there should be no censorship of the Internet... But I guess, this will be one of the tasks that would go under “lain-lain tugasan seperti yang diarahkan dari semasa ke semasa”…
The government is worried about the spread of rumours and lies by way of blog, or so I was told. If found guilty, identified blog owners would be charged, perhaps under Sedition Act, Printing Presses and Publications Act or even Penal Code. But not CMA – so why ask the Ministry to undertake an effort that the Ministry could not act upon. Hmm, maybe the stakeholders want the Ministry to cooperate and liaise with other government agencies. The police, perhaps, or the Internal Ministry, or even the Bahagian Keselamatan of the Prime Minister’s Department. I chuckled at the thought of liaising with the police force though, remembering how long it took to convince all telecommunications service providers to cooperate with the police in order to increase the efficiency of the emergency call system. Chances are, it would probably be better for the Special Branch officers to continue their own monitoring of identified possible hazardous blogs, rather than relying on the Ministry.
It is funny to think that the call to monitor blogs came not long after a national newspaper loudly pronounced blogs as hokum bunkum (with the cover screaming BLOG-WASH). On one hand the mainstream media are saying that blogs are just some craps not to be minded, yet on the other hand, the government think highly enough of blogs to be capable of influencing the people’s thoughts and opinions. Ah-hah.
But when the task of monitoring blog was awarded to the Ministry, I wonder who will undertake the actual task anyway when the Ministry has almost always been understaffed and overworked for the past couple of years. Probably someone from the Content division. Or maybe someone from the Regulatory division. I also wonder, why not delegate the task to Communications and Multimedia Commission - they certainly have more people there than the Ministry... But then again, they too are supposed to function in accord with CMA 1998, which brought us to my above-mentioned point...
I wonder what will be the Key Performance Index (KPI) for this task – perhaps, how many blogs should be monitored a year, or how many blogs had been taken action against (when necessary), or that blogs would be classified so that some would not be touched at all (the kind that rants on and on about on and on, but nothing of great importance so as to pose a threat to national security) but only a handful which fulfill certain criteria would be subject to close scrutiny.
At the end of the day, I pretty much envy the person who would be in charge of monitoring blogs. Imagine, spending all day long blog-hopping, possibly becoming addicted to some, and one can honestly say that he or she is just carrying out the assigned official duty…
No comments:
Post a Comment