The Cuban government tries again to control the internet.
Little more than a month after the massive protests that shook the country -and that were called through social networks-, the Island authorities published on Tuesday a series of regulations that typify for the first time what they consider cyber crimes that may be subject to criminal action.
But they go a step further: they consider as “incidents cybersecurity ”from virus attacks and“ power failures ”to the possibility of using the networks to call a march, criticize the government or request or incite a change in the system.
The official media have called it “the highest-ranking regulation approved in Cuba on information and communication technologies” and assure that they seek to offer what they define as “ an ethical and good internet for the population “.
In social networks, Cubans, for their part, have called it u na new “gag law”, which they believe seeks to limit expression and restrict their discourse on social networks.
Experts in internet regulation and human rights organizations have also raised their voices before what they consider measures aimed at eliminating public debate.
“It is serious because of what it says and for the moment in which it is published, a month after the protests, when the international community expected another step towards to listen to its population and not to repress speech anymore ”, assures BBC Mundo Pedro Vaca, r elator e special for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights .
“On the one hand, human rights are not recognized in citizens, their freedom is not recognized expression. And on the other, what citizens may or may not publish on the internet is seen from a criminal and war perspective ”, he adds.
The new regulations were published at a time when Cubans have used social networks not only to denounce the many detainees who still remain from the protest of the 11 July, but also the Dantesque conditions that suffer with the collapse of the health system.
The new regulations
Many countries in the world have approved – or have proposed to do so – regulations to control the dissemination of certain messages on the internet, mainly hate speech, defamation, incitement to violence or “terrorism”.
According to the Cuban authorities, these are also some of the objectives of the regulations that have just been announced.
“Our Decree Law 35 (one of those approved) goes against disinformation and cyber lies, “wrote President Miguel Díaz-Canel on Twitter.
The Vice Minister of Communications Ernesto Rodríguez Hernández said, for his part, that the new regulations “promote the promotion of the computerization of society, while defending the rights of citizens endorsed in the Constitution: equality, privacy and the secrecy of communications. ”
The experts consulted by BBC Mundo, however, point out that, unlike what have done other countries, the new regulations in Cuba seem to have an ideological matrix (the text of one of the decrees clarifies that it seeks to “defend the achievements made by the Socialist State ”) and that they are oriented to contain any criticism of the system.
And it is that the regulations establish 17 crimes or “cybersecurity incidents”, with “levels dangerousness ”ranging from“ medium ”to“ very high ” and on many occasions it is the political content that determines the dangerousness.
To give you an idea, unlike most international internet regulations, the Cuban does not mention or seem to seek to combat child pornography, a crime that has been behind laws for the control of content around the world.
The Cuban regulation only mentions pornography as “diffusion and distribution” of “pornographic material”, and considers it to be of a “medium” level of danger.
However, he considers “social subversion” to be “very high” dangerousness, which he defines as “attempting to alter public order and promote social indiscipline”, cyberterrorism, understood as actions to “subvert the constitutional order” or “cyberwar”, which he calls “method s of unconventional warfare ”, whatever that means.
He also considers highly dangerous the “dissemination of news false “,” offensive messages “and” defamation with an impact on the prestige of the country “, without specifying what each of them consists of, although they top the list of crimes.
In that In this sense, another Vice Minister of Communications, Wilfredo González, told the AFP agency that the norm sought that “no one is capable of distorting the truth, so that no one can denigrate an official of our country or of our revolutionary process “.
For this reason, many Cubans have understood that one of the objectives of the authorities is to penalize those who make fun of their leaders in networks , especially the president, who has become very popular ar a nickname with a word considered vulgar in Cuban colloquial language.
The island’s networks have been filled since Tuesday with memes, jokes and puns in which they say the same mockery and criticism, but with the peculiar double sense of humor on the island.
A old method vuelt or law
For years, Cuba was one of the Latin American countries with the worst internet connectivity, only surpassed by Haiti.
However, as of 2018, the government, then under the command of Raúl Castro, began to progressively extend services and, according to the latest official data, more than 5 million Cubans (in a country with a population of 11 millions) are currently connected to the network, mainly to
But as Joan Barata, an expert on freedom of expression and media regulation at the Stanford University Center for Information and Society, explains to BBC Mundo, there has been a contradiction between the expansion of connectivity and freedom in access to content in Cuba.
“On the one hand, they have had a will so that the Cubans may have greater access to the internet. There was a time when it was impossible; but in recent times, in terms of connectivity, an effort has been made to improve “, he says.
” However, in terms content control things have not changed. In recent years a series of special decrees have been approved, one reforming the previous one, establishing a framework to seek control of content and restrict freedom of expression ”, he adds.
Laritza Diversent, director of the independent legal consultancy Cubalex , specialized in human rights issues on the island, believes that this is largely due to the fact that the networks have become the only space Cubans have to channel their complaints and discomfort, something that has become evident with the current crisis with the coronavirus.
The island has a single internet provider, a state company called Etecsa, which for years, has limited the access of Cubans to certain websites (from the media to sales sites), that has extended the use of VPNs.
After the protests of the 11 of July, digital traffic monitoring sites, such as Netblock, have detected that the Cuban state provider has intermittently limited the Cuban access to the network, in an apparent attempt to contain the demonstrations.
Now, the new decree and the regulations that accompany it legally authorize Etecsa to cut the internet when the government considers it timely and even impose fines, confiscate SIM cards or phones from people (something that also happened previously, according to numerous complaints).
“ What they are proposing now it’s nothing new . It is something that was already done to artists and dissidents. Now what is being given a legal corpus. It is part of a legal system that has been structured since the moment the population began to be given access to the internet and that prioritizes ideology as the foundation of cybersecurity ”, says Diversent.
The questions
The experts consulted by BBC Mundo agree that the document shines due to vagueness of the definitions, which can give way to any form of dissent that can fit into any of the categories.
International standards say that restrictions are only used that can lead to criminal punishment in exceptional cases, such as child pornography, that is not what happens here either ”, he says. that occurs in other countries, they do not offer safeguards or present mechanisms to guarantee the free expression of citizens. Nor do they suggest the creation of independent entities or regulators that can ensure respect for the rights of expression: the government alone determines what is false or offensive.
Vaca, for his part, points out that this in itself is “serious”, given that international norms promote allowing criticism of leaders, to ideology and the political system, something that, in his opinion, the new Cuban regulations are “criminalized.”
“It is worrying, for example, to understand what or who will define what is understood as news false in a country where the veracity of the information is not about checking the facts based on the objective truth, but the way the official voice is reflected ”, he considers.
In this sense, the specific rapporteur al believes that this can make the situation not only difficult for network users and activists, but also for independent journalists.
“We are talking about an institutional framework where only those who work for state media are recognized as journalists. We are talking about a media system where the truth is only found in the official voice, so a criticism of the government by the independent press on the internet can be crossed out within these categories, ”he says.
It is not clear at the moment if the rules will also include users who share the ideology of the system on social networks or official media.
Many have also compared the measures with those applied by others Authoritarian governments, such as China, and some have even written that regulations make Cuba “North Korea’s Caribbean ”.
Impacts
The experts consulted by BBC Mundo differ on the implications that these regulations may have in the medium or long term in the use that Cubans make of social networks.
“I think they are looking more than anything for the so-called exemplary effect : if you find out that your neighbor was fined for reporting on social networks , you probably won’t. The government does not have the resources to follow what all Cubans publish on social networks, but it is enough that they do it with some, they will make others inhibit themselves out of fear, ”says Diversent.
In one Appearance on state television (only) the director of Cybersecurity of the Ministry of Communications Pablo Domínguez Vázquez said that the government had “a record of all incidents on social networks” and threatened that it could even be used against Cubans living abroad.
“When these people can be identified and they are in the country, violations will be imposed on them,” he said.
Vaca, for her part, believes that networks will continue to be used because they have become “an escape valve for expressions that they have been repressed for many years ”.
“And the expressions and the causes of those expressions are still there. Processing these expressions with less freedom of expression can be counterproductive, “he says.
Barata agrees that Cuban civil society has begun to show” that he has lost his fear ”and that new forms of discourse repression could be ineffective.
“I believe that in the phase in which we find ourselves, those who want to express themselves or exercise activism will continue to do so. Some will resort to anonymity, but many others will even continue to show their identity, “he says.
Now you can receive notifications from BBC Mundo. Download our app and activate them so as not to miss our best content.