There is a need to strike a balance between the need to uphold the law and the need to maintain privacy in the social media, Information, Communications and Culture Ministry secretary-general Kamaruddin Siaraf said today.

He said as such, it was timely that the authorities create better understanding with social media providers and to understand the commercial policies which governed the use of these social media applications.

“Malaysia is very concerned with the fact that crimes are committed and laws disregarded because clever use of Internet applications and the social media sometimes provide a ‘cloak of anonymity’.

“This cloak of anonymity has given rise to a multitude of social problems such as cyber bullying and harassment.

“Unfortunately, there is no definitive way to compute the number of such cases as we know that not all victims report such incidents to the authorities and those who do, rarely receive legal recourse because of the anonymous nature of the Internet.

NONE “As such, cyber criminals often get away with their misdemeanours,” he said when opening the two-day ITU-Asean Forum on Promoting Effective and Secure Social Media in Kuala Lumpur.

Kamaruddin (right) said cyberspace was not a lawless place, as what was illegal offline was also illegal online. “Similarly, laws which are applicable in the physical world are also applicable in the virtual world.”

He said currently, the number of Facebook users ranged from 3.2 percent to 58.8 percent of the population in the 10 Asean countries.

“I believe that the growing number of social media users in this region will encourage social media providers to be more responsive to issues faced by Asean countries, particularly in enforcing our respective laws,” he said.

The two-day forum will focus on various aspects of social media usage from the impact it has on everday lives and its role in risk and crisis communications, to confronting regulatory challenges and approaches.

Apart from policy-makers and regulators from the 10 Asean countries, representatives from the industry and academia in the region as well as social media providers are also participating in the forum.

- Bernama