Conclusion
While many countries around the world are still in the early stages of addressing the way they deal with cybercrime, the GCC countries have been taking decisive measures in recent years to protect their economies and populations from its consequences. For several reasons, however, the cybercrime laws that have been enacted in the region constitute, by their structure and content, an incomplete step towards fighting cybercrime.
With regard to fighting cybercrime, the structure of the GCC cybercrime laws does not elaborate on essential parts of the law that are crucial for investigations and for handling electronic evidence. Nor do these laws provide the necessary legal frameworks for international cooperation. None of the GCC countries is party to any international agreement on cybercrime; and the only regional platform that does exist in this respect – the Arab Convention on Combating Information Technology Offences – has not been used in fighting cybercrime, nor mentioned under any GCC cybercrime law. At present, GCC countries rely mostly on bilateral relationships and informal channels, such as police-to-police cooperation or informal agency-to-agency cooperation for fighting cybercrime. These routes are useful, but are not enough. Moreover, the fact that they are not based on clear and defined policies limits their efficacy in conducting successful investigations.
The Budapest Convention is the most relevant international instrument on cybercrime. Membership of the Convention is increasing, and new protocols are being added to address emerging challenges in cybercrime. Joining the Convention would help the GCC countries in harmonizing and updating their laws, in enhancing their cybercrime investigative techniques and in increasing international cooperation between them and between the other signatory countries.81 However, the current content of most GCC countries’ cybercrime laws may constitute an impediment to this endeavour. Article 1582 of the Convention makes the powers provided to state parties subject to international human rights law standards. So it could be argued that the additional offences that exist in most of the GCC cybercrime laws highlighted in Table 5 might act as a barrier to these countries’ accession to the Convention as the laws do not meet the protection safeguards set out in international human rights law.
Should the GCC countries choose not to accede to the Convention, each could seek observer status and could use the Convention as a guideline and a reference to update their laws accordingly, primarily as regards procedural law, electronic evidence and international cooperation. This would contribute to building mutual ground and would play a significant role in facilitating international cooperation on fighting cybercrime.
Encouraging dialogue on social media and contributing to positive content – as opposed to stifling online speech – would go a long way towards creating common ground between citizens and their governments and, equally important, between citizens with different viewpoints, and contribute to fighting extremism and keeping vulnerable groups away from radicalization.
From a social standpoint, research has shown that youth in the GCC countries are not necessarily liberal or anti-establishment; their attitudes in fact reflect the variety of views that exist within the Gulf societies.83 Therefore, encouraging dialogue on social media and contributing to positive content – as opposed to stifling online speech – would go a long way towards creating common ground between citizens and their governments and, equally important, between citizens with different viewpoints, and contribute to fighting extremism and keeping vulnerable groups away from radicalization. It would also foster dialogue on issues of public interest in the current regional context of socio-economic and political challenges.
Monitoring all online speech, which is what most cybercrime laws in the GCC countries in effect do, creates confusion regarding the issues at stake – i.e. between the issues that constitute a real risk and those that are simply in disagreement with what ‘ought’, in the view of the state, to be the narrative. International law strikes a good balance in this respect, elaborating on rights and limitations while respecting national differences. It sets the rules on how to limit extremism, hate speech, incitement to violence and other potential risks, while protecting free speech and other human rights. This gives governments that may otherwise fear for their citizens’ safety a certain degree of comfort that should encourage them to lift the lid on social media and unleash its potential. The cybercrime laws of the GCC countries do not at present take account of this. In their current form, these laws are at odds with international human rights law, standards and safeguards, and have an adverse impact on freedom of expression.
An argument can be made that the GCC governments have been attempting to constrain online speech through the enforcement of cybercrime laws, among other laws, that restrict freedom of expression and that give the authorities a very wide degree of discretion in the application of their provisions, as evidenced by recent cases prosecuted under these laws. Others might make the case that the reason for the laws being in their current shape is, rather, attributable to a draconian approach to the drafting process, limited policy expertise within the civil service, and the absence of civil society institutions that would feed into the process. Regardless of the reason, the end result is an online sphere that is heavily censored. Whether the censorship efforts serve as a distraction from the main social, political and economic issues that are being discussed over social media, or as a deterrence from discussing them, they are certainly an impediment to, and a distraction from, combating growing cybercrime, and they put the GCC governments in an untenable position globally in terms of the divergence from international human rights norms.
The institution, in the GCC countries, of cybercrime laws that are actually fit for purpose would go a long way in fighting cybercrime as internationally recognized, and in reaping the genuine benefits of social media. To this end, revamping the cybercrime laws of the six GCC members is urgently required, and is essential for better security, a better society and for better civil liberties.
81 For more on this, read Hakmeh, J. (2016), ‘Tackling Cybercrime: Time for the GCC to Join the Global Efforts’, Chatham House Expert Comment, 8 December 2016, https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/tackling-cybercrime-time-gcc-join-global-efforts (accessed 11 Apr. 2018).
82 Budapest Convention (2001) http://www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-list/-/conventions/rms/0900001680081561 (accessed 22 Jun. 2018).
83 Kinnimont, J. (2015), Future Trends in the Gulf, Chatham House Report, London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/files/chathamhouse/field/field_document/20150218FutureTrendsGCCKinninmont.pdf.