The socio-economic, political and technological background to GCC cybercrime laws
Participation in public affairs under the authoritarian governments of the GCC countries4 has always been limited and controlled, notwithstanding some elements of representation that vary from country to country. The legitimacy of this model has often been attributed to the social contract of the rentier state, whereby the state obtains revenues from a windfall such as oil, without requiring either taxation or significant economic development policies, and then expects loyalty by disbursing this wealth to its citizens.5 This is partially the case given the history of the GCC countries both before and after the discovery of oil resources, and the patriarchal social system that acts as the foundation of the existing social contract. However, this model does not hold water with regard to the kind of ambitious development strategy that each of the GCC countries is now putting in place.6 Many of the younger generation of leaders have, furthermore, been making considerable efforts to associate themselves with futuristic economic development plans that depart from being simply a mechanism for distributing resource wealth.
While national wealth has been one of the main factors underlying the lack of public participation in the GCC states, it has enabled most countries of the region to make sustainable investments and to reinvent themselves on several fronts. They have made remarkable efforts to diversify their economies through initiatives aimed at reducing their reliance on the oil and gas sector, and through investing in digital economies and in ‘smart’ infrastructures.7 Moreover, GCC countries have assumed an increasingly important role in foreign aid and in economic statecraft in the Middle East and North Africa region, and have channelled considerable resources and energy towards investments in international sports, arts and culture. All the same, the main political tenets of Rentier State Theory remain relevant for the GCC countries. The ‘red lines’ determining the extent to which state authority may be challenged by citizens remain as clear as ever.8
The current socio-economic and political turmoil in the region has, nonetheless, given a new generation of Gulf leaders and citizens cause to examine the status quo, and in particular the continuing validity of the long-held social contract.9 As oil revenues decline, and as the rapid growth of the region’s youth population continues, the economics of the social contract and the security generated by rentier wealth is coming under increased pressure. The fiscal restraint that these circumstances will inevitably require will make it more difficult for the governments of the GCC countries to maintain the degree of largesse that generations of their citizens have come to expect. This context, together with the ambitions of the economic strategies now being implemented, is increasingly compelling the GCC governments to seek alternative sources of legitimacy and to develop new participatory strategies in order to manage public expectations of what the state might be expected to do for them,10 or allow them to do.11
The rise of social media has offered a platform for a young, tech-savvy generation that is eager for its voice to be heard. The GCC has among the highest internet and mobile penetration rates in the world. Across the GCC countries (as shown in Table 1), an average of 76 per cent of the population use the internet, compared with a global average of 51 per cent. The average mobile subscription rate is 184 per 100 inhabitants (231.8 per 100 in Kuwait), and the average rate of mobile broadband subscription is 115 per 100 inhabitants.
Table 1: Internet, mobile and social media penetration in the GCC
|
Country |
Internet users (% of population, 2015) |
Mobile broadband subscriptions (per 100 inhabitants, 2015) |
Mobile subscriptions (per 100 inhabitants, 2015) |
Social media penetration (Facebook, per 100 inhabitants, 2017) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Bahrain |
93.5 |
131.8 |
185.3 |
73 |
|
Kuwait |
82.0 |
139.3 |
231.8 |
71 |
|
Oman |
74.2 |
78.3 |
159.9 |
41 |
|
Qatar |
92.9 |
80.0 |
153.6 |
95 |
|
Saudi Arabia |
69.6 |
111.7 |
176.6 |
58 |
|
UAE |
91.2 |
92.0 |
187.3 |
94 |
|
GCC average |
76.0 |
115.0 |
184.0 |
66 |
Sources: ITU (for internet users, mobile broadband subscriptions, mobile subscriptions);12 Arab Social Media Report.13
This remarkable online presence, standing in contrast to a traditionally limited public sphere for interaction and restricted space for political opinion, lack of civil society infrastructures and free media, has provided a new vehicle for citizens to voice their opinions and concerns. It has led to a ‘cultural revolution’ on several fronts.
Social media use became a new way of life for GCC citizens from the late 2000s, a source of ‘unfiltered’ and abundant news, and a conduit for citizens to engage and interact with one another. Many women in the GCC were able to use social media platforms as a marketplace, overcoming social taboos and traditions to run businesses from their homes, and contributing to the emergence of a new generation of female entrepreneurs.14 Social media was also used by GCC leaders for positive PR, to engage with their millions of followers and to share aspects of their personal lives with a wide audience.15
Emboldened by the ‘anonymity’ that social media platforms provide, GCC citizens also started to interact more with their governments to express grievances and criticisms, and to call for political reform and greater participation. In this respect, social media platforms compensated for the lack of a public space and served as a proxy for physical demonstrations, which have always been difficult to convene in GCC countries, and provided a forum for debate between loyalists and opponents of the ruling monarchies.16 For some in the GCC, social media platforms came to serve as a ‘virtual’ Tahrir Square.17
Emboldened by the ‘anonymity’ that social media platforms provide, GCC citizens started to interact more with their governments to express grievances and criticisms, and to call for political reform and greater participation.
As the Arab uprisings spread across the Middle East and North Africa, Bahrain and Oman were the two GCC countries most directly affected by the wave of protests and physical demonstrations. In Bahrain,18 thousands took to the streets to demand greater democracy and an end to sectarian discrimination, in response to which the government declared a state of emergency and sought the assistance of neighbouring countries in quelling the protests. Unprecedented protests in Oman19 called for economic reforms, more jobs and an end to corruption; these protests were also put down by the security forces. The legitimacy of the political systems of the other GCC countries was also called into question, even if these did not see mass protests in the same way as did Bahrain and Oman.20 Social media platforms played a key rallying role.
It is in this context that most of the revamping or enactment of cybercrime laws currently in force in the GCC countries took place (see Table 2). With their implementation, the laws criminalized a wide array of forms of expression, using vaguely worded and far-reaching provisions that depart from international human rights norms. A case can be made that these laws were primarily a reaction to governments’ concerns about regional political change, and that the principal aim of anti-cybercrime legislation adopted by GCC states from 2011 onwards was to assist in strengthening regional governments’ grip on social media, and to stymie the potential for spillover via online platforms of political unrest from other Arab countries. This would, moreover, be consistent with the GCC countries’ long-standing restrictions on other forms of freedom of expression. For political activists and ordinary citizens to attempt to challenge the ruling establishment and the status quo via online platforms was bound to be met with an equivalent form of repression.21
Table 2: Cybercrime laws in the GCC in the context of the Arab uprisings
|
Country |
Legislation enacted |
|---|---|
|
Saudi Arabia |
March 2007* |
|
Oman |
February 2011 |
|
UAE |
August 2012† |
|
Bahrain |
September 2014‡ |
|
Qatar |
September 2014 |
|
Kuwait |
July 2015 |
* In March 2015 Saudi Arabia revised its existing legislation to introduce a so-called ‘naming and shaming’ penalty, for cases in breach of Article 6 of the cybercrime law, allowing for the publication of a summary of the final ruling in one or more local newspapers, with the costs of publication being chargeable to the offender.22
† The UAE’s previous cybercrime legislation, in force since 2006, was abrogated at this time.
‡ Prior to enacting its cybercrime law, in November 2013 Bahrain inaugurated a Cyber Safety Directorate, mandated with the task of monitoring websites and social media networks.23
4 The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, which in 2016 ranked 167 countries worldwide on a scale of 0–10 based on 60 indicators covering pluralism, political culture and civil liberties, categorizes each of the six GCC countries as authoritarian (i.e. with a ranking on the scale 0–4, where a ranking of 8–10 indicates full democracy). The individual country rankings for 2016 (compared with their equivalent ranking in 2006) were: Bahrain 2.79 (3.53); Kuwait 3.85 (3.09); Oman 3.04 (2.77); Qatar 3.18 (2.78); Saudi Arabia 1.93 (1.92); UAE 2.75 (2.42). See Economist Intelligence Unit (2016), ‘Democracy Index’, https://infographics.economist.com/2017/DemocracyIndex/ (accessed 21 Mar. 2018).
5 Rentier State Theory (RST) ‘holds that, since the state receives [this] external income and distributes it to society, it is relieved of having to impose taxation, which in turn means that it does not have to offer concessions to society such as a democratic bargain or a development strategy’ Gray, M. (2011), A theory of “Late Rentierism” in the Arab States of the Gulf, Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS), Georgetown University, School of Foreign Service in Qatar, https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/bitstream/handle/10822/558291/CIRSOccasionalPaper7MatthewGray2011.pdf.
6 These include Smart Dubai; Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 and National Transformation Program 2020; Qatar’s Connect 2020 ICT Policy; and Oman’s Digital Strategy.
7 The UAE levels of digital readiness surpass those of the US and Europe in the adoption of digital technologies by consumers and government. For more, see Benni, E., Elmasry, T., Patel, J. and aus dem Moore, J. P. (2016), Digital Middle East: Transforming the region into a leading digital economy, McKinsey & Company, October 2016, www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/middle-east-and-africa/digital-middle-east-transforming-the-region-into-a-leading-digital-economy (accessed 22 Jun. 2018).
8 Gray (2011), A theory of “Late Rentierism” in the Arab States of the Gulf.
9 Chatham House (2016), The Social Contract in the GCC, Middle East and North Africa Programme Workshop Summary, 11–12 January 2016, https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/files/chathamhouse/events/110416-GCC-Social-Contract-Workshop-Summary.pdf.
10 Ibid.
11 Some Gulf experts argue that rulers will opt for more social freedom rather than greater political freedom as a way to adapt to the changing circumstances, read for example, Kinnimont, J (2018), ‘Why Going to the Cinema in Saudi Arabia is suddenly Okay’, Chatham House Expert Comment, https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/why-going-cinema-saudi-arabia-suddenly-okay.
12 ITU (2016), Measuring the Information Society Report 2016, Geneva: ITU, pp. 240–247, https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/publications/misr2016/MISR2016-w4.pdf (accessed 11 Apr. 2018).
13 Salem, F. (2017), Social Media and the Internet of Things – Towards Data-Driven Policymaking in the Arab World: Potential, Limits and Concerns, Arab Social Media Report 2017 (Vol. 7), Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Government, Dubai, www.mbrsg.ae/getattachment/1383b88a-6eb9-476a-bae4-61903688099b/Arab-Social-Media-Report-2017 (accessed 11 Apr. 2018).
14 Buller, A. (2016), The Female Instagram Entrepreneurs of Saudi, World Government Summit, 16 February 2016, https://worldgovernmentsummit.org/knowledge-hub/the-female-instagram-entrepreneurs-of-saudi.
15 Arabian Business (2017), ‘Revealed: more than 15m people follow Dubai ruler on social media’, 13 January 2017, http://www.arabianbusiness.com/revealed-more-than-15m-people-follow-dubai-ruler-on-social-media-658895.html.
16 Peel, M. (2012), ‘Gulf states crack down on Twitter users’, Financial Times, 18 June 2012, https://www.ft.com/content/1e647122-a8d1-11e1-be59-00144feabdc0.
17 Ibid.
18 BBC (2013), ‘Arab Uprising: Country by Country – Bahrain’, 16 December 2013, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-12482295.
19 Ibid.
20 Peterson, J. E. (2012), The GCC states: participation, opposition and the fraying of the social contract, Kuwait Programme on Development, Governance and Globalisation in the Gulf States, London School of Economics (LSE), December 2012, http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/55258/1/Peterson_2012.pdf.
21 It is important to note that cybercrime laws were not the only tool that came to light in the context of the Arab uprisings; several countries in the GCC region have also enacted counterterrorism laws that serve a similar purpose. For instance, Saudi Arabia’s 2014 counterterrorism law was strongly criticized by human rights organizations as being in effect a tool to further suppress peaceful political dissent. Moreover, the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism expressed concern at Saudi Arabia’s ‘unacceptably broad’ definition of terrorism, and at its use of the 2014 counterterrorism law and other national security provisions, contrary to international human rights standards, against human rights defenders, writers, bloggers, journalists and others who expressed non-violent views. Saudi Arabia updated the law again in November 2017, introducing the death penalty for a number of acts. UAE enacted a similar law in 2014 that was also heavily criticized for its threat to lives and to liberty. Bahrain revised its 2006 law in 2013, whereby revoking of citizenship was added as a penalty. Additionally, cybercrime laws have been used in different cases along with existing laws, particularly the Penal Code, and media law to prosecute people for online speech.
22 Norton Rose Fulbright Data Protection Report (2015), ‘Saudi Arabia updates cybercrime law to include “naming and shaming” penalty’, 8 June 2015, https://www.dataprotectionreport.com/2015/06/saudi-arabia-updates-cybercrime-law-to-include-naming-and-shaming-penalty/ (accessed 14 June 2018).
23 Bahrain News Agency (2013), ‘Shaikh Fawaz praises Cyber Safety Directorate’, 18 November 2013, http://bna.bh/portal/en/news/588716 (accessed 22 Jun. 2018).