Digital Security Act: Press Ctrl+Alt+Del and look for an option

Francis Fukuyama, in his book Liberalism and its Discontents suggests that 'speech has an intrinsic moral value as the locus of thoughts and choice, as well as the practical value of permitting human beings to communicate in complex ways of which no other species is capable.' Fukuyama further added that 'freedom of speech implies a freedom to think and is the basis for all the other freedoms that liberal orders seek to protect.' Freedom to think is a fundamental human right. Without freedom of thought or opinion, we have no humanity and we have no democracy. According to the European convention of human right, the rights to freedom of thought require three things: (a) the ability to keep one's thoughts private, (b) freedom from manipulation of one's thoughts; (c) that no one can be penalised for their thoughts alone. But protecting such fundamental right in the digital age is a challenge. We sometime mistake our liberty as a license. Former US president Eisenhower once said freedom requires self discipline. Otherwise we will be drifted to something else, vulnerable, disordered and disconnected. This essay paints a picture of what a state such as Bangladesh and its' citizen such as Journalist ought to be doing regarding this matter.

In Voltaire's satirical novel Candide written in 1759, the young hero Candide declared proudly that 'I read only to please myself and enjoy only what suits my taste.' Critiques suggest that Voltaire's Candide was influenced by various atrocities of the mid-18th century such as the devastating Lisbon earthquake of 1755, the outbreak of the horrific seven years' War in the German states, and the unjust execution of the English Admiral John Byng. This story is often hailed as an important text of the Enlightenment.

Other side of the argument is that a law address to some moral issues on which people hold a variety of different views. But the law regulates their moral choices on the principle that there ought to be only one collective moral judgement, not a multiplicity of individual ones. This will require the changing attitude of our society to law. Because the expansion of the public space at the expense of the private space, we can see that Voltaire's young hero Candide's desire will not remain intact.

The seventeenth century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes observed that the political communities surrendered their liberty to an absolute ruler in return for security. But over the centuries absolute monarchy has been abolished and created absolute democracy in the twentieth century. So, our thought process focused on different democratic norms. It is natural to talk about the relations between the state and its citizens in 'us and them' terms. But in a democracy the state is neither with us nor against us. It is 'us'. This is the reason a citizen object to its intrusiveness, criticise the arrogance of some of its government's spoke person and become a critique rather than remain just as an ordinary citizen.

There was a TV debate carried out about free speech couple of years ago in UK. A general consensus was that 'There should be no restrictions on it whatsoever. No hate speech laws, no public order legislation that targets speech, no libel laws and the best response to speech that is wrong, or dangerous or racist or horrible, is always more speech. Never censorship, never laws, never putting somebody in prison.' But it has been recognised that 'there is such a thing as incitement to violence, which is not a free-speech issue but a criminal offence.' Also suggested that 'we need to be specific and provide evidence before putting any sanctions on speech.'

Any threat to digital security or emerging threat from the artificial intelligence need to be regulated. However many scientists argued that regulating digital research or innovation will give benefit to countries where such activities are not regulated. So, European regulators have proposed to scale regulation according to risk. This means any Digital Security Act requires a statutory instrument for the risk based regulation of the Act. This means that a low risk digital activity should have little or no regulation. A high risk digital activity should be controlled and the extremely risky activity should be forbidden. For example artificial intelligence (AI) enabled game or an opinion that is not life threatening can be a low risk. Interaction of AI with human can be a minimal risk. Where digital activity raises the question of safety of general population, then it should be considered as high risk and highly regulated activity. The overarching point is that if a digital activity or journalistic opinions cause an existential risk to humanity, then this should be considered as high risk activity and should be highly regulated.


Bangladesh is politically polarized. Whether it is good or bad, the people of Bangladesh will make that decision. However, no democracy, including Britain has ever lived up to the ideal of 'representative democracy'. American writer Michael Lind calls for 'democratic pluralism', a time when workers, non-graduates and others who do not belong to the elite are recognized and represented in the corridors of power. This is a separate debate one can pursue to mitigate any harm that can cause by political polarity. Greek Philosopher Epictetus once said, 'two words should be taken to heart and obeyed when exerting ourselves for good and restraining ourselves from evil-words that will ensure a blameless and untroubled life: Persist and Resist.' In the current context of digital security issue we should resist ourselves to do any harm to a state such as Bangladesh which is flourishing in many fronts rather we should provide our sustain, wilful and concerted effort to overcome something that is challenging and difficult, which is a value of persistence.

Above all, Anais Nin, a French essayist and novelist, observed that 'we do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.' Hence need some holistic approach to revisit the digital security and similar sort of laws. When you press Ctrl, Alt and Del on your computer keyboard what you see? You get some options such as change, start, switch, lock and log off. It may be necessary to switch from digital law to cyber law or may need to start a new way of implementing the law such as a risk based approach to digital law mentioned above or abandon the law. So, look for a better option. In this debate we are all in the same boat. The government as well as the citizen must figure out how to manage their emotions, abstain from what should be abstained from, and choose what standards to observe. We must master ourselves unless we'd prefer to be mastered by someone else. For journalist please avoid Orwellian hate week. Let us go back to Eisenhower and his idea that freedom is the opportunity for self discipline.

The writer is a UK based academic, scientist and philosopher, columnist and author