Will a penalty of up to seven years for offenders of the new computer misuse law, several social media users have vowed to keep at it but this time anonymously.This comes after President Museveni assented to the controversial Computer Misuse (Amendment) Bill 2022 this week. The was mainly mooted to target critical voices on social media.
The Bill which now becomes an Act of Parliament was passed by parliament on September 8, 2022.
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The computer misuse law trends a very thin line between online regulation and free speech and was introduced by Kampala Central MP, Mr. Muhammad Nsereko. It listed several punitive measures against people who send malicious information, hate speech, unsolicited information, and share information about children without the consent of their parents or guardians. The punishment for the convicted person is UGX 15 million or a seven-year jail term, if not both.
Writing, sending, or sharing any information through a computer which includes smartphones, has now been made illegal if it ridicules, degrades, or demeans another person, group of persons, tribe, ethnicity, religion, or gender. On top of that, it also criminalizes that same if the information shared creates divisions among persons, a tribe, an ethnicity, a religion, or a gender; and or, promotes hostility against a person, group of persons, a tribe, ethnicity group, religion, or gender. Several Ugandans who are against the new computer misuse act are still determined to criticize the government online opting to use VPNs and anonymous accounts on social media. VPNs hide your internet traffic and disguise your online identity. This makes it more difficult for third parties and government security agencies from tracking their citizen’s activities online and monitor intercept data.
When someone wants to voice their opinion or say something that may be a little controversial, they can expect some people to disagree with them. But will all this online hackery save people from being tracked down by law authorities?
Staying under the radar in today’s social space can be difficult, but serval social media users in Uganda are determined to pull this off with the right tools and strategy to evade being caught.
People who want to stay anonymous would make use of the things like the Tor browser that can route all the web traffic over its network concealing one’s true IP address, also using an anonymous email address thanks to Riseup, a technology collective that offers e-mail, VPN, and mailing list services and finally using mobile numbers that are not registered by mobile networks. This is too truly too much hustle for hundreds of Ugandans to go through all in the name of keeping anonymous, but if one is faced with breaking computer misuse law — there is no limitation you can put to what one can do.
