Hacking of the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister’s Telegram accounts most deplorable but no justification for four-day failure by police and government to provide strong and proper response to serious Meta allegations that the police running a troll farm to spread fake news and false information

The hacking of the Prime Minister, Ismail Sabri and the Foreign Minister, Saifuddin Abdullah’s Telegram accounts is most deplorable but they are no justification for four-day failure by the police and the government to provide a strong and proper response to the serious Meta allegations that the police is running a troll farm to spread fake news and false information.

Why is the government not prepared to declare that it will be a good digital citizen in the information era, and will not only protect Malaysians from any cyber warfare from any quarter, the government will not abuse its powers, responsibility and trust in the information age and will never conduct any form of intrusion into the personal space of its citizens, as running a troll farm to spread fake news and false information.

The hacking of the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister’s Telegram accounts should have driven home to the government of the importance of its duty to protect Malaysians from any form of digital intrusion and invasion, as this has emerged as a new right in the digital world.

This is why the sole but weak and unconvincing response of the police in the last four days to the serious allegation by the tech giant Meta in its Quarterly Adversarial Threat Report which claimed that the Malaysian police was running a troll farm to spread fake news and false allegations is most unfortunate and deplorable.

Meta said it had closed down close to 1,000 Facebook and Instagram accounts as well as Facebook groups and pages for violating the platforms’ policy against coordinated inauthentic behaviour.defined as “the coordinated use of fake accounts to manipulate public debate for a strategic goal.”

The allegations against the Malaysian Police in the Meta Quarterly Adversarial Threat Report is serious enough in the information age to warrant a discussion of the Meta Report in the Cabinet, as well as warranting a policy statement to be issued by the government that it will not be associated with any campaign to spread fake news, false allegations or to run troll farms of any kind.

Has the Cabinet discussed the Meta report and is a policy statement that the Malaysian government will not be involved in any kind of operation of fake news and false allegations forthcoming?