Who Moved My Shiny?

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

"Oi! You! Where do you think you're going?"
"I'm moving in to my new place. I've got a Shiny, I have!"
"Not without a moving in/moving out form you haven't! Where is it?"
"I haven't got 'it' whatever 'it' is!"
"Well then, you can't move in, can you? If you haven't got a moving in/moving out form, duly completed and submitted five days before you move, you can't move. It's quite clear."
"What's quite clear? Nobody told me about this!"
"It's in black and white, in the regulations. Duly available to any member of the public who presents himself to the regulation archive and requests a copy."
"Where's the regulation archive?"
"We don't know. We lost it. We'd have put it in The Archive, but we're turning that into a shopping mall. Anyway, that's beside the point. No moving in/moving out form, no move."
"But this is mine. I bought it. Freehold."
"Usufruct."
"I'm sorry?"
"Usufruct. Not freehold. That's in the regulations, too. Which gives us the right to insist on you completing a moving in/moving out form before you move in. And tell you what colour you can paint your Shiny and all the other stuff we get up to when we conjure up daft new schemes and ideas."
"In the advert, it didn't say 'Dare to dream, live to love, enjoy a scintillating lifestyle in paradisical sunshine by the way it's usufruct so you can't even move in without filling in some arbitrary form to pander to some odious jobsworth who couldn't even organise a shawarma stand."
"Okay, that's it, mate. You can't say shawarma to me like that. I'm only doing my job and I won't have random strangers throwing obscenities at me. I'm calling the law, I am."
"What about this lorry and all my stuff?"
"Take 'em back. You'll not need 'em for a while anyway once the law get hold of you. Your feet aren't going to touch the floor. 'Hello, police? I'd like to lodge a complaint against someone who just said 'shawarma' to me. I know, I know. I am indeed grievously insulted. Right away. Thank you, officer.' Right, mate, I'll give you shawarma, so'n I will."
"Have you seriously just called the police and complained I said 'shawarma' to you?"
"You can pick up a copy of the moving in/moving out form on your way down to the nick or you can fill in the online form and print that out to submit an application for the moving in/moving out form at the same office. You can suit yourself, I've had enough of standing around being insulted by the likes of you. Good day to you."

In case the above doesn't make much sense this link to the moving/in moving out form story might help and this one to the shawarma insult story may shed further light in the gloom. 

Posting People's Pictures Online Could Carry A Fine Or Even Jail Time

United Arab Emirates (Photo credit: saraab™)

The National newspaper today confirms what has long been an odd quirk here in the UAE has indeed been taken to its (inevitable) online conclusion - publishing (posting) pictures of people without their consent is against the law here - and, as a criminal case, could result in a hefty fine or prison time.

It's always been the case that you actually needed written consent before publishing somebody's photo in the UAE. That we often shortcut this requirement - as so many legal requirements are shortcut in a society which rubs along very nicely with a mainly 'laissez faire' attitude - does not mean it does not exist. As with so many aspects of life here, when things go wrong, the law comes into play and suddenly what seemed a forgotten piece of legislation becomes very real indeed.

Now it's been confirmed in words of one syllable that the online equivalent of the offline phrase 'publish' which is, of course, 'post' also carries the same weight. In short, you post an image on Facebook, Twitter or the like and you are open to criminal prosecution. Not a civil case, you understand, a criminal one.

Lt Col Salah Al Ghoul, Head of the bureau for law respect at the Ministry told The National: "Article 24 of the cybercrimes law stipulates that anyone who uses an information network to infringe upon someone else’s privacy shall be punished by a minimum prison sentence of six months and/or a fine of between Dh150,000 and Dh500,000."

You can consider an image to include video and, presumably, audio. So if you see a gentleman beating a hapless-looking chap around the head with his agal, you have 500,000 great reasons to pass by rather than film the incident and post it on YouTube.

That has always been the case here - as some of the more liberally grey-haired on Twitter pointed out when that particular video was put up. You can, literally, defame someone with the truth in the UAE.

Protecting decent folks' privacy or obviating social justice? You tell me...

Life Of A Stranger...

(Photo credit: ST33VO)

It's been going the rounds the past couple of days, with nearly half a million visits knocked up in about a week or so of its existence: Life Of A Stranger Who Stole My Phone is a tumblr blog put up by a vengeful German tourist after her mobile was nicked during a drunken skinny-dip in Ibiza.

About four months after the incident, she noticed her phone was uploading images to Dropbox - whoever had stolen it hadn't disabled the feature. Worse, someone called Hafid tried to hit on her, accessing her Facebook account from the mobile. The images clearly show Dubai locations - and Hafid's love of selfies and his friends' goonish activities combine nicely with the waspish commentary of a girl wronged. It's compelling stuff - Hafid is such a numb-nut and she's so clearly still angry. Daft picture by daft picture, we all enjoy Hafid's daftness vicariously through his unwitting sharing and her witting barbs. The combination of clownish young Arab men and vengeful Valkyrie is glorious.

I have been enjoying the blog along with so many others, right up to the point where @sudanpessimist wondered during a Twitter conversation, "Probably poor guy brought it from a second hand shop. Doesn't seem to be able to afford Ibiza hols :("

That was an 'oh' moment. Because flicking back over Hafid's piccies with that thought in mind, you get the feeling that maybe my Sudanese friend has a point. Part of what makes Hafid so amusing in the context of the blog is that he is, indeed, pretty - well, basic. And if he does have a point, then something terrible is happening. Because Hafid might just have bought a second hand phone. And over half a million people are laughing at him because he's simple and poor.

I found myself caught in time. I dislike Internet mobs and I'd found myself in one. I stood and let the crowd move on, the burning brand in my hand useless and held limply to my side. The monster in the castle on the hill might not be a monster after all. And we were all so ready to believe in the monster. We always are - remember 'dog poop girl', the Korean student whose life was destroyed by a JPG?

If our young German friend decides to come to the UAE for her next holiday, she could be in for a surprise. Because of course in UAE law she has defamed Hafid by posting his private images online. Sure, you could argue it was using her private phone and her private Dropbox and the act of theft preceded his use but I suspect even if he were the thief the law would stand. But if he wasn't the thief he actually has been thoroughly defamed and the UAE's law would actually be serving justice in a way any European sensibility would recognise as fair.

Which is pretty wacky, if you ask me. And all part of defining the new moral landscape that is the Web...

Postscript. Now the Daily Mail's picked up the story. Reading it on an iPad, I realised I recognised the mosque in the pictures posted up on the blog - it's the big 'Sheikh Mohammed' mosque outside the Sharjah Radisson Blu. And the beach in shot is down along from our house.

Careful What You Tweet For

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Gulf News today carries a roundup of recent cases of bloggers and tweeters in trouble around the Gulf and it's an extensive and growing list.

Flagged as being 'with inputs from AFP', 60% of the story is lifted directly from an AFP file, (the rest being made uo of this report from Habib Touma, which is the only bit available online) but we mustn't cavil, must we?

Tweets aren't a joking matter anymore - imagine facing this one in court: "undermining the values and traditions of Bahrain's society towards the King on Twitter". The six Bahraini 'tweeters' who did have just been sentenced a year in prison for 'misusing the right of free expression'.

It's as neat an illustration of the conundrum posed by social media in the Middle East as you're likely to get. Here we all are in possession of these powerful and far-reaching technologies that support widely sharing information and opinion and when we use them we're suddenly very far above the parapet indeed.

All this freedom of expression stuff suffers from the problem that it is, of course, that it's an absolute. You're either free to express or not, surely? But then we also apply 'filters' to that absolute in the West (whilst being all to ready to be scandalised by the hypocrisy of societies that don't allow total freedom of expression) - incitement, hate speech, holocaust denial and a number of other things our society deems to be unacceptable.

We also saw how fragile our freedoms are when British Prime Minister David Cameron, faced with lawless rioting across the country organised via Facebook and Twitter made it clear he would favour 'switching the Internet off'. That's the kind of thing despots do, isn't it?

The trouble is, of course, that government is government the world over - there's that lovely definition of democracy - "Say what you like, do what you're told." which works well as long as when you say what you like it doesn't have the benefit of a platform open to every man and with enormous power to allow messages to be shared and reach audiences far wider than are possible with 'traditional media'. Let's not forget, there are now over double the number of users of Facebook Arabic in the Middle East and North Africa than there are newspapers sold every day (in English, Arabic and French combined) in the region. That's Arabic alone - most users in the region still prefer the English interface, whatever language they are posting in.

It doesn't take insulting a leader or inciting religious hatred to get into trouble with the law on Twitter - you can just break any old law that would have applied in the 'analogue world' - for instance, a lady was fined Dhs 1,000 in Dubai earlier this week for calling an Egyptian gentleman 'stupid'. The law in the UAE does take the issue of personal respect very seriously indeed - it's not something limited to the rulers alone. So, logically, calling someone stupid on Twitter could potentially open you up to a Dhs 1,000 fine.

It's a reminder - whether you're going to put your life on the line for something you believe in or whether you're just sounding off. The law is peering over your shoulder - and those little 140 character blipverts are subject to its full might and weight...