According to the report, different forms of legislation are used to silence speech online:

• In Saudi Arabia and Jordan, new cybercrime and counterterrorism laws are used to ban online speech that threatens the government’s legitimacy.
• Egypt uses a 2014 anti-protest law to silence dissent online.
• In Tunisia online speech is silenced by using old defamation and drug laws.

In spite of using terms such as “cybercrime” and “terrorism”, the report finds that these laws are aimed at unwanted online speech, rather than addressing attacks on cyber security: “The pattern is that authorities will find the offending speech and then choose the law that can be interpreted to most closely address it,” EFF notes.

The full report can be accessed here.

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