KUALA LUMPUR (May 25): Wrongdoings on the part of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) must be investigated to ensure the commission has transparency and accountability to the Malaysian public, said Lawyers for Liberty executive director Eric Paulsen.

In a statement, Paulsen urged newly-appointed Communications and Multimedia Minister Gobind Singh Deo today to investigate the October 2017 personal data breach expose of over 46 million mobile phone subscribers (in addition to other personal medical and employment records from Jobstreet.com and various medical associations) that were compromised and sold.

He said the now-infamous largest data breach in Malaysian history has been traced back to MCMC’s outsourcing of a phone-blocking system to the little-known company Neumera Sdn Bhd, and until today, MCMC has not come clean on the scandal. 

“Furthermore, we fully expect MCMC's investigation and prosecution policies to be updated and revamped to prevent the widespread abuse of power that we saw under the previous Barisan Nasional (BN) administration, when these powers were misused to clamp down on political opponents and dissidents online,” he said.

Paulsen said the lawyers’ group was supportive of the recent move to unblock Sarawak Report, Asia Sentinel, Medium and other websites and blogs that were previously blocked, due to their critical content against the BN administration.

“However, we are concerned that this power to block has been too easily abused and furthermore, may be illegal, since there is no legislative provision in the CMA empowering MCMC to do so.

“We would therefore strongly urge the Minister to instruct MCMC to not block any more websites until legislative amendments can be done, and clear guidelines put in place, in order to better define the scope and powers of the MCMC when dealing with websites or contents that they view as illegal or prejudicial to public order or security,” Paulsen said.