Select Committee on Deliberate Online Falsehoods

This page covers the pre-legislative inquiry. For the Bill it recommended and its passage, see Parliamentary passage of the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act. For the resulting Act, see Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act 2019.

The Select Committee on Deliberate Online Falsehoods was a ten-member committee of the Parliament of Singapore, appointed on 10 January 2018 following a motion moved by Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam, to examine the phenomenon of deliberate online falsehoods and recommend how Singapore should respond. It received written representations from January to March 2018, held eight days of public hearings in March 2018, and published its report, including 22 recommendations, on 19 September 2018. The report formed the direct basis for the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Bill introduced the following year.

Origin and terms of reference

Shanmugam had first called for a review of laws to combat "fake news" on 3 April 2017, citing several online falsehoods, including a false claim that a family's complaint had sparked a commotion at a 2015 Thaipusam procession and a fabricated story mocking former President S. R. Nathan's funeral turnout. On 5 January 2018 the Ministry of Communications and Information and the Ministry of Law published a Green Paper, "Deliberate Online Falsehoods", setting out the case for a Select Committee. On 10 January 2018, MPs present voted unanimously to appoint the Committee.

The Committee's terms of reference were to examine and report on: the phenomenon of using digital technology to deliberately spread falsehoods online; the motivations and actors involved, both local and foreign; the consequences for Singapore's institutions and democratic processes; and how Singapore could prevent and combat online falsehoods, including the principles that should guide its response and any specific measures, including legislation, that should be taken.

Composition

The Committee comprised ten members, chaired by Deputy Speaker Charles Chong: Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam; Social and Family Development Minister Desmond Lee; Senior Minister of State Janil Puthucheary; Members of Parliament Rahayu Mahzam, Seah Kian Peng, Sun Xueling and Edwin Tong Chun Fai; Workers' Party Member of Parliament Pritam Singh; and Nominated Member of Parliament Chia Yong Yong. This gave a composition of eight members from the Government benches, one from the Opposition, and one Nominated Member.

Process

The Committee invited written representations over a period ending 7 March 2018 and considered 169 written representations from a broad cross-section of society. Of these representors, 79 were invited to elaborate on their submissions at public hearings; the Committee heard oral evidence from 65 individuals and organisations over eight days of hearings held between 14 and 29 March 2018. Some evidence, described by the Committee as concerning state-sponsored disinformation operations against Singapore, was received in private hearings.

Witnesses included academics, security researchers, journalists, civil society representatives and representatives of technology companies including Facebook, Twitter and Google.

The report

The Committee's report was published on 19 September 2018. Speeches during the subsequent Second Reading debate gave differing page counts for the report — 176 pages excluding annexes according to one Committee member, and 279 pages according to the Minister for Law — a discrepancy this page notes rather than resolves.

Findings

The Committee found the phenomenon of deliberate online falsehoods to be pervasive and serious, and concluded that Singapore was a target of hostile disinformation operations, with its national sovereignty and security, social cohesion, and democratic institutions all at stake. It examined the actors who spread falsehoods (foreign states, ideologically or politically motivated citizens, and profit-driven actors), the digital tools used to spread them (fake accounts, bots and trolls, targeted digital advertising, and platform algorithms), and their impact across national security, democratic institutions and free speech, individuals, and businesses. It further found that falsehoods generally spread faster, wider and with a stronger psychological effect than corrections, citing a 2018 MIT study finding falsehoods 70% more likely to be re-tweeted than true statements, and a 2018 University at Buffalo study finding fewer than 20% of users who shared a false tweet later corrected it. The Committee concluded that all decisions in the report were reached unanimously.

Recommendations

The report made 22 recommendations across five areas: nurturing an informed public, through public education and support for quality journalism; reinforcing social cohesion and trust, including in public institutions; promoting fact-checking; disrupting online falsehoods, including through new legislation empowering the Government to counter falsehoods "in a matter of hours" (Recommendation 12) and measures directed at technology companies; and dealing with threats to national security and sovereignty. The Committee found Government intervention through legislation necessary, while stating that non-legislative measures were necessary but insufficient on their own.

The Committee considered and rejected the view that falsehoods should be left to a "free marketplace of ideas" to resolve, and found that voluntary action by technology companies, while a positive step, was inadequate given companies' track record of slow responses to serious harms and a fundamental conflict of interest between their commercial incentives and the public interest. It observed that Facebook, Twitter and Google had confirmed they would not, as a matter of policy absent legislation, remove content solely on the basis that it was false.

Conduct of the hearings

The Shanmugam–Thum Ping Tjin exchange

The most widely reported episode of the hearings was a nearly six-hour exchange on 29 March 2018, the final day of public hearings, between Shanmugam and historian Thum Ping Tjin. Thum's written submission argued that Singapore did not need new legislation and that the People's Action Party government was itself historically a source of "fake news", citing detentions without trial under the Internal Security Act, including Operation Coldstore in 1963, which the Government has maintained were necessary to disrupt a clandestine communist conspiracy. Shanmugam questioned Thum at length on an academic paper Thum had written citing declassified British colonial telegrams, including from Lord Selkirk, then British Commissioner to Singapore, and on Thum's stated academic position at Oxford University; Thum accepted during the exchange that parts of the paper "could have been worded better".

In its published report, the Committee devoted a 13-page addendum to its exchanges with Thum, Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders (RSF). The Committee found that Thum had misrepresented his academic credentials, stating he had suggested holding "an academic position of some seniority" at Oxford when he in fact held privileges obtained through a fee-paying arrangement, and concluded it did not find him "a credible representor" and gave "no weight" to his views. Thum publicly disputed the committee's characterisation and said the exchange was intended to "intimidate and instill fear into anyone who contradicts the official government narrative".

The official video of the hearing was released by Parliament in four parts; contemporaneous reporting described the exchange as running to almost six hours. Three of the four parts are embedded below.

Removal of Han Hui Hui

During the same afternoon hearing, at around 3.05pm, during the Shanmugam–Thum exchange, blogger Han Hui Hui was removed from the public gallery, and the session — then about ninety minutes in — was adjourned for five minutes. According to contemporaneous reporting, Han held up a stack of papers displaying the cover of Authoritarian Rule of Law: Legislation, Discourse and Legitimacy in Singapore by law academic Jothie Rajah, the former wife of Shanmugam. Two ushers first asked her to leave; she declined, telling them the papers were blank notes she was using to follow the hearing, though she then agreed to hand the stack over. Parliament staff returned with police officers and asked her to leave again; she still declined to move, and was removed from her seat by female officers. A Parliament spokesperson said she was removed for creating a disturbance after refusing a request to leave. Han and the international NGO Front Line Defenders characterised her removal as disproportionate to silently displaying a book cover.

Han Hui Hui being removed from the public gallery, 29 March 2018.

Video of the removal was posted to Facebook: archived recording of Han Hui Hui's removal.

Non-appearance of Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders

Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders were invited to give evidence but did not appear before the Committee, including by teleconference, which the Committee said it had offered. Shanmugam said at a press conference that the two organisations' reasons for not appearing were "contrived", and that the Committee considered it important for the public to know this given the substantial window and teleconference option offered.

Criticism from civil society participants

On 2 April 2018, a joint statement signed by the civil society groups Community Action Network and Function 8, journalist and activist Kirsten Han, blogger Terry Xu, and Thum Ping Tjin said that despite engaging with the Committee in good faith, participants had been "harangued, harassed, threatened and misrepresented", and that "numerous leading questions were asked" with Committee members "repeatedly [insisting] on yes or no answers... despite repeatedly being told of the importance of context and nuance".

See also

• Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act 2019
• Parliamentary passage of the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act
• POFMA directions
• POFMA appeals