Not long ago, the European police Europol was able to monitor a so-called phone chip farm in a “European” country, and it turned out that this farm runs 49 million fake accounts whose goal is to falsify reality and manipulate public opinion, as well as using them in electronic fraud and fraud, stealing money, increasing interaction on communication platforms, and even political influence in major countries.
A picture of this farm was published with the news, showing hundreds of telephone SIM cards connected to a base and devices, so that each SIM card contains hundreds of accounts that are registered on various means of communication and engage with people in endless arguments, discussions, disagreements, and dialectical wars.
Imagine, dear reader, that this farm with 49 million accounts is only one that was monitored from one location in one country, and imagine the amount of controversy, discussions, and futile wars that are conducted on social media around the clock, and we enter into them forcefully and spend long hours responding, without knowing that we are merely tools moved by hidden fingers in nearby or even distant places.
Therefore, I see in the Press and Electronic Media Law, which was ratified by His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, the great King of the country, may God protect and preserve him, a forward-looking vision for the future of electronic wars, which today have become more ferocious and bloody than wars with conventional weapons. The ugliest strife that we see today is more severe than murder, as mentioned in the Holy Qur’an.
This law and the decisions that will be issued after it will be the shield protecting the homeland that is targeted from abroad with these accursed tools. I have no doubt that there are similar farms working day and night to target Bahrain and all the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, and even these devils are trying to sow discord between our brothers and sisters in the Gulf countries and the Arab countries. If we go back for months and years very soon, we will clearly monitor these strife, but without realizing or reaching their source and where they come from, and who is sitting behind these chipsets and computers to sow discord between Siblings.
We aspire in the new Press and Electronic Media Law to be a barrier and deterrent to these accounts, especially since today we are witnessing the random expansion of news sources on social media, and we do not know their owners and those who manage them and how much they profit for every news that carries a malicious goal or even trivial news that occupies our societies and creates discord and disagreement among us.
This law will reveal in the next stage a lot of the falsehood that we thought was true, and other legislation will emerge from this law that combats the crime of publishing, commenting, liking, and other tools that we consider simple but malicious. We thank His Majesty the Great King for ratifying the new law, and we thank His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister, may God protect him, and his government, which made great efforts in developing ideas for these articles and the future interpretations they will entail, which we will not know, and the final thanks of the Council. The Legislative Council in its two chambers, and we congratulate the press and media on this great achievement.
* Captain – Editor-in-Chief of the English newspaper “Daily Tribune”.
