The Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (Matt) has ex­pressed con­cern that the Cy­ber Crime Bill (2014) con­tains pro­vi­sions to charge jour­nal­ists and their sources for elec­tron­ic tip-offs.

In a re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, Matt de­scribed the bill as a di­rect threat to press free­dom and called for its im­me­di­ate with­draw­al to al­low greater con­sul­ta­tion with stake­hold­ers.

"Par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ri­some to Matt are those as­pects of the bill that in­fringe on jour­nal­ists' free­dom to gath­er and re­port in­for­ma­tion. The bill threat­ens to crim­i­nalise and im­prison jour­nal­ists who re­port on doc­u­ments ob­tained from whistle­blow­ers and to un­der­mine the eth­i­cal oblig­a­tion of jour­nal­ists to pro­tect the iden­ti­ties of con­fi­den­tial sources. This chal­lenges the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly en­shrined rights of press free­dom and the pub­lic's right to free ex­pres­sion, key pil­lars on which our democ­ra­cy stands," the re­lease stat­ed.

Sev­er­al claus­es of the bill strike di­rect­ly at the day-to-day pro­fes­sion­al ac­tiv­i­ties of jour­nal­ists and oth­er civ­il so­ci­ety in­ter­ests.

Claus­es 9 and 13 threat­en to sti­fle and crim­i­nalise jour­nal­ists, whistle­blow­ers and mem­bers of the pub­lic who re­ceive, gain ac­cess to or share com­put­er da­ta from an­oth­er per­son know­ing that the oth­er per­son has ob­tained the com­put­er da­ta through unau­tho­rised means.

These laws can be used to pros­e­cute jour­nal­ists, whistle­blow­ers and mem­bers of the pub­lic who re­share such ma­te­r­i­al over the In­ter­net.

Penal­ties range from $200,000 and three years im­pris­on­ment to $500,000 and five years im­pris­on­ment.

The T&T Pub­lish­ers and Broad­cast­ers As­so­ci­a­tion has al­so ex­pressed con­cerns.