COR160 Essential Academic Writing: Laws Against Online Falsehoods

This essay examines the increasing threat of online falsehoods in Singapore and argues for the enactment of more robust laws to combat this issue. It highlights the vulnerabilities created by advanced digital technology and social media, leading to potential breaches of data integrity, confidentiality, and availability. The essay contends that existing laws are insufficient to address the evolving nature of cybercrimes and calls for stricter legislation with defined punishments to deter illegal activities. It emphasizes the importance of safeguarding democratic processes and private institutions from the negative consequences of online falsehoods, advocating for laws that prioritize individual accountability and adapt to emerging cyber threats. The essay concludes that new laws are essential to bridge the gap between current legal frameworks and the growing sophistication of online falsehoods, ensuring a more secure and trustworthy digital environment in Singapore. Desklib provides access to similar essays and study resources for students.

Essential Academic Writing Skills
Online Falsehood

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Table of Contents
Introduction...................................................................................................................2
Should the government enact more laws to prevent and combat online falsehoods?.2
Conclusion....................................................................................................................3
References..................................................................................................................... 4

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Introduction
Online falsehood is one of the major threats that exist in today’s world. Online
falsehood can be said as an action in which unauthorised users tries to read or modify the data
using fault line. Online falsehood can be said as a cybercrime that create malicious activities
over the network. It is a complex problem that has affected many industries. To overcome
such issue various laws are implemented by the government. In this report, the discussion is
about should there be more laws to prevent online falsehood in Singapore. It is true that
online falsehood need to be handled properly as it breaches the security by disturbing the
integrity, confidentiality and availability of data. Online falsehood means all the wrong
actions that should be controlled by the medium of laws. Law is a process through which
regulations could be implemented and falsehood could be eliminated.
Should the government enact more laws to prevent and combat online falsehoods?
It is correct that online falsehoods are increasing in Singapore, as all the information is stored
over internet. Thus, there are chances of information getting leaked (Chong, 2018). Online
falsehood is a real challenges thus new laws need to be made so that issue related to it can be
eliminated. There are various laws that are already designed but they should be implemented
in an effective manner (McNair, 2017). The consequence of online falsehood in Singapore is
due to advanced media, technology and social media. Government should make strict laws
for digital technology so that issues can be prevented (Noreddine,2015).
The use of digital technology has increased cyber-crimes and chances of security breach.
Online falsehood is increasing day by day as the existing laws in Singapore are not able to
tackle situations. Thus, laws should be defined in a manner that it is followed by everyone.
Falsehood is related to the issue of information leakage or security breach, wrong bank
transactions or any social media obligations (Sigala, 2017). The main motive to introduce
new laws is to maintain security. Thus, new laws in Singapore are made for better customer
satisfaction and offering loyalty to customers. The existing laws are not addressing the issue
and threat of online fabrication thus laws are designed that offer human rights to deliberate all
the online falsehoods (Noreddine,2015).
There exists is a gap between current laws and increasing falsehoods. Thus, new laws need to
be designed so that actions should be taken to safeguard the people from online falsehoods.
Apart from that, there exist three main characteristics that should be present to safeguard the

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system from online falsehoods in Singapore (Shramko, 2016). The first one is maintaining
privacy across the entire cross borders by preventing bugs to penetrate from one system to
other. The other consequence that is faced is access of third party users need to be controlled
(Gaiziuniene & Cibulskas, 2014).
If the online falsehood will increases it can be a huge threat for the Singapore society as it
will affect the democratic process as well as private institutes. The existing legislations
require add on so that falsehood could be addressed. Existing laws don’t take strict actions
thus new laws need to be designed so that instant actions could be taken. The democratic
processes are confidential thus online falsehood need to be controlled.
The laws are already present but there is no advancement according to the crimes. Hence,
laws need to be designed by defining a strict punishment so that crimes can be controlled. If
laws are not strict then criminals may go for longevity and online content can never remain
secure. The laws should be designed in a way that actions are taken against the individual
who performed eh crimes rather than focusing on the crime (Eng, Fitzgerald & Weiss, 2016).
The existing laws are intended towards the social media giants and they do not focus upon
hackers who perform illegal activities. The new laws should be complete mobilised so that
they can adapt to new crimes (Berghel & Berleant, 2018). The cybercrimes have increased
the need of new laws which may include media literacy programs and deal with all the
political issues (Shramko, 2016). The laws should be transparent and the actions taken should
also be visible to every individual so that threat could be created (McGrew, Breakstone,
Ortega, Smith & Wineburg, 2018). New laws will help in filling the gap between the existing
plans due to rapid advancement in technology.
The online falsehood can be prevented by making the data secure and private by defining an
access control list. Online falsehood has increased as the laws were not strong enough and
they are not defending the information from all the injustice. The principals that need to be
followed is to maintain confidentiality, integrity and availability. The new laws are needed
that will have priority of creating the crimes by offering punishments (McGrew, Breakstone,
Ortega, Smith & Wineburg, 2018). The strict and negative actions would be taken against
online falsehood so that it creates a fear among individual.
Some of the specification measures that need to be taken by government so that all the
unnecessary actions could be stopped. It was found that increase in online falsehood is due to
advanced digital technology which engages an individual in wrong activities. The laws

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should be designed in a way so that integrity, confidentiality and availability are not
breached. The laws should be such that it acts as a guideline for the society (Berghel &
Berleant, 2018). Laws are made to resolve the conflict between social groups and
communities. Laws should be strict so that all the indirect impact of the society could be
removed. The set of laws need to be established by considering the criminal responsibilities
and designing laws so that security is maintained (Zdnet, 2018).
Thus, it is suggested that rules and regulations should be enforced with strict government
behaviour so that no harm is caused to an individual (Rancourt, 2017). The new laws need to
be designed for online falsehood so that all the evils could be defended and good actions
could be promoted.

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Conclusion
From the above discussion, it was found that the phenomenon of digital technology
has deliberately increased online falsehoods. The motivations and reasons for spreading such
falsehoods are to capture the private data so that confidential data could be read. It can be
said that new laws are needed to cover up the gap between current laws and increasing
falsehood. The laws need to be implemented so that security could be enhanced. Strict laws
help in maintaining the security and gaining customer satisfaction. Existing laws do not have
strong penalties for the wrong actions, thus to control the crimes proper laws need to be
designed. The consequences of online falsehoods has affected Singapore society both private
and democratic processes. It can be prevented by working under strict laws and strong
legislation.

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References
Berghel, H., & Berleant, D. (2018). The Online Trolling Ecosystem. Computer, (8), 44-51.
Chong, C. Deliberate online falsehoods a 'serious global problem. Available from Deliberate
online falsehoods a 'serious global problem' Read more at
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/select-committee-deliberate-
online-falsehoods-charles-chong-10041914 Accessed on 18 sept 2018.
Eng, D., Fitzgerald III, R. E., & Weiss, G. S. (2016). Online Defamation: Do Hyperlinks
Constitute Republication for Florida Defamation and Trade Libel Claims. Fla. BJ, 90,
58.
Gaiziuniene, L., & Cibulskas, G. (2014). Factors influencing falsehood in online educational
research (II). Social Sciences, 84(2), 57-68.
McGrew, S., Breakstone, J., Ortega, T., Smith, M., & Wineburg, S. (2018). Can students
evaluate online sources? Learning from assessments of civic online reasoning. Theory
& Research in Social Education, 46(2), 165-193.
McNair, B. (2017). Fake news: Falsehood, fabrication and fantasy in journalism. Routledge,
8(3), 80-89.
Noreddine, H. A. M. I. C. I. (2015). Rumor in digital space: A new ecology of mass
falsehood. La revue de la Communication et du Journalisme, 2(3), 85-105.
Rancourt, B. T. (2017). Better understanding through falsehood. Pacific Philosophical
Quarterly, 98(3), 382-405.
Shramko, Y. (2016). Truth, falsehood, information and beyond: the American plan
generalized. In J. Michael Dunn on Information Based Logics (pp. 191-212).
Springer, Cham.
Sigala, M. (2017). How “bad” are you? Justification and normalisation of online deviant
customer behaviour. In Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism
2017(pp. 607-622). Springer, Cham.
Zdnet, Singapore questions social media giants over 'online falsehoods'. Available from
https://www.zdnet.com/article/singapore-questions-social-media-giants-over-online-
falsehoods/ Accessed on 18 sept 2018.