The legislature — and the legislative process — is one of the three pillars of democracy, enshrined in the very heart of the political system. The legal system and the lawmaking process both exist to protect the citizens of a democracy. Yet, in our research in the Unfreedom Monitor, we have seen repeatedly how authoritarian as well as supposedly democratic states use laws that claim to protect citizens to police people’s actions, words and very presence in digital spaces and curtail freedom of expression. In an episode of Global Voices Insights entitled “Can citizens of democracies still trust the law?,” panelists Laís Martins, Veszna Wessenauer, and Alok Prasanna Kumar discussed the consequences of governments passing laws to regulate digital spaces. The 2022 Freedom House report shows that global freedom has declined for the 10th year in a row, with authorities in several countries pursuing laws aimed at tech companies and industries in an effort to subdue free expression and gather citizens’ private data. Technology and liberty get more entangled each day: the last elections in both Brazil (2018) and India (2019) were dubbed “WhatsApp elections,” with both countries waging a kind of love-hate battle with social media. Martins explains that, in Brazil, in 2018, all candidates used social media with skill, especially Bolsonaro, who incorporated social media use and disinformation into his presidency. This quickly intensified into coordinated inauthentic behaviour and attacks on journalists and opposition members. Lawmakers have tabled legislation to try to counter this. In 2020, the Fake News Bill began to take shape in Brazil’s Congress on the left, as a way to counter fake news. As the debate process moved, various suggestions were incorporated from academia, civil society, etc., as they learned of the impact it could have on free expression. The bill eventually became a gigantic platform regulation bill, leading actors who were initially very committed to the bill to start backing down, saying it had become something that is trying to change the way the internet operates. Martins points out that the main issue with the bill is that it criminalises content, and not behaviour, because it opens the way for those with power to choose what is “bad” content at any given time, and then criminally prosecute people for it. Furthermore, it would require platforms to police the content, which adds another layer of trouble, since it requires an understanding of country context to tell if content is problematic in any way, and we have seen in Brazil and India how this can backfire. Alok comments that in a country with weak rule of law, such as India, where “the police and judiciary don’t always follow the law, but the instructions of higher-ups,” you don’t even need to go after content; you can harass the person who is “responsible” for it, and scare them into silence. The Information Technology Act of 2000 in India has two sections that are often used for just this. Section 66A of the act, introduced in 2009, which he calls a “zombie section,” criminalises anyone who sends any message through any medium that is offensive or menacing, which is an attempt to focus on content. And, since there is no objective understanding of “menacing” or “offensive,” it makes anything that is unacceptable criminal. The section was challenged and in 2015, the Supreme Court struck it down for violating freedom of speech. But, for seven years after this judgement — which is longer than it was on the books — people have still been prosecuted under this “zombie section.” The other, Section 69A, allows the government to block specific links on the internet. What remains unfair is the process by which it gets taken down, because it does not require disclosure of why the content is taken down. In recent times the Indian government has taken down entire YouTube channels, some of which cover local events that the mainstream media ignores, leaving them with no information about why they were taken down. Section 69A fits into a larger set of laws in India that Alok calls “lawless laws” because they are used on the whims of the government: the consequences on individuals are heavy, and there is room for neither explanation nor redress. In Hungary, one specific law made for good but open to much abuse is the Child Protection Law of 2021, enacted ostensibly to protect children from pedophiles. Because the law limits who is allowed to talk to children about sexuality, it is used to attack the LGBTQ+ community.