The ESCWA Cyber Legislation Digest Each of the six documents has the following structure:     The areas that ESCWA’s research covered, essentially the scope of the directive. The experience of ESCWA member countries in formulating legislation related to the directive and a comparison of these formulations with international legislation. A descriptive explanation of the proposed laws. The specific chapters, sections and articles of the laws proposed for the specific directive. Additionally, each document referenced a wide range of studies, laws or cases relating to the subject of the specific directive. These directives were discussed and agreed upon during an expert group meeting that was held at ESCWA’s premises in Feb 2011, as detailed in Appendix B. The directives (together with annex and glossary) are available to download from ESCWA’s website7. Directive 1: e-Communication and Freedom of Expression This first directive has a fundamental importance specifically as it forms the basis for other cyber legislation directives. This is due to its handling of the technical and operational aspects related to the determining the identities and responsibilities of the parties that provide electronic communications services. The identities of responsible parties needs to be legally determined after any transgression, hence the legitimation of the various aspects of electronic communication are necessary. An increase in Internet penetration and broadening in the nature and variety of users goes in parallel with the increase in the types of devices used for accessing the Internet i.e. laptops, mobiles, PCs, tablets, etc. Electronic communication witnessed a shift in paradigm, from being solely used for accessing information to being used as the basis for interactive socio-economic development. This brought to the forefront, the issue of validity of such usage, where any transgression encountered by the transferred information, in terms of medication, blockage, divulging of personal data, may result in damages to various parties involved in the transfer. More importantly, the judiciary world has opened up to the possibility of using such information as legal evidence, requiring firm and legal establishment of the identities of the parties involved, the time and date of transfer and the information systems it was sent from. Communicators of information that use electronic means have traditionally resorted to various technical devices to protect themselves. These devices resulted in a variety of practices which could be discretionary, illegal, impractical, incomplete or lacking in exposing the identities involved. These incongruous methods were seen as insufficient to protect the public from the misuse of electronic communications. The issues researched and addressed by this directive include: 7 http://isper.escwa.un.org/FocusAreas/CyberLegislation/Projects/tabid/161/language/en-US/Default.aspx 12