New law amendment that further restricts information technology use in the UAE

Khaleej Times recently stated that A number of special federal laws have been issued by Shaikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE, including one on regulating the competencies of the National Media Council (NMC), and on combating cybercrime and judicial fees at federal courts."The Federal Law No. 12/2016 amends the existing Federal Law No. 5/2012 on combating information technology crimes.

Article 1 provides for replacing the text of Article 9 of Federal Law No. 9/2012 as follows: "Whoever uses a fraudulent computer network protocol address (IP address) by using a false address or a third-party address by any other means for the purpose of committing a crime or preventing its discovery, shall be punished by temporary imprisonment and a fine of no less than Dh500,000 and not exceeding Dh2,000,000, or either of these two penalties."

It is important to note that the reasons that might urge people to use a fake IP address are mainly because: they need to test if a web server is correctly configured, They want to access something that they can’t in their location ( for instance: Google Voice) or  .. They just want to connect to a VPN network.   

Now, individuals result to VPNs because, other than the fact that they can  get access to network resources when they're not physically on the same LAN (local area network), They can use it as a method for securing and encrypting their communications when they're using an "untrusted" public network.  It secures the computer's internet connection to guarantee that all of the data the user is sending and receiving is encrypted and secured from prying eyes.

Even if the country is mplementing the law as a measure to prevent people from having access to critical content that contradicts with its culture ( ie: pornography, content inciting to violance ..) some of the blocked websites only advocate for human rights and with the ban of VPN use you can't have access to these websites and still be able to secure your data.