Well if you ever needed an example of bad things that can happen purely on the basis of digital communication, the latest case of Fiona and David Fulton is a reminder. They are British missionaries who have be sentenced to one years hard labour in a Gambian prison for calling the president a madman in an email.
There emails were basically sent to to several churches in the UK but got into the hands of someone with links back to the Gambian Government who forwarded them to the police.
Now remember Mr Jammeh is a democratically elected president (although there have been many claims of intimidation involved of the opposition). Gambia is also a very popular holiday resort and many Europeans fly out there every year. It is important to remember the consequences of everything you do online and the implications of where you are when you use the internet and email.
Generally this applies to the use of proxy servers as well – they are controlled by the laws of the country they physically reside in and of course we can see that calling your leader a nutter can lead to a prison sentence if you’re in the wrong place !!
The worrying thing is that it is incredibly easy to forge the headers of emails, as evidence they are not exactly reliable! Although to be fair to the Gambian legal department the Fultons confessed to their ‘crime’.
Hopefully they will be released or pardoned soon but this sort of thing happens all the time. Be careful about what you do online and where you do it !
