Regulations to Curb Use of Telegram for Illicit and Criminal Activities

6 Mr Vikram Nair asked the Coordinating Minister for National Security and Minister for Home Affairs whether the Ministry plans to introduce any further laws, regulations or actions to curb the use of Telegram to facilitate a range of illicit and criminal activities, including (i) the sale of drugs, vapes and etomidate (ii) scam operations and (iii) sexual crimes.

The Minister of State for Home Affairs (Mr Goh Pei Ming) (for the Minister for Home Affairs): Any communication platform can be misused to facilitate criminal activities. To address this, the Government primarily relies on the legal powers under the Online Criminal Harms Act (OCHA).

When online criminal content is detected, the Government can issue OCHA Directions to prevent the offending accounts or content from interacting with users in Singapore. Since the operationalisation of OCHA, the Police have been able to disrupt online criminal activities, including on communication platforms, such as Telegram, more effectively.

The Government also actively engages online communication platforms to implement ex ante measures to prevent scams and malicious cyber activities. Through the OCHA Codes of Practice, designated online services, such as Telegram, must implement appropriate systems, processes and measures to quickly disrupt malicious accounts and activities and prevent their propagation. As part of the continuing efforts against the serious crime situation, the Police are working with designated online service providers, including Telegram, to implement further anti-scam measures under the OCHA Codes of Practice by this year.

The Government will continue to review our laws and regulations to ensure that they remain effective in protecting users in Singapore from online criminal harms.

Mr Speaker: Mr Nair.

Mr Vikram Nair (Sembawang): I thank the Minister of State for the response and to explain that the OCHA Directions are being issued to Telegram as well. The only reason I mentioned Telegram specifically is it seems to emerge in a whole range of crimes, including selling of drugs, etomidate, sexual crimes, scams.

I think the Minister of State mentioned scams but it sounds to me like this is an issue with the platform itself. And I will be grateful if the Minister of State believes that the numbers of crimes facilitated on Telegram will be effectively reduced with these additional measures that the Minister of State is saying the Ministry will take.

Mr Goh Pei Ming: Mr Speaker, I thank the Member for his supplementary question. I note the particular concern about Telegram. During the Ministry of Home Affairs Committee of Supply debates, we also spoke about Telegram as a platform.

One of the key traits of Telegram is that users can remain anonymous. This is compared to, say, WhatsApp, for example. And for Telegram, I think when we last spoke about this during the Committee of Supply, I also mentioned that we have followed up, for example, I personally have followed up on some of these text messages that I have received on Telegram purportedly selling drugs, for example. And when we followed it up through the Central Narcotics Bureau, we realised that actually many of these offers to sell drugs, even sexual offers, are actually scams masquerading as those offers. What we want to do is, indeed, using scam as the basis to work more closely with platforms, such as Telegram, to really tackle the issue. Many of the powers enabled through OCHA does allow us to follow up on that, and we will do so.

I just want to take the opportunity to reiterate that the anti-scams work is not just a Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) effort. It has involved multiple agencies across the whole of Government, together with industry partners, working very closely. And I think, when I last spoke during the Committee of Supply, we announced a series of measures that we have taken and that we will be taking this year, and we are constantly reviewing what we are doing on this front because we recognise the situation is one that is very concerning.

We want to continue to sustain the downward trend that we have gotten last year, in terms of overall number of victims and total amounts lost. In the first quarter of this year, the numbers have continued that trend; we are slightly heartened. But it is too early for us to celebrate, way too early. There is a lot more work that we need to continue to do on this front.

Like I mentioned earlier, further anti-scam measures are coming out later this year. Within MHA, we are also looking at how we are organised internally to fight scams. More details will be released when ready.