Cuba updates legal framework on telecommunications and typifies cybersecurity incidents

The Official Gazette published new legal norms on telecommunications on Tuesday. Among the approved legal instruments are Decree-Law No. 35 on "Telecommunications, Information and Communication Technologies and the Use of the Radioelectric Spectrum" and Resolution 105, "National Action Model for the response to cybersecurity incidents."

For the first time, "the country will have a legal norm where cybersecurity incidents and typifications that go beyond the technological limits are associated", expressed Pablo Domínguez Vázquez, Director of Cybersecurity of MINCOM in a press conference.

Resolution 105, "National Action Model for the response to Cybersecurity incidents", typifies facts that until now had no legal backing in the country in Internet environments such as ethical and social damages or aggression incidents.

These include the media replication of fake news, understood as the dissemination of false news, offensive messages, defamation with an impact on the country's prestige.

They also include the dissemination through telecommunication/ICT infrastructures, platforms or services, of contents that attempt against the constitutional, social and economic precepts of the state, incite mobilizations or other acts that alter public order; disseminate messages that advocate violence, accidents of any kind that affect the privacy and dignity of people".

The Resolution also describes cyberterrorism and its intention to subvert the constitutional order, suppress,  or seriously destabilize the functioning of political and mass institutions, the economic and social structures of the state, or force the public authorities to carry out an act or refrain from doing so.

According to Wilfredo López Rodríguez, Director of Regulations of the Ministry of Communications, Decree-Law No 35 is the first legal norm of superior rank approved in Cuba on Telecommunications services, ICTs and the Use of the Radio Spectrum.

This Tuesday's edition of the Gaceta also includes Decree 43, which sets out the regulations on the Use of the Radioelectric Spectrum and implements the agreements and recommendations approved within the framework of the World Radiocommunication Conferences of the International Telecommunication Union, of which Cuba is a signatory.