Telecommunications in the Bahamas is accomplished through the transmission of information by various types of technologies within

The Bahamas The Bahamas (), officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the West Indies in the North Atlantic. It takes up 97% of the Lucayan Archipelago's land area and is home to 88% of the ar ...

, mainly

telephones A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into ele ...

radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmi ...

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

, and the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

Status

Internet censorship and surveillance

Access to the Internet is unrestricted."Bahamas"
''Freedom in the World 2013'', Freedom House. Retrieved 15 November 2013. There were no government restrictions on access to the Internet or credible reports that the government monitors

e-mail Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic (digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

or Internet

chat rooms The term chat room, or chatroom (and sometimes group chat; abbreviated as GC), is primarily used to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing. The term can thus mean any technology, ranging from ...

without

judicial oversight Judicial review is a process under which executive, legislative and administrative actions are subject to review by the judiciary. A court with authority for judicial review may invalidate laws, acts and governmental actions that are incompa ...

."The Bahamas"
''Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2012'', Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, U.S. Department of State, 22 March 2013. Retrieved 15 November 2013. The constitution provides for freedom of speech and

press Press may refer to: Media * Print media or news media, commonly called "the press" * Printing press, commonly called "the press" * Press (newspaper), a list of newspapers * Press TV, an Iranian television network People * Press (surname), a fam ...

, and the government generally respects these rights in practice. An independent press combined with a relatively effective—albeit extremely backlogged—judiciary, and a functioning democratic political system ensures freedom of speech and press. The constitution prohibits arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home, or correspondence, and the government generally respects these prohibitions in practice. Strict and antiquated libel laws dating to British legal codes are seldom invoked. In April 2013, the Bahamas Commissioner of Police Ellison Greenslade warned that the police would press charges against people who post “lewd” or “obscene” pictures on social media websites and Attorney General Allyson Maynard-Gibson announced that the government was working on legislation that will police information posted on the Internet. "We have to balance freedom of the press with protecting the public,” she added. Also in April Rodney Moncur was charged with "committing a grossly indecent act" by posting autopsy photographs of a man who died in police custody on his

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

page."Rodney Moncur Charged In Court Over Facebook Pictures"
Lamech Johnson, ''Tribune 242'', 5 April 2013. Retrieved 15 November 2013. Phone calls to the Bahamas are monitored by the U.S.

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collect ...

's MYSTIC program.

Status

Internet censorship and surveillance

See also

References

External links