By: Efrat Daskal

 

The issue of digital rights dominated the discussions during the 2003 and 2005 phases of the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) (Antonova, 2013). Since then, the approach centering on human rights or digital rights has been steadily gaining ground in internet governance debates, yielding a large number of internet proclamations based on the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including declarations, principles, and charters of rights. As a rule, these documents were developed by international organizations or multi-stakeholder coalitions including civil society, the private sector, and the academic and technical communities (Wagner, 2011). Examples include the Association for Progressive Communications Internet Rights Charter from 2006, the Global Network Initiative Principles from 2008, the Declaration of Internet Freedom from 2012, and most recently the Internet Rights and Principles Charter (IRPC) written by the Internet Rights and Principles Dynamic Coalition in 2014.
But what exactly are these digital rights? To answer this question, I analyzed the above-mentioned documents – and especially the 2014 IRPC. My analysis exposed a loose tripartite division of these rights: the right to access, freedom of speech, and the right to privacy. While there is a degree of overlap, each cluster represents a distinctive aspect of internet rights:

1. Access to the internet (technology and content): Based on Article 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR), “everyone has the right to seek [and] receive… information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Accordingly, the IRPC stipulates that “everyone has the right to access, and make use of, the Internet… [T]he Internet shall not be subject to any restrictions except those which are provided by law [or] are necessary in a democratic society to protect national security, public order, public health or morals or the rights and freedoms of others” (IRPC 2014, 13). Thus, everyone is entitled to access the content on the internet, which should be open and universally available. Moreover, it should be of good quality and free from discriminatory prioritization, filtering, or traffic control on commercial, political, or other grounds, enabling users to access diverse information and cultural discourse. In this context, any blocking and filtering systems designed to prevent access to content which are not end-user controlled are to be considered a form of censorship.

2. Freedom of Speech: According to Article 19 of UNDHR, “everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression.” In line with this stipulation, the IRPC (2014, 16) declared that “freedom of expression is essential in any society for the enjoyment of other human rights and social goods including democracy and human development.” The declaration states that everyone should have the freedom to share and publish information freely on the internet without censorship or other interference. Among the liberties included in this clause are the right to diversity, the right to innovation and creation without disturbance or blockage of new technologies, the right to initiate any assembly or association, the right to work, etc. Restrictions on users’ freedom are imposed by law, the necessity to respect the rights or reputations of others, as well as by considerations of national security, public order, public health or morals.

3. Right to privacy: Like the protection of freedom of speech stipulated in Article 19, the right to privacy is assured by Article 12 of UNDHR, which reads: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation.” Moreover, since the right to privacy stands at the core of many online crimes, such as harassment, cyber-stalking, human trafficking, and misuse of one’s digital identity, it is closely related to the right to security. In the digital age, the right to privacy includes, inter alia, freedom from surveillance (by governments as well as commercial entities), the right to secure connections to and on the internet, the right to use encryption, the right to online anonymity, the right to data protection, and the right to control over personal data collection, retention, processing, disposal, or disclosure (IRPC, 2014). Similarly to the constraints on freedom of speech, any infringement on privacy can be motivated only by legal considerations, the necessity to preserve others’ rights or reputations, or the protection of national security, public order, public health or morals.

The above formulations leave much room for interpretation and deliberation regarding the definition and scope of the digital rights. Moreover, to some extent there is an inherent contradiction between these different rights. It is not surprising, therefore, that over the years opinions have differed widely. Contradictory interpretations have often led to ongoing discussions involving different national and international stakeholders, including governments, internet companies, intergovernmental organizations, and last but not least – civil society organizations. While some countries have recognized these rights and taken steps to make sure these rights are protected by their national laws, others have been reluctant to do so for various reasons. An example is the issue of net neutrality, which forms part of the right to access the internet. While in Israel the protection of net neutrality has formed part of the law since 2014, in other countries the topic is still being debated. Over the past five years, we have seen at least three major campaigns on this subject, in India, the EU, and the US . 

My work focuses on these campaigns, and more specifically on the work of the civil society organizations that advocate for digital rights around the world. These organizations promote computer and internet-related civil liberties on parallel tracks: on the one hand, they confront governments and internet corporations in the constitutional, political, and judicial arenas; on the other, they educate the public about its rights. Accordingly, they are among the few social actors with the potential to challenge and sometimes even change the rules dictated by powerful social actors (Breindl, 2011; Postigo, 2008). In order to achieve their goals, digital rights advocates must convince other stakeholders, including the public. Yet such persuasion is not easy. The foremost challenge is persuading members of the public to contribute time and money to a political or social cause. This is true for almost any kind of advocacy. As scholars have repeatedly pointed out, recent decades have seen a drop in conventional political participation as well as traditional volunteering to attain certain political or social goals. Secondly, most citizens still do not have sufficient knowledge or understanding of this complex area of policymaking and might therefore be less motivated to contribute to causes which appear unfamiliar or irrelevant to their lives. Finally, as these organizations operate largely from a Western “political rights” perspective, they may be perceived in certain countries (particularly non-Western countries or unstable democracies) as strategic communicators who aim to undermine the autonomy and wellbeing of their host country. Thus, in order to achieve their goals, the organizations must find ways to negotiate with local social actors, and their activities must be adjusted to the local context both ideologically and practically.

How do these organizations achieve this? This question is the focus of a new research project sponsored by the Internet Policy Observatory that aims to shed light on issues related to public involvement in digital rights advocacy around the world and to offer suggestions and best practices for advocates in order to improve their work with the public. With these goals in mind, the study will explore the public-related activities of digital rights organizations operating around the world, focusing on their strategies for recruiting non-financial help; requesting money and offering services to the public while exploring three questions:

1. What to know: which arguments and stories do the organizations use in order to persuade the people to support their cause?

2. What to do: which actions and activities do the organizations offer to the public in order to get involved?

3. What to use: what branding techniques do the organizations use in order to get the public interested and excited?

This study will aim to answer these questions while exploring the activities of 15 digital rights advocates working in different countries on three different continents. If you would like to hear more about the project, please feel free to contact Efrat Daskal at efrat.daskal@mail.huji.ac.il

References

Antonova, S. (2013). Internet and the emerging global community of rights: The human-rights debate at the internet governance forum. Journal of Philosophy of International Law, 4(1), 84 – 98.

Breindl, Y. (2011). Promoting openness by ‘patching’ European directives: Internet based activism & EU telecommunication reform. Journal of Information, Technology and Politics, 8(3), 346–366. doi:10.1080/19331681.2011.595326

Internet Rights and Principles Coalition, (IRPC) (2014). The Internet Rights and Principles Coalition Charter. Retrieved from http://internetrightsandprinciples.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/IRPC_Booklet-English_4thedition.pdf

Postigo, H. (2008). Capturing fair use for the YouTube generation: The digital rights movement, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the user-centered framing of fair use. Information, Communication & Society, 11(7), 1008-1027. doi: 10.1080/13691180802109071.

Wagner, B. (2011). Freedom of expression on the internet: Implications for foreign policy. Global Information Society Watch. Retrieved from http://giswatch.org/en/freedom-expression/freedom-expression-internet-implications-foreign-policy