Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines, Human Rights

COMMUNICATIONS: Technologies for Expression – and for Censorship

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Sep 23 2003 (IPS) - Information and communications technologies (ICTs) pose opportunities but also threats for human rights like freedom of expression and protection of privacy, warn organisations specialised in the issue.

"Privacy, a human right enshrined in international law, encounters specific challenges with the introduction of ICTs," says Meryem Marzouki, an activist with the France-based organisation IRIS (Imagine an Internet Solidarity Network).

Marzouki says human rights must figure prominently in the final declaration of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), to take place in Geneva, Dec. 10-12.

The December summit is the first of two phases. The second WSIS is to take place in Tunis in 2005.

The aim of the first is to bridge the "digital gap" separating the rich from the poor, and also to foment the efforts of some governments to jump-start the ICT industries, which have suffered a sharp decline in recent years.

Non-governmental organisations, which for the first time are involved in the United Nations-led formulation of a shared vision of the "information society", have been adamant about the inclusion of human rights in the final declaration and plan of action to be signed in December.

"If this summit fails to reaffirm the centrality of human rights in its deliberations, we will have not only missed an opportunity, we will have sacrificed the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights that we all hold dear," she said.

NGOs specialising in human rights and information and communication technologies are taking part in the final preparatory committee conference for the WSIS. This third "PrepCom" is to conclude two weeks of sessions in Geneva on Friday.

Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, based in London, shared Marzouki’s concerns. He presented "Silenced", an international report on censorship and control of the Internet, a document prepared in collaboration with GreenNet Education Trust, another British NGO.

The report indicates that the Internet is an "ideal communications media to be controlled and censored." The worldwide web is invaluable as an instrument for freedom of expression, but it is also "very fragile".

There are many mechanisms for "destroying freedom of speech in this fledgling medium," Davies said. These include licensing requirements, restrictive laws and even manipulating the infrastructure of telecommunications, states the report.

The computer hardware and software sold to the population can be manipulated or, as has occurred in too many countries, Internet users may simply be intimidated or imprisoned, Davies said.

An estimated 100,000 to 150,000 cybercafes (centres for Internet access) have been shut down in China, limiting citizens’ access to information.

"Some African nations have closed down the Internet for periods of time because of the concerns about political free speech," said the activist.

And Western European countries are not free of such controls. In Italy, for example, foreign visitors must present their passports to use the Internet access of a cybercafe, and the data emerging from their on-line activities "are logged and can be accessed by the police upon request," said Davies.

But it is not just certain countries doing this, he added. "The United States and the United Kingdom have led the way in establishing prohibitive, prescriptive legislation."

The two world powers have also invested in restrictive technologies that are marketed around the world, so the responsibility does not just fall on governments, but also on the private sector, the Privacy International expert said.

The right to privacy is also affected by the use of ICTs, said Canadian Deborah Hurley, who presented her book "Pole Star: Human Rights in the Information Society".

For example, an eye scan – the iris is "a supposedly unique biometric identifier" – to withdraw a small sum of money from an automatic banking machine could be considered a "disproportionate" security mechanism, she said.

Surveillance technology has exploded to the point that a person in Britain is captured by closed-circuit television an average of 300 times a day, said Hurley. This has been "facilitated by advances in information processing, storage and miniaturisation."

Video cameras, audio recorders and sensors are being marketed and employed to record and analyse individuals’ faces, gait, sweat, and pulse and eye movements, according to her book.

The "Blue Eyes" system, developed by the U.S.-based transnational IBM, "tracks the movements of a person’s eye to capture both the purposeful looks that she directs at the world about her as well as unconscious glances of which she herself may be unaware."

Hurley also mentioned the Galvactivator system, in the research stage, which by measuring skin conductivity "can assess an individual’s state of arousal and convey it to third parties."

Research of this sort of technology usually initially involves the most vulnerable populations, such as children or Alzheimer’s patients, or populations in custodial settings such as prisoners, or with limited rights, such as soldiers, said the author.

She suggested it would be important to study the relationship of "privacy and poverty, to look for correlation between income level and the availability or lack of privacy protection".

Another report, "Privacy and Human Rights", by the U.S. governmental Electronic Privacy Information Centre (EPIC), expresses concern about the increased surveillance of communications since the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

EPIC representative Cedric Laurant noted that since that date governments have "seized the response to the threat of terrorism to enhance their powers, affecting many fundamental human rights, including privacy."

Australia, France, New Zealand, South Africa and Switzerland have adopted legislation to increase their ability to intercept communications, "making it easier for law enforcement and security agencies to obtain customer data from ISPs (Internet service providers) and telecommunications companies," according to Laurant.

The United States has watered down its privacy protections against wire-tapping while giving Justice Department greater surveillance authority.

The United States has also created elaborate "profiling and tracking systems and databases" to monitor the activities of its own citizens and of foreigners crossing its borders.

Many governments have agreed to collaborate and share information with the United States on travellers between their countries and to enact laws to facilitate the transfer of this information, says Laurant.

As the three reports were presented in Geneva on the occasion of the WSIS preparatory meetings, IRIS activists Marzouki commented: "We don’t need a culture of security, we need to ensure the security of cultures."