Experts and adolescents during a workshop about the risks of internet for children and young people, as part of the 2016 Internet Governance Forum (IGF2016), held in Zapopan, in eastern Mexico. Credit: Franz Chávez /IPS

By Franz Chávez
ZAPOPAN, Mexico, Dec 27 2016 (IPS)

Email surveillance, blocking of websites with content that is awkward for governments, or the interruption of services such as WhatsApp are symptoms of the threat to freedom of expression online, according to Latin American activists.

Representatives of organisations in the region participated this month in Zapopan, on the outskirts of the Mexican city of Guadalajara, in the Internet Governance Forum (IGF 2016), an initiative formally established by the United Nations Organisation in 2006. They discussed the problems facing freedom of speech on the social networks.

A total of 12 Mexican civil society organisation highlighted the situation in their country, which is similar to that of other countries in the region.“There are no hegemonic standards or models of legislation for the information society. Every region, country, government and key actor makes decisions in accordance with their own financial and technical possibilities, political will and digital culture, which it is necessary to work on.” -- J. Eduardo Rojas

In a statement they denounced the interception of communications and the use of malware “to silence journalists and political opponents”.

“Mexican authorities intercept private communications” and 99 percent of the geolocalisation and obtaining of people’s digital identity (metadata) ”are done without a judicial order,” they stated in the document, issued by the Mexican branch of Article 19, a Paris-based international organisation for the defence of freedom of expression.

“Civil society actors are very worried” with regard to the surveillance that the new technologies allow “and the possibility of intercepting our computers and telephones, where we leave a digital fingerprint when we look for news or use our email,” Edison Lanza, special rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter American Commission on Human Rights, told IPS.

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in force since 1948, states that “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

“Three years ago, someone hacked into my email account and made my list of contacts public,” Martha Roldos complained to IPS. She is executive director of the Ecuadorian Foundation 1000 Pages, which researches and promotes accountability of civil servants towards the community.

She described challenges faced by activists, including espionage or interception of email messages, and mentioned government actions such as employing facial and voice recognition equipment for people involved in journalism or environmental activism.

In Brazil, the mobile text messaging app WhatsApp was interrupted on four occasions over the last two years by judges who demanded that conversations be revealed as part of investigations – a measure that was condemned by Artigo 19, Articulo 19’s local branch.

“The court ruling is disproportionate and is a direct attack on freedom of expression. The measure represents a blatant violation of principles and of the proportionality that judicial rulings should have,” said Artigo 19 in defense of millions of Brazilian citizens who use the popular app.

Ana Ortega, the head of the Freedom of Expression Committee (C-Libre) in Honduras, told IPS that among the many incidents against freedom of expression was the arrest of and prosecution against Elvin Francisco Molina for allegedly spreading false information on his Facebook page about the country’s banking system.

Accused of causing “financial panic in the social networks,” Molina was investigated by order of the National Council of Defence and Security. C-Libre expressed concern over the “criminalisation” of the use of social networks in the draft of a new Criminal Code which is being debated by the National Congress.

In Honduras, “there is no law to protect internet users and we take refuge under the right to freedom of expression and the 2006 law on access to information,” explained Ortega.

The report “Surf Freely”, carried out by the Venezuelan Press and Society Institute in several of that country’s states before and after the December 2015 parliamentary elections, concluded that web pages that were blocked belonged to companies that had provided information about the exchange rate of the dollar.

It was also established that other blocked websites were media outlets and blogs critical of the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela and the administration of President Nicolás Maduro.

Yvana Novoa, a lawyer for the Peruvian organisation Anti corruption and Freedom of Information (Liber), documented cases in which users were blocked from accessing the Facebook account of the city of Lima. Also, “some public officials such as ministers have blocked users who criticise them on Twitter,” she told IPS.

Article 2 of Peru’s constitution recognises the right to freedom of information, opinion, expression and dissemination of thought through written or oral means, or images, through any social means of communication, without previous authorisation or censure.

But “there is no criminal penalty when a user is blocked by official social networks accounts,” said Novoa.

The blocking of sites as a form of censorship on the Internet is not very effective because the message will just be multiplied over the social networks, said Javier Pallero, an Argentine analyst for the international digital rights defence organisation, Accessnow.

Beyond that, it represents an action that stifles the debate needed to strengthen democracy, he told IPS.

Censorship on the internet “is a deplorable act by people who fear the power of information,” said David Alonso Santivañez, a Peruvian expert on digital legislation.

In any case, in his opinion, the capacity of social networks to multiply a message some 60 million times in a minute calls into question the possibility of true censorship of people’s communication.

What is needed, the expert told IPS, is to create laws that guarantee the use of the service, offer security and are the result of teamwork between civil society, legal experts and governments.

“Judges and prosecutors are the ones that have to investigate these kinds of abuses and interference in the private lives of journalists, activists and political leaders. If they detect illegal interference with no judicial order, without any legitimate objective, they must sanction this kind of offence,” urged IACHR rapporteur Lanza.

In a world dominated by the information society, the paradigm of self-regulation makes it necessary for “multi sectoral stakeholders to establish an informed and intelligent dialogue in order to define approaches, methods and techniques to face the challenges of an increasingly digitalised society,” J. Eduardo Rojas, a Bolivian expert who heads the Networks Foundation, told IPS.

“There are no hegemonic standards or models of legislation for the information society. Every region, country, government and key actor makes decisions in accordance with their own financial and technical possibilities, political will and digital culture, which it is necessary to work on,” he said.

Italy has finally joined the restricted club of states in the world that have chosen the constitutional path for regulating the Internet – or at least has taken a significant step in that direction – by adopting a Declaration of Internet Rights.

It is now looking to present the Declaration at the Internet Governance Forum scheduled for November in João Pessoa, Brazil.

The drafting process lasted more than one year, which is quick by normal Italian bureaucratic standards, and observers were surprised that it had seen the light of the day given what they says is the backwardness of the country’s digital infrastructures.Many questions related to access and use of the Internet go well beyond national borders because of the very nature of the Internet and therefore call for a coordinated effort at the international level

A number of progressive Italian media hailed the Declaration as of “historical significance” in view of the visibility and prestige that it will give Italy on internet governance issues within the global community.

Unlike other countries, where proposals for Internet Bills of Rights or Declarations have been promoted mainly by scholars, associations, dynamic coalitions, enterprises, or groups of stakeholders, the Declaration’s promoters have stressed that the drafting process was characterised by “peer-to-peer relations between institutions and citizens, so that the whole construction has become horizontal.”

In fact, the Declaration is the outcome of a complex and open multi-stakeholder process, which ended with the direct involvement of Italian citizens through a four-month public consultation on the Internet.

Nevertheless, momentum for the Declaration is closely associated with the figures of Laura Boldrini, President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies and former spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and Stefano Rodotà, an Italian jurist and politician and long-time advocate of a “Magna Carta” for the networked society who headed the committee of experts which drafted the document.

Explaining the contents of the Declaration, Rodotà said that unlike almost other similar initiatives,  the Italian Declaration : “does not contain specific and detailed wording of the different principles and rights already stated by international documents and national constitutions” but attempts to “identify the specific principles and rights of the digital world, by underlining not only their peculiarities but also the way in which they generally contribute to redefining the entire sphere of rights.”

The Declaration covers a wide range of issues, from the “fundamental right to Internet access” and net neutrality to the notion of “informational self-determination”. It also includes provisions on the security, integrity and inviolability of IT systems and domains, mass surveillance, the right to anonymity and the development of digital identity. It also deals with the highly-debated idea of granting online citizens the “right to be forgotten”.

The Declaration is critical of the opacity of the terms of service devised by digital platform operators, who are “required to behave honestly and fairly” and, most of all, give “clear and simple information on how the platform operates.”

Rodotà pointed out that the set of rights recognised in the Declaration “does not guarantee general freedom on the Internet, but specifically aims at preventing the dependency of people from the outside” through, for example, “expropriation of the right to freely develop one’s personality and identity as may happen with the wide and increasing use of algorithms and probabilistic techniques.”

The importance of needs linked to security and the market are taken into consideration but, according to the promoters of the initiative, there cannot be a balance on equal terms between these interests and fundamental rights and freedoms. In particular, “security needs shall not determine the establishment of a society of surveillance, control and social sorting.”

Renata Avila of Guatemala, who heads the “Web We Want” campaign launched by the World Wide Web Foundation, expressed her satisfaction with the section of the Declaration dedicated to net neutrality and free software, but said that it should have had more explicit and stronger recognition of “the right of people to communicate in private and the right to anonymity.”

The next step for the Italian Declaration concerns it status. It is currently simply a political document with no legal value, although Boldrini has said that it will be the subject of a parliamentary “motion” in the coming months.

As the basis for a legally-binding document, it has much in common with national legislation concerning the Internet in Brazil and the Philippines. However, it promoters note that the Italian declaration was created with an international framework in mind.

Its rationale, they say, is that “the many questions related to access and use of the Internet go well beyond national borders because of the very nature of the Internet and therefore call for a coordinated effort at the international level.”

According to the promoters, the main aim of the Declaration is not limited to being a text for the creation of new national legislation, but aims at being a contribution to public debate that points to possible legislative developments at all levels, “from national legislation to international treaties.”

For his part, Rodotà hoped that the Italian Declaration of Internet Rights would serve as an instrument for the “consolidation of a common international debate and of a culture highlighting common dynamics in different legal systems”.

Edited by Phil Harris