2010 started with Google’s shift in policy with regard to operating in China, and ends with the WikiLeaks affair and its multi-various global implications. The dilemmas for internet service providers will only deepen in 2011, and so too the need for multi-stakeholder initiatives to examine the impact of the industry on all rights.
Security, openness and privacy on the Internet have become critical issues as a result of the explosive growth in online traffic around the world. The implications for human rights are enormous and will require further engagement between governments, business and civil society in the years ahead.
Companies in the Information & Communications Technology (ICT) sector will face mounting pressure from states which want access to data, community groups that want material that offends them to be taken down, and authors, artists, campaigners, and others, who wish to express themselves freely. Many measures they undertake may conflict with internationally recognized human rights standards relating to freedom of expression and privacy. The growth in social networking and other online sharing of information is also a challenge for the industry, as it may put individuals, particularly children, at risk as targets for identity theft and other forms of abuse.
Legal systems are in an ongoing process of catching up with rapid developments taking place in information technology. The dissemination of hundreds of thousands of confidential documents of the U.S. departments of State and Defense on the website, Wikileaks has raised serious human rights concerns, not least the safety of human rights defenders who may be named in such documents who may face the risk of being identified and persecuted by their governments because of such exposure.
The legality of what WikiLeaks has done apart, a host of serious questions concerning freedom of expression need to be addressed urgently. For example, the decision by Amazon to cancel its contract with WikiLeaks, which was renting its servers, was taken, according to the company, because of violations of its terms of service, but human rights organisations have called for greater transparency in such decision-making.
The work of the Global Network Initiative set up in 2008 by a group of companies, civil society organizations (including human rights and press freedom groups), investors and academics will be key to this unfolding area. The Initiative has sought to shape a collaborative approach to protect and advance freedom of expression and privacy in the ICT sector, and participants are now putting in place the structures that will carry the work forward in the years ahead.