23 May Why and how do we document the impact of rights violations?
MacKinnon speaking at the RightsCon session on documenting ICT companies’ impact on civic freedoms
Why does Ranking Digital Rights evaluate companies’ respect for users’ rights? Because when companies are insufficiently transparent and accountable about how their policies affect users’ freedom of expression and privacy, real people can be harmed. We believe it is important to document these people’s stories, so that companies—as well as governments that regulate them—can better understand how their policies and practices affect users around the world.
Documenting the impact of human rights violations caused directly or indirectly by ICT companies is key to raise awareness and to hold to account those responsible, whether they are governments, companies, or non-state actors. For this reason, at RightsCon in Toronto last week we held a session called “Documenting ICT companies’ impact on civic freedoms and human rights defenders.’’ Ranking Digital Rights director Rebecca MacKinnon moderated a conversation with people who lead projects that work to document what happens to people around the world when company policies and practices fail to respect their rights.
MacKinnon pointed out that while RDR evaluates and compares company policies by publishing an annual Corporate Accountability Index, we seek to strengthen the connection between our data and analysis about company policies and disclosures, and the stories of people affected by these companies’ policies and practices.
Internet users around the world face a number of threats and restrictions that put their rights to privacy and freedom of expression online at risk including network shutdowns, content takedowns by social media platforms, judicial threats and arrests, and mass surveillance programs.
“It is important to document those cases to provide evidence to businesses and decision makers about the scale of those attacks,’’ Ana Zbona from the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC) said. ”Documentation can lead to results in terms of raising awareness, and can also have an impact both on national level and with individual cases,’’ she added. The BHRRC has a database of attacks which documents attacks against defenders in the field of business and human rights.
Peter Micek from Access Now said that through his organization’s Shutdown Stories project they collect and publish stories of users and communities affected by network shutdowns. These stories, he said, can be used in advocacy campaigns as well as formal efforts to obtain remedy.
Documenting these violations, however, can be challenging due to lack of transparency from both governments and businesses. According to Jessica Anderson from onlinecensorship.org, a project that documents cases of content takedowns by social media platforms, collecting evidence about these harms from a wide range of communities and users is not easy. She noted that while data crowdsourced from users who had their content removed or accounts suspended ‘’give us a lot of insight into user perspective on content moderation, they are very hard to verify.” In addition, reports received through the onlinecensorship.org portal lack sufficient diversity since they are very US focused even though the website is also available in both Arabic and Spanish.
Another challenge is ensuring that communities and users providing evidence and stories are not put at risk. ‘’One of the big challenges is how do we talk about these things in a meaningful way and do something positive with it instead of putting them at risk,’’ Ellery Biddle director of Global Voices Advocacy said. Her organization is building a platform called “Threatened Voices,” that will enable the collection and reporting of detailed cases. “The idea of the project is to show patterns,” she said. For example: “What does it mean that many people are being arrested for their Facebook posts? What does Facebook need to do about it?”
Ranking Digital Rights and Global Voices are currently working together to produce a toolkit that will offer guidance and resources to digital rights advocates who want to document and report on cases of online harms involving internet and telecommunications companies. By making it easier for digital rights communities to document violations of technology users’ rights around the world, we do not only aim to hold to account those responsible. We also hope that if more stories and cases are collected systematically, companies and policymakers will better understand the human cost of digital rights violations and how corporate as well as government policies need to change. In addition, by compiling more information about people whose freedom of expression and privacy and other rights are violated when using ICTs, we believe that civil society, governments, and companies will be better equipped to construct better systems of grievance and remedy for victims of these violations.
This week, members of the Ranking Digital Rights team will be in Toronto, Canada, for the sixth annual 
