Bridge Blog Article Page - Ranking Digital Rights

28 Jan How not to destroy the Internet while fighting terror

Posted at 18:06h in News, Related Developments by Rebecca MacKinnon 1 Comment

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Yesterday I testified at a hearing titled The Evolution of Terrorist Propaganda: The Paris Attack and Social Media convened by the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade. I am not a counter-terrorism expert but here at Ranking Digital Rights we do have a few things to say about how not to destroy Internet users’ right to freedom of expression and privacy. A copy of my written testimony, along with testimony of all other speakers can be downloaded here. Video of the hearing is here. Below is a distillation of my main arguments with links to key resources:

In response to the tragic massacre in Paris, the French government has called for UN member states to work together on an international legal framework that would place greater responsibility on social networks and other Internet platforms for terrorist use of their services. In addressing the problem of terrorist use of social networking platforms, it is important to adhere to the following principles:

First, multi-stakeholder policymaking. The international human rights community opposes UN control over Internet governance because many UN member states advocate policies that would make the Internet much less free and open. The alternative is a multi-stakeholder approach that includes industry, civil society, and the technical community alongside governments in setting policies and technical standards that ensure that the Internet functions globally. In constructing global responses to terrorist use of the Internet we need a multi-stakeholder approach for the same reasons.

Second, any national level laws, regulations, or policies aimed at regulating or policing online activities should undergo a human rights risk assessment process to identify potential negative repercussions for freedom of expression, assembly and privacy. Governments need to be transparent with the public about the nature and volume of requests being made to companies. Companies need to be able to uphold core principles of freedom of expression and privacy, grounded in international human rights standards. Several major US-based Internet companies have made commitments to uphold these rights as members of the multi-stakeholder Global Network Initiative. Guidelines for implementing these commitments include: narrowly interpreting government demands to restrict content or grant access to user data or communications; challenging government requests that lack a clear user basis; transparency with users about the types of government requests received and the extent to which the company complies; restricting compliance to the online domains over which the requesting government actually has jurisdiction.

Third, liability for Internet intermediaries including social networks for users’ behavior must be kept limited. Research conducted around the world by human rights experts and legal scholars shows clear evidence that when companies are held liable for users’ speech and activity, violations of free expression and privacy can be expected to occur. Limited liability for Internet companies is an important prerequisite for keeping the Internet open and free.

Fourth, development and enforcement of companies’ Terms of Service and other forms of private policing must also undergo human rights risk assessments. Any new procedures developed by companies to eliminate terrorist activity from their platforms must be accompanied by engagement with key affected stakeholders and at-risk groups.

Fifth, in order to prevent abuse and maintain public support for the measures taken, governments as well as companies must provide effective, accessible channels for grievance and remedy for people whose rights to free expression, assembly, and privacy have been violated. Thank you for listening and I look forward to your questions.

The above recommendations were informed by years of work on Internet free expression and privacy issues, the Global Network Initiative‘s principles and implementation guidelines, standards for ICT sector companies currently under development by the Ranking Digital Rights project, and a new report published by UNESCO titled Fostering Freedom Online: The Role of Internet Intermediaries.

19 Jan New UNESCO Report – Fostering Freedom Online: The Role of Internet Intermediaries

Posted at 11:30h in News, Publications by Rebecca MacKinnon 0 Comments

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We are pleased to announce the release of a new report edited and co-written by several members of the Ranking Digital Rights project team and affiliated research partners, published this week by United Nations Educational, Science, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Fostering Freedom Online: The Role of Internet Intermediaries examines in detail how legal, regulatory, and commercial frameworks help or hinder Internet companies’ ability to foster free expression online.

Research for the 200-page report, supported by the Internet Society, Open Society Foundations, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Global Communication Studies was conducted in the first half of 2014 by a global team working in North and South America, South and East Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. They examined 11 Internet services with a focus on search engines, social networks, and Internet service providers (ISPs) operating across 10 countries. The result is a uniquely global perspective on how information flows online as well as how content gets restricted, by whom, and under what circumstances.

According to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, governments have the primary duty to protect human rights, including freedom of expression and the right to privacy (which itself is considered a prerequisite for freedom of expression). All companies, including those that operate Internet platforms and services, also have a responsibility to respect those rights. The report takes stock of how companies are doing in this regard, and how governments either help or hinder companies from upholding their human rights responsibilities. It identifies two broad categories of problems:

Governments are making it hard for companies to respect users’ free expression rights. The problem exists to varying degrees across the gamut of political systems and cultural contexts. The report identifies cases around the world in which laws, government policies, and regulations – even those enacted by well-meaning public servants seeking to address genuine problems of crime, terror, and child protection – not only erode free expression rights online but also cause companies to carry out censorship and surveillance, affecting speech that should be protected and respected under human rights law.

A major culprit is law that holds companies legally responsible – liable – for what their users say and do. The legal term for this is “intermediary liability.” While countries like China have long blacklists of words and phrases that companies must delete if they want to stay in business, censorship can still be heavy in some democracies. Facebook received more government requests to censor content in India than in any other country where it makes an effort to operate (Facebook is blocked in China).

Companies are not transparent enough about how they restrict content and collect or share user data. Despite the clear problems that governments cause, companies are not doing enough to minimize users’ freedom of expression from being unduly restricted when they comply with government demands or enforce their own terms of service. Companies also need to be more transparent about how these actions affect users’ ability to express themselves or access information – as well as clarify who has access to users’ personal information and under what circumstances.

A growing number of companies, mainly in the US and Europe, have started to issue transparency reports with data about the number of government requests they receive and how many they comply with. But many companies report more extensively on user data requests than on censorship requests, and many do not report any information at all about requests for content restriction or how they comply.

Vodafone started to report last year about the law enforcement requests it receives for user data and bulk surveillance. But it is not transparent about content removals, including its role in a voluntary scheme in the UK to protect children from age-inappropriate content. In mid-2014 the non-profit Open Rights Group found that the system blocked adults from accessing content that included an article about postpartum depression and the blog of a Syrian commentator. Also, while companies like Twitter report extensively on content restrictions in response to legally binding external requests, they provide no information about content removed to enforce their private “Twitter rules.”

The report does not argue that people should be free to do anything they want online regardless of consequences. Rather, restriction of speech or interference in peoples’ privacy should be “necessary and proportionate,” based on clear legal authority to address a specific threat or crime, and should be as narrowly tailored as possible. Accountability mechanisms are key. Recommendations to governments and companies include:

Laws and regulations affecting online speech must undergo due diligence to ensure they are compatible with international human rights norms.

Policies at the national, regional, and international level that affect online speech need to be developed jointly by representatives of all affected stakeholder groups (such as industry, civil society groups, and technical experts).

Transparency about censorship is just as important as transparency about surveillance. Transparency from governments and companies about how their censorship and content restriction processes work, in addition to public reporting about the amount and nature of content being restricted, is essential to prevent abuses and improve accountability.

Companies that “self-regulate” by using private terms of service to restrict content that the law does not forbid, or which comply with extra-legal blacklists generated by non-governmental groups, must be transparent with the public about what is being restricted, under what circumstances, by whose authority.

Governments and companies need to set up effective mechanisms for people to report abuses and grievances, as well as processes through which aggrieved parties can obtain redress.

Organizations such as Freedom House and the World Wide Web Foundation annually rank governments on how well they protect Internet users’ rights. Ranking Digital Rights is in the process of developing a parallel methodology to measure and compare companies’ respect for users’ rights around the world. Our first public ranking is scheduled for launch in late 2015. The UNESCO research helped our team refine our thinking about what standards companies should be expected to uphold despite the challenging and constantly changing patchwork of legal environments in which they operate.

12 Dec RDR @ the United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights

Posted at 17:48h in Events, News by Rebecca MacKinnon 0 Comments

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In early December for the third year in a row, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights convened its annual Forum on Business and Human Rights. The purpose of the forum, according to the official website, is to operationalize core principles for business in respecting human rights around the world, in all sectors:

The United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights is a space for representatives and practitioners from civil society, business, government, international organizations and affected stakeholders to take stock of challenges and discuss ways to move forward in carrying out the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights – a global standard for preventing and addressing the risk of adverse impacts on human rights linked to business activity.

The full three-day program can be downloaded here. I also recommend watching the videos of some of the plenary sessions, available here. I represented RDR for the first time at the forum on three different panels:

On the opening day, I was invited to represent RDR in a session called “Ranking business and human rights: The potential of benchmarking corporate respect for human rights” alongside leaders of the Access to Medicines Index, Oxfam’s Behind the Brands, plus a newly-launched project – even younger than RDR – called the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark.

On day two I discussed ways that civil society and researchers have engaged with Internet companies on free expression and privacy issues in a session called “Respect in practice – progress and challenges in implementing the corporate responsibility to respect Embedding the UN Guiding Principles in decision-making and processes“.

On day three, I moderated a session called The Right To Privacy in the Digital Age. Despite the fact that the panel started at 8am, the discussion was lively and rich, thanks to the insights of a diverse range of panelists. Here is the video:

06 Oct Phase 1 Pilot Study Launched

Posted at 10:00h in Announcements, News, Phase 1 Methodology by Rebecca MacKinnon 2 Comments

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This week marks the launch of our Phase 1 Pilot Study in partnership with Sustainalytics, a leading independent research firm with extensive experience assessing the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance of global companies.

The purpose of this pilot study is to test RDR’s newly revised Phase 1 Methodology in preparation for the 2015 launch of a full annual ranking of several dozen of the world’s largest publicly traded Information and Communication Technology (ICT) companies.

Over the coming month, Sustainalytics analysts will use the newly revised methodology to evaluate 12 publicly traded Internet and telecommunications companies operating around the world. This Phase 1 Pilot methodology is the product of extensive research followed by stakeholder consultation on two earlier drafts (archived here and here).

We are contacting the 12 companies this week to let them know that they have been selected for this pilot. They will be invited to review the initial research results for their own companies before Sustainalytics completes its analysis, after which RDR will work with Sustainalytics to finalize internal and public reports on the pilot’s findings.

While a public report on the lessons learned from the pilot study will be published in the first quarter of 2015, the actual company scores calculated for the pilot study will not be publicly released. Rather, we will use the data gathered from the pilot phase to further refine and adjust the methodology for use in the fully public, inaugural ranking on a much larger selection of companies that will be published in late 2015. We will also organize meetings and calls with stakeholders in the first quarter of 2015 to gather feedback on the pilot findings that will help us to maximize the ranking’s effectiveness and impact.

For more information about the project’s research and implementation timeline, please click here. Please also see our newly revised FAQ.

We are grateful to the many research partners and funders who have enabled the project to reach this exciting stage. RDR staff Priya Kumar and Allon Bar have worked tirelessly over the past months as well. We would also like to thank the hard-working team at Global Integrity who have built the back-end research management system for this pilot study with their research platform, Indaba.

14 Sep RDR @ the Internet Governance Forum

Posted at 17:46h in Events, News by Allon Bar 0 Comments

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RDR had an active presence at this year’s Internet Governance Forum, an annual multi-stakeholder meeting organized by the United Nations which brings together representatives from governments, companies, civil society, and the technical community to discuss key issues of common concern related to the internet’s future. This year’s ninth annual forum was held in Istanbul and attended by over 3,000 people from around the world, with one of the sub-themes being ‘the Internet and human rights’. Our team presented Ranking Digital Rights during several gatherings and received positive responses.

RDR public workshop and stakeholder meeting

The IGF offered various sessions on privacy impacts in the post-Snowden era, and brought significant attention to human rights-related issues. We organized a workshop with the Rio Institute for Technology and Society (ITS) on how companies can be encouraged to respect the human rights of their users. The workshop featured representatives from civil society (Human Rights Watch, ITS, and Allon Bar on behalf of Ranking Digital Rights), private sector (Facebook, Tunisian Internet Agency, Blunai), government (UK) and multi-stakeholder groups (Global Network Initiative). Charles Mok, a Hong Kong legislator who has pushed for transparency on government requests for user data, moderated the panel. Click here to read a summary of the session, or you can watch it on YouTube here:

During the session, several panelists (other than ourselves!) highlighted the potential Ranking Digital Rights has as a way to improve companies’ respect for human rights. Human Rights Watch’s Cynthia Wong explained how standard setting and measurement are important approaches to improve corporate behavior. Ihab Osman of Blunai also mentioned RDR as a way to influence companies’ policies while further focusing on the importance of stimulating good behavior on the part of individual business leaders. Other workshop participants focused on the critical role governments play in how companies handle human rights.

We also organized a meeting with half a dozen companies as well as with project researchers and advisors present at the IGF. We discussed the status of the project, our plans for the ranking pilot later this year, and the full ranking taking place in 2015. It was a useful way to get feedback, for example, about how to assess companies operating in multiple countries and also to answer questions about how we plan to approach the ranking.

UNESCO report on Internet intermediaries and freedom of expression

Another key gathering for us at the IGF was UNESCO’s workshop on “Intermediaries’ role and good practice in protecting freedom of expression”. Rebecca MacKinnon, one of the lead authors of a forthcoming report on the topic presented the research results. The report will be published later in the Fall and explores how different intermediary types (Internet service providers, search engines, and social networks) can adopt policies and practices to protect their users’ right to freedom of expression. Ranking Digital Rights staff and research partners were heavily involved in drafting the report. You can watch the video of the entire session here:

Dynamic Coalition on “Platform Responsibility”

New to the scene at the IGF was the Dynamic Coalition on Platform Responsibility, which held its formational meeting in Istanbul. This new coalition aims to promote initiatives that focus on companies’ responsibility to promote human rights. Rebecca MacKinnon offered the opening address to its inaugural gathering, posing the question how companies can be encouraged to minimize human rights harms, while maximizing privacy and freedom of expression. Follow up plans include a project to draft concrete recommendations for what companies’ policies should look like.

Freedom Online Coalition Working Group on Privacy and Transparency

RDR’s Rebecca MacKinnon is a member of a new multi-stakeholder working group on privacy and transparency created by the Freedom Online Coalition which describes itself as a “partnership of 23 governments working to advance Internet freedom”. The working group’s inaugural meeting was held at the IGF. Through this working group as well as through active involvement with other organizations and activities, RDR intends to be part of an effort to develop and advance transparency and accountability by governments as well as companies when it comes to policies and practices that affect Internet users’ fundamental freedoms.

Other initiatives

The IGF also proved a great venue to learn more about other region or issue-specific efforts to rank technology companies. These include the Thai Netizen Network’s effort [in Thai] to assess security practices of Internet companies operating in Thailand, and a scoring by the Association of Progressive Communications of APC’s scoring of efforts by social media companies to prevent violence against women.

In all, it was a busy and productive week for us at RDR. It highlighted our work to a wider audience and further galvanized us on this mission.