RDR and Access Now pushed tech companies to adopt one human rights recommendation each. Here’s how they responded.
Ellery Biddle
India’s Jammu and Kashmir region has seen 55 internet shutdowns so far in 2019. These shutdowns, often triggered by conflict on the ground, have left residents unable to communicate, access information, exchange money or do any other activity that the internet enables. While shutdowns happen at the behest of the Indian government, it is up to companies like Bharti Airtel—a dominant internet and mobile service provider in India—to actually cut off services.
This might lead Kashmiris to wonder: What exactly happens when Bharti Airtel receives a shutdown request from the government? Which government agency ordered the shutdown and for what purpose? In what areas is it taking place? How long is it expected to last?
If the company would make just one change—to publicly disclose all information about shutdown requests—customers would at least know what to expect, and where to begin when considering strategies for advocating change.
If you could ask a technology company to make one change in the way it treats user rights, what would it be? Our partners at Access Now asked this very question, focusing on the 24 companies that we score here at Ranking Digital Rights (see the table of recommendations).
This month, Access Now launched a campaign urging each company evaluated in our 2019 RDR Corporate Accountability Index to make just one public commitment to improve their human rights practices.
On October 3, open letters were sent to top executives at each company, asking them to commit to fulfill one key recommendation drawn from the RDR Index. The letters also call for greater transparency and urgency in safeguarding privacy and freedom of expression for users.
Internet shutdowns and content censorship were a major driver of several recommendations. Government and third-party requests to shut down networks, hand over user information, or block content were issued to América Movil, Bharti Airtel, MTN, Ooredoo, Orange, Telefonica, Telenor, Vodafone, and Yandex.
Some companies in the RDR Index do not make explicit commitments to protect or promote human rights at all. The letters advise these companies—Axiata, Kakao, Mail.Ru, and Tencent—to make and publish formal commitments to uphold freedom of expression or privacy.
Other letters targeted more specific areas, such as the handling of user information (Etisalat), protecting net neutrality (AT&T), articulating data breach policies (Verizon Media), and notifying users when restricting access to content (Microsoft).
The letters also urge certain companies to strengthen governance and oversight (Apple and Deutsche Telekom), provide grievance mechanisms (Baidu, Google, and Samsung), and conduct human rights impact assessments of targeted advertising practices (Facebook and Twitter).
Without the kind of transparency that we and our partners at Access Now ask of these companies, they cannot truly be held accountable to the public. RDR is proud to renew its partnership with Access Now in engaging with these companies to advance rights-respecting policies and products. In our previous letter campaigns, 15 out of 22 companies responded to our recommendations in 2018, and 12 of 16 companies responded in 2016.
This year, Access Now gave the companies two weeks to respond to the letters for 2019. You can find company responses to this year’s letters from our recommendations table and the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre as they become available.
