core sector communique

Internet Was Tool for Expression and Repression in 2011

By Charlene Porter

Staff Writer

Washington - The United States and its international partners "made a great deal of progress" in 2011 in adopting measures that can "turn our commitment to Internet freedom into reality," according to U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Michael H. Posner.

Speaking at a Washington conference January 17, Posner said  the use of the Internet as a tool for human rights and as the nemesis of dictatorial regimes were two narratives that unfolded in 2011. While some oppressive regimes attempted to silence their online detractors by "jailing bloggers and hijacking Facebook pages," the United States and a group of nations from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development concurred on principles for an open Internet available to all.

Posner said 2011 also saw 15 countries and private interests launch the Coalition for Freedom Online. "They will stand up for the rights of netizens and cyber-activists," Posner said. "And these governments will work with tech companies on ways to promote respect for their customers' human rights and fundamental freedoms."

The Internet freedom this coalition strives to protect will serve as a basis for the 21st-century human rights agenda, Posner said.

The United States has spent more than $70 million on advocacy and training programs to defend human rights online through "projects ranging from developing better circumvention technologies and 'panic buttons' for mobile phones to training activists in cyber self-defense," said the human rights official, speaking at the State of the Net conference, sponsored by the Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus.

Posner reminded his audience that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton defined two pillars of U.S. policy on Internet access in 2010: universal human rights of expression and assembly apply online as well as offline; and promotion of those rights is a U.S. foreign policy priority.

But the Arab Awakening, which first burst onto the scene in January 2011, "upped the stakes further," Posner said. Authoritarian regimes that have clung to power through fear and isolation lost control of populations that made demands for greater freedom and accessibility using online blogs, street encampments and grainy videos of police brutality.

The Arab Awakening has been like a "geopolitical earthquake," Posner said.

"Syria is not having a Facebook revolution or a Twitter revolt or a YouTube winter. Syria is having a mass outbreak of courage," Posner said. "Their courage does not emanate from any digital device. It comes from knowing that they are not alone."

Information technology tools allow expression of the outrage of injustice, Posner said, and grievances born from injustice have driven people into the streets to demand their human rights of freedom of expression, assembly and association.

The assistant secretary of state for democracy cautioned against the attempts of some governments to put forth policies phrased as "information security or Internet management" when they are actually attempts to wall off their citizens from the wide-open, and sometimes raucous, Internet. No government should believe it is empowered to deny fundamental rights of expression and association, he said.

"We do not need to reinvent international human rights law, or our enduring principles, to account for the Internet," Posner said.

He also said technology companies should be compelled to respect human rights as they negotiate a global market to distribute their products. They must resist pressure from repressive regimes to provide personal information about political dissidents.

Other industries have confronted and overcome ethical challenges forced upon them by authoritarian governments, and technology companies must do the same. "All have a special stake in protecting the freedom and integrity of the Net as well as the human rights of their customers," Posner said.

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State.)