[bestbits] Council of Europe multi-stakeholder consultations on Internet freedom

Wed Apr 15 06:56:43 EDT 2015

Sorry, but you got me wrong. I didn’t question it is very important
that human right should apply equally on line as off line. As a whole
the document of the CoE comes as a disappointment Behind claiming that
HR apply equally there isn’t real substance. In this regard it is a
slogan

On 15 April 2015 at 11:52, Nick Ashton-Hart <nashton at consensus.pro> wrote:
> I disagree entirely that the idea that human rights apply equally online and offline is just a slogan. I know from direct, repeated personal experience that the agreement on that point at the Human Rights Council that all rights apply equally online and offline is a landmark. It is continually used to push back against attempts to justify censorship in other international agreements and it works.
>
> If you are just talking about the implementation of this concept at the CoE that’s a different thing.
>
> We need more international understandings like the one at the HRC, because they can be built upon in other places.
>
>> On 15 Apr 2015, at 10:11, Halbersztadt Jozef (jothal) <jozef.halbersztadt at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Rysiek,
>>
>> a few words on two sentences (HR on-line/off-line). It is just a
>> slogan without real policies. We have no choice but to acknowledge
>> that the core of the problem lies elsewhere. With the Council of
>> Europe consultations on Internet freedom we are not at the beginning
>> of a process. We are after many years of debating the issue in the CoE
>> how human right should operate in the digital environment. And as a
>> result they arrived to a position that - for example - is very much
>> against the suggestion that blocking orders could only be made by a
>> court. Why? Because it corresponds to the national laws of some member
>> states. And all member state would like to have non-judicial
>> arrangements in relation to national security and intelligence.
>>
>> Regards
>> Jozef H
>>
>>
>> On 15 April 2015 at 00:30, rysiek <rysiek at hackerspace.pl> wrote:
>>> Dnia wtorek, 14 kwietnia 2015 14:56:34 Jeremy Malcolm pisze:
>>>> On 14/04/2015 1:44 am, Carolina Rossini wrote:
>>>>> The Council of Europe is working on a draft recommendation by the
>>>>> Committee of Ministers to its member states on Internet freedom
>>>>> (attached). The draft is currently being elaborated by a committee of
>>>>> experts operating  under the authority of the Council of Europe’s
>>>>> Steering Committee on Media and Information Society.
>>>>>
>>>>> As part of its multi-stakeholder outreach and dialogue, the Council of
>>>>> Europe would like your feedback, comments and suggestions on the draft
>>>>> recommendation to be sent to us, at the latest by *_30 April 2015_*,
>>>>> by E-mail to Marta.WIELOCH at coe.int <mailto:Marta.WIELOCH at coe.int> .
>>>>
>>>> It has been a while since we collaborated on a joint submission through
>>>> Best Bits.  Is there a group interested in writing something together
>>>> and presenting it for submission jointly?
>>>
>>> /me rises his hand, and looks around
>>>
>>> And right off the bat:
>>>
>>> "1. The European Convention on Human Rights (hereinafter the ECHR) applies
>>>    without any distinction to the physical world and to the Internet. The
>>>    Council of Europe member States have both negative and positive
>>>    obligations to protect and promote human rights and
>>>    fundamental freedoms on the Internet."
>>>
>>> This has to be one of the best bits (pun not indented) of language in this
>>> kind of "Internet freedom" text I've read for a long, long time.
>>>
>>> My main beef with many "lists of Internet freedoms" is that as soon as new
>>> technology comes around, we will have to re-do them, again and again, for the
>>> new technology.
>>>
>>> This is what has happened in Brazil, as far as I understand from talking to
>>> people there -- Brazilian Constitution protected (explicitly) privacy and
>>> freedoms in phone communication, and hence large portion of Marco Civil had to
>>> (explicitly) deal with them in the new domain of the Internet.
>>>
>>> Don't get me wrong, Marco Civil is a great piece of work, and brings a lot of
>>> good into the world; but large parts of it were needed because authors of the
>>> Brazilian Constitution didn't future-proof it well enough against new
>>> technologies.
>>>
>>> I much prefer the approach visible in these two quoted sentences -- clearly,
>>> unequivocally reaffirming the rights and freedoms we all have regardless of
>>> the medium we choose to exercise them in.
>>>
>>> These rights and freedoms are, I feel, well enough future-proofed, as long as
>>> we don't dismantle them by explicitly reiterating them for each new
>>> technological medium (and thus making it possible for future authoritarians to
>>> claim that "these do not apply in $TECHNOLOGY, as they have not been
>>> reiterated for it explicitly").
>>>
>>> --
>>> Pozdrawiam,
>>> Michał "rysiek" Woźniak
>>>
>>> Zmieniam klucz GPG :: http://rys.io/pl/147
>>> GPG Key Transition :: http://rys.io/en/147
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> jozef [dot] halbersztadt [at] gmail [dot] com
>> Internet Society Poland http://www.isoc.org.pl
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>

-- 
jozef [dot] halbersztadt [at] gmail [dot] com
Internet Society Poland http://www.isoc.org.pl
pubkey&address: http://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?search=0x6A332CA03C4ACB9A