[governance] NYT opinion by Vint Cerf: Internet Access is not a HR

[Ginger Paque]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/opinion/internet-access-is-not-a-human-right.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

Interesting opinion piece from Vint Cerf. I am copy/pasting it here for
those who may not be able to access it:
January 4, 2012
Internet Access Is Not a Human Right By VINTON G. CERF

Reston, Va.

FROM the streets of Tunis to Tahrir Square and beyond, protests around the
world last year were built on the Internet and the many devices that
interact with it. Though the demonstrations thrived because thousands of
people turned out to participate, they could never have happened as they
did without the ability that the Internet offers to communicate, organize
and publicize everywhere, instantaneously.

It is no surprise, then, that the protests have raised questions about
whether Internet access is or should be a civil or human right. The issue
is particularly acute in countries whose governments clamped down on
Internet access in an attempt to quell the protesters. In June, citing the
uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, a report by the United
Nations’ special
rapporteur<http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/06/united-nations-report-internet-access-is-a-human-right.html>
went
so far as to declare that the Internet had “become an indispensable tool
for realizing a range of human rights.” Over the past few years, courts and
parliaments in countries like France and Estonia have pronounced Internet
access a human right.

But that argument, however well meaning, misses a larger point: technology
is an enabler of rights, not a right itself. There is a high bar for
something to be considered a human right. Loosely put, it must be among the
things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful lives, like
freedom from torture or freedom of conscience. It is a mistake to place any
particular technology in this exalted category, since over time we will end
up valuing the wrong things. For example, at one time if you didn’t have a
horse it was hard to make a living. But the important right in that case
was the right to make a living, not the right to a horse. Today, if I were
granted a right to have a horse, I’m not sure where I would put it.

The best way to characterize human rights is to identify the outcomes that
we are trying to ensure. These include critical freedoms like freedom of
speech and freedom of access to information — and those are not necessarily
bound to any particular technology at any particular time. Indeed, even the
United Nations report, which was widely hailed as declaring Internet access
a human right, acknowledged that the Internet was valuable as a means to an
end, not as an end in itself.

What about the claim that Internet access is or should be a *civil *right?
The same reasoning above can be applied here — Internet access is always
just a tool for obtaining something else more important — though the
argument that it is a civil right is, I concede, a stronger one than that
it is a human right. Civil rights, after all, are different from human
rights because they are conferred upon us by law, not intrinsic to us as
human beings.

While the United States has never decreed that everyone has a “right” to a
telephone, we have come close to this with the notion of “universal
service” — the idea that telephone service (and electricity, and now
broadband Internet) must be available even in the most remote regions of
the country. When we accept this idea, we are edging into the idea of
Internet access as a civil right, because ensuring access is a policy made
by the government.

Yet all these philosophical arguments overlook a more fundamental issue:
the responsibility of technology creators themselves to support human and
civil rights. The Internet has introduced an enormously accessible and
egalitarian platform for creating, sharing and obtaining information on a
global scale. As a result, we have new ways to allow people to exercise
their human and civil rights.

In this context, engineers have not only a tremendous obligation to empower
users, but also an obligation to ensure the safety of users online. That
means, for example, protecting users from specific harms like viruses and
worms that silently invade their computers. Technologists should work
toward this end.

It is engineers — and our professional associations and standards-setting
bodies like the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers — that
create and maintain these new capabilities. As we seek to advance the state
of the art in technology and its use in society, we must be conscious of
our civil responsibilities in addition to our engineering expertise.

Improving the Internet is just one means, albeit an important one, by which
to improve the human condition. It must be done with an appreciation for
the civil and human rights that deserve protection — without pretending
that access itself is such a right.

Vinton G. Cerf <http://www.icann.org/en/biog/cerf.htm>, a fellow at the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, is a vice president and
chief Internet evangelist for Google.

Ginger (Virginia) Paque
Diplo Foundation
www.diplomacy.edu/ig
VirginiaP at diplomacy.edu

*Join the Diplo community IG discussions: www.diplointernetgovernance.org*
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