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

[Fouad Bajwa]

Is paper a human right? Is pencil a human right? Is access to both a
paper or pencil a human right?

In my humble opinion, this article attempts to recognize the layer of
abstractness between Technology as only a tool of the current age and
Human Rights and Civil Liberties as universal in order to understand
both the technical and civil roles.

The larger point that Vint mentions that "technology is an enabler of
rights, not a right itself" says that there is something of more
humane nature and need than just the technology in between. It just
outlines in the following order:
- Human Beings as Citizens,
- Recognition of Human Rights (the right to freely communicate, share
and express),
- Technology (the tools),
- Access (being able to access that tool),
- Policy (government plans, regulations and action to achieve
connectivity to the tool for its citizens),
- Cost Control and Management (the dynamics of economy, demand and
supply, market production and distribution),
- Technology Evolves (update and upgrade both knowledge and infrastructure),
- Waste (dumping old technology?)
- Changing Needs (as human society progresses with technology)
- Human Rights & Civil Liberty Violations, did the Internet violate
those or did governments and corporations violate those?

At the fundamental level, it is the duty/obligation of every
government to create an enabling environment where its citizens can
live and practice their fundamental human rights, can freely connect
with each other, can freely share and interchange information with
each other with the fear of violation of their fundamental rights
(again greatly regulated under national constitutions). The tools then
evolve and are used as Human Civilization embraces more and more
scientific developments of its various needs.

For example, despite the tall claims of my country's telecom
regulatory bodies that Mobile Penetration reaches nearly half of the
country's population, smart phones are both expensive and a luxury
accessible to only a certain affording class while even for them
Internet access is a luxury. The governance of the telecom actually
delays and prevents society to shift to 3G or 4G access which again
increases the access to luxurious 3G and 4G compliant technology.
There really is not any line that we can draw here.

In my recent visit to Kabul, 1MB of Internet connectivity stood at
US$200 to US$300. In Pakistan, that is at only US$12. For Afghanistan
to achieve that price and make it accessible for its citizens will
remain a dream for many years to come. Why, Pakistan is population
wise the 6th most populated country in the world and thus the 6th
largest market for Internet and Telecom Services. The market in
Pakistan has evolved only after insufficient struggle to provide basic
human needs and infrastructure. In the cities for example, we have had
less and less electricity since 2007. In rural regions where over 66%
of national population resides, electricity may be available only for
2-4 hours max in a 24hr day.

For both Pakistan and Afghanistan, electricity is a major issue and
would electricity be subject to being an Human Right or a basic need
for Humans to progress and participate in today's post-industrialized
global economy? Is electricity a tool to run a bunch of other tools
that help improve one's life or is it a human right that using it or
not using it might end me up in jail because I did not use it to
express myself? Electricity is a basic human need in today's world. I
can still express with or without it. I can use solar power to charge
my phone and send that particular SMS that can go viral. Then access
to solar batteries would indeed be a challenge.

Another important discussion here is that if humanity uses electricity
to build a technology on which all human ideas, expression and
knowledge is stored, how can I access that? Do I have the fundamental
right to access that human knowledge? Will I have to use electric
powered tools to communicate in order to practice my fundamental human
right to communicate? Once I can communicate, how do I use these tools
to freely share and raise my concerns or help others so how can I
practice my freedom of speech.

That has been the thin red line that prevails within the Human Rights
Declaration and Internet Rights per say debate today. Is the tool the
fundamental character or the tools to enable the right to access
knowledge, the right to communicate, the right to freedom of speech?
As Vint Cerf says, as these rights are universal to humanity, they are
not bound to any particular technology at any particular time that
also links Internet is valuable as a means to an end, not as an end in
itself.

I taught thousands of Pakistani Web Masters and Internet Engineers
from the very beginning of Internet/WWW penetration here since 1995
and have managed the country's critical Internet infrastructure in a
government body in the past and continue to train governments and
organizations on the use of Free & Open Source Software and Open
Standards (Open ICT Ecosystems). It was both my professional and
personal obligation to empower my fellow citizens with the knowledge
and ethics of data, information and knowledge creation while
maintaining safety and showing others how to use information while
keeping safe. As the Internet and WWW continued to spread,

To that end, I believe Vint Cerf simply says, protect existing civil
and human rights without calling access to the tool a human right.
Accessing that tool and expressing on it might get me jailed or
killed, in our part of the world, it does. Help our governments first
appreciate our Human Rights and Civil Liberties is what it directs
at......but it does miss the point!

Best

Fouad




On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 2:21 PM, Naveed haq <naveedpta at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> I agree too .. i mean from a public management prospective, declaring
> Internet as a human right will just make an extra layer of obligation to the
> government to provide access to every citizen in an economy. which i believe
> is not fair. Yes.! It is now a critical aspect of every one's daily life but
> declaring it as Human Right may not be justified in developing economies
> especially those who are striving hard to increase the proliferation and
> access .. !
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Naveed-ul-Haq
> Assistant Director (ICT)
> Pakistan Telecom Authority
> Headquarters F-5/1,
> Islamabad
> Ph. +92-51-9203911
> Fax. +92-51-2878124
> Mob. +92-342-5554444
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: gpaque at gmail.com
> Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2012 07:33:30 -0430
> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org
> Subject: [governance] NYT opinion by Vint Cerf: Internet Access is not a HR
>
>
> 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 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, 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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