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

Tue Jan 10 08:08:09 EST 2012

Dear Ivar and members of the list

> "The only issue I missed in Vinton’s statement is the mention of the pharaonic amount of financing invested in ICTs and Internet broadband infrastructure in DCs, in particular in Africa, and the huge sums paid by the mobile phone users. A large part of this treasury is a misuse of precious financial resources which could be otherwise spent on more vital needs for the population."
> I completely disagree with this view for two reasons.

Since you are quoting an extract of my mail, let me add a short comment on the reasons that inspired this sentence.

It is not the principle of ICT/telecom infrastructure to be available and services to be used ... and paid for by people in DCs. This could even be a "right" :-) for some equality with rich countries and people living there. 
What I wanted to stress in my phrase is the huge amount of the COST for this to happen. And more particularly the extra investments paid for overlapping and duplicating infrastructure as well as redundent networks. Just two examples to illustrates this : 
Example 1 : in 2012 there are 6 submarine cable systems along the West African coast (a seventh is planned and three others are envisaged). Half of the six would be largely sufficient in terms of traffic (even for the ten coming years), redundance and even competition. Extra cost generated by this situation : 1,6 billion dollars (only CAPEX). 
Example 2 : Kenya has 7 terrestrial networks the half of which carrying just a symbolic traffic. Three networks would largely satisfy the domestic needs for the ten years ahead. Extra cost is about 30 million (only CAPEX). Another example : In African countries the mean number of mobile operators is between 4 to 8. In industriallized countries this figure is betwenn 2 and 4. Unless to say that here are huge amounts of resources spent for "ideological" reasons (competition, free market rule ...). 
All this cost (plus the OPEX, plus the gifts to the shareholders) must be paid for : that is the reason why African mobile users must afford 50 billion dollars per year (and this amount is strongly growing!).

That is what I find particularly unworthy for people living in DCs and for the countries themselves. They have more basic needs that I mentioned in my mail (access to water and sanitation, access to electricity, to education, to health, to food) and therefore as many "rights" to question such a "cable glut", systematically welcomed by the "international constituencies", first of all the ITU ! 

IMHO this it is also the duty of CS to stress such misappropriation of financial resources that generate ten thousands of deaths among people in DCs. FYI : the budget of FAO is equal to the cost of the useless surplus of submarine cables mentioned above.

best

Jean-Louis Fullsack
CSDPTT-France 

> Message du 09/01/12 16:45
> De : "Ivar A. M. Hartmann" 
> A : governance at lists.cpsr.org, "Paul Lehto" 
> Copie à : 
> Objet : Re: [governance] NYT opinion by Vint Cerf: Internet Access is not a HR
> 
> "IF it is found that lack of access to the internet would very substantially impede exercise of political speech rights and that the alternative methods of expression are inadequate, then a state must expend the funds or take the actions necessary to faciliate political speech rights."
> 
> It's good to see someone with a legal education in the US argue this. I agree, Paul. To say something is a right doesn't necessarily lead to the conclusion that every single person, even those very well off from the financial perspective, must receive a service from the state for free.
> 
> "The only issue I missed in Vinton’s statement is the mention of the pharaonic amount of financing invested in ICTs and Internet broadband infrastructure in DCs, in particular in Africa, and the huge sums paid by the mobile phone users. A large part of this treasury is a misuse of precious financial resources which could be otherwise spent on more vital needs for the population."
> I completely disagree with this view for two reasons. 
> For one, as many have already pointed out, human rights, both freedom rights and social rights, form an indivisible body. Their protection and realization isn't leveled: it's impossible for a country to pretend to implement the right to life flawlessly before it then moves on to implementing the 'second most important right', as if there was a line of rights and an order of complete implementation. Freedom of speech and access to information is just as important in communities which suffer from lack of food and water as it is in developed countries. 
> Second, one should not push for the notion that if some companies have a profit to make due to the public spending in the realization of a human need, then states should 'fear' making such need a human or constitutional right. This would call countries to neglect health care because pharmaceutical companies make money, to deny a right to housing because contracting companies make money, to deny a right to water because companies in that market are profitable, to forbid a right to education as a result of the existence of large private education companies. In other words, it's a fallacy. 
> 
> "But, the real human rights behind access to internet already exist, and they are related to freedom of expression and freedom of diffusion, as well as right to dignity, equality, privacy,  education and participation (among the most important). Access per se doesn’t make sense, because it is too easily confused and confined  to technological hook-up (...)"
> 
> It's possible to find relationships among all rights: education with equality, freedom of expression with education, housing with right to life etc. This alone is not a reason to deny the recognition of a right. The reason a right to water is recognized in many constitutions despite the fact that a right to life is also made explicit is that even though people can't live without water, the two legal instruments don't cover the exact same situations and it has been found, in experience, that providing for these two rights in separate ensures a wider scope of protection. That is why I believe a right to Internet access is not irrelevant just because there's a right to freedom of expression. They don't cover the exact same things. One can try and insist shamelessly on fitting current social phenomena to older legal paradigms or one can accept that sometimes the legal paradigm has to be changed.
> Some people in this thread see the Internet as a mere technology. I honestly don't expect anyone who holds that POV to understand Internet access as a right - I wouldn't myself. But I believe, like some others here, that the Internet isn't simply a technology. Furthermore, with this in mind, it's not hard to see that a right to Internet access doesn't entail merely a technological hook-up but also aspects like information literacy. 
> 
>  "Internet is the best tool for democracy and guarantee of the
> HR. not an HR itself."
> 
> I can certainly see where the fellow discussants here are coming from when they argue Internet is a tool and therefore not a human rights. I must reiterate, however, that a strong school of human rights and fundamental rights scholarship has argued that all rights are tools for allowing individuals to realize their human dignity or to pursue their own happiness. I don't see any human right as an end in itself. In my POV, people don't want their human rights protected as an end in itself, they want their human rights protected because of what this will enable them to achieve or maintain. To argue otherwise would be to say that states are the ones defining what people's goal in their lives is. I believe states help a person reach his or her own personally-defined life purpose: each and everyone here decides what their own dignity is and how and what they'll need to be live happily. Human rights are all tools in that context.
> 
> Lastly, I must say (even though it's wrong to require people to gain knowledge about something before they're allowed to express their views on that subject) that I expected a person like Vinton Cerf (who I obviously admire greatly) to interest himself at least a little in the huge body of knowledge on human rights law that has been developed over several decades (as Matthias rightfully pointed out) before arguing something in a NYT op-ed. Cerf's declarations have a huge impact in international IG politics and with such influence comes some responsibility. His complete disregard for the conceptualization of human rights and civil rights has seriously impaired the discussion of his article and his views.
> 
> Best,
> Ivar    
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 09:58, Paul Lehto  wrote:
> 

> 
> On Sun, Jan 8, 2012 at 12:59 PM, Ginger Paque  wrote:
> 

>  
What Mr. Cerf said ("Internet access is not a human right" [1]) is not unusual; it is something many of us discuss, even (horrors) agree with. The value of his editorial is in the debate it has catalyzed. [...]

> 
Mr. Matteucci makes an excellent point that “'Human rights' are not self-executing: they represent legitimate aspirations – not obligations", [...]

> The statement that "human rights [represent] legitimate aspirations - not obligations" is a contradiction.  Rights are obligations that governments must respect, at least providing due process of law prior to depriving anyone of an alienable right, and not able to deprive the right at all, even with due process, if the right is inalienable.   For Mr. Matteucci to define rights as mere aspirations is dangerous because it lowers the entire class of rights to the status of a mere hope or aspiration.
> 

> 
Under the UN Declaration on Human Rights[2] (UNDHR), we all have a set of inalienable human rights, no matter who we are, no matter where we live. What we may or may not have is the ability to exercise these rights. The exercise of these rights may be legally interrupted because we have broken the law. They may be illegally (or legally in exceptional circumstances) interrupted by government action or decree. Or their exercise may be supported or hindered by selective legal and/or practical implementation. State sovereignty allows each country to establish its own triage to apply their funds and energies as they see fit. We cannot decide for another whether water, food or information are their highest priorities, so their application or practical administration must be a local or regional issue. What the UN and others can do is (attempt to) ensure that the the implementation (exercise) of human rights is not prohibited.

> Sovereign states may not apply their funds and energies "as they see fit" if they wish to practice genocide or other violations of human RIGHTS.  
> 

> 
Our rights are protected under the UNDHR. Their exercise, as both Mr. Cerf and Mr. Matteucci agree, often, and in the case of Internet, undoubtedly, rely on technology. Although access to information will help solve other ills, the triage priority assigned to Internet access is not as clear cut as 'breathing, bleeding, beating'. If Finland can manage to make Internet access a legal right, congratulations, and more power to the Finnish.  But if another country must make safe water, food and medicine a higher priority, I can understand that. I think we must be concerned about the hindrance or prohibition of the exercise of any human rights, as we work towards the local implementation, in the way we each have set our priorities.

> There is a great confusion in this thread generally between the existence of a right and the practical means to carry it out.  I have the right to speak politically but lack the funds to purchase television ads.  This lack of funds reduces my power as a political speaker but does not mean I do not have a political speech right. 
> 
> The existence of a right is still meaningful even if I or others can't afford the practical means of exercising the right at the present time.  For example, the existence of the right means that governments may not arbitrarily terminate access to the internet (when considered a right) because of race, sex, creed, color, religion or other arbitrary reasons. If access to the internet is a mere privilege (not a right), then the worst abuses of government that everyone on this list opposes are legally permissible, and all we can say against these abuses are relatively very weak policy and aspirational arguments that amount to saying "someday, when things are better, we hope this abuse won't happen any more."
> 
> When something is a right, its practical exercise may not occur because of the personal choice of the right-holder, the personal means of the right-holder, or the outside actions of third parties such as government.  When third parties like government deny the exercise of a right, then the persons affected have a claim for VIOLATION of the right -- a strong platform from which to fight -- as opposed to vague complaints based on mere aspirations.  It's therefore quite important to be able to argue violation of a right as opposed to denial of one's aspirations.  
> 
> The FUNDING of the practical exercise of a right is usually, but not always, a severable or separate issue.  This depends on whether the right is non-derogable or not.  Certain rights are so fundamental that states must GUARANTEE them.  (Right against genocide, for example)   These guarantees include the funding necessary to guarantee the right, so states must expend, as a top priority, the funds necessary to prevent genocide.
> 
> The debate, then, is whether freedom of speech is so fundamental that it is a non-derogable right, at least for those not in prison after due process of law.  IN large part, political speech is non-derogable, as states may not suspend political speech related to elections by completely defunding or making media communications illegal.  But does a government have to support the access of certain individual citizens with lesser means to access the internet for political speech-rights purposes?  This depends on the existence of meaningful alternative means of exercising the right.  IF it is found that lack of access to the internet would very substantially impede exercise of political speech rights and that the alternative methods of expression are inadequate, then a state must expend the funds or take the actions necessary to faciliate political speech rights. 
> 
> Usually the nations that are in a position of having to make very difficult financial choices between things like water or infrastructure do NOT have electronic communications systems that are so pervasive that there are no meaningful alternatives to political speech via the internet, so as a practical matter this conflict is somewhat unlikely to arise.  But still, it is quite important indeed to recognize that internet access for speech purposes is a right even if not everyone can afford it, and even if the government is not obliged to fund it because there are other ways to express the right of political speech in that particular situation.
> 
> Paul Lehto, J.D.
> 

> 

>  

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> Paul R Lehto, J.D.
> P.O. Box 1 
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