Digital Rights are Human Rights

Tim Hardy is a technical writer, commentator, activist and PS21

Global Fellow. He runs the website Beyond Clicktivism and
tweets at @bc_tmh

In November 2014, the UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Flavia Pansieri
declared that the changes in digital communications over the last two decades represented
perhaps the greatest liberation movement the world has ever known.
Yet that liberation movement was under threat, she warned. And some of the greatest threats
came from the countries that most pride themselves on their historic and continued role in the
promotion of democracy and liberty worldwide.
The UN adopted Resolution 68/167, the Right to Privacy in the Digital Age on 18 December
2013, emphasising that unlawful or arbitrary surveillance and/or interception of
communications, as well as unlawful or arbitrary collection of personal data, as highly
intrusive acts, violate the rights to privacy and to freedom of expression and may contradict
the tenets of a democratic society. The Deputy High Commissioner warned information
collected through digital surveillance has been used to target dissidents. There are also
credible reports suggesting that digital technologies have been used to gather information that
has then led to torture and other forms of ill-treatment.
Far from being a historic abuse of power, this is a growing tendency. Overt and covert
digital surveillance in jurisdictions around the world have proliferated, with governmental
mass surveillance emerging as a dangerous habit rather than an exceptional measure.
Sultan al Qassemi noted in February, "Every single country in the Arab world, save for
Lebanon, has jailed online activists. Every single country today has individuals in jail for
posting tweets." The Arab Spring has led to a winter of silent discontent as those who were
prominent in the days of rage have withdrawn either completely from social media or into
closed communities, removing their voices from the wider sphere of public discourse. Any
safety in such private communities is of course illusory.
The free speech potential of the online world can have fatal consequences when privacy
cannot be guaranteed.
In 2011, Maria Elizabeth Macias Castro was the first journalist to be murdered for social
media posts. A note left by her decapitated body by the Mexican crime syndicate Los Zetas
connected her to the online pseudonym shed assumed would keep her safe. Posting under
your real name carries proportionally greater dangers. Avijit Roy and Washiqur Rahman
were both hacked to death in the street this year in Bangladesh, their murders blamed in part
on the government's crackdown on "known atheists and naturalist bloggers. Mauritania and
Saudi Arabia have issued the death penalty for online postings. According to Reporters

without Borders, 19 "netizens and citizen journalists" were killed in 2014 and 175 have been
imprisoned so far this year because of their online activities.
Its not just public postings on social media that draw attention. Iran who together with
China imprisons a third of the journalists jailed around the world uses surveillance as part
of its strict monitoring of the internet. In 2009, Lily Mazaheri, then a human rights and
immigration lawyer although later disbarred, claimed that one of her clients, an Iranian
dissident was shown a transcript after his arrest of instant messaging conversations with her
that they had assumed were private. Whether or not this was true, we now know that
governments can and do monitor private web chat even where there is an expectation of
confidentially.
Lawyer-client privilege is a cornerstone of democracy as is the ability of journalists to protect
their sources. Surveillance undermines both. Two years before the Edward Snowden leaks,
the then executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Lucy
Dalglish was approached by a national security official at a conference who, on the subject of
exposing whistle blowers, threatened: "We don't need to subpoena you anymore. We know
who you're talking to."
Amnesty warned in their annual report last year, From Washington to Damascus, from
Abuja to Colombo, government leaders have justified horrific human rights violations by
talking of the need to keep the country safe. In reality, the opposite is the case. Such
violations are one important reason why we live in such a dangerous world today.
A progressive trend is being reversed and in the countries where democracy is healthiest,
there is little political appetite to address this. Those who criticise government surveillance
are tacitly or explicitly accused of supporting enemies of the state.
UK foreign secretary Philip Hammond said on a visit to GCHQ Cheltenham last year
Nobody who is law abiding, nobody who is not a terrorist or a criminal or a foreign state
that is trying to do us harm has anything to fear from what goes on here. Of course, like all
who repeat the authoritarians mantra if you have nothing to fear, you have nothing to hide
Hammond presumably still makes love and defecates behind closed doors. A desire for
privacy can be nothing more sinister than a demand to be treated with basic human dignity.
Defenders of mass surveillance sometimes underplay its extent by declaring Its just
metadata. But metadata is the context of your life where you go and when, who you
associate with, what you read and watch. In aggregate, its as unique as a fingerprint and
exposes more about you than most people are happy to share with an intimate partner. In
2014, former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden pointed out We kill people based on
metadata.
Mass surveillance, so costly for democracy, fails even to achieve its own security goals and
wastes resources and funding that could be put towards more traditional intelligence
operations.
The NSA claims that their surveillance programme would have prevented September 11 but
that is not supported by the 9/11 Commission Report that found that the intelligence
community failed at analysis not at data gathering. Mass surveillance failed to prevent the
Boston Marathon bombings even though one bomber, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, had been on a

watchlist since 2011 after Russian intelligence warned their US counterparts about him and
both he and his brother had made multiple social media postings that should have waved a
red flag. Mass surveillance failed to stop the Charlie Hebdo attack.
Just as generals are often accused of always fighting the last war, it seems that intelligence
services are always fighting the last terrorist plot then are blindsided when an extremist
changes tactics.
For a long time, digital rights have been side lined as a matter of technical interest only but
even before the UN endorsed this position, digital rights have always been human rights. As
more of our most intimate moments and experiences occur in the overlap between the
material and digital spheres, our sense of betrayal and exposure as our digital privacy is
violated becomes ever more acute. The distinction between the online and offline worlds
grows more blurred and for the generation more likely to own a home in Skyrim than to ever
own one in the material world, any attempt to distinguish between the two is met with
suspicion. But there are differences differences that are significant for the possible futures
of democracy. The freedoms we take for granted in the material world in the West are
increasingly denied in the digital. As the two merge more and more and the opportunities to
opt out recede, the importance of defending these rights becomes more critical.
The absence of privacy, the constant awareness that your conversations, your reading and
your online transactions are being monitored has a chilling effect. The writer and security
consultant Bruce Schneier warns:
Think of how you act when a police car is driving next to you, or how an entire country acts
when state agents are listening to phone calls. When we know everything is being recorded,
we are less likely to speak freely and act individually. When we are constantly under the
threat of judgment, criticism, and correction for our actions, we become fearful thateither
now or in the uncertain futuredata we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by
whatever authority has then become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. In
response, we do nothing out of the ordinary. We lose our individuality, and society stagnates.
We dont question or challenge power. We become obedient and submissive. Were less free.
Edward Snowden is a divisive character but whether or not your politics inspire you with a
desire to shoot the messenger, his revelations cannot be ignored. The US and her allies have
systematically undermined the security of the internet, damaged the reputations of their
countries, undermined their ability to challenge authoritarian regimes and placed their
citizens and the citizens of other sovereignties under an unprecedented level of mass
surveillance.
There is an opportunity here. We can continue to participate in a global trend towards greater
repression in the name of security and freedom. We can continue to give succour to regimes
that monitor their citizens for the overt goal of silencing all dissenting voices. We can
continue to build a machinery of totalitarianism that we hope but cannot guarantee will not be
put to malevolent ends. Or we can take back the moral lead. By making the defence of
privacy online a core principle rather than treat it as a liberal qualm to be belittled and
ignored, we can help ensure that the next two decades see a continuation of the global trend
towards democracy and freedom enabled by the internet and not its calamitous reverse.