On Liberty in Cyberspace
Impact of the Internet on Human Rights
In cyberspace East Timor is free, Chinese dissidents advocate democracy, Afghan women unveil opinions, and Kosovo refugees reunite with families.1 "But so what?"a skeptic might ask. What does this mean for the human rights situation in the "real" world? How is the Internet used in this regard? Who organizes and who participates in such on-line activities? What is the concrete impact of the Internet on the struggle to protect and extend human rights?
Human Rights and the Internet
Proponents of human rights assert that information collection, processing, and dissemination are crucial functions of human rights advocacy.2 The Internet, in turn, makes these functions more efficient, effective, and widespread. Realizing these advantages, human rights advocates turn to the Internet to communicate with each other, to inform and educate the public, to pressure influential people and organizations, and to facilitate actions aimed at helping victims whose basic rights have been violated and holding the violators responsible.
International Human Rights Law
The Charter of the United Nations has given rise to a vast body of international human rights law. Numerous international and domestic institutions and mechanisms have also been established to promote and supervise the implementation of this law. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed these rights as "the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world," and the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights created a legally binding framework for states to assure human rights universally and effectively. Thereby, all persons, indiscriminately, are entitled to rights of life, liberty, and security of person, privacy, and the freedoms of conscience, expression, association, and movement.
Human Rights Reality and Advocacy
Behind government rhetoric and despite strenuous efforts to promote human rights, severe abuses persist. Amnesty International's 1998 Annual Report documents that 117 governments torture their citizens, at least 87 jail prisoners of conscience, at least 31 make their citizens "disappear," and at least 40 execute their citizens.3 The idea that human rights of citizens of any country are a legitimate concern of people and governments of other countries dates back to the Charter of the United Nations. However, the practice of foreign intervention for humanitarian reasons has only currently become an integral part of foreign policy. And only recently has the international public become aware and outspoken in denouncing abuse. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and transnational advocacy networks have played a key role in facilitating this change by monitoring and exposing violations, placing the cause in media spotlights and on policy agendas, and campaigning to hold violators responsible.4 Many human rights policies of governments around the world emerged in response to this pressure.5
Although governments are the primary guarantors of rights they are also the primary violators, and human rights advocates cannot always accomplish their goals by applying direct pressure on an abusing government. When a government violates or refuses to recognize rights, appeals to political and judicial state structures may be futile, and other channels, such as foreign governments, influential organizations, and the international media, must be found to effect change. Advocates call upon symbols, statistics, and personal stories to frame issues, convey problems to domestic and international audiences, and create a sense of urgency. They use their organizations and extended support networks to quickly generate credible and politically usable information and to disseminate it where it would have the most impact. Such activities also bring new ideas, norms, and discourses into policy debates and serve as sources of information and testimony.6
For example, the Argentine government's responsibility for the practice of disappearances was exposed through the intense, collective efforts of numerous NGOs. These organizations provided definitive and undeniable evidence necessary to mount an international human rights campaign against the Argentine military.7 An organization called the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, for instance, sent representatives to Europe, the United States, and Canada to denounce abuses in Argentina, seek international solidarity, and request scientific assistance in identifying victims and investigating the circumstances of their death. The American Association for the Advancement of Science responded by arranging a scientific delegation, including medical doctors. Among other cases, the delegation was able to determine that a daughter of one of the Grandmothers was executed at a distance of thirty centimeters, which directly contradicted the military's explanation that she had been killed in a shootout after trying to run a roadblock.8
The Role of Information in Human Rights Advocacy
Researchers and NGOs bring forth numerous other examples suggesting that accurate, credible, and timely information is indispensable to human rights advocacy. Such information is a basis for public education and policy pressure to prevent further violations. Consequently, collecting, processing, and presenting information, as well as the ability to disseminate it quickly and strategically, are critical functions of advocacy. 9
Information-intensive activities require financial, personnel and other resources and infrastructure, such as communication channels, organizational support, and equipment. In this light, domestic and especially international networking can be rather costly. Geographic distances, organizational inertia, and communication costs demand large commitments of resources. The availability of these resources shapes not only the focus and scope of activities but also their results. The costs can be prohibitive to many human rights organizations, especially at the grass roots level, that are often strapped for funding.
The Role of the Internet: A Match Made in Cyberspace
The Internet provides appropriate, capable, and nearly universally accessible and affordable tools to mitigate these obstacles and to create new opportunities. Emerging from a four-node experimental network in the late nineteen-sixties, the Internet has, to date, linked up the globe through over 50 million nodes and 150 million users in about 200 countries.10 To varying degrees, it has penetrated the academic, government, commercial, and public sectors in the countries where it is available. Although the number of users still represents a numerically small fraction of the world population (about 5%), it encompasses a powerful and influential core of intellectuals, business people, community leaders, and other educated and politically aware professionals.
Such global expansion of the Internet does not necessarily translate into success, or even correlate with the scope of on-line human rights advocacy. Rather, it characterizes the extent of connectivity and the potential audience that advocates attempt to engage. The Internet is being incorporated into the work of an already interconnected and dynamic international human rights community. Since the 1970s, global, regional, and local human rights NGOs have dramatically increased in numbers, diversity and strength. Since the 1980s, human rights activists and NGOs have also developed organizational and technological networks for coordinating with each other. The 1990s, in turn, have brought about increasing use of the Internet for both intra- and inter-organizational communications and mobilization of efforts.
The Zapatista uprising in Mexico presents one of the first and most vivid examples of both organizational and technological networking. Since 1994, The Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) has been waging armed insurrection concurrently with international media and Internet campaigns for sympathy and support. Using the Internet the EZLN has been able to coordinate its military and political activities, alert and collaborate with NGOs and other supporters locally and globally, and generate tremendous international awareness and assistance. With the help of information technology, a violent insurgency by a small indigenous force in an isolated region of Chiapas quickly (within weeks) transformed and expanded into a largely nonviolent and mutually reinforcing network of indigenous peoples, the EZLN guerilla army, and numerous NGOs. Although the conflict still continues, the Mexican government has been severely constrained by the efforts of this coordinated cross-border resistance coalition. The government was forced not only to curb its initial reactionto suppress the insurrection and deny or at least downplay its size, scope, cause and criticismsbut also to minimize armed confrontations and to address the Zapatista's demands in official negotiations.11
The use of the Internet in support of human rights in China illustrates a tangle of political, economic, and technological issues arising from the rapid development of the Internet, capable of both empowering and harming its users. The government faces a dilemma: while the Internet strengthens the state by advancing commerce, education, communications, and many other vital aspects of society and governance, it also provides political dissidents with channels and means to undermine, if not subvert, the state. The government wants the benefits, but not at the expense of political unrest.
China is actively investing in the commercial development of the Internet and advanced telecommunications infrastructure. Meanwhile, dissidents and other citizens are using the Internet to discuss political ideas and to critique the prevailing regime. For example, a Chinese language pro-democracy magazine, VIP Reference, compiled by Chinese scholars and Internet experts from an office in Washington, D.C., is electronically circulated in China. The magazine is both a source of news and analytical essays and a network of like-minded intellectuals and political dissidents in China and abroad. The magazine is distributed to and reportedly received by about 250,000 addresses throughout China compiled from commercial and public lists.12 For the security of editors and readers, communications are dispatched from a new address every time. Among recipients are Chinese government members and law enforcement officials who are targeted (often against their will) in order to challenge their thinking and impress upon them the rising presence and influence of democratic ideas in China. Chinese readers are reported to e-mail the magazine up to 500 times a day. On the average only 6% of these responses contain threats and requests to be removed from the distribution list, while an overwhelming 94% express their views and engage in political discussions.13 Given the censorship of other media and the security and anonymity features of the Internet, this magazine provides a unique forum for exchanging political ideas and strengthening civil society.
The government, however, is not idle. In the first known instance of a Chinese court challenging Internet use as a threat to national security, a thirty year old engineer and software company owner, Lin Hai, was fined, stripped of political rights for a year, and sentenced to two years in prison. His crime was providing 30,000 Chinese e-mail addresses to VIP Reference. Lin Hai was arrested in March of 1998 and, after a short trial closed to the public, he was sentenced in January of 1999. His two desktop computers, a laptop, a modem, and a telephone were confiscated as tools of the crime. Lin Hai argued that his action was a common business practice intended for marketing purposes and devoid of any political motivation. In his defense he invoked lack of legal grounds and insufficient evidence behind his sentence.14 If true, such circumstances would point to a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which China is a signatory. However, the court rejected Lin Hai's claims on the basis that providing e-mail addresses to this pro-democracy magazine constituted subversion of the state, i.e. a grave criminal act under Chinese law.15
The news of Lin Hai's predicament spread rapidly around the world via both traditional media and the Internet, generating a plethora of international responses. NGOs, exiled Chinese dissidents, and even computer hackers responded particularly vehemently with outrage and disapproval. Although the authorities dismissed Lin Hai's appeal, they seem to have acknowledged the pressure. The relative leniency of the sentence (punishments for "subversion of the state" usually range from 10 years in prison to the death penalty) underscores the possible significance of this rapid and multifaceted international outcry largely enabled by the Internet.
How Human Rights Advocates Use the Internet
Hundreds of human rights NGOs and advocates maintain Web sites, including homepages, bulletin boards, news and discussion groups, and various on-line research and educational tools such as databases, search engines, and translators.16 Many sites are linked to each other creating a comprehensive information network with opportunities for visitors to get informed, reach activists, and participate in events.17 According to interviews and information posted on these sites, advocates conceive of their Web sites as widely accessible international fora for publicizing their views and activities and for interacting with supporters and others.
To assure secure transmission and storage of sensitive information, human rights advocates often use the following Internet security features. Encryption ensures confidentiality, authenticity, and integrity of messages. Anonymous remailers18 and the tactic of distributing censored or sensitive information from different addresses obscure the origin of messages and make traffic analysis more difficult. This is important since observing and analyzing sources, recipients, frequency, and other features and traceable results of correspondence (so called "traffic") can reveal substantial details about the activity of an organization and endanger its members, supporters, and those receiving or mentioned in correspondence.
Although some human rights advocates are likely to stay off-line (for secrecy reasons or due to the inability to afford or access the Internet), many consider this technology desirable and beneficial to their work. To this end, network-facilitating and infrastructure-building NGOs, such as the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), Peacenet, Conflictnet, and Global Exchange, help issue-oriented and research organizations acquire access to the Internet and develop the necessary expertise. They also maintain worldwide computer-conferencing and e-mail systems for advocacy purposes. APC for example, is a worldwide network of communication service providers for the non-profit civil sector, especially in less developed countries.19
"So What?"
Assessing the impact of the Internet is complicated by the novelty of the use of this medium to advance human rights, the consequent lack of comprehensive data, and the difficulty inherent in isolating the impact of the Internet from other factors. Evidence suggests that the Internet provides a means to overcome censorship and to improve human rights advocacy. However, the Internet is also being used to create obstacles to advocacy, to propagate violence, and to directly impair civil liberties and the privacy of individuals.
Overcoming Censorship
Citizens, whose rights to freedom of expression and association are violated by repressive regimes, have used the Internet to protest and organize activities in defiance of censorship.20 In 1996 the President of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, took Radio B92, the only independent broadcaster in Belgrade, off the air for covering street demonstrations that had followed the annulment of election results. However, B92 and students and faculty at the University of Belgrade started distributing news reports over the Internet, both in text and in RealAudio format. Although not many local citizens outside university campuses had access to the Internet, international radio stations like the BBC, Deutsche Welle and the Voice of America picked up the dispatches and re-sent them into Yugoslavia over short-wave radio, while expatriates faxed transcripts back home. Also censored, the independent Prishtina-based Albanian-language newspaper Koha Ditore and the Belgrade-based news agency Beta coordinated to launch Kosovo-On-Line, which maintained the only ongoing dialogue between Serbs and Albanians in 1996.21
Where available, the Internet is replacing leaflets and fax machines, used in the past by dissidents in Eastern Europe and by students in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, as a crucial lifeline for resistance movements. In Yugoslavia today, a small number of citizens who have access to the Internet created a news network consisting of e-mail exchanges, chat rooms and bulletin boards, which provide a channel of communication for those separated by war as well as real time information on refugee movement and military operations.22
In Myanmar (formerly Burma) few people have access to and can afford the Internet. However, activists have combined more traditional methods with the Internet to protest against the military regime. For example, Htun Aung Gyaw, who fled the country to avoid persecution for participating in student demonstrations of the 1980s, continues his fight for freedom via the Internet. He launched and now coordinates an organization called Civil Society for Burma out of his New York apartment. Without email and the Internet, he says, he could not afford to keep up this extensive worldwide resistance network comprising students and political activists in Myanmar and exiles and supporters overseas. Civil Society members in Myanmar compile urgent communications of local members and details of the latest atrocities of the military regime, and smuggle this information over the border. Once safe, they electronically distribute the information to alert international members and the media and to strategize activities.23 In another example, Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Laureate kept under house arrest for the past nine years for denouncing the Myanmar military regime, recorded her 1998 address on the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations, which was subsequently smuggled out of the country and broadcast on the Internet. From the Internet major international media further disseminated the address.24
It must also be noted that although in these cases the Internet enables uncensored exchange of political ideas, maintenance of dissident associations, and organization of protests against the state, such "speech", "association," and "expression" are not as "free" as they are intended by international human rights law. Covert free speech on the Internet is not truly free speech. This and other human rights cannot be exercised as long as censorship and political repression persist.
Improving Human Rights Advocacy
In most countries with human rights violations the Internet remains unknown or inaccessible to the majority of the population. It has reached Congo, for example, where most people have never seen a phone.25 In such circumstances, using the Internet to facilitate domestic political activity is not likely to be effective. However, human rights workers who do have access use the Internet to alert the international community and to mount advocacy campaigns. The Internet enables greater operational efficiency, worldwide outreach and education, and new opportunities for interactive participation. Advocates value these improvements as a means to broaden the public awareness necessary for creating pressure on governments and effecting greater respect for human rights.
Operational Efficiencies
The most widespread and crucial areas of impact are often the least apparent, since they involve the logistics and internal operations of an organization. According to several studies, human rights groups have been able to cut costs and improve the effectiveness and scale of their communications, planning, other logistics, and information gathering, storage, processing, exchange, and protection.26
The International Tibet Independence Movement used a digital camera linked to the Internet to broadcast its 1996 "March for Tibet's Independence" from Washington, D.C. to New York City. According to the Movement's president, 30% of all communications required to prepare the march were carried out over the Internet (with 60% and 80% for similar events in the two subsequent years). This made the preparation cheaper and more efficient than expected if other means of communication had been used instead. A Web site that aired the march on-line received hundreds of thousands of visitors throughout the event. Currently the movement also maintains an active 300-member Internet discussion group, a 4000-member database of subscribers to electronic updates and campaigns, and an informative and creative Web site.27 The Movement views its educational and advocacy campaigns as crucial steps toward realization of its goal of independence for Tibet. Moreover, the president emphasizes that the current level of campaign cost-effectiveness and widespread public participation could not have been achieved without the Internet. He also underscores that independence leaders in Tibet, with whom he maintains regular contacts, were appreciative and encouraged by the magnitude of such international solidarity.28
Outreach and Education
The Internet has improved the speed, scope and often quality of outreach and educational activities. Interviews, studies, and observations show that on-line alerts and campaigns allow advocates to reach and engage many more supporters than ordinary methods.29 In this way, advocates are also able to provide expert information to a large number of people as an alternative to sensational media reports.
Moscow Libertarium, a group advocating civil liberties (on- and off-line) in Russia, emphasizes public education as a key to responsible and effective citizen action vis-a-vis the state. Moscow Libertarium collects relevant materials on its Internet site30 thereby providing easily accessible ideas, arguments, and background information on freedom of speech on the Internet and respect for individual liberties at large. The impact of this Internet-enabled work is particularly explicit in building nation-wide opposition to "SORM-2," an Internet surveillance project proposed by the Russian Federal Security Service (FCB), the heir to the KGB.31 Journalists, lawyers, private citizens, policy makers, and law enforcement representatives regularly consult the site and use the information to publicize their opposition to the project and to shape a substantive debate on the proposed policy.32 The growing debate has scrutinized the proposal and so far helped defer its implementation.
Interactive Participation and Networking
NGOs like Amnesty International have been able to solicit and send more advocacy letters faster, cheaper, and simultaneously, by alerting members by email and accepting electronic submissions. Marked by rapid, massive, and international response, such campaigns have also enabled smaller human rights organizations to project global presence and to hold violators responsible to domestic victims and the international community.
When in 1997 a policeman shot a street boy begging for food in Guatemala City, Casa Alianza, an NGO that provides rehabilitation services to street children in Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras, emailed alerts to more than 5,000 "Rapid Response List" subscribers around the world encouraging them to protest such violence. Several hours later, hundreds of responses started flooding Guatemalan President Arzu's email box, with copies to his government members, embassies abroad, and media around the world. According to Bruce Harris, Executive Director of Casa Alianza in Latin America,
Guatemala's authorities became anxious about the international outcry and within days responded with an official investigation. Casa Alianza credits the Internet in several other similar situations for the ability to mount an international outcry that in turn obliged President Arzu to uphold justice.33
The Internet also enables unprecedented connectivity, scope, speed, and ease of communication and coordination among human rights advocates around the world. Computer experts link up with educators and public policy specialists, human rights information databases, international NGOs, and grass roots advocacy groups, magnifying the existing capabilities of each into a pervasive and dynamic network of networks.34
Uncertainty of Positive Impact
Evidence of the Internet's positive impact on the conduct of human rights advocacy exists, but the question remains whether improved advocacy translates into a better human rights situation. This is a pressing question, which with respect to the Internet is further complicated by evidence of no or a negative impact of this technology on human rights. Although NGO web sites can be reached by virtually anybody who has access to the Web, it is often unclear whether global outreach actually occurs, whether it can be maintained over time, and whether it results in substantial public action in support of human rights. Average visits to web sites per day range from roughly 5000 for Human Rights Watch, to 3000 for Moscow Libertarium, to 7-10 for the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women and the Warsaw Women's Rights Center.35 While such numbers indicate levels of site visibility, they are not necessarily indicative of impact. An assessment of impact must also consider whether visitors stumble upon a site by mistake or whether they come intentionally, why they come and what they do with the information, whether they merely look or whether they engage in consequent political action.36
Many separatist groups and independence movements, including The Irish Republican Army, the Basque separatist organization ETA, the Parti Qu?b?cois, Eastern Turkestan freedom fighters, and the East Timor Independence movement, have taken their causes to the Web. Some provide information and enlist support, others engage in electronic warfare along with resistance operations on the ground. East Timor even proclaimed a "virtual independence" embodied in a symbolically named Internet domain.37 However, virtual independence is hardly sufficient for actual sovereignty, and the impact of these efforts (beyond informing those who find the sites and take the time to browse) is unclear.
Mass media have drawn attention to some of these sites and efforts. The media also occasionally turn to electronic publications, such as the Hong Kong Voice of Democracy, as sources of information. But overall, electronic human rights publications are not yet regarded as a major source of credible information. Even though Internet publications are available nearly instantly and ubiquitously, perception of their credibility appears to be less favorable than that of primary sources, e.g. citizens under oppressed regimes, human rights workers in the field, or NGO representatives.
The Internet also nurtures a new type of activista hacktivist, who uses technical computer hacking knowledge and electronic warfare to pursue political goals.38 For example, a group called Electronic Disturbance Theater uses special software to attack targeted sites, such as those of the Mexican government, with a message of political protest, such as support for the Zapatistas.39 In October 1998, a hacker named Zyklon replaced the official Chinese Human Rights site with a rather rude message critiquing government "propaganda" on the site and providing references to Amnesty International and Human Rights in China, which expose the on-going human rights violations in that country.40 Hacktivists do attract international attention to themselves and the causes that they espouse, but their activity also tends to trigger stringent government controls on the use of the Internet, likely resulting in greater compromise of individual freedoms in the targeted country.
Obstacles to Advocacy and the Propagation of Violence
The Internet has negatively impacted human rights by enabling greater misuse of information and the promotion of violence. This does not necessarily result in increased human rights abuses, but it can discredit advocacy, hinder relief efforts, and foster violence.
Obstacles
The very advantages of the Internet for human rights advocacy, such as speedy, massive, and interactive handling of information, can also lead to misinformation, disinformation, and information overload. This makes sifting for relevant messages more difficult, and the consequences of following a wrong lead could be embarrassing and regrettable. An ironic example occurred in the spring of 1999, when one of the Zapatistas' strongest weapons, the Internet, backfired. An Internet appeal called for donations to a special bank account to help finance the Zapatista struggle for peace and indigenous rights. Although the appeal resembled earlier legitimate ones, this time it turned out to be bogus, and the bank account given was traced to the Zapatistas' opponent, Vicente Fox, a state governor with the conservative National Action Party (PAN). The PAN boasted to have collected nearly 2 million pesos (about $200,000) with the help of this false appeal.41
A situation of abuse can also deteriorate if sensitive information compiled by an NGO about the conditions and whereabouts of victims is intercepted by abusers or changed during transmission. This may result in more abuses or in an ineffective response (causing, for example, delays in response time or delivery of inappropriate or insufficient aid). Information on NGO field workers could also be used to trace, threaten, and assault them.
Propagation of Violence
The Internet has given a new outlet to hatred and violence, which challenge basic rights to life and freedom from fear and discrimination. Although Internet activities that propagate violence may themselves constitute protected speech, they can and have resulted in assaults on the physical security of persons. In the United States alone, an organization called HateWatch monitors more than 100 hate groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, other racists, anti-Semites, and neo-nazis, who use the Internet to disseminate information, recruit members, and organize assaults of varying degrees of violence. 42
The 1998 case of an anti-abortion Web site run out of Oregon provides a notable example of Internet-enabled assaults on civil liberties and the lives of individuals. The Web site entitled "The Nuremberg Files" listed the names, home addresses and license plate numbers of many abortion doctors and the names of their spouses and children. Meanwhile, ten people working at abortion clinics around the U.S. were killed and more than 250 clinic bombings and incidents of arson have occurred in recent years. When a doctor on the Web site's list was slain, as three have been, the site showed a line drawn through his name, while the names of wounded were shown in gray. In court both plaintiffsthe Planned Parenthood organization and a group of doctorsand defendantsthe American Coalition of Life Activists, American Rights Coalition and Advocates for Life Ministries and othersinvoked freedom of speech and other civil rights arguments. However, the case was decided in favor of the plaintiffs among whom many doctors contended that this information on the Web amounted to intimidation and deadly threats. These doctors testified to wearing disguises or bulletproof vests in public and instructing their children to hide in the bathtub if they heard gunfire in the house. A federal jury condemned the defendants and charged them more than $107 million dollars in compensation.43
Threats to Privacy and Civil Liberties
The Internet and other recent advances in information technology have revolutionized surveillance methods and the collection of detailed personal information, which are among the fastest growing means of political control and coercion.44 Such technologies have already been used to track dissidents, human rights advocates, journalists, student leaders, minorities and political opponents.45 Although surveillance can be legitimized in the name of national security, unfettered and unlawful surveillance and access to information compiled in the process can result in severe civil rights violations.
In the past, advanced surveillance technologies were used primarily by national security establishments. Today they are proliferating both vertically, from national security establishments to law enforcement and local police, and horizontally, from more technologically and economically advanced countries, whose laws tend to protect civil rights, to countries with less or no respect for individual liberties. Consequently, threats to civil liberties grow as the number of nodes at which sensitive personal information can be collected and potentially misused increases.
The United States and the European Union's advanced Transatlantic Electronic Surveillance, consisting of the EU-FBI and the ECHELON systems, illustrates the pervasiveness and associated dangers of such technologies.46 The EU-FBI system, which links up police, customs, immigration services, internal security organizations, and other law enforcement agencies of participating countries, allows routine interception of email, telephone and fax communications by the U.S. National Security Agency.47 The ECHELON global surveillance system is a British-American arrangement comprising the activities of military intelligence agencies.48 ECHELON forms a targeting system on all of the key Intelsat satellites used to convey most of the world's satellite phone calls, faxes, telexes, email and other Internet communications.49 Although military and political intelligence is supposed to be the priority of this system, its primary targets are non-military, including governments, civil and non-governmental institutions, and private citizens. Such pervasive, large-scale international surveillance systems play an important role in keeping global terrorism and criminal activity in check. However, they also place private communications of citizens and organizations around the world in jeopardy. Privacy advocates question whether such tremendous access to personal information is legitimate in view of the right to privacy. Many others are concerned about harmful misuse of such information, if the systems are used in the absence or in disregard of provisions for legal authorization and democratic transparency and accountability.
Conclusion: Research and Social Implications
Research Implications
The findings presented in this essay suggest that the global diffusion of the Internet does have an effect upon human rights and the efforts to advocate and protect them. However this impact is complex and ambiguous. There is evidence to support three contradictory views: (1) that the Internet helps advance human rights by improving advocacy and putting pressure on violating governments to limit abuse; (2) that Internet-enabled advocacy does not always improve human rights situations; and (3) that the Internet could directly hinder the cause of human rights. More research is needed to specify the conditions under which each of these outcomes obtains, and to draw implications and prescriptions for policy and advocacy to steer the use of this technology toward greater advantages and minimal detriments to society.
Social Implications
With all the advantages of the Internet for human rights advocacy, respect for these rights is clearly more than a click away. Efforts to uphold human rights in the presence of hatred, violations and atrocities must still focus on the world of humans in physical space, not cyberspace. The Internet will likely continue to advance and empower transnational advocacy networks, mobilized to demand justice and uphold respect for human rights around the world. But this technology is by no means a panacea. It can be an important facilitator, but it cannot replace crucial off-line tasks involved in curbing violence, alleviating repression, and fostering a global civil society intolerant of abuse and mockery of human dignity.
Footnotes
This article is based on research conducted throughout the 1998-1999 academic year by Ekaterina A. Drozdova under the auspices of the Consortium for Research on Information Security and Policy, a research collaboration of the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), the Institute for International Studies, and the School of Engineering, Stanford University. We would like to thank Lynn Eden and Marie-Joelle Zahar of CISAC for their helpful comments on earlier drafts.
1 See East Timor Freedom Page, URL: http://www.freedom.tp, Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, URL: http://www.rawa.org/, and endnote 22 on Kosovo. Information on Chinese dissidents and democracy can be located at ChinaSite.com, URL: http://ChinaSite.com/dissident.html, VIP Reference site, URL: http://come.to/dacankao, Human Rights in China, URL: http://www.hrichina.org/, and endnote 12.
2 Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998). Correspondence, interviews, and surveys conducted for this study with human rights advocates and NGOs.
3 Amnesty International News Release, "Fiftieth Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," News Service: 237/98 AI INDEX: ACT 30/26/98.
4 In the past states often turned a blind eye to human rights violations abroad for a number of reasons, including strategic interests dictated by the Cold War. The end of the Cold War and the consequent changes in the international system have set the stage for human rights and other humanitarian issues to become more prominent.
5 Keck and Sikkink, 102. Also see Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, Second Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
6 Ibid., 1-38.
7 Kathryn A. Sikkink, "Nongovernmental Organizations, Democracy, and Human Rights in Latin America" in Beyond Sovereignty: Collectively Defending Democracy in the Americas, edited by Tom Farer (London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 150-169.
8 Keck and Sikkink, 92-95.
9 See Keck and Sikkink (endnote 5) and Sikkink (endnote 7) for further examples and research findings. Interviews and surveys conducted for this study also support this view.
10 The current numbers of Internet nodes and users are estimated from various experts and surveys, including Nua Internet Surveys, URL: http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/ and Network Wizards "Over 43.2 Million Internet Hosts in January 1999," URL: http://www.nua.ie/surveys/?f=VS&art_id=905354740&rel=true . Due to the dynamic nature of the Internet, its rapid development and popular use, these numbers can only represent approximations made at a particular time. About 200 countries currently have full TCP/IP capability, which stands for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol and constitutes an agreed upon set of rules directing computers how to exchange information with each other. TCP is the major transport protocol in the Internet suite of protocols
providing reliable, connection-oriented, full-duplex streams. TCP Uses IP, the network layer protocol, for delivery. See Seymour E. Goodman, Grey E. Burkhart, William A. Foster, Arun Mittal, Laurence I. Press, Zixiang (Alex) Tan, The Global Diffusion of the Internet (Fairfax, VA: The Mosaic Group, 1998), Appendix B.
11 The Zapatista rebellion and especially its Internet dimension have been widely publicized, analyzed, and discussed by journalists and scholars. A comprehensive review and analysis as well as an extensive bibliography can be found in David Ronfeldt, John Arquilla, Graham E. Fuller, Melissa Fuller, The Zapatista Social Netwar in Mexico (Washington, D.C.: RAND, 1998).
12 Correspondence with Richard Long, editor, VIP Reference. VIP Reference has been covered widely in majjor international media. Articles include Andy Kennedy, "For China, the Tighter the Grip, the Weaker the Hand" Washington Post, January 17, 1999, Page B02. Eric Echholm, "In China, the Internet Is Double-Edged," The New York Times On The Web, February 10, 1999. Also see endnote 14. Back issues of the magazine in Chinese can be found on VIP Reference web site URL: http://www.come.to/dacankao/.
13 Correspondence with Richard Long, VIP Reference.
14 Lin Hai's case has been covered extensively by the traditional media and on the Internet, especially from late 1998 to early 1999. References include the following. "China Cracks Down on Internet Activist" The Associated Press, February 5, 1999. "Dissidents to continue e-mail activity despite court verdict," South China Morning Post, 02/02/99. William Kazer, "China Jails Computer Engineer in Internet Case" Reuters, January 2, 1999. "Cyber-Dissident Sentenced to 2-Year Imprisonment for Subversion," Hong Kong Voice of Democracy, January 21, 1999, URL: http://www.democracy.org.hk/pastweek/99/jan17_23/lin_hai.htm . "Cyber Dissident Appeals 2-Year Sentence," Agence France Presse, February 8, 1999.
15 The Constitution of the People's Republic of China, Articles 52, 53, and 54.
16 These sites include the United Nations, URL: http://www.un.org, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Human Rights Resources, URL: http://shr.aaas.org/dhr.htm, Project Diana Online Human Rights Archive at Yale University, URL: http://diana.law.yale.edu, and Human Rights Internet, URL: http://www.hri.ca/ie4.htm. Guides and manuals on the use of the Internet for human rights can be located on the AAAS site and Derechos, URL: http://www.derechos.org/human-rights/manual.htm. Organizations like Global Internet Liberty Campaign, Institute for Global Communications, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other human rights NGO also provide resources and tips for human rights advocacy on and off the Internet.
17 Human rights groups are not unique in having to constantly update and improve their sites in order to live up to the expectations of instantaneous gratification on the Internet, to cater to existing audiences, to attract new supporters, and to ward off opponents and vandals. Many human rights web-sites address this challenge by using frames, hyperlinks, and other organizational features to identify main parts of the site and direct visitors to the information that meets their needs. Those who are able to provide clearly organized, up-to-date, and high-quality information are more successful in attracting support via the Internet. Others must rely on more conventional means.
18 Anonymous remailers are computer programs that receive messages intended for other recipients, strip the return addresses from these messages, and then send them to their intended destinations.
19 Ronfeldt et.al., 53-60.
20 In such cases the Internet is the only means in the absence of access to other media for expression or in the presence of greater risks of prosecution for using other media. This impact is, of course, constrained by the availability and accessibility of the Internet.
21 Bruno Guissani, "Born From '96 Opposition, Serbian Internet Effort Thrives," The New York Times on the Web, September 8, 1998.
22 Neil MacFarquhar, "For First Time in War, E-Mail Plays a Vital Role" News Online, The New York Times On The Web, March 29, 1999.
23 Michael Ryan, "He Fights Dictators With the Internet," Parade Magazine, August 23, 1998, 12. William Glaberson, "Guerilla War on the Internet," The New York Times, April 8, 1997. Correspondence with Htun Aung Gyaw, 1998.
24 CNN, Associated Press, The New York Times, etc.
25 "Congo residents take first steps into cyberspace," Reuters, January 25,1999. On human rights abuses in Congo see "Scores of Executions in the Democratic Republic of Congo," News Release Issued by the International Secretariat of Amnesty International, News Service: 097/99, AI INDEX: AFR 62/15/99, May 18, 1999.
26 Interviews and correspondence with human rights advocates who use the Internet in their efforts. Also Jamie Metzl, "Information Technology and Human Rights," Human Rights Quarterly, 18:4 (1996) 705-746.
27 URL: http://www.rangzen.com
28 Interview with the president of the International Tibet Independence Movement, 1998.
29 See endnote 26.
30 URL: http://www.libertarium.ru/index.html.
31 FCB is a commonly used abbreviation from Russian "Federalnaia Slyzhba Bezopasnosti." "SORM" stands for "Sistema Operativno-Rozysknih Meropriyatii na setiah dokymentalnoii elektrosviazi" in Russian, translated as the System for Conduct of Investigations and Field Operations. If adopted, "SORM-2" would require all Russian Internet service providers to purchase, install, and operate a device that would guarantee FCB unfettered access to the contents of all electronic messages on their networks and to the network addresses of both senders and recipients. See Moscow Libertarium site for the original text and revisions of the proposed legislation.
32 Correspondence with Anatoly Levenchuk, 1998. See Moscow Libertarium site for more information on the proposed legislation and the debate regarding its adoption.
33 Correspondence with Ana Lara, Regional Office, Casa Alianza. "The World Defends Central American Street ChildrenBy Internet!" August 20, 1997, For Immediate Release by Casa Alianza. More information on Casa Alianza can be located at URL: http://www.casa-alianza.org.
34 The already mentioned Zapatista movement is a representative example.
35 These numbers provide a general illustration of the range of visitors to human rights sites. They are accurate for the time of inquiry. The numbers of daily hits for Human Rights Watch, Moscow Libertarium, and the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women were obtained in October-November, 1998, through correspondence with representatives of these organizations. The number for the Warsaw Women's Rights Center was also obtained in late 1998 from statistical information linked to the web site.
36 Such information is not readily available on most sites and even upon request. If compiled, this information could be used to correlate visits to human rights sites with participation and political action.
37 "Hackers Rob East Timor of Cyberspace Independence," Reuters, January 28, 1999.
38 Amy Harmon, "'Hacktivists' of All Persuasions Take Their Struggle to the Web," The New York Times, October 31, 1998, Page A1.
39 More information about the Electronic Disturbance Theater and its activities known as "Electronic Civil Disobedience" can be located at URL: http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ecd/ecd.html.
40 Zyklon's message can be located at URL: http://www.echange.fr/china/index.html.
41 Reuters: Politics-0307.00421, March 8, 1999.
42 URL: http://www.hatewatch.com. The American Anti-Defamation league has also reported that the Internet is being used by sprawling hate and terrorist groups to advocate and organize physical violence. See High-Tech Hate: Extremist Use of the Internet (New York: Anti-Defamation League, 1997), Hate Group Recruitment on the Internet (New York: Anti-Defamation League, 1995), Terrorism and the Internet (New York: Anti-Defamation League, 1998). Further information can be located at URL: http://www.adl.org.
43 Sam Howe Verhovek, "Creators of Anti-Abortion Web Site Told to Pay Millions," New York Times, February 3, 1999, Page A11.
44 Surveillance technologies are devices or systems that can monitor, track and assess the movements of individuals, their property and other assets. Modern surveillance technologies include: laser microphones, which allow listening to conversations from a closed window in line of sight; stroboscopic cameras, which can take hundreds of pictures in a matter of seconds and individually photograph numerous participants in a demonstration; advanced closed circuit television, which can scan crowds and match faces against a database of images held in a remote computer; automatic vehicle recognition systems, which track cars around a city via a Geographic Information System of maps; and DNA technology, which enables extensive personal profiling from a single fingerprint.
45 "An Appraisal of Technologies of Political Control," Working Document, Scientific and Technological Options Assessment, European Parliament, January 1998, PE 166499. The document is also available at URL: http://jya.com/stoa-atpc.htm#notes.
46 Although these systems were developed prior to the advent of the Internet and continue to rely on other technologies, the Internet is becoming more important and intricately woven into their fabric.
47 "An Appraisal of the Technologies of Political Control," An Omega Foundation Summary & Options Report For The European Parliament, September
1998. This summary report is available at URL: http://jya.com/stoa-atpc-so.htm#7.0. "EU and FBI Launch Global Telecommunications Surveillance System," Statewatch Bulletin, January-February 1997, Volume 7, No. 1. "EU-FBI telecommunications surveillance system extended to Internet and satellite phones" Statewatch Bulletin, November-December 1998, Volume 8 No. 6. See also URL: http://www.statewatch.org/news.html.
48 Such as NSA and CIA in the U.S. and GCHQ and MI5 in Great Britain.
49 The system supposedly works by indiscriminately intercepting very large quantities of communications and then siphoning out valuable information using artificial intelligence aids like Memex to find key words. The U.S. is a senior partner under the UK-USA agreement of 1948. Four other nations share the results: Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Each country supplies to the other four "dictionaries" of keywords, phrases, people and places to "tag," and the tagged intercepts are, in turn, forwarded to the requesting country.