Proposals for international cooperation on cross-border Internet

Interim Report of the Ad-hoc Advisory Group on Cross-border Internet

to the Steering Committee on the Media and New Communication Services incorporating analysis of proposals for international and multi-stakeholder cooperation on cross-border Internet

Estonia: A Leader In Europe's E-Democracy

A European Institute politics expert has revealed that Estonia is now considered a leader in Europe's experiment with electronic democracy.

Kristjan Vassil told a 16 November conference in Strasbourg to launch the Council of Europe's E-Voting handbook that some 100,000 of the country's estimated 600,000 voters now use the internet to choose governing officials.

Council of Europe Commits To Network Neutrality On The Internet

Image via Wikipedia

A Declaration on network neutrality has ben adopted by the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers  which underlines its commitment to network neutrality on the Internet and insists that any exceptions to this principle would need to be justified by overriding public interest.

Users should have the greatest possible access to Internet-based content, applications and services of their choice, whether or not they are offered free of charge, using suitable devices of their choice, the Committee says. It also declares that a competitive and dynamic environment may encourage innovation, increasing network availability and performance, and lowering costs, and can promote the free circulation of a wide range of content and services on the Internet.

Operators of electronic communication networks may need to manage Internet traffic, in connection with ensuring quality of services, the development on new services, network stability and resilience, or combating cybercrime. However, the Committee of Ministers stresses that those measures should be proportionate, appropriate, avoid unjustified discrimination and be reviewed periodically. Users should be informed about them and be able to understand how they affect their fundamental rights, in particular freedom of expression and privacy.

The Committee of Ministers has also adopted a Declaration on the Digital Agenda for Europe and a Declaration on the management of Internet protocol address resources in the public interest. In the former, it welcomes the European Union’s Granada Ministerial Declaration and its Digital Agenda for Europe, encourages Council of Europe member states to pursue the objectives of this agenda at national level, and invites the European Union to cooperate with the Council of Europe in this field.

In the declaration on the management of Internet protocol addresses, the Committee of Ministers underlines the importance of addressing the issue of scarcity of Internet resources, notably IPv4 addresses. It states that Internet protocol address resources should be regarded as shared public resources and allocated and managed in the public interest by the entities entrusted with these tasks taking into account the present and future needs of Internet users. It also points out that timely and effective deployment of the new Internet Protocol IPv6 – which offers a far larger address space - in the public sector should be ensured and swift preparations for migration to and deployment of IPv6 in the private sector should be encouraged and promoted.

The Committee also declares that, to the extent that information on users´activities and communications, as well as traffic data, amount to personal data, they should be treated and used in compliance with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and relevant case law of the European Court of Human Rights, as well as the Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data (CETS No.108)

Making Sense of The Digital Era

Media and Information Society

Making Sense Of The Digital Era: A Human Rights Approach To The Internet

Image by wjr via Flickr

Defending the right to a free, open and interconnected Internet has become a touchstone of the western progressive tradition.

Finland and Estonia have gone furthest in their embrace of the internet as an instrument of free expression, ruling that access to the online “knowledge society” is a human right for their citizens. The Internet was even nominated for a Nobel Peace Price last March

Yet away from the political rhetoric and think-tank policy papers, the real world may look upon the internet as a useful but anarchic frontier of the global age.

Certainly that is the impression given by the media. The affectionate coverage which marked the arrival of the information superhighway is now underscored by a suspicion that the digital environment teems with menace.

If the virus, the hacker, the spammer or the sexual predator doesn’t get you, the identity fraudster will. Such is the web experience in 2010.

The media’s cautionary tales may be in the public interest but they also create fertile conditions for paranoia.

The mistrust which can flow from a rich diet of scare stories increases the likelihood that governments will rush to legislative action.

At a time of dizzyingly-rapid technological change, the potential for knee-jerk, ill-considered, ineffective or even misguided policies is clear.

Attempts by governments to block access to sites such as Blogspot, Twitter and You Tube are but the most glaring examples of a greater willingness to police the internet.

Content manipulation and censorship, the arrest and intimidation of bloggers, expanding surveillance and the use of filtering software are the raw material of a mounting assault on digital freedom by law-makers.

Whilst most of Europe’s 800 million citizens enjoy fewer intrusions on their right to a free internet, there is little reason for complacency.

Fears about terrorism, electronic fraud and other crimes and the distribution of child pornography have contributed to increased monitoring and tracking of online behaviour, secrecy in state deliberations and “three strikes” laws.

That is why the Council of Europe urges its 47 member states to adopt a human rights approach to digital policy.

It encourages national authorities to resist the temptation to ‘blanket’ block web sites and to avoid “mission creep” when acting against illegal distributors.

Cormac Callanan, co-author of the organisation’s report on cooperation between Internet service providers and law enforcement authorities said: “Technically, it is difficult. Legally, it is problematic. Above all, it represents a real threat to the free transfer of information and conflicts with basic democratic principles.”

The online circulation of child pornography presents a grave test for the Council of Europe’s ‘open internet’ approach.

While the organisation does not rule out the use of legal sanctions, it does advise a raft of other measures which could help the fight back against porn merchants.

Chief among these is the promotion of education as a real alternative to regulation, with emphasis placed on media literacy programmes.

The fear of vulnerable children being groomed on the internet is best dealt with by youngsters learning the arts of safe surfing, as the success of the Council of Europe’s Wild Web Woods game demonstrates.

As a ministerial conference last May in Iceland made clear, the Council of Europe’s approach is anchored by the willingness to bring human rights to the online world.

The conference resolution stated that “fundamental rights and Council of Europe standards and values apply to online information and communication services as much as they do to the offline world.”

Significantly, the resolution affirmed that “any interference with the freedom of expression and information must be prescribed by law and be a proportionate response to a pressing social need related to the limited exceptions set out in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, as interpreted by the European Court of Human Rights.”

Only through a consistent adherence to human rights principles will the Council of Europe’s member states achieve the coherent international policies that the digital era demands.

More Information

Children And The Internet
Cybercrime
Personal Data Protection And Privacy

Related articles by Zemanta

• Global 'internet treaty' proposed (telegraph.co.uk)

Technology Sector ‘Key Partner’ In UK Fight Against Child Sexual Exploitation

Image by paul.klintworth via Flickr

Information and communication technology leaders will be asked to join the global fight against child exploitation and pornography if the United Kingdom ratifies a Council of Europe treaty.

The United Kingdom has already signed the 2007 Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse.

The Council of Europe, the region’s oldest assembly of nations, hopes the treaty will soon become part of national law. Its experts are concerned that the Internet is fast becoming the “tool of choice” for child predators wishing to “groom” children whom they may later abuse and exploit.

An Internet Watch Foundation’s report, published in April 2009, revealed that some 1,500 websites worldwide are responsible for the online commerce in child pornography. Some 69% of the victims exploited in images or videos appeared to be under 10 years of age.

Alarmed by the scale and profitability of this Internet trade and by the use of new media tools to corrupt youngsters for sexual purposes, the Council of Europe is now encouraging its member states to seek greater cooperation with the private sector.

It sees ratification of the treaty as the “logical next step” to be taken by the organisation’s 47 member states in combating the distribution of sexually abusive images of children.

If the convention is approved, information and communication technology officials will join counterparts from the travel and tourism industry and the banking and financial sector in a partnership with national authorities. It is designed to improve public-private sector coordination and to prevent business structures from being used to feed the child sex trade.

“Private sector enterprises, particularly those related to the information and communication technology sectors, the banking and finance industry, and the travel and tourism sectors, are likely to be in contact with situations giving rise to sexual exploitation and abuse of children.,” said the Council of Europe’s Deputy Secretary General Maud de Boer-Buquicchio.

“Corporate social responsibility must therefore be encouraged and the private sector must play a more active role in preventing sexual abuse of children. Co-operation between private industry, public authorities and law enforcement is essential. No agency alone can achieve the goal of eliminating sexual exploitation of children.

“The Internet is a fantastic tool for all of us, and in particular for children. But for them, it can also represent a world full of dangers: their natural curiosity and eagerness to discover the world around them makes them particularly vulnerable.

"The growing phenomenon of grooming and the exchange of child pornographic images via the Internet are human rights abuses of the worst kind, and our new Convention seeks to eliminate these phenomena by criminalising 'grooming.'"

The convention’s multi-agency approach requires governments to improve coordination between national education authorities, the health sector, social services, law enforcement and judicial authorities.

The treaty encourages law-makers to make sure that confidentiality rules “do not constitute an obstacle” to the reporting of suspected crimes. It also recommends that national law covers so-called ‘sex-tourism’ offences. This would allow courts to try nationals suspected of committing criminal offences against children in foreign countries where they escape prosecution by benefitting from legal loopholes or from the ‘blind eye’ of authorities.

Campaign: Building A Europe For And With Children
Game: How To Stay Safe Online

Related articles by Zemanta

• Facebook child protection app prompts 211 reports (guardian.co.uk)
• Paedophile 'could have been stopped by Facebook panic button' (telegraph.co.uk)
• Paedophiles 'turn to webcams' (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Tell-Tale Child Sex Grooming Signs 'Missed' (news.sky.com)
• Child Pornography On The Rise, Justice Department Reports (huffingtonpost.com)

Child Protection Experts: Online Safety Needs More Than Panic Buttons

Image by Don Hankins via Flickr

Child protection experts have warned that youngsters using social media websites need more than ‘panic buttons’ to protect them online from sexual predators.

The installation of the highly-visible button on all social networking web sites has been proposed as a response to the rape and murder of a British teenager who was lured to her death by a serial sex offender using a fake Facebook profile.

When installed, the panic button, pioneered by the British government’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop), provides internet safety advice.

The Council of Europe (CoE), the region’s largest and oldest human rights intergovernmental organisation, says panic buttons can contribute to the fight against ‘internet grooming.’

But experts see the measure as just one ‘tool’ available to a strengthened public-private sector partnership geared to a policy of “robust law enforcement and determined child empowerment.”

This approach, outlined in the CoE’s 2007 Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse, combines the punishment of offenders with an educational programme preparing children for the dangers they may face online.

“Panic buttons, like internet hotlines, are positive additions to any action plan to combat sexual violence against children,” a spokesman said.

“But they have to be part of a comprehensive system of robust law enforcement and determined child empowerment.

“That is why we urge countries to ratify the Council of Europe convention. We need law and punishment. We also need young people to be better educated about how they can use the internet in safety.”

The Council of Europe wants its 47 member states to ratify the 2007 treaty to clear the way for a public-private sector approach to tackling the sexual abuse and exploitation of youngsters.

It creates a multi-agency partnership of representatives from government, justice, education, social services and law enforcement and officials from information technology, the tourism and travel industry and the banking and financial sector.

The convention proposes that the government makes sure that confidentiality rules “do not constitute an obstacle” to the reporting of suspected crimes.

It also recommends that national law covers so-called ‘sex-tourism’ offences. This would allow courts to prosecute nationals suspected of committing criminal offences against children in foreign countries which decide not to bring legal charges.

Building a Europe for and with children

Related articles by Zemanta

• Paedophile Postman Groomed Kids Online (news.sky.com)
• Facebook Installs Panic Button For Children (news.sky.com)