On top of the investigatory powers bill, the UK government wants companies to actively censor the content on their sites, like Facebook and Twitter, with threats of fines. Nick Clegg claims it's an unrealistic prospect, yet a man in Pakistan was sentenced to death for what he posted on Facebook.
Could the government’s intentions for net neutrality pose a threat to our human rights?
Talking here on internet censorship, Lawyer Monthly hears from Asif Robbani, Partner at Francis George Solicitor-Advocate.
There has been a significant technological change over the last decade (on a global scale) and that has created many opportunities to strengthen the protection of the right to freedom of expression. However, the growth of the digital world and its many opportunities to expand free speech has resulted in both considerable and evolving challenges. As a consequence, there have been negative implications on human rights.
Internet service providers (ISPs), social media platforms and search engines allow ideas and opinions to be exchanged rapidly and on a global scale. The issue from the intermediaries perspective is the increasing pressure to be responsible for what their users do online.
To achieve a balance, intermediaries can and often do, restrict and/or ban certain types of content themselves. The criteria for determining how, when and why particular content should be censored is not entirely clear and that appears to have compounded the existing issues. There is the view that private censorship fails to recognise and/or respect international human rights standards, and consequently has a negative impact on freedom of expression.
The lack of transparency in the way in which restrictions are implemented also impacts upon an individual’s right to freedom of speech. The absence of a clear mechanism for a user to appeal against a decision made by an ISP means that online content is increasingly being regulated and censored by private companies. They offer limited transparency and accountability.
There are currently discussions surrounding mechanisms to tackle things like online bullying and “horrific” or “extremist” internet content. Although that sounds fair on one hand, the realities of how the internet and ISPs actually work are often over looked. The definition of terms such as “extreme” is also difficult to define particular depending upon the applicable factual matrix.
Furthermore, holding companies like Facebook and Twitter etc. liable for the comments and posts left by their users is likely to lead to complicated problems and increased use of strictly targeted and automated filtering (automatic censoring without specifically considering the full content). In turn, that will have a negative impact on freedom of speech.
