Tuesday, July 17, 2012

We the People Need Our Existing Bill of Rights to Apply in the Digital Domain



From the blog: "How the Bill of Rights is being upheld in a digital context is, to say the least, an interesting living story to follow.

The passage of a
resolution that human rights must also be protected on the Internet in the United Nations Human Rights Council was a historic affirmation of the principle that “the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online.”

This affirmation may play well in the headlines, but it does raise some practical questions. For instance, would this high-level resolution by the U.N. Human Rights Council inhibit member countries if they violate their citizens’ right to freedom of expression online, if such countries are already violating human rights offline? Or would the U.N. Security Council ever vote for sanctions over Internet censorship of political or religious content that might be online speech in one country and deemed blasphemous or even illegal in another?" Read more