Internet Rights and Principles Coalition
Committed to making Internet work for human rights
Professor Sonia Livingstone discusses how internet governance needs to consider the specific rights and needs of children, both in terms of protection from harm as well as the right to access and use digital media.
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The IRP Coalition hereby presents the IRPC Charter of Human Rights and Principles for the Internet for endorsement and feedback as part of the Dynamic Coalition Main Session scheduled for the 2015 IGF meeting in Brazil. Read more
This is an important milestone in the public timeline of the Charter work and a terrific time to show support for the Charter and other Dynamic Coalitions by commenting on submissions on the IGF website
This year the IRPC gained Official Observer status at the Council of Europe’s Steering Committee on Media Information and Society (CDMSI).
http://nexa.polito.it/declaration-internet-rights
On 28 July 2015, Laura Boldrini, the speaker of Italy’s House of Deputies announced the publication of Italian Declaration of Internet Rights. She called it the “first time that a parliament produces a declaration on Internet rights of constitutional inspiration and international scope”. Drawn up in a multistakeholder process the drafting phase also included multiple drafts, the last of which was also discussed on the IRP list in March of this year.
Controversial surveillance legislation hustled through parliament last summer has been ruled unlawful by the UK High Court, which argued that the vague terms and descriptions of powers in the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014 (DRIPA) renders the act incompatible with human rights under European law.
“…The the use of encryption and anonymity tools and better digital literacy should be encouraged. Encryption and anonymity depend on their widespread adoption and I encourage states, civil society organizations, and corporations, to engage in a campaign to bring encryption by design and default to users around the world. And when necessary, to ensure that users at risk, be provided the tools that exercise their right to freedom of opinion and expression securely.”
The Council of Europe has called upon its 47 member states to ensure that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which manages Internet domain names globally, creates adequate mechanisms to identify, prevent and mitigate possible breaches to human rights in its work, notably the rights to freedom of expression and privacy.
In recent years, the Snowden revelations and debates in the UK and US around the scope of government surveillance have brought the issue of privacy in the digital age a greater audience than ever before. Hanane Boujemi argues that society must change its attitude to where boundaries lie if rights are to be meaningfully protected in the online sphere.