80% think that Internet Access is a basic Human Right
The BBC has done a survey of 27,000 people across 26 countries, and of those 80% have expressed a view that Web access has become so basic as to be a fundamental human right.
Almost four in five people around the world believe that access to the internet is a fundamental right, a poll for the BBC World Service suggests.
The survey – of more than 27,000 adults across 26 countries – found strong support for net access on both sides of the digital divide.Internet Access a Human Right
Countries such as Finland and Estonia have already ruled that access is a human right for their citizens.
International bodies such as the UN are also pushing for universal net access.
“The right to communicate cannot be ignored,” Dr Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), told BBC News.
“The internet is the most powerful potential source of enlightenment ever created.”
He said that governments must “regard the internet as basic infrastructure – just like roads, waste and water”.
“We have entered the knowledge society and everyone must have access to participate.”
This has implications for a number of areas of British and Global society:
- Should the internet be turned off for individuals, as proposed by Lord Mandelbrot, when a service supplier thinks that a particular connection is being used for “downloading”?
- Should individual’s internet access be restricted, or spied upon, by Government? If so, under what degree of supervision?
- Should it be much more difficult for individual’s means of access to the Internet to be withdrawn, for example as part of a
ControlHouse Arrest Order, or by the confiscation of equipment? - Where does this leave the rights of countries, including the UK, to have auto-blocking systems in place where designated websites are added to a “watch-list” – usually associated with Anti-Terrorism or sites which have been decided to be linked to “Child-Abuse Images”, In the UK this latter is a non-published list, run by the Internet Watch Foundation, a private body which is largely free of scrutiny.
- Most interestingly, there are implications for countries, such as China and Saudi Arabia (*), which apply broad ranging censorship to the Internet. Where would Internet access as a basic human right leave the Great Firewall fo China?(**)
(*)Saudi Arabia has censorship operations in two main areas of content: sexual and political. In my more clear-thinking moments I suggest that the first is to stop people being human, and that the second is to stop them being free.
(**) The answer is: exactly where it was before, but with the Chinese Government looking even more repressive than it is already.
Categories: All WW, Human Rights / Freedom, Legal, Media, News - Current Affairs, Political Blogging, Politics
Does anyone else find odd the idea of access to the Internet as a fundamental human right? Of all of the “human rights” is this not somewhat intriguing?
.-= Stuart´s last blog ..In a few days there will be an international gathering of atheists in Melbourne. Richard Dawkins and many other misotheistic heavyweights will be there. =-.
[...] Matt Wardman has an interesting post on this. If you have stumbled onto this blog and are not a Christian, get yourself a hot drink, pull up a comfy chair and then tuck into the following article written by one of the best in the business:- All Of Grace by Charles Spurgeon [...]
I believe it’s already the case in Estonia.
The internet is, increasingly, how the government delivers information and some services. There are other ways of doing it, but they’re much less convenient. Add to that the increasing number of services coming through teh interwebs – VoIP, TV etc. – and it looks more and more essential to everyday life. Whether that makes it a fundamental right, I don’t know – I have a couple of reservations about the discourse on fundamental rights – but as it becomes more and more ‘how things are done’, it does move up the hierarchy.
There are also interesting implications for people who, for whatever reason, cannot or do not use the internet. Even considering listing it as a human right shows its utility and means, by extension, that the unconnected are unable to exercise what a lot of people consider a fundamental human right.
.-= Dave Cole´s last blog ..Dave at the @PodDelusion =-.
The idea about the human right of the access to the information is the only way we could boost the innovation with minimum cost. As simple as that.
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