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2. Why should we vote in the EU elections?
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What are your plans for the coming days? We have a suggestion: The
European elections will take place - and it's absolutely crucial to go
and vote!
In the past, the EU has often defended our digital rights and freedoms.
This was possible because the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs)
– who we, the EU citizens, elected to represent us in the EU
decision-making – are open to hearing our concerns.
So, what exactly has the EU done for our digital rights?
Privacy
The EU has possibly the best protection for citizens' personal data: the
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This law was adopted thanks
to some very dedicated European parliamentarians, and it enhances
everyone’s rights, regardless of nationality, gender, economic status
and so on. Since the GDPR came into effect, we now have for example the
right to access our personal data a company or an organisation holds on
us, the right to explanation and human intervention regarding automated
decisions, and the right to object to profiling measures.
You can read more about your rights under the GDPR here:
https://edri.org/a-guide-individuals-rights-under-gdpr/Net neutrality
Europe has become a global standard-setter in the defence of the open,
competitive and neutral internet. After a very long battle, and with the
support of half a million people that responded to a public
consultation, the principles that make the internet an open platform for
change, freedom, and prosperity are upheld in the EU.
In June 2015, negotiations between the three European Union institutions
led to new rules to safeguard net neutrality - the principle according
to which everyone can communicate with everyone on the internet without
discrimination. This principle was put at risk by the ambiguous,
unbalanced EU Commission proposal, which would have undermined the way
in which the internet functions. In 2016, the Body of European
Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) was tasked with
publishing guidelines to provide a common approach to implementing the
Regulation in the EU Member States. In June 2016, BEREC published the
draft guidelines that confirm strong protections for net neutrality and
open internet.
ACTA
In 2012, the MEPs voted against an international trade agreement called
the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which, if concluded,
would have likely resulted in online censorship. It would have had major
implications for freedom of expression, access to culture and privacy,
it will harm international trade and stifle innovation. Therefore,
people decided to demonstrate and there were protests against this draft
agreement in over 200 European cities calling for a rejection. In the
end, the Parliament listened to the concerns of the people and voted
against ACTA.
Protecting whisteblowers
Whistleblowers fight for transparency, democracy and the rule of law,
reporting unlawful or improper conduct that undermine the public
interest and our rights and freedoms. In 2017, the European Parliament
called on legislation to protect whistleblowers, making a clear
statement recognising the essential role of whistleblowers in our
society. This Resolution started the process of putting into place
effective protections for whistleblowers throughout the EU. In April
2019, the Parliament adopted the new Directive, which is still to be
approved by the EU Council.
Your vote matters for digital rights
In many occasions, the EU Parliamentarians have stood for our rights and
freedoms. It's important that also the new EU Parliament will be a
strong defender of our digital rights – because there are so many
important fights coming up.
The European elections are one of the rare occasions where we can take
our future and the future of Europe into our own hands. Your vote
matters. Please go and vote for digital rights on 23-27 May!
You can find more information about the elections online, for example at
https://www.european-elections.eu, https://www.thistimeimvoting.eu/ and
https://www.howtovote.eu/.
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3. Pseudo-counter-terrorism at the cost of human rights?
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The Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Arden showed compassionate and
empathetic leadership in her response to the Christchurch terrorist
attack on a mosque in her country on 15 March 2019. On 16 May in Paris,
Arden and the French President Emmanuel Macron co-launched the
Christchurch Call to Action to Eliminate Terrorist and Violent Extremist
Content Online.
The day before, EDRi joined a meeting the New Zealand government held
with civil society and academics. The purpose of the meeting was to
present the call and to hear recommendations moving forward on the call
implementation and joint work to combat terrorism and white supremacy.
While the approach of the New Zealand government is sensible, and the
final text of the call to action does include human rights safeguards
for a free and open internet, the initiative is naïve as it relies on
questionable companies and governments’ practices, inefficient in
combatting terrorism, and opens the door to serious human rights breaches.
A “sacrificed process”
In the words of Arden herself, civil society consultations were
“sacrificed” to allow for a swift process and for the call to be
launched, on the occasion of the Tech for Good conference and the G7
Digital Ministers meeting. NGOs and other stakeholders such as
journalists, academics and the technical community did not get a chance
to submit contributions before the finalisation of the call. The rushed
timeline was an obstacle to any meaningful participation in the process.
The lack of anti-racism organisations or organisations from the Global
South in the consultative meeting in Paris is a major gap for an
initiative purporting to address “violent extremism” globally.
Failure to address social media business model
The call to action refrains from criticising and questioning the
business model of Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple in order to get
them to sign the initiative. However, as long as profit is made mainly
from behavioural advertising revenue which increases by showing
polarising, violent or illegal content, the entire system will continue
to promote such content and lead people to share it. Human nature and
all of its addictions are encouraged and amplified by opaque artificial
intelligence.
Human rights concerns
As state authorities are unable to call out the big tech for larger
issues, the Christchurch call places emphasis on content removal and
filtering of broadly and ill-defined content. “Terrorist and violent
extremist” content can be left to the appreciation of law enforcement
authorities and companies, which opens risks of arbitrariness against
legitimate dissent from groups at risk of racism, human rights
defenders, civil society organisations or political activists. Solutions
such as upload filters or rapid removals of content can be turned into
censorship and are error-prone, as the European Commission acknowledges,
by stating that “biases and inherent errors and discrimination can lead
to erroneous decisions”. Invaluable and unique evidence of human rights
abuses committed by groups or governments can also disappear, as
examples from the war in Syria show. UN Special Rapporteur on human
rights and counter-terrorism estimates that around 67% of people
affected by counter-terrorism or security policies are human rights
defenders.
Handing over policing powers and regulating freedom of expression to the
private sector, with no accountability or possibility of redress, is
highly problematic for the rule of law. Companies' terms of services do
not replace laws when it comes to assessing what is legal and what is
not. In addition to this problem, there should be redress mechanisms to
review whether in fact only illegal terrorist content has been removed −
otherwise human rights will be at risk in countries that do not have the
same respect for the rule of law than New Zealand.
Algorithms used to prevent uploading or delete content are not
transparent, and do not allow for accountability or redress mechanisms.
Therefore unaccountable removal of content and incentives for
over-removal of content must be explicitly rejected. Likewise, law
enforcement authorities must be held accountable by being obliged to
submit transparency reports regarding the requests to remove content,
including the number of investigations and criminal cases opened as a
result of these requests. There are many initiatives addressing the
broad range of “harmful online content” such as the upcoming G7 Biarritz
Summit, France and the UK’s online harms/platform duties proposals and
the EU Regulation on Terrorist Content Online. The overall impact of
initiatives that risk limiting freedom of expression needs to be
evaluated based on evidence. This is currently not the case.
Broader societal efforts are needed to effectively combat terrorism -
online and offline. These include education, social inclusion,
questioning the impact of austerity, accountability for politicians
using hate speech and stigmatising rhetoric, and real community involvement.
What the YouTube and Facebook statistics aren’t telling us (24.04.219)
https://edri.org/what-the-youtube-and-facebook-statistics-arent-telling-us/
Commission working document - Impact assessment accompanying the
Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council
on preventing the dissemination of terrorist content online (12.09.2018)
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/files/soteu2018-preventing-terrorist-content-online-swd-408_en.pdf
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of
human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism on the
role of measures to address terrorism and violent extremism on closing
civic space and violating the rights of civil society actors and human
rights defenders (18.02.2019)
https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Terrorism/SR/A_HRC_40_52_EN.pdf
(Contribution by Claire Fernandez, EDRi)