Why should we vote in the EU elections? See below! D

Begin forwarded message:

From: "European Digital Rights (EDRi)" <edrigram@edri.org> Subject: EDRi-gram newsletter 17.10, 22 May 2019 Date: 22 May 2019 at 17:14:40 CEST To: edri-news@mailman.edri.org Reply-To: edrigram@edri.org

======================================================================

EDRi-gram

fortnightly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe

EDRi-gram 17.10, 22 May 2019

Read online: https://edri.org/edri-gram/17-10/

======================================================================= Contents =======================================================================

[ … OMISSIS …]

2. Why should we vote in the EU elections?

[ … OMISSIS …]

12. About

[ … OMISSIS …]

======================================================================= 2. Why should we vote in the EU elections? =======================================================================

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/.

======================================================================= 3. Pseudo-counter-terrorism at the cost of human rights? =======================================================================

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-prevent...

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)

[ … OMISSIS …]

============================================================ 12. About ============================================================

EDRi-gram is a fortnightly newsletter about digital civil rights by European Digital Rights (EDRi), an association of civil and human rights organisations from across Europe. EDRi takes an active interest in developments in the EU accession countries and wants to share knowledge and awareness through the EDRi-gram.

All contributions, suggestions for content, corrections or agenda-tips are most welcome. Errors are corrected as soon as possible and are visible on the EDRi website.

Except where otherwise noted, this newsletter is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. See the full text at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Newsletter editor: Heini Jarvinen - edrigram@edri.org

Information about EDRi and its members: http://www.edri.org/

European Digital Rights needs your help in upholding digital rights in the EU. If you wish to help us promote digital rights, please consider making a private donation. https://edri.org/donate/

- EDRi-gram subscription information subscribe by e-mail To: edri-news-request@mailman.edri.org Subject: subscribe You will receive an automated e-mail asking to confirm your request. Unsubscribe by e-mail To: edri-news-request@mailman.edri.org Subject: unsubscribe

- Newsletter archive Back issues are available at: http://www.edri.org/newsletters/

- Help Please ask edrigram@edri.org if you have any problems with subscribing or unsubscribing.

Dott. Diego Latella - Senior Researcher CNR-ISTI, Via Moruzzi 1, 56124 Pisa, Italy (http:www.isti.cnr.it) FM&&T Lab. (http://fmt.isti.cnr.it) http://www.isti.cnr.it/People/D.Latella - ph: +390506212982, mob: +39 348 8283101, fax: +390506212040 =================== The quest for a war-free world has a basic purpose: survival. But if in the process we learn how to achieve it by love rather than by fear, by kindness rather than compulsion; if in the process we learn how to combine the essential with the enjoyable, the expedient with the benevolent, the practical with the beautiful, this will be an extra incentive to embark on this great task. Above all, remember your humanity. -- Sir Joseph Rotblat