There should be a “presumption” against regulating free flow of...
There should be a “presumption” against regulating free flow of information and data on the Internet, panelists agreed at a Google event, but disagreed on what balance to strike between protecting personal liberties and free speech, and national security and…
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social and cultural traditions. There’s no absolute in free expression, but when the state reads citizens emails and monitors Web traffic in the name of security, there should be a “presumption” in favor of the individual, John Kampfner, former CEO of the Index on Censorship, told an Internet at Liberty 2012 panel in Washington. When the state seeks to limit individual expression and privacy, it should do so “apologetically” and in as “narrow a sense” as possible, he said. That there should be a “presumption against regulation is probably true,” and countries need to show why they need the authority to monitor online activity, said Stewart Baker, former assistant secretary of homeland security. Asked if there should be international standards for how and when governments can monitor activity, he said there are no “easy answers.” Norms are slowly emerging on that issue, he said. But every country has criminals and there’s a legitimate security-based reason for monitoring them, he said. Baker defended the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), passed last month by the House, saying it undid two “dumb” privacy rules that were bad for security. The measure helps build barriers to receiving things like malware by allowing sharing of information, he said. “At the end of the day, the government has to be protecting people,” he said. Renata Avila, an advocate for the international blogger network Global Voices, said measures taken by the U.S. and the EU in the name of national and regional security are “threatening the fundamental rights” of citizens elsewhere. Stressing the need for privacy, she said people have to have the right to “express ourselves in an anonymous way.” Saying free flow of information and data on the Internet is under assault, Bob Boorstin, Google public policy director, said many countries, including India and Brazil, are considering legislation or regulations that could slow or “strangle” free flow of online information. More than 600 million people now live in countries that engage in substantive or pervasive filtering of online content, said Susan Glasser, editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy, quoting figures put out by the OpenNet Initiative.