Human Rights and the Internet

Citation

Duff, A. (2001), "Human Rights and the Internet", Library Review, Vol. 50 No. 4, pp. 203-204. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.2001.50.4.203.4

Much information society research has a highly academic air, a fact which has occasionally evoked the ire of a certain class of tough‐minded individuals at the practitioner end of information science. What we have under review here, however, is an example of a book to which not even the most anti‐intellectual of practitioners could object. Human Rights and the Internet takes us straight to the cutting edge, to where the information society meets – and, heart‐warmingly, sometimes overcomes – the satanic practices of state torture and killing.

This is an edited collection consisting largely of short case‐study chapters by worthies from the human rights community, including activists, politicians, and academics, many of them Canadian (although one of the editors, Edward Halpin, teaches information management at a UK University). However, an immediately evident strength is the international range of the discussions. We learn of European responses to the Echelon (surveillance) issue; of the epic struggle of the independent Belgrade radio station Radio B92 (and particularly its utilisation of Real Audio Internet broadcasting software) under the Hitler‐emulating Milosevic; of dissident women’s electronic newsgroups there and elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia; of the Vanished Gallery Web site commemorating “missing” Argentinian innocents (those victimised prior to the heroic knock‐on liberation of Argentina by British forces under Margaret Thatcher); of the successful campaigning via the Internet by Mexico’s Zapatista rebels; of Net activism in East Timor, and much more. It is humbling and moving to read of such bravery under the oppressor’s heel, of extraordinary people for whom the cheap communicational capabilities of the Internet have been a godsend, often making the difference between life and death. It is also nothing short of thrilling to read, for example, of the declaration of “virtual sovereignty” for East Timor, a step which reactionary forces welcomed with a major hacking attack. Chapter endnotes supply many references to Web addresses to which one is inspired to turn, these searing shots of the real world whetting the appetite for more knowledge of ongoing human rights activities.

Such accounts have a ring of authenticity and one does not expect heavy‐hitting scholarly credentials. On the other hand, those chapters which attempt a more analytical or philosophical approach are less convincing, or at least they will seem so to the average librarian. Thus discussions of information overload, the need for information management skills, and the technical problems of networking, while they may be exercising human rights workers compiling their first database or whatever, will appear old hat to library professionals in many parts of the world. Similarly, the chapters covering privacy, online pornography, and the like, are “worthy but dull”, adding nothing of significance to the long‐running debates on these issues. There lies a slight dilemma for this book: is it aimed at the human rights and NGO (non‐governmental organisation) professional communities only or at the average layperson as well, and, if it reaches for the latter, is it trying to strengthen their grasp of general Internet matters as well as of human rights issues? The layperson might also ask whether the definition of human rights violations should be drawn so widely that it includes breaches of online privacy or pornographic abuses. One feels intuitively that human rights activists should concentrate on saving people from acute life‐threatening phenomena such as torture and hit squads, and leave the finer points of civil or social rights to other types of agencies.

However, these are minor criticisms. While Human Rights and the Internet is lacking in rigour and can as a result be bland or salesman‐like in tone, it symbolises, and for the most part realises, a worthwhile literary and humanitarian project. It represents value for money because it details ways in which the Internet, a medium of genius which has in recent years been compromised by advertisers and other predatory forces of e‐commerce, can still be used for laudable altruistic purposes. Viva the revolution.