EC Readies Human Rights Guidelines for ICT, Privacy Group Urges Better Export Controls

The European Commission is preparing human rights guidelines for the information and communication technologies sector, said Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes Monday in a lecture at Humboldt University in Berlin. Part of the EU plan to secure human rights online and offline includes allowing nongovernmental organizations to trial censorship-evading tools on Europe’s large-scale Internet testbed and mesh networks, she said. But sometimes those tools are used by repressive regimes instead of by activists, she said. Making human rights part of a telco’s corporate responsibility is common sense, Kroes said. An EU company supplying surveillance systems to a despotic government “is more than just an image problem, it is a major ethical problem,” Kroes said. The EC is working on human rights guidance for the ICT industry, she said.

Privacy International welcomes EC efforts to incorporate human rights into corporate social responsibility “with enthusiasm, but let’s be clear: The problem of European companies supplying despotic regimes with surveillance technology is already a reality, not an imagined hypothesis,” said spokeswoman Emma Draper Tuesday. Some of those companies have inherently unethical business models, and only the introduction of export laws specifically regulating foreign sales of surveillance products will prevent dangerous equipment and software made in Europe from falling into dictators’ hands, she told us. PI is tussling with the U.K. government over claims that Gamma International’s FinSpy surveillance technology is being marketed and sold abroad without proper export licenses. Gamma says the claims are unfounded.

Kroes also announced the publication of a report by a high-level group (HLG) on media freedom and pluralism in Europe on risks and recommendations for action (http://bit.ly/WRdCbP). The inquiry was sparked by threats to media pluralism and freedom by such things as Hungary’s 2010 media law, which the EC deemed incompatible with EU law, and the U.K. Leveson inquiry into phone-hacking and other media wrongdoing. The EU can only enforce fundamental rights in areas subject to EU law, and “we need to think seriously about whether the EU has sufficient powers in this area to protect our values,” she said.

Among other things, the report recommended that, in view of the Internet’s growing role as a source of information, end-users should be informed about any filtering, selecting or hierarchical ordering of the information they receive, and should have the right to object to the automatic application of such filtering algorithms. Services that offer heavily personalized search results or newsfeeds should allow users to turn off that personalization, and channels or mechanisms through which media are delivered should be entirely neutral in how they handle the content, it said. For digital networks, “Net Neutrality and the end-to-end principle should be enshrined within EU law."

The HLG also recommended a network of national audiovisual regulatory authorities along the lines of the one for electronic communications. Such a body should help share common good practices and set quality media standards, it said. Other suggestions included: (1) The EU must have the power to protect media pluralism and freedoms at the national level to guarantee rights granted by EU treaties to Europeans. (2) Greater harmonization of EU law, such as in the area of libel or data protection in cross-border media activities, is important. (3) European and national authorities should take into account the specific value of media pluralism, and the increasing merger of different channels of communication and media access, in enforcing antitrust rules. The HLG specifically urged antitrust authorities to “monitor with particular attention” new developments in online access to information.

(4) National competition authorities should regularly assess individual nations’ media environments and markets, and highlight threats to pluralism. (5) The EU should designate and fund Europe’s fundamental rights agency to monitor national-level media freedom and pluralism, or, alternatively, set up an independent monitoring center as part of academia. (6) Any changes to journalism’s regulatory framework must be aligned with the “new reality of a fluid media environment” and cover all types of journalistic activities, regardless of the transmission medium. The HLG recommendations “are an important basis for the tough and principled discussion we urgently need in the EU. It starts today,” Kroes said.

"We were quite taken aback by some of the report’s recommendations,” said European Publishers Council Executive Director Angela Mills Wade. Among other things, the EPC rejected the idea that media companies should be regulated by independent bodies monitored by the EC, and that the EU should be able to harmonize national defamation and other media laws.