I am supporting the proposal for a DIRECTIVE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL concerning the EU Global Online Freedom Act presented by 8 MEPs to the European Parliament.
More and more authoritarian states as Belarus, Burma, the People’s Republic of China, Cuba, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam censor the internet by blocking websites and filtering search results and intimidate internet users through ‘cyber police’ and obliged registration. As this constitutes a clear violation of human rights under article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, EU action needs to be undertaken, especially since European companies are cooperating with authoritarian governments to restrict the access of citizens to the provision of Internet and information society services.
Technology companies from the US even have succumbed to pressure by authoritarian governments to provide such governments with information about Internet users that has led to the arrest and imprisonment of cyber dissidents, in violation of the corporate responsibility of such companies to protect and uphold human rights. Due to the current lack of self-regulation in the European internet industry the possibility exists that European technology companies will also succumb to such pressures.
The European Union therefore needs a directive on global online freedom and follow the American example where legislators are working on a Global Online Freedom Act (GOFA). This European counterpart of the American GOFA, the EU Global Online Freedom Act (EU – GOFA) must make sure that Europe stays in the fore front of the global promotion of human rights and democratization and the protection of dissidents.
The EU GOFA is a directive which contains provisions on the promotion of global internet freedom, minimum corporate standards for European companies who provide Internet and Information society services and export controls and trade sanctions for internet-restricting countries. The first 8 articles are on the promotion of global internet freedom. Amongst others they state that it is EU policy to promote global free speech on the internet and global free flow of information and provide for the annual designation of Internet restricting countries commissioned by the European Commission. They also provide for the establishment of the Office of Global Internet Freedom (OGIF) as part of the European External Action Service and designate 20 million euros for the development and distribution of anti-censorship tools and services.
Articles 9 until 15 of this directive are on minimum corporate standards for European Internet companies. They contain provisions on the protection of EU and Member State -supported online content, regarding Internet censorship and search engine filtering and rules for European business with content-hosting services in order to create more transparency. The articles also contain provisions on the integrity of user identifying information through the prohibition for European businesses with internet content hosting services to provide personally identifying user information to officials in internet-restricting countries except for legitimate foreign law enforcement purposes. Search engines should also not be located in “internet restricting” countries. The last article of this section contains penalties for failure to uphold the above stated minimum standards for corporate behavior.
The last four articles of this directive (article 16, 17, 18 and 19) are on export controls, regulating the export of products and services which could facilitate internet censorship and on the policy of treating internet censorship as an international barrier to trade.
Freedom of information and speech are basics rights of every human being. It is not acceptable that some countries still do not provide these fundamental rights to its citizens and it is not acceptable that companies from the ‘free’ world support these countries by providing the required technologies or transmitting the data of ‘non-free’ citizens to these countries. The latest breach of freedom of information has been clearly shown by the Chinese government in the attempt to prohibit the access to certain websites to accredited journalists covering the Olympic Games 2009.
Ref. http://www.julesmaaten.eu/_uploads/EU%20GOFA.htm
