Principle 2, Section 2:
- By creating capacity to ensure demands to remove illegal content are done in ways that are consistent with human rights law
Whenever someone says “illegal” my ears perk up. This addresses an existing, ubiquitous issue: how do we decide how to communicate? I consider very little to be problematic, others believe a lot should not be allowed… it’s a pickle. Let’s look at each point.
- Passing appropriate national laws and regulations to ensure the effective enforcement of established international treaty rights on the human rights to freedom of expression, of peaceful association and assembly, and the freedom to access information as applied to online speech, behavior, and online information.
Are there establish “appropriate national laws and regulations” anywhere in the world? To know, we need to understand more about which treaties inform nations.
I normally only hear about legislation when it has gone off the rails, so I don’t have knowledge in this area.
- Funding research and engaging in multi stakeholder forums aimed at developing future regulation on moderation dispute resolution mechanisms and content take-down, including with the aim of limiting the impacts of misinformation and disinformation, to ensure these are aligned with human rights standards.
It is hard to compromise (“multi stakeholder”) when surveillance capitalists are invited to the table. One way to adjust the system is to dis-incentivize misinformation by making it unprofitable to spread it…
- Developing mechanisms to ensure all government content take-down requests are grounded in law, properly documented, comply with human rights standards of legality, necessity and proportionality, include proper notification to the poster and potential audience, and are subject to appeal and judicial review.
This very much applies to the US, and California.
The Court in question denied a temporary restraining order against California Secretary of State, Bill Jones. Jones had previously threatened legal action, causing the sites to shut down.
In 2000, many of the vote pairing web sites were hosted in California, and so when the California Secretary of State, Bill Jones, charged that the web sites were illegal and threatened their creators with criminal prosecution, some (but not all) of the sites reluctantly shut down. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) got involved to protect the web sites, seeking a restraining order against Jones and then a permanent injunction against him, alleging that he had violated the constitutional rights of the web site creators. However, the issue would only be resolved after the 2000 election had already occurred. The media at the time gave little coverage to vote pairing, except for how it was being charged as illegal.
ACLU’s account: ACLU Disappointed With Court Decision Regarding CA Shutdown of Voteswap 2000 | American Civil Liberties Union
Aside from financially supporting ACLU, EFF, and other similar orgs, what can we do to ensure the government properly conducts it’s business?
- Developing mechanisms to ensure meaningful transparency for political advertising.
What is “meaningful transparency for political advertising”? I mean, I kinda get it, but are there examples? Even hypothetical?
Well, these government principles really raise more questions for me, but then again, I’m not an elected official, so maybe that’s okay?