Everyday another story emerges about how increasing use of automated algorithmic decision-making can produce a variety of unintended consequences. The effects are felt in health care, employment, education, finance and insurance, crime prevention or surveillance – the list goes on.

In response to these concerns and the growth of AI, the European Union in 2022 agreed a Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles for the Digital Decade. It aims to uphold EU fundamental rights (including the EU Charter on Fundamental Rights). Tellingly, the Declaration contains a new commitment to a ‘right to a human decision’ over systems based on algorithms that ‘affect people’s safety and fundamental rights’.

A recent post by Yuval Shany on the AI Ethics at Oxford Blog noted that this emerging right to oversight by a human decision-maker is increasingly being proposed and accepted by countries in both the global north and south. He writes:

Given the relationship between the justifications invoked for the right to a human decision and the justifications attached to other human rights protecting core human values such as due process, political participation, equality and dignity, it appears that a new right to a human decision could fit well within the corpus of universal and inalienable human rights.

But declarations of principle are one thing, deriving workable solutions to complex problems quite another. For the right to a human decision maker to make a difference, decision-makers will need to be competent (and equipped with the right expertise and skills) to oversee the increasingly complex and opaque processes embedded in computer systems.

In fact, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) already requires human decision makers to undertake ‘meaningful human review’. They must, according to the independent DPO Centre (Data Protection Officer) blog

understand how the AI system works; to recognise when the system is likely to produce misleading or incorrect recommendations; to understand the external or other factors that should influence decision making that an AI system would not consider; and how to document their decision making to be transparent and accountable.

However, in March 2023, Mozilla Corporation published a study showing how in reality companies and organizations rarely prioritize ‘meaningful transparency’ about AI.

Until real transparency is actually implemented, there will be more Horizon scandals. The message is clear: people must be able to exercise their communication rights to know how decisions that affect them are made and who (or in the world of AI,’ ‘what’ algorithms) make them, on what criteria. This is a real, practical and urgent AI challenge that remains to be addressed.

Photo: Stock-Asso

The report notes that, “2019 was characterised by waves of public uprisings of remarkable magnitude in each of the world regions, demanding changes to how people were governed. The role human rights defenders (HRDs) played in these protests ranged from organising and mobilising to monitoring and documenting human rights violations, and to assisting those who were injured or arrested.”

In 2019, the number of human rights defenders killed working to protect the environment, free speech, LGBTQ rights and indigenous lands numbered 304. The report names them. Two thirds of the killings took place in Latin America, where impunity from prosecution has long been the norm.

In 2019 in Colombia, targeted violence against community leaders opposing environmentally destructive mega-projects led to 103 murders. The Philippines was the second deadliest country with 43 killings, followed by Honduras, Brazil, and Mexico.

The report details some of the digital security risks facing human rights defenders (HRDs), who faced defamation, trolling and harassment campaigns, and unauthorised access to social media accounts, information from which was then used to jeopardize the reputations and safety of defenders.

Authorities also led coordinated campaigns of complaint to social media companies which targeted HRDs’ accounts in order to get them suspended or shut down, and thereby limit their reach and possibly lose their follower bases.

In addition, “Internet shutdown, restricting access or blocking certain communication tools such as social media and instant messaging during protests, social upheavals or crises were commonplace in 2019. This impacted the work and security of HRDs in numerous ways; most obviously, with a communications blackout it was far more difficult for HRDs to report on human rights violations, communicate securely, organise and mobilise themselves.”

The report cites evidence that governments are colluding with private companies that manufacture spyware in order to target human rights activists, noting that “it is jarring that so little is being done to prevent the export of this surveillance and spying technology to repressive regimes.”

Digital technology has its upside and its downside. Human rights defenders are made vulnerable by its use, yet depend on it to record and publicise violations. It’s a double-edged sword.

Photo: frontlinedefenders.org

Internet freedom includes digital rights, freedom of information, the right to Internet access, freedom from censorship, and net neutrality.

In Russia, a new law enabling the government to disconnect users from the Internet went into effect at the end of October 2019. Press freedom advocacy group Reporters without Borders (RSF) – which ranks Russia 149th out of 180 countries in terms of press freedom – says the law allows authorities to block content without telling the public what has been blocked and why.

Under the new law, the Russian authorities can isolate the country from parts of the global Internet. The aim, according to the government, is to keep the Russian network functioning smoothly in the event of a crisis or an undefined “security threat”.

The law also creates an independent Russian Domain Name System (DNS). When it comes into effect in January 2021, Russian users will not be able to determine what website they are sent to when they enter an address. The system can direct them to a fake web site or to none at all.

The move to increase government control over the Internet is reminiscent of old-style Soviet censorship and is part of a long-term national policy trend. Since 2016, a law has required social networks to store data about Russian users on servers within the country. It was presented as an anti-terrorism measure, but many criticized it as an attempt to control online platforms that can be used to organize anti-government demonstrations. And in 2017, officials put forward a proposal to route 95% of Internet traffic locally by 2020.

The state already has a monopoly over federal broadcasting channels, which interferes with people’s right to freedom of information. While there are independent media, they are small and publish only on the Internet. The new law can be used to silence them.

For a while, Internet blogs became the samizdat (self-publishing intended to avoid censorship) of the digital era. In his autobiography To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter, the Russian-born British human rights activist Vladimir Bokovsky, who died 27 October 2019, wrote, “Samizdat: I write it myself, edit it myself, censor it myself, publish it myself, distribute it myself, and spend jail time for it myself.”

Russians today undoubtedly face similar penalties under a law obviously aimed at curbing freedom of expression and opinion.

Photo above: Rally demanding internet freedom. Photo: Alexey Mironov/Shutterstock

Imagine the abode of the future – house, apartment, hotel room, log cabin, prison cell – equipped with a “plasma wall” incorporating all the telecommunications interfaces that enable social and cultural activity. Each wall would integrate computer screen, television, telephone, surveillance system (security and emergency), art and photo gallery, digital concert hall, memory and other personal devices.

M. Forster’s futuristic short story, The Machine Stops (1909) begins:

“Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk – that is all the furniture. And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh – a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs.”

George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) features “telescreens” – television and security cameras used by the ruling Party in Oceania to keep its subjects under constant surveillance in order to forestall conspiracies. Telescreens regularly broadcast fake news about Oceania’s military victories, economic production figures, and bulletins from the Ministry of Truth.

In The Republic (380 BCE), the Greek philosopher Plato describes a large cave inhabited by prisoners chained up since childhood. Not only are their arms and legs bound, but their heads are held in place so that they are compelled to gaze at a wall in front of them.

Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway along which people carry “figures of men and animals made of wood, stone, and other materials”. On the wall in front of them, the prisoners see shadows cast and they hear distorted echoes of noises from the walkway. The prisoners take the shadows and the echoes for real since these are all they have ever seen or heard.

Is this an image of society today? Chained to screens from childhood and linked to “friends” through social media, today’s prisoners take digital images and sounds for real, digital acquaintance for live encounters, digital gossip for genuine exchanges of meaning. The will to be in communication is being sapped, enfeebled, enslaved. What will become of us?

Photo above:  Willyam Bradberry/Shutterstock

As the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) points out, not only is the Internet a pathway to information, communication, and economic opportunity, it is increasingly necessary to access basic commercial and public services. As more of the world becomes digital, those unable to connect will inevitably be left behind.

The United Nations has put forward 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDG 17 aims to “Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development”. It calls for enhancing “the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology”, whose measure is “Proportion of individuals using the Internet”.

As A4AI’s Affordability Report 2019 summarises:

“For the 50% of the world unable to connect, the greatest barrier remains affordability. Across Africa, the average cost for just 1GB data is 7.12% of the average monthly salary. In some countries, 1GB costs as much as 20% of the average salary – too expensive for all but the wealthiest few. If the average US earner paid 7.12% of their income for access, 1GB data would cost USD $373 per month! This gulf underlines the challenge we have to bridge the global affordability gap and ensure that everyone has affordable Internet access.”

The Report calls on Governments to use their policy and regulatory powers to build competitive broadband markets that provide users with lower costs and high quality services. In doing so, they should focus on three core areas necessary to support healthy, competitive markets:

• Policymakers should support robust operating rules, and regulators should provide regulatory certainty for service providers to help their long-term planning and to encourage network investments.
• Regulators and policymakers should play a key role in facilitating infrastructure sharing among operators, investing in high-capacity intermediate links between the core network and the small subnetworks at the edge of the network, and allocating spectrum in a fair and transparent way.
• Governments should use their regulatory powers to support a competitive market environment as well as invest in opening up markets to new providers and end users.

Civil society is a crucial actor in the struggle for more open, inclusive, and democratic media systems. As such, civil society actors need strategies to implement concrete changes to communication and information legislation and policy, related to issues such as equitable access to information and knowledge and to the Internet.

Photo by Robo Wunderkind on Unsplash

This number is expected to increase once developing countries – where most of the world’s children live –become digitized.
This is both exciting and worrisome. Exciting because it has been established that connectivity opens doors to new educational experiences, skills, and other benefits. Worrisome because of what we know and experience about the Internet’s darker side.

A new report by the UN Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development has identified the following online risks for those aged 18 years and under: Sexual abuse, exploitation and trafficking; online harassment, victimization, and cyberbullying; radicalization and recruitment by extremist organizations; exposure to misinformation and age-inappropriate content, such as pornography or violence; apps and games designed to encourage unhealthy habits and behaviors; illegal or unethical data harvesting and theft; and the normalization of gender-based violence through exposure to online abuse materials.
The report, Child Online Safety: Minimizing the Risk of Violence, Abuse and Exploitation Online, cites numerous statistics that show the extent of the problem now, and its potential to escalate. For instance, the World Health Organization estimates that every year, at least 200 million children are sexually abused, with much of it taking place online, or captured and distributed digitally.

The challenges in addressing these problems, says the report, include the inconsistency of or lack of legislation across jurisdictions on child abuse crimes committed online, and the lack of regulations and laws that hold service providers accountable for child abuse material hosted on their platforms. Newly digitized countries are at greater risk, because often “educational and law enforcement infrastructures will have difficulty keeping up with sophisticated and determined criminals misusing digital platforms and services,” the report notes.

The fact that digital spaces where children spend time – such as social media, live-streaming apps, and interactive games— are often un-moderated compounds the problem, the report says. Digital companies often design technology “with limited or no consideration about the ways these could be used to exploit or abuse a child,” it adds.
Only a “unified and coordinated global approach” by governments, international institutions, private sector companies and civil society can combat these problems, the report stresses. “We know that it takes a village to keep children safe both online and offline.”

There are now more than 2.2 billion people under the age of 18, making them “the biggest vulnerable group,” in the world, the report states. They are also the fastest-growing online demographic in a world that is in the midst of the fourth Industrial Revolution, which offers even greater opportunities and risks.

If we care about our children and if we want them to gain the full benefits of connectivity, we cannot afford to wait any longer.

Photo above: Nadezda/Shutterstock

But it was only during the Arab Spring that many came to realize that television wasn’t the only way of keeping people informed. Social media had become a prominent force in not only raising world-wide awareness in seconds but also bringing people together to protest almost anything.

Protests used to recruit members by circulating advertisements, such as pamphlets and radio announcements. After months of planning, the March on Washington became the pinnacle of rallies in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, when hundreds of thousands joined to protest for full employment and racial equality in the United States. Almost a decade of advocacy and resistance went by before the U.S. government decided to enact the anti-segregation legislation.

In today’s world, it takes a matter of seconds to raise awareness of issues around the world. From South Sudan to Serbia, 2019 has seen the majority of protest recruiting, organization and advocacy go digital. Expanding consciousness, both regionally and internationally, creates increased pressure for governments to concede to the demands of the masses.

In some countries, social media are the only way to make voices heard. In reference to the Serbian protests, actor Branislav Trifunović states that, “Social networks have remained the only possible way for the people to be told, truthfully, about what is happening. Broadcasters are, in one way or another, owned by the ruling party.”

However, governments are catching on. During the 2011 Egyptian uprisings, the government ordered an internet blackout to halt protestors from disseminating information and setting up demonstrations. In 2019 alone, Indonesia, Kashmir, Sri Lanka and South Sudan, among others, saw a complete internet blackout during their protests in order to prevent dissent and backlash.

As a result, people are turning to more encrypted mediums of communication. In April 2019, the government of Hong Kong proposed a bill allowing fugitives to be extradited to mainland China, causing millions to protest. After the bill was withdrawn, protesters shifted their focus to advocating for full democracy, civil liberties, and complete autonomy from China. According to the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong protestors have been forced to utilize encrypted messaging apps and peer-to-peer communication to ensure anonymity and avoid government detection and persecution.

Nevertheless, people shouldn’t have to find loopholes on the internet to ensure their voice and message are heard. The right to seek and disseminate information is a basic human right and should not be infringed by the government – especially to suppress individual opinions and democracy as a whole.

How governments across the world choose to deal with this will determine their genuine commitment to citizens’ fundamental human rights.

Photo above: John Ye/Shutterstock 

Access to communication and information tools and platforms, including digital platforms, is essential to enable us all to exercise our human rights. In today’s world, fully exercising basic rights such as the right to freedom of expression, access to information, freedom of assembly, or to private communication without real access to digital, internet-based communication is inconceivable. Furthermore, our ability to exercise these basic communication rights is critical to enable us to exercise other human rights, such as the right to access to justice or to education, because it enables us to understand our rights and responsibilities and denounce abuse, therefore making access to digital communication platforms critical.

Nevertheless, access to digital communication varies widely across developed and developing countries. While developed countries like Canada are in the midst of a transition between 4G to 5G networks that promises to open up a broad range of new possibilities—such as the Internet of Things (IoT)—as a result of 5G’s ability to handle massive amounts of data[1], some 3.4 billion people, mainly in developing countries, are still offline[2].

This disparity presents a dilemma for people (policy-makers, activists, researchers) and organizations (private sector, governments, international organizations) working for the democratization of communication and information everywhere: how do help unleash the full potential of open and accessible communication and information brought about by 5G wireless while also working towards affordable and accessible digital communication for all?

Driven by the principle of solidarity and by the promise of economic and human development made possible as a result of greater connectivity, those who stand to gain the most in terms of the profits made possible by the 5G revolution should take a leadership role in helping to bring affordable and robust internet access to all, especially the most marginalize people in developing countries. Embracing and reinvigorating Universal Service and Access Funds is one way to do more in that direction.

The 5G dividend
The digital transformation of the past 20 years has had a major economic impact. For the media and advertising industry, for example, the rise of digital internet-based services translated to major disruption, as revenue shifted from media companies to Internet companies such as Google and Facebook; today these two companies have a market share of 63% of the total global advertising market, roughly USD $61.6 billion per year[3].

A similar situation may take place as 5G wireless connectivity becomes the norm in developed economies over the next few years, mainly as a result of the likely rise of new businesses and increased productivity.

We’re looking at a world where not just all people are connected but all things are, too: cars will be connected to roads, patients and their medical devices to their doctors and smart cities will offer all new connected services to residents and workers. And 5G will be the key to unlocking the nascent demand for IoT… the number of 5G connections around the world will have hit 1.3 billion by 2025, amounting to around 40 percent, or 2.7 billion, of the world’s people.[4].

This shift will have major economic consequences. For example, the share of European GDP linked to mobile technologies is set to rise from 3.3% in 2017 to 4.1 in 2022, at a time when 5G connectivity is expected to booming in Europe[5]. The global economic impact of 5G is expected to reach USD 12 trillion by 2035[6].

Reinvigorating Universal Service and Access Funds
Many people around the world live in remote, rural, or impoverished communities that lack robust Internet infrastructure and services. This is the result of, among other things, the fact that for large telecommunication companies, providing services in these communities may not make economic sense.

In order to address this situation, many countries around the world have set up Universal Service and Access Funds (USAF) to help bring telecommunication services to these types of communities. USAFs are funds made up of contributions made by telecommunication companies and administered by the state. USAFs are meant to help address access gaps by setting up telecom services that will eventually become commercially viable.

However, not all countries have USAFs, and in the cases where USAFs exist, they are often underutilized. For example, only 23 of 54 countries in Africa have active USAFs[7]. Crucially, USAFs have great potential to support community-managed networks to meet the connectivity needs of rural or remote communities, but so far they have mostly failed to deliver[8].

In this context, USAFs should receive greater attention in the context of internet governance as they represent a concrete mechanism to help address access gaps. Private, public, and civil society actors should work together to encourage more sustainable contributions to national USAFs, to promote the establishment of a global mechanism for telecoms and companies benefitting from 5G from developed countries to contribute towards a global-level USAF, and to promote greater transparency in the management of USAFs.

The inherent challenges of this approach are many, from political will to infrastructure gaps to technical issues. However, by balancing a sense of solidarity, pragmatism, and the promise of economic growth made possible by universal connectivity, much can be done to halt the emergence of a new digital divide.

[1] Shulz, Yogi, 2019. 5G opens new possibilities for businesses. IT World Canada. https://www.itworldcanada.com/blog/5g-opens-new-possibilities-for-businesses/415439

[2] World Econonomic Forum, 2019. More than half of the world’s population is still offline. Here’s what we’re doing about it. World Economic Forum.
https://www.weforum.org/our-impact/creating-hundreds-of-millions-of-new-internet-users

[3] Oghia, Michael J. Governing Digital Convergence: An Issue Paper on Media Development and Internet Governance. Global Forum for Media Development. https://gfmd.info/internet-governance/

[4] Harri, Steve, 2018. The trillion-dollar race: what 5G means to the global economy. Orange Business Services https://www.orange-business.com/en/blogs/trillion-dollar-race-what-5g-means-global-economy

[5] Harri, Steve, 2018. The trillion-dollar race: what 5G means to the global economy. Orange Business Services https://www.orange-business.com/en/blogs/trillion-dollar-race-what-5g-means-global-economy

[6] Rosenberg, Don, 2018. How 5G will change the world. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/01/the-world-is-about-to-become-even-more-interconnected-here-s-how/

[7] World Wide Web Foundation, 2018. UNIVERSAL SERVICE AND ACCESS FUNDS: An Untapped Resource to Close the Gender Digital Divide.  https://webfoundation.org/docs/2018/03/Using-USAFs-to-Close-the-Gender-Digital-Divide-in-Africa.pdf

[8] Carlos Baca, Luca Belli, Erick Huerta & Karla Velasco, 2018. Community Networks in Latin America: Challenges, Regulations and Solutions. Internet Society.

Photo: Kheng Guan Toh/Shutterstock

An Associated Press piece in The Guardian newspaper (“YouTube fined $170m for collecting children’s personal data”, 4 September 2019) notes a serious violation of children’s right to privacy:

“Google’s video site YouTube has been fined $170m to settle allegations it collected children’s personal data without their parents’ consent. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) fined Google $136m and the company will pay an additional $34m to New York state to resolve similar allegations. The fine is the largest the agency has yet levied against Google, although it is tiny compared with the $5bn fine the FTC imposed against Facebook this year for privacy violations.”

With all the furore around personal privacy and the sale of data to third parties, Google should have known better. FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra noted that this is the third time since 2011 that the agency had sanctioned Google for privacy violations. He went on to say, “This latest violation is extremely serious.”

According to UNICEF, “The rights of children… include a variety of communication rights: the right to be heard and to be taken seriously; to free speech and to information; to maintain privacy; to develop cultural identity; and to be proud of one’s heritage and beliefs… Communication efforts need to respect children’s privacy and dignity and foster their self-esteem and confidence.”

In the digital era, children’s communication rights are particularly difficult to protect. Access to digital platforms is not without its safeguards, but there are always loopholes as well as devious people seeking to take advantage of unsuspecting children. In addition, iPhones are ubiquitous and are increasingly a vital part of education systems and practices.

Children need protection when personal data is being collected and processed because they may be less aware of the risks involved. Companies making use of children’s personal data need to set in place procedures that safeguard children from the outset, and design systems and processes with this in mind.

Children have the same rights as adults over their personal data. These include the right to access their personal data; to request rectification; to object to processing; and to have their personal data erased. Even if children do not know or understand their rights, others do.

Google has signally failed in its duty and clearly deserves the penalty imposed by the Federal Trade Commission – even though the fine was not heavy enough.

The book appeared before the digital era, when, as Peter Pomerantsev points out in “The disinformation age: a revolution in propaganda” (The Guardian, 27 July 2019), the availability of:

“More information was supposed to mean more freedom to stand up to the powerful, but has also given the powerful new ways to crush and silence dissent. More information was supposed to mean a more informed debate, but we seem less capable of deliberation than ever. More information was supposed to mean mutual understanding across borders, but it has also made possible new and more subtle forms of subversion. We live in a world in which the means of manipulation have gone forth and multiplied, a world of dark ads, psy-ops, hacks, bots, soft facts, deep fakes, fake news, Putin, trolls, Trump.”

The penultimate sentence of Manufacturing Consent, however, still resonates with today’s concerns over data abuse, disinformation, and fake news on social media:

“The organization and self-education of groups in the community and workplace, and their networking and activism, continue to be the fundamental elements in steps toward the democratization of our social life and meaningful social change.”

If filter bubbles, echo chambers, and factual inaccuracy are setting political and social agendas by reducing the diversity of opinion, one inevitable result is the loss of perspectives and experiences that might otherwise contribute to greater social justice and progress. The climate crisis is a case in point, where a proliferation of voices and outlets attempting to counter scientific evidence means that those unwilling to face reality have a plethora of sources to bolster their mistaken views.

Pomerantsev argues that in the digital era, the ground has shifted and become unstable: “This has produced a propaganda model that is very different from the 20th century. Instead of stuffing an ideology down people’s throats via TV and radio, a spin doctor has to tailor different messages to different social media groups.”

In a world of digital anonymity, since unquestioning consensus is the name of the game, we need to be opening people’s eyes and ears.