Balancing Rights in the Information Society: Human Rights and the Protection of Public Security (original) (raw)
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BALANCE FOR PRIVACY, FREEDOM OF INFORMATION AND NATIONAL SECURITY
This article examines how the continuous escalation of new emerging threats to national security has forced states to reconsider the balance of civil liberties and national security established in international human rights treaties. In the first section, the article reviews reasons for different interpretations of international treaties and implementations of legislation among states. In the second section, the article reveals divergent balances for the privacy, freedom of information and national security between European and American judges and politicians. And in the third section, author discusses on considerations on how to overcome contradicting approaches of balance in the future. In particular, the balance of civil liberties and national security established in international human rights treaties in practice has shifted among states significantly that produced polar dichotomy between judicial, legislative and executive powers and tend to crack existing understanding of democracy and the rule of law. «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» 1 B F
Information Society, Human Rights and the Security Dilemma
This paper proposes to focus on the security dilemma, which becomes more and more complex due to a number of factors. On the one hand, there is the proliferation of a staggering cybertechnology that mates with the demands of the information society in the field of Human Rights (DH), particularly the right to Freedom of Speech. and Information (FSI) facilitated by another proliferation of Cyber Social Media (CSM). On the other hand, there is the will of states to ensure public order (PO) or internal security but also to guard against external threats. The argument behind this work is that biopolitical theories of governmentality have shortened the distance between internal and external security thus complicating the security problem because abuses from ignorance of the law or its misinterpretation can arise from both CSM users and/or law enforcement agencies. Examples taken from real life as well as a body of documents collected from WhatsApp concretely illustrate the opacity of laws in Morocco as well as elsewhere (USA and Canada), leading to conflicts of laws, but especially to abuses on both sides.
The Struggle Between Liberties and Authorities in the Information Age
The “struggle between liberties and authorities”, as described by Mill, refers to the tension between individual rights and the rules restricting them that are imposed by public authorities exerting their power over civil society. In this paper I argue that contemporary information societies are experiencing a new form of such a struggle, which now involves liberties and authorities in the cyber-sphere and, more specifically, refers to the tension between cyber-security measures and individual liberties. Ethicists, political philosophers and political scientists have long debated how to strike an ethically sound balance between security measures and individual rights. I argue that such a balance can only be reached once individual rights are clearly defined, and that such a definition cannot prescind from an analysis of individual well-being in the information age. Hence, I propose an analysis of individual well-being which rests on the capability approach, and I then identify a set of rights that individuals should claim for themselves. Finally, I consider a criterion for balancing the proposed set of individual rights with cyber-security measures in the information age.
Information rights and national security
Government Information Quarterly, 2005
The changes in the global information landscape, as epitomized by the reaction of governments to the 9/11 attacks, resulted in legislation, policy, and the formation of agencies that have affected many issues related to information and its use. This article examines the recent multiplicity of challenges that affect citizens' control and use of information. In the name of the war on terror, greater national security, and globalization trends, information laws, and policies often go further than is necessary and impact on the information rights of citizens. In this article, we advocate for bringing together what are at times disparate information issues under one label, namely, binformation rightsQ (which include privacy, freedom of expression, access, etc.). Information rights are apprehended from a user-centered perspective (i.e., users as citizens, not just consumers). They cover many different aspects of the information life cycle and the roles and responsibilities of individuals and communities. Such an approach provides an alternative way of framing current information issues as they relate to national security policies and civil liberties in the broader sense. D (N. Caidi). Government Information Quarterly 22 (2005) 663 -684
The Right to Privacy and Data Protection in the Information Age
Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences, 2020
The article considers the legality of mass surveillance and protection of personal data in the context of the international human rights law and the right to respect for private life. Special attention is paid to the protection of data on the Internet, where the personal data of billions of people are stored. The author emphasizes that mass surveillance and technology that allows the storage and processing of the data of millions of people pose a serious threat to the right to privacy guaranteed by Article 8 of the ECHR of 1950. Few companies comply with the human rights principles in their operations by providing user data in response to requests from public services. In this regard, States must prove that any interference with the personal integrity of an individual is necessary and proportionate to address a particular security threat. Mandatory data storage, where telephone companies and Internet service providers are required to store metadata about their users’ communications ...
In this article, I offer an outline of the papers comprising the special issue. I also provide a brief overview of its topic, namely, the friction between cyber security measures and individual rights. I consider such a friction to be a new and exacerbated version of what Mill called ‘the struggle between liberties and authorities,’ and I claim that the struggle arises because of the involvement of public authorities in the management of the cyber sphere, for technological and state power can put individual rights, such as privacy, anonymity and freedom of speech, under sharp devaluating pressure. Finally, I conclude by stressing the need to reach an ethical balance to fine-tune cyber security measures and individual rights.
Balancing 'Individual Privacy' and 'National Security': Constitutional Imperatives
13 (1) Bangalore University Law Journal 98 - 107, 2023
The apex court in the privacy judgment, while recognizing right to privacy as constitutionally protected right, did not overlook the legitimate state interests such as protection of national security. Judges endeavored to strike a proper balance between the two by subjecting the privacy intrusive measures to the four – fold tests. These tests allow the state to adopt appropriate privacy intrusive measures to address legitimate national security concerns without unreasonably impinging upon right to privacy.
Human Rights for the Information Society
2003
This paper proposes to explore how "informational developments" interact with the societies in which they take place. These developments refer to the growing significance of information products (such as news, advertising, entertainment and scientific data) and information services (such as those provided by the World Wide Web); the increasing volumes of information generated, collected, stored and made available; the essential role of information technology as the backbone of many social services and as the engine of economic productivity; and the input of information processing into transactions in trading and finance. The interactions between informational developments and societies have technological, cultural, political and economic dimensions, for which the international community has established human rights standards. These standards are analysed in the paper. The major problem with these standards is the lack of implementation. No effective mechanisms have been established to deal with all the obstacles that hamper the realization of human rights in the field of informational developments. Moreover, current human rights provisions focus exclusively on "information" and ignore "communication". No human rights standard has been adopted to address communication as an interactive process. Communication tends to be seen as the "transfer of messages". This omission could be remedied by the adoption-as part of the existing human rights standards-of the "human right to communicate". This right is perceived by its protagonists as more fundamental than the information rights presently accorded by international law. The essence of this right would be based on the observation that communication is a fundamental social process, a basic human need and the foundation of all social organization. The right to communicate should constitute the core of any democratic system. The paper concludes by stating that the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) could remind the international community of all that has been achieved already and stress the importance to seriously identify and remove major obstacles to the urgently needed implementation of existing human rights provisions. WSIS could also point out that the essential omission in "human rights for the information society" is the lack of human rights standards for communication as an interactive process. UN Secretary-General Kofi Anan stated the need for Communicating in the Information Society 122 the right to communicate very explicitly in his message on World Telecommunication Day (17 May 2003) as he reminded the international community that there were millions of people in the poorest countries who were still excluded from the "right to communicate", which was increasingly seen as a fundamental human right.