• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Internet Companies Agree To New Human Rights Guidelines

Posted on: Tuesday, 28 October 2008, 13:15 CDT

Leading Internet companies have drawn up and agreed to a set of guidelines that seek to limit what data they should share with authorities worldwide and when they should do so.

Internet giants Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. agreed to the new Global Network Initiative guidelines, which were set in order to reduce the scope of government requests that appear to conflict with free speech and other human rights principles.

Announced on Tuesday, the guidelines were created through a collaborative effort of Internet companies along with human rights organizations, investors and academics.

The companies are agreeing to consider human rights issues ahead of time as they decide which countries to operate in and what services to offer, according to Leslie Harris, chief executive of the Center for Democracy and Technology, one of the main groups behind the guidelines. The guidelines also call for companies to train employees and develop mechanisms to resolve conflicts.

It was not immediately clear, however, what practices, if any, will change, as the guidelines do not ban any specific conduct, and many of the key points are open to interpretation or are left to individual companies to implement.

"What's disappointing is that the amount of effort ... didn't produce something more substantial," said Morton Sklar, executive director of the World Organization for Human Rights USA, which sued Yahoo for giving Chinese officials information that led to the arrest of two journalists. The lawsuit has since been settled for an undisclosed amount.

However, Sklar did acknowledge the companies for recognizing "that there was a huge problem here and needed to be addressed."

The new guidelines allow for the creation of an oversight organization to regularly review the companies' practices.

“Does it solve all problems? Probably not,” says Rebecca MacKinnon, a professor at Journalism and Media Studies Centre of Hong Kong University, who was involved in drafting the Initiative. But “part of this is about getting companies to think through these issues before they get bad into situations.”

“Now the fact that a manager would be told that he or she needs to keep these issues in mind and that the entire company is going to be benchmarked on these issues can potentially make a difference,” she added.

As Internet companies have continued to expand into China, some claim they have overstepped boundaries by sharing of information with Chinese government officials.

Yahoo and its Taiwan-born chief executive, Jerry Yang, have faced the biggest backlash for handing over e-mails that led to the imprisonment of two Chinese journalists. Besides Sklar's lawsuit, the outcry spurred a congressional hearing during which the late Rep. Tom Lantos likened Yang to a moral "pygmy" for cooperating with the Chinese government.

All eyes will be on the relationship between Yahoo and Alibaba, the leading Chinese internet company which controls the Yahoo brand in China and is approximately 40 percent owned by Yahoo.

Meanwhile, Google, under fire for censoring about 2 percent of its search results in China to comply with government rules, has refrained from offering e-mail or blogging services in China because it doesn't want to be put in a position where it might have to turn over any of its user's communications.

Google's Russian-born co-founder, Sergey Brin, has maintained that the people living in China will be better off with an abbreviated version of the search engine than a full version that is entirely blocked by the government.

"From the start, Google has promoted free expression and the protection of our users' privacy," said Bob Boorstin, Google's director of policy communications. "We see this as another crucial step. The coming together of all these diverse companies and groups is more likely to bring change in government policies than any one company working by itself."

---

On the Net:

• Global Network Initiative

Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports

More News in this Category