Council Of Europe Sees Human Rights Concerns In Internet Restrictions

By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch

The Council of Europe today alerted its 47 member states “to the gravity of violations of Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights which might result from politically motivated pressure exerted on privately operated Internet platforms and online service providers, and of other attacks against websites of independent media, human rights defenders, dissidents, whistleblowers and new media actors.”

A declaration passed by the CoE Council of Ministers Wednesday, underlined the necessity to reinforce policies that uphold freedom of expression and the right to impart and receive information, as well as the right to freedom of assembly and association. More and more ordinary people, but also whistleblowers and human rights defenders rely on social networks to access and exchange information, publish content, interact, communicate and associate with each other, the Council wrote. Although privately operated, the platforms are “a significant part of the public sphere through facilitating debate on issues of public interest.”

But with growing numbers of distributed denial-of-service attacks against websites of independent media, human rights defenders, dissidents, whistleblowers and other new media actors, the internet service providers are more and more hesitant to continue hosting those websites. Also, intermediaries are “not immune to undue interference; their decisions sometimes stem from direct political pressure or from politically motivated economic compulsion, invoking justification on the basis of compliance with their terms of service,” it said. In the declaration, which came on the eve of the United Nations Human Rights Day, the CoE clearly underlined the necessity “to affirm the role of these actors as facilitators of the exercise of the right to freedom of expression and the right to freedom of assembly and association.”