By Matthew Kredell
To watch the full video of the event, click here.
The USC Price School of Public Policy launched a new Human Rights Speaker Series on Oct. 5 with David Kaye, a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, who spoke about the challenges to freedom of expression in a digital age.
“This human rights issue is something that has become enormously important, not only in the United States but around the world,” said USC Price Dean Jack H. Knott in his opening remarks via video. “We’re very pleased to have David Kaye from the University of California, Irvine, be our first speaker. Our goal is to try to have an impact on the dialogue and policies related to human rights not only here but in other parts of the world.”
Knott pointed to several reasons that compelled USC Price to launch the speaker series, including: the treatment and living conditions of a growing number of refugees and immigrants in various parts of the world; 21st Century slavery being practiced with women through prostitution rings and men through forced labor; and emerging authoritarian regimes that limit freedom of movement and expression.
Alison Dundes Renteln, professor of political science, anthropology, public policy and law at USC Dornsife, which collaborated with the Price School to establish the series, emphasized the importance of Americans needing to be aware of global human rights. “The U.S. is the only country that has not ratified the convention on the rights of the child and we do not belong to the international criminal court,” Renteln explained.
Kaye, a professor of law, named Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as a central human rights instrument around the world today. It holds that everyone should have the right to hold opinions without interference and to have freedom of expression, only to be restricted by law for the respect and reputation of others or the protection of national security, public order, public health or morals.
“While the digital age has offered us a remarkable platform for expression and access to information, it’s also provided government and private parties with a remarkable amount of access to our private lives,” Kaye said. “Some of that is sort of the bargain we have collectively agreed to.”
While freedom of expression is essential to human rights, the digital age has brought new threats, Kaye noted. He identified the most significant of these threats and discussed what can be done to safeguard the Internet as a space for open expression and access to information.
David Kaye, a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, at USC’s Lewis Hall (Photo by Tom Queally)
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Online censorship comes in many forms. Kaye showed that the government in Thailand removed an article from the International edition of the New York Times that expressed that Thai spirits were sagging with the economy. On social media, governments are increasingly putting pressure on sites such as Twitter to take down content. Twitter issues a transparency report and, in the first half of 2016, Turkey requested 1,781 takedowns with Russia making 1,599 such requests. No other country was above 500, with the U.S. at 98.
Surveillance is also a major issue in the digital age, beginning with people’s search engine histories, which are monitored by private companies as part of their business model, Kaye explained.
As responses to surveillance and censorship, Kaye suggested paying attention to global human rights norms; campaigning publicly to highlight when freedom of expression is being repressed; and thinking about legal and political strategies, as well as the different institutions that can raise concerns about censorship, denial to access of information and restrictions on freedom of expression.
“I think there’s a lot of opportunity for those of us in this room, but also around the world, to engage on all these kinds of issues,” Kaye said. “One thing that has to happen is the countries in the world need to maintain what we call the multi-stakeholder approach to Internet governance. Most of us don’t think of the Internet as governed at all. It feels ungoverned, and that’s by design. But the Internet today is governed by the technologists who create the infrastructure, private companies, the government and activists.”