Technology Promotes Democracy, Lawmakers Say]

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

for the time being

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: For IP: Technology Promotes Democracy, Lawmakers Say
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2006 22:56:10 -0500 (EST)
From: AMBOLLC () aol com
To: dave () farber net

Technology Promotes Democracy, Lawmakers Say

(Mobile phones, phone  text-messaging allow users to avoid censorship)
(1040)
By Carol  Walker
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- Technology  has the power to bring about a faster pace of
democratization in repressive  regimes, especially during and between
elections and in managing health  services, according to members of
Congress and technology experts at a  conference on March 1.

The conference, “Expanding and  Strengthening Democracy: The Role of
Technology,” was sponsored by Democracy  Data and Communications, the
International Republican Institute (IRI) and  the National Democratic
Institute (NDI) and was held at the U.S. Chamber of  Commerce.

Technology and innovation have been catalysts for  revolutionary change,
according to Representative Anna G. Eshoo, a Democrat  from California.
“What the printing press made possible in centuries past,  the Internet has
amplified exponentially,” Eshoo said.

Repressive regimes control information to protect a strong autocracy and
promote a weak civil society, said Tian Chua of the Labour Resource Centre
and vice president of the Keadilan Party in Malaysia. Once citizens are
able to find ways to learn about government corruption and scandal, they
can begin to build a stronger civil society.

“We’re using  technology to win the battle,” Chua said.

Just as fax machines  helped disseminate information and mobilize
activists in Malaysia in recent  decades, Chua now sees the Internet, SMS
(short message system) messaging  and cell phones being used to spread, and
even broadcast, information and  news people cannot get anyplace else.
Radio, television and print media in  Malaysia are fully censored, Chua
said.

More than 103 million  people are online in China, and according to a
2005 Internet-use survey,  most Chinese use the Internet for entertainment
or to obtain information  about entertainment and to communicate online
with each other.

The average Chinese Internet user stays online for 2.7 hours per day but
more than 75 percent never have made an online purchase, according to Guo
Liang of the Research Center for Social Development at the Academy of
Social Sciences in Beijing at an Internet meeting at the Brookings
Institution in Washington in November 2005. Chinese Internet users prefer
instant messaging to e-mail, Gao said, and they rely on the Internet for
making contact with colleagues and with people who share their personal
and political interests.

The use of blogs to maintain dialogue  during and between elections has
been key in developing democracies and  repressive countries, said Ethan
Zuckerman, head of Global Voices Online, a  nonprofit project of the
Berkman Center for Internet & Society at  Harvard Law School, at the
technology and democracy conference. Global  Voices Online is a worldwide
community of bloggers, or bridge bloggers, who  find, collect and track
information and ideas appearing in blogs, podcasts,  photo sharing sites,
and videoblogs.

“The period between  elections is the most critical stage in democratic
transitions as political  parties and newly elected officials build the
institutions required to  sustain democratic gains and maintain public
trust in the political  process,” said Representative Jim Kolbe, a
Republican from Arizona, at the  March 1 conference.

Kolbe said the use of cell phones and text  messages for coordinating
demonstrations, telling people how and where to  vote during elections, and
the use of the Internet have been vital tools in  promoting democracy and
development.

Although SMS was relied  on heavily in getting people out to vote in
Iraq’s December 2005 elections,  television is still the most vital way to
reach people in Iraq, said Alan  Silverleib, director of the Political
Parties Program at IRI. Silverleib,  along with Rahman Al Jebouri, deputy
country director at NDI, participated  in the panel discussion from
Baghdad, Iraq, via video  teleconference.

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) helping to  get people out to vote
in the 2004 Afghanistan elections used SMS technology  to let citizens know
about polling times and conditions.

“Cellular phones and Internet connectivity are being used by activist
citizens in innovative ways to organize and communicate,” Kolbe said.
“Tools such as cell phone text-messaging and Web logs [blogs] have been
utilized as ways to circumvent the traditional mechanisms of state control
over media and information.”

MANAGAING HEALTH  CARE

Internet and cell-phone technologies also have become  important tools
to manage health services, particularly in countries with  large rural
populations. In Rwanda, where 4 percent of adults living in  rural areas
and 13 percent in Kigali are living with HIV/AIDS, health-care  workers are
using cell-phone technology to streamline and expedite data  sharing. SMS
technology interfaces with the Internet, said panelist Julia  Cohen,
technical leader for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief  Supply
Chain Management System.

Health workers and patients in  Rwanda can monitor test results and
patient progress within seconds rather  than days or weeks by logging onto
the Internet, if possible, or receive SMS  messages. Cohen, who works for
the company Voxiva, Inc., which developed the  cell-phone service in
Rwanda, said the technology also is being used in  newly emerging
democracies to get around Internet censorship.

INTERNET FREEDOM

At a February congressional hearing on  Chinese censorship on the
Internet, Representative Christopher Smith, a  Republican from New Jersey,
criticized Google, Yahoo, Cisco and Microsoft,  leading U.S. companies that
provide China with the technology necessary to  filter Internet content. At
the same time, Smith noted the efforts of these  and other companies to
develop anti-censorship technology that would enable  Chinese citizens to
access the entire Internet filter-free and detect  monitoring by Chinese
officials. (See related article
(http://usinfo.state.gov/dhr/Archive/2006/Feb/16-161025.html).)

Internet users have grown worldwide from 16 million to 900 million over
the  last decade, according to Michael Gallagher, U.S. assistant secretary
of  commerce for communications and information at the U.N. General
Assembly-sanctioned International Summit on the Information Society in
Tunis, Tunisia, in November 2005. (See related article
(http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2005&m
m=November&x=20051115172431cmretrop0.931576&t=xarchives/xarchitem.html).)

“The forces of private sector innovation, freedom of expression,
democracy  and markets are moving all of the world forward on the digital
path,”  Gallagher.

The Global Internet Freedom Task Force,  including State Department
officials in international communications policy,  human rights, democracy,
business advocacy and corporate responsibility, is  working with U.S.
businesses, NGOs, the European Union and other governments  to address
Internet freedom issues.

The task force will make  recommendations to Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice on policy and  diplomatic initiatives. (See related
article
(http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2006&m
m=February&x=20060214161400bcreklaw3.503054e-02&t=xarchives/xarchitem.html)
).)

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