FC: UN frets about 1st Amendment, wants to ban racist US sites

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

---
Note:
>    "It today is technologically possible to block access to certain 
> websites by
> international users. Vendors of encryption technology on the Internet have
> effectively practiced this: Only people in the U.S. or using U.S. Internet
> access infrastructure were able to download software with strong encryption,
> while others were directed to software with weak encryption," he said.

Of course, that requires the cooperation of the U.S. web sites...

More:
  http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=un

-Declan

---

Inter Press Service
February 18, 2000, Friday

HEADLINE: HUMAN RIGHTS: RACIST SPEECH FINDS COURSE CLEAR ON INTERNET
BYLINE: By Gustavo Capdevila

   The international community is preparing for the first world conference
against racism, but without a clear plan on how to counter hate messages on
the Internet without compromising freedom of speech.

   That dilemma has been debated for the past several years by United Nations
agencies and civil society forums, such as a seminar that ended today in 
Geneva,
preparatory to next year's U.N. World Conference Against Racism and Racial
Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, to be organized in
South Africa.

   So far, the discussion has been largely limited to industrialized 
countries,
where the overwhelming majority of Internet users are concentrated.

   Swiss expert David Rosenthal said there were an estimated 201 million 
people
on-line in September 1999: 112.4 million in Canada and the United States, 
47.15
million in Europe, 33.61 million in the Asia-Pacific region, 5.29 million in
Latin America, 1.72 million in Africa, and 880,000 in the Middle East.

   The biggest discrepancies have been North-South in nature, or have arisen
between the United States and countries seeking to clamp down on 
expressions of
racism and hate speech.

   The disagreements emerge from differing national conceptions on the 
absolute
or relative nature of freedom of expression, said Swiss official Joel Sambuc.

   The discrepancies have stood in the way of an agreement on even minimal
controls over Internet content and international procedures to put them into
practice, said Sambuc, the vice president of the Swiss Federal Commission
Against Racism.

   U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson called on the 
"Expert
Seminar on Remedies Available to the Victims of Acts of Racism, Racial
Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance and on Good National
Practices in this Field," which opened on Feb. 16, to come up with a clear
diagnosis of the newly emerging forms of racism, with a view to next year's
conference in South Africa.

   "In this regard, we must note that new forms of communications technology
such as Internet are being used to support the dissemination of racial 
hatred,"
said the U.N. official.
   "Another phenomenon which must receive adequate attention is the 
situation of
migrants whose numbers are increasing all the time. The phenomenon of
large-scale migration has often been accompanied" by expressions of racism and
xenophobia, Robinson added.

   The main document presented by the secretariat of the seminar stated 
that the
use of technical media like the Internet should be a priority in international
aid.

   Cooperation between police forces and legal systems is needed to 
effectively
combat racism beyond national frontiers, the document added.

   But Sambuc pointed out that attempts to clamp down on racism and hate 
speech
on the Internet ran up against major hurdles, due to technical aspects and the
differing legislation and policies of each country.

   As long as websites exalting hatred and racial supremacy are allowed to 
exist
in the United States, due to the conception of freedom of speech based on the
first amendment of the U.S. constitution, punitive action by other nations is
effectively blocked.

   "As a consequence, the U.S. has developed into a 'safe haven' for racists
spreading their word worldwide by using the Internet. Not only people 
living in
the U.S. are taking advantage of this situation, but also many Internet users
from other countries," he pointed out.

   Rosenthal cited a U.S. report published in March 1999 which listed 1,426
known Internet sites promoting "racism, anti-Semitism, hate music, neo-Nazis
and bomb-making. As of July 15, 1999 this number has skyrocketed to over 2,100
sites."

   Given such challenges presented by the Internet, Rosenthal said he was in
favor of "a new reading" of international conventions on the promotion and
defence of human rights.

   But most non-governmental organizations are opposed to any interference 
with
the Internet, for fear of censorship by anti-democratic regimes and the
possibility of finding themselves deprived of a valuable tool for spreading 
the
word on human rights.

   One alternative brought up this week, which has also been debated by other
forums on Internet content, proposes censoring or self-regulation schemes.

   But Rosenthal agreed that any filtering scheme or limitation of freedom of
speech "inherently carries the risk of being used in an unconstitutional 
way or
even abused by anti-democratic regimes around the world for their own 
purposes.
Under the cloak of combatting racist speech, such regimes may try to ban
other content they find disturbing."

   Nor is self-regulation, touted by neo-liberal ideologues, a solution, 
because
all it does is transfer the burden of making controversial decisions to
industry, he added.

   Self-regulation plans, whether of the public or private sectors, fail to
provide safeguards against the abuse of power, the Swiss expert argued.

   One proposal Rosenthal presented at the seminar referred to limiting 
access
to racist messages by users located outside the United States through the 
use of
encryption systems.

   In some European states, on-line lotteries use such systems to keep users
from other nations from participating in violation of laws in their own
countries.

   The "compromise solution" suggested by Rosenthal would "limit racist 
speech
geographically" by reducing the spread of racist propaganda to U.S. nationals
with free access to websites.

   "It today is technologically possible to block access to certain 
websites by
international users. Vendors of encryption technology on the Internet have
effectively practiced this: Only people in the U.S. or using U.S. Internet
access infrastructure were able to download software with strong encryption,
while others were directed to software with weak encryption," he said.

   Rosenthal also proposed "effective content identification, another 
compromise
strategy (which) could be to persuade the U.S. government to regulate racist
speech in a way to ease its detection and filtering wherever required. 
Although
the U.S. government may not outright ban racist speech, it may impose 
reasonable
restrictions."


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