Henrik Piski, Spokesperson of IT and Telecommunication of Alternattiva Demokratika, the Green Party of Malta

The employment of Dr Ing. Patrick Attard has been terminated after he commented on The Times online with reference to a Gozo News item. Attard was critical of the manner in which
the Church in Gozo is effecting Nadur farmers through contamination of a water source which is vital for their livelihood.

The Malta Resources Authority has terminated the employment of Attard on the pretext on an inexistent breach of professional secrecy. Attard has himself declared that his service to the MRA was in no way connected to water matters. It follows clearly that the dismissal of Patrick Attard is an attack on the right of freedom of expression : a throwback to the dark 70s and 80s when human rights in Malta were more observed in the breach.

We appeal to the Malta Resources Authority to undo the damage done immediately by reinstating Patrick Attard. An employee cannot be dismissed without prior warning and without being given the chance to defend himself. This goes against basic ethics.

The commissioner of Data Protection is asked to investigate the matter to find out how the information about the electronic activities of Patrick Attard have been transmitted to third parties without his consent.

Digital Rights are nothing other than our usual and common rights, but expressed and translated into the domain of the Internet.

The right to share, the right to protect one’s privacy, freedom of speech, the right to learn, the right to access knowledge or consumer rights are amongst the common rights that apply in a digital world, hence they are Digital Rights.

Several of these rights gather new power because of the digital environment where they are placed. The right to access knowledge is strengthened as the possibilities of accessing it are enhanced due to technological advances. This fact confers a new importance to these rights.

Although these are rights that we Westerners may have taken for granted, the fact is that the digital world is a new environment, and these rights have to be fought for again.

In the last years we have experienced a series of attacks on Digital Rights:

• The Digital Guillotine, aimed at banning from the Internet users infringing copyright
• Collecting Societies criminalize users for downloading songs, even if this is not considered to be an illegal action
• Governments spend public money to pay for  advertisements where Internet users are compared with thieves.
• Public Organisations systematically neglect the existence of GNU/Linux or other open source software in their Calls for Tenders.
• Users are forced to buy certain products in order to have a normal experience on the Internet.
• Consumers are forced to pay intellectual propriety levies on CDs/DVDs even if they are used to store their own content.
• The European Union is continuously trying to grant software patents. One directive was rejected by the European Parliament, but they insisted with EPLA and now through ACTA.
• Privacy is put at risk and subdued under more government and police control.
• Free speech is under attack from several governments.

 
One key idea behind all these attacks is that some companies, in connivance with governments, want to make profits at the expense of no matter what (read “our rights”). Government control by authoritarian regimes is also a threat, and it also has no respect for digital rights.

* We need open knowledge: The right to access knowledge

• The internet made it  possible for knowledge to become accessible to a huge number of people in a relatively cheap way. The expansion of the internet has to be defended in order to make knowledge accessible to everyone in the world
• Knowledge must be free. Knowledge helps people’s development and, as it has been developed based on previous knowledge, can be considered as a common good. Therefore it is absurd to allow knowledge monopolies. It is not ethical to make profit at the expense of other people’s access to knowledge.
• Free software has to be supported, as it is free knowledge. It is also the proof that a new economic model can be set up based on free access to knowledge, rather than on restricting it
• Creators need to find a new way of making profit. They must be helped to achieve a sustainable business model that does not entail reducing our digital rights.

 
* Technological neutrality is a consumer right

• People can’t be forced to use a certain technology.  Just as it would be nonsense to force users to drive a certain brand of car to enter a national road, so is it nonsense to force internet users to “drive” on certain operating systems to access websites, especially if the websites have been built with public money.
• To respect that technological neutrality, public organisations have to respect Open Standards and ensure interoperability.
• Consumers shouldn’t be forced to buy technology they don’t want, in particular in the case of computers, where hardware and software are usually sold together. We support unbundling, so users can buy both the computer and the operating system of their choice.

* The right to privacy and to protect personal data

• Anonymity on the Internet should be supported. 
• Cryptography is a technology used to secure communications and protect against unauthorized access to our communications. It should be used there should be no  restriction on its use imposed by any Government.

* Supporting P2P means protecting our right to share

• Sharing is not a crime, and it shouldn’t be illegal.  Copying is not stealing, and digital propriety is not comparable with physical propriety, especially when producing legislation.
• In Europe, the European Commission is worried about “unauthorized” downloads. There is no authorization needed to make use of our right to share.
• Network Neutrality means that all information sent on the Internet should be treated the same way. In particular, Internet Providers can’t reduce the speed of P2P communications.

* Free Speech in a Free Internet

• Free speech is under attack in several countries, and censorship is being enforced. This should not be tolerated, even if abiding by authoritarian rules helps western companies make more profit.
• Internet has a special status, as no political and economical control must influence it, as should be the case for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which manages important technical aspects of the operation of the Internet. 

I am supporting the proposal for a DIRECTIVE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL concerning the EU Global Online Freedom Act presented by 8 MEPs to the European Parliament.

More and more authoritarian states as Belarus, Burma, the People’s Republic of China, Cuba, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam censor the internet by blocking websites and filtering search results and intimidate internet users through ‘cyber police’ and obliged registration. As this constitutes a clear violation of human rights under article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, EU action needs to be undertaken, especially since European companies are cooperating with authoritarian governments to restrict the access of citizens to the provision of Internet and information society services.

Technology companies from the US even have succumbed to pressure by authoritarian governments to provide such governments with information about Internet users that has led to the arrest and imprisonment of cyber dissidents, in violation of the corporate responsibility of such companies to protect and uphold human rights. Due to the current lack of self-regulation in the European internet industry the possibility exists that European technology companies will also succumb to such pressures.

The European Union therefore needs a directive on global online freedom and follow the American example where legislators are working on a Global Online Freedom Act (GOFA).  This European counterpart of the American GOFA, the EU Global Online Freedom Act (EU – GOFA) must make sure that Europe stays in the fore front of the global promotion of human rights and democratization and the protection of dissidents.

The EU GOFA is a directive which contains provisions on the promotion of global internet freedom, minimum corporate standards for European companies who provide Internet and Information society services and export controls and trade sanctions for internet-restricting countries. The first 8 articles are on the promotion of global internet freedom. Amongst others they state that it is EU policy to promote global free speech on the internet and global free flow of information and provide for the annual designation of Internet restricting countries commissioned by the European Commission. They also provide for the establishment of the Office of Global Internet Freedom (OGIF) as part of the European External Action Service and designate 20 million euros for the development and distribution of anti-censorship tools and services.

Articles 9 until 15 of this directive are on minimum corporate standards for European Internet companies. They contain provisions on the protection of EU and Member State -supported online content, regarding Internet censorship and search engine filtering and rules for European business with content-hosting services in order to create more transparency. The articles also contain provisions on the integrity of user identifying information through the prohibition for European businesses with internet content hosting services to provide personally identifying user information to officials in internet-restricting countries except for legitimate foreign law enforcement purposes. Search engines should also not be located in “internet restricting” countries. The last article of this section contains penalties for failure to uphold the above stated minimum standards for corporate behavior.

The last four articles of this directive (article 16, 17, 18 and 19) are on export controls, regulating the export of products and services which could facilitate internet censorship and on the policy of treating internet censorship as an international barrier to trade.

Freedom of information and speech are basics rights of every human being. It is not acceptable that some countries still do not provide these fundamental rights to its citizens and it is not acceptable that companies from the ‘free’ world support these countries by providing the required technologies or transmitting the data of ‘non-free’ citizens  to these countries. The latest breach of freedom of information has been clearly shown by the Chinese government in the attempt to prohibit the access to certain websites to accredited journalists covering the Olympic Games 2009.

Ref. http://www.julesmaaten.eu/_uploads/EU%20GOFA.htm