Regular readers of J’accuse will know that we are always glad when a post of ours provokes more discussion. We mentioned Dr Ghio’s short quip in the Times interview in our earlier post (The Emperor’s New “Internet Civil Rights”) and Dr Ghio chose to reply with his own thoughts that will surely help to generate more discussion. I gladly reproduce his full comment here in the hope that more of you feel might join in with your two cents’ worth. So here is Antonio’s full reply :
Dear all. I read these posts with interest. Unfortunately TOM published only a few lines from the 800 plus word comment I sent them so I’d take the opportunity to share some of those thoughts with you (respectfully of course 
) with the hope that this can generate some discussion:
Last year’s events in North Africa highlighted the importance that social media and ICT plays in today’s world. Many falling regimes decided that by cutting off their citizen’s access to information tools they could control the uprisings. They were very wrong.
Only recently the discussion of looking at the internet and all that it stands for as a civil right has emerged. Within this evolving discussion, one needs to distinguish between fundamental human rights and civil rights even though they go hand in hand. This distinction was clearly made by Vint Cerf, one of the founding fathers of the internet as we know it, in his open letter to the New York Times only a few weeks ago.
A civil right is a tool to attain your fundamental human rights enshrined in our constitution and international treaties. In this sense, the internet can be seen as just a tool but a very important one. The recognition of a right to a networked society and to informational self-determination is a reflection that the principles on which societies are built are not static and the ways in which we can enjoy our fundamental human rights is in constant flux and depends on the appreciation that our society has of the very same tools which enable us to enjoy such fundamental rights as freedom of expression and our right to private life.
Whilst a handful of countries recognized the right to internet access or a broadband right, the proposed bill goes much beyond that. It is not just the recognition of universal service or the setting of some minimum level of service. It is the legal crystallization of a reality we live in and without which we cannot reach our potential as individuals but also as a society. Published figures relating to internet penetration rates in Maltese households and the utilization of social networks all point towards the importance that Maltese society gives to these technologies. The proposed rights should go beyond a mere right of access to the internet but should serve as guiding principles relating to internet censorship, free flow of information and privacy.
There is already a myriad of laws relating to issues such as privacy on the internet, the use of the internet as an important tool for commerce. These new rights will not re-invent this but should elevate the importance that we now give to these legal provisions, making them available and easily accessible to everyone without the need of being a lawyer or academic to establish where these legal provisions are contained. The new rights should endeavour to highlight the importance that laws relating to technology that have emerged during the past years have in today’s connected world, a clear statement that our fundamental human rights also apply to our online existence.
Last year Malta experienced the introduction of the civil right to divorce but very few of our community will end up using this right. We are here faced with something much larger. We are now talking about a civil right which will not affect a minority but all of us, from my nanna in Gozo using skype to chat with my cousin in Poland to my 8 month old son who is already chewing my iPad.
The proposed digital civil rights should set the bar of how we value the role of technology and our right to privacy and information today. These new principles should serve as a litmus test against
which we measure any new law which would be perceived as invading our private lives, our right to be part of a digital community, our right to express ourselves freely on the net.
I think this is more the realization of how dear the internet has become to all of us and to the fact that we do not want anyone to mess with our internet and with our online experience. This does not mean that these rights are not already there.
But what wrong in enshriningg those rights in a constitution? After all, we have tons of laws relating to employment. Does that mean that any reference to the right to work and protection from forced labour in our constitution is futile? So I guess rather than a legal crystallisation this should be a constitutional crystallisation.
Is that wrong?
