Over-regulation of cyberspace risks infringing on human rights

In our quest to shape and regulate cyberspace, we risk subverting the global commons of information we have created, and by extension, the prospects and potential for global democracy, said University of Toronto professor Ron Deibert in his keynote speech to the 2012 iConference, hosted by the Faculty of Information.

“Fear is the dominant driving force for a wide range of movements to control cyberspace,” said Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab and Canada Centre for Global Security Studies. “Countering terrorism online, for instance, serves as a means for silencing legitimate political opposition, while filtering inappropriate content is also the basis for removing human rights websites.”

In his research, Deibert has sought to outline and define the major driving forces shaping cyberspace and their potential consequences. Through his work at the Citizen Lab, he has found that laws that are being introduced as safeguards to the threats that cyberspace poses have serious implications.

Policymakers trying to solve the complex tangle of cyber security problems also face three major challenges, Deibert said to the attendees of the nationwide conference for library and information professionals.

“First, the rules are already being written, out there in the wild, by the users themselves, who are innovating at a rate that outpaces the ability of institutions and regulators to adapt; second, as much as 95 per cent of cyberspace is owned and operated by the private sector, which makes it difficult to impose rules in a centralized, top-down fashion; and third, cyberspace is constantly changing and thereby presenting new challenges that we have never imagined before.”

States of all stripes today are not only asserting their powers to limit and control cyberspace, but are also transferring the policing of this domain to the private sector, such as telecommunication companies and Internet service providers.

“We are moving forward to a more regulated cyberspace,” Deibert said. “It is, therefore, crucial to maintain a high-degree of transparency and accountability to ensure that human rights and the gains in openness and networking are not subverted in the process.”

Professor Bryan Spencer, academic director, Statistics Canada Research Data Centre at McMaster University, explores the data and draws conclusions.