Freedom of information
[16] The report concludes that structural barriers and discrimination that perpetuates bias against people of different races and ethnicities contribute to having an impact on the digital divide.
[20] However, a post by an African American woman addressing her discomfort with being the only person of color in a small-town restaurant was met with racist and hateful messages.
A number of states, including some that have introduced new laws since 2010, notably censor voices from and content related to the LGBTQI community, posing serious consequences to access to information about sexual orientation and gender identity.
This can be fostered through human service professionals who can utilize the internet with evidence and evaluation to provide information to LGBTQIA individuals who are dealing with the circumstances of coming out and the possible repercussions that could follow as a result.
A UNESCO study considers that adopting open standards has the potential to contribute to the vision of a ‘digital commons’ in which citizens can freely find, share, and re-use information.
[1] Promoting Free and open-source software, which is both free of cost and freely modifiable could help meet the particular needs of marginalized users advocacy on behalf of minority groups, such as targeted outreach, better provision of Internet access, tax incentives for private companies and organizations working to enhance access, and solving underlying issues of social and economic inequalities[1] The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Declaration of Principles adopted in 2003 reaffirms democracy and the universality, indivisibility and interdependence of all human rights and fundamental freedoms.
[39] The 2004 WSIS Declaration of Principles also acknowledged that "it is necessary to prevent the use of information resources and technologies for criminal and terrorist purposes, while respecting human rights".
Harrington Investments, which proposed that Cisco establish a human rights board, has dismissed the GNI as a voluntary code of conduct not having any impact.
The system blocks content by preventing IP addresses from being routed through and consists of standard firewall and proxy servers at the Internet gateways.
In accordance with these laws, more than sixty Internet regulations have been made by the People's Republic of China (PRC) government, and censorship systems are vigorously implemented by provincial branches of state-owned ISPs, business companies, and organizations.
States have increasingly adopted laws and policies to legalize monitoring of communication, justifying these practices with the need to defend their own citizens and national interests.
In parts of Europe, new anti-terrorism laws have enabled a greater degree of government surveillance and an increase in the ability of intelligence authorities to access citizens’ data.
[53] Number of regional efforts, particularly through the courts, to establish regulations that deal with data protection, privacy and surveillance, and which affect their relationship to journalistic uses.
According to the World Trends Report 2017/2018, between 2012 and 2016, 20 UNESCO Member States adopted data protection laws for first time, bringing the global total to 101.
[63] High-profile examples of this have been WhatsApp's implementation of full end-to-end encryption in its messenger service,[64] and Apple's contestation of a law enforcement warrant to unlock an iPhone used by the perpetrators of a terror attack.
Leading contemporary threats include mass surveillance technologies, mandatory data retention policies, and disclosure of personal digital activities by third party intermediaries.
[73] In 2009, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Council adopted the Recommendation for Further Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions.
To address the issues with zero-rating, an alternative model has emerged in the concept of ‘equal rating’ and is being tested in experiments by Mozilla and Orange in Africa.
[79] According to the Arab Youth Survey, in 2016, 45 percent of the young people interviewed considered social media as a major source of news.
After years of budget cuts and shrinking global operations, in 2016 BBC announced the launch of 12 new language services (in Afaan Oromo, Amharic, Gujarati, Igbo, Korean, Marathi, Pidgin, Punjabi, Telugu, Tigrinya, and Yoruba), branded as a component of its biggest expansion ‘since the 1940s’.
[81] Also expanding access to content are changes in usage patterns with non-linear viewing, as online streaming is becoming an important component of users’ experience.
[84] UNESCO has been assigned as the custodian agency responsible for global reporting on indicator 16.10.2 regarding the ‘number of countries that adopt and implement constitutional, statutory and/or policy guarantees for public access to information’.
It also points to the need for sustainable business models for Internet activity, and to trust in the preservation, quality, integrity, security, and authenticity of information and knowledge.
A similarly high growth rate has occurred in the Asia-Pacific region, where seven countries adopted freedom of information laws in the last five years, bringing the total to 22.
The Global Right to Information Rating is a programme providing advocates, legislators, reformers with tools to assess the strength of a legal framework.
[113] According to the United Nations Secretary General’s 2017 report on the Sustainable Development Goals, to which UNESCO contributed freedom of information-related information, of the 109 countries with available data on implementation of freedom of information laws, 43 per cent do not sufficiently provide for public outreach and 43 per cent have overly-wide definitions of exceptions to disclosure, which run counter to the aim of increased transparency and accountability.
[2][118] As of 2006[update], the following 19 countries had freedom of information legislation that extended to government bodies and private bodies: Antigua and Barbuda, Angola, Armenia, Colombia, the Czech Republic, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Panama, Poland, Peru, South Africa, Turkey, Trinidad and Tobago, Slovakia, and the United Kingdom.
[121] Secretive decision making by company directors and corporate scandal led to freedom of information legislation to be published for the benefits of investors.
[122] Disclosure regimes for the benefit of investors regained attention at the beginning of the 21st century as a number of corporate scandals were linked to accounting fraud and company director secrecy.
[123] Starting with Enron, the subsequent scandals involving Worldcom, Tyco, Adelphia and Global Crossing prompted the US Congress to impose new information disclosure obligations on companies with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002.
