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The Lady or the Tiger?: Norine Heselton, VP Policy, ITAC I am honoured to have been invited by the Atlantic Human Rights Centre to participate in this colloquium. I am a Maritimer born and bred and any invitation that brings me this much closer to home is welcome indeed. The Centre is also to be congratulated for providing an important forum for the discussion of the relationship between information technology and human rights. Although this marks the second annual colloquium, the reality is that this discussion has been going on for a very long time. In fact, the debate about the hazards and benefits of information technology pre-dates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It predates television, the telephone and telegraphy. In fact, along with questions like "What is the nature of freedom?" and "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" it may be one of the most persistent riddles engaging humankind. It's certainly an enigma. In preparing for my remarks today I read through the synopsis of last years proceedings hoping for guideposts for my own thought. But clearly this dialogue generates as many questions as it answers and we still seem very far from consensus on the issue. I wish I could settle this debate once and for all. I wish I had some blinding flash of the obvious to offer that could reduce the matter to a simple solution and free our energies to attack other concerns like hunger and the quest for peace. But I don't. Like many of you I approach the whole subject with a great deal of ambivalence. Although I am an advocate for the technology industry, I must confess to nagging lapses of faith about the impact of technology. Quite simply, I don't have all the answers. I believe, fundamentally that technology can be an instrument of our humanity. This means we must exercise our mastery of technology responsibly and vigilantly. I believe that as long as we do so we can ensure the best possible outcome from the information technology revolution. When I was in high school up the road in Dartmouth, we studied a short story in English class called "The Lady and the Tiger". It was an old chestnut even then. But it appealed to teenage readers because of its suspended climax. The story dealt with a mythical king who dispensed rough justice through a unique spectacle that brought transgressors head to head with fate. Criminals would be led to an arena with a building in the centre with two doors and ordered to open one of the doors. Behind one was a beautiful lady. If that door was selected she emerged into the sunlight to immediately marry the accused who would be judged not guilty and blessed by the king. Behind the other door was a tiger who had been deprived of a few meals. If the accused selected that door, the tiger would leap out and devour him. The crowd would be treated to a gory entertainment comfortable in the knowledge that the poor choice clearly determined the culprit's guilt. There's a twist to the story. It seems that fate wasn't the only determinant. The king's daughter was romantically linked to a lowly gardener who for over-stepping his station was sent to the arena. The princess contrived to find out which door concealed the lady and which the tiger. This gave her the power to send a signal and save her lover's life. But a dilemma entered. Could she stand to watch the man she loved marry another woman? Could she bear to watch him be devoured by a tiger? The story leaves us guessing. In much the same way we're still guessing about how the story of information technology and human rights will end. Now I am not expert on technology. Though I can program my VCR, I can't write code. I do have the opportunity, however, to work with the people who are leading the information revolution. And this gives me the perspective that I'd like to share with you today. Simply put, my thesis is this. Like the princess in the story we can influence and guide the outcome of the information revolution to maximize the benefits - in all aspects of life - that information technology can offer. To do this requires a clear understanding of the creatures behind both doors. Let's start with the tiger. The Hazards of the Information Technology Revolution Ours is a wired world - although, thanks to cellular phones and satellites, increasingly one can say it is a wireless world. Be that as it may, in total the world spends over 1 billion hours on the phone or fax or sending data messages annually. Our thirst to communicate appears insatiable. Forecasts indicate that by the year 2000, that usage will grow by more than 50 per cent. We are reminded almost daily about the exponential growth of the Internet. Cyberspace is the fastest growing population on earth with more than 60 million Internet users worldwide. But other technologies are burgeoning as well. Cellular phone penetration has quadrupled since 1991 and in some countries, like Israel, has eclipsed wireline telephony completely. Canada ranks as a leader in the information technology revolution. We have the world's highest penetration rate for home computers. We also boast the world's cheapest telephone and Internet access rates. This connectivity has helped to fuel a dynamic information technology industry in Canada. Our IT industry drives annual revenues of over $70 billion and employs over 400,000 people. Technology is clearly viewed by all levels of government as a major engine for Canada's leadership in the global knowledge-based economy. The federal government has strategically focussed on initiatives to brand a "connected" Canada to compete effectively in the information age. Provincial governments, most notably this one in New Brunswick have used IT to rejuvenate lagging economies. And cities from St. John's to Vancouver are reinventing themselves as high tech-friendly "cyber-cities". Clearly there is an information technology revolution going on and Canada is in the thick of it. But revolutions are messy and disruptive. There are many issues that can be found in the debris left by the information technology revolution. Three of the most challenging are · the threat to privacy and security · the impact on employment · and the growing divisions between haves and have-nots. Canada's Office of the Privacy Commissioner estimates that every hour of every day we engage in activities that contribute to the bank of readily accessible personal information about our work, our health, our habits and our buying habits. We make these contributions passively, almost without thinking…having our picture taken when we make withdrawals from ATMs…using our Air Miles Card with a grocery purchase…giving our credit card number to a voice at the end of an 800 call. But every transaction builds a personal file of data that can be retrieved and mined for a variety of purposes…not all of them benign. A recent documentary on the National, for example, profiled the cases of three British Columbians whose lives have been disrupted by inappropriate use of personal data. The consequences ranged from theft to vandalism and the threat of personal violence. So clearly we cannot dismiss privacy concerns. Especially not considering that electronic commerce is at a point where it is about to accelerate sharply. Consider just a few points: · more computers are sold worldwide every day than even existed in 1975 · the number of Internet users is growing 100-fold every 1,000 days · Canadians have already jumped on the debit card bandwagon - making some 676 million transactions in 1996 alone, worth more than $30 billion · a single U.S. company does about US$1 billion a year in business electronically with its 1,400 suppliers. The opportunities for data gathering and data mining proliferate - and the public's confidence that their privacy and security will be maintained is low. Now, I have to say that such concerns exist even without electronic commerce - and I speak as someone whose credit card number was lifted at a Mississauga restaurant by a human being…a fact I found out only when my statement included a charge for a $1200 meal, followed by a first-class train trip to Thunder Bay, among other things. But the fact remains that there are issues to resolve in terms of the impact of information technology on personal privacy. Nor can we be insensitive to fears about the impact of technology on employment. At ITAC we believe the best antidote to fear is information. That's why we engaged the Conference Board to conduct a detailed study of the impact of technology on employment. The good news is that the Conference Board confirmed that technology does not kill jobs. In fact, it concluded that companies which used technology experienced stronger growth in revenues and employment than those who didn't. The challenge is that the technology-based economy changes the nature of employment. It raises the skills ante and demands a generally higher level of education from a worker. Those who express concerns about disenfranchising unskilled labour should be heard. They underscore the need for effective retraining and reorienting the workforce to meet the demands of a knowledge-based economy. As Toronto Star economics editor David Crane recently observed "…opportunity and access to education have to be available to everyone in order for the fruits of economic progress to be widely shared." The prospect of disenfranchisement is even more acute in the developing world. In 1995 the vice-president of South Africa tossed a spanner into the G-7's first celebration of the benefits of wired societies. He reminded a room full of some of the most powerful people in information technology that while they were rushing to build the information highway, half of the world's population was still waiting to hear dial tone for the first time. It is well for us to remember that at least some of those people live right here in Canada. Just two years ago, when one of the cellular carriers launched its mobile satellite service on a satellite that covers all of North America, they arranged for a native Canadian elder from north of the Arctic Circle to talk over the phone to journalists in Ottawa and Toronto. It was the man's first time on a phone, and the people who heard it said it was a very moving thing…not so much what he said as the fact that even here in Canada, where we pride ourselves on telecommunications leadership that is second to none in the world, we still have people who live without Alexander Graham Bell's invention. Building the global infrastructure that will support the info-highway is a high-cost venture. Can the world sustain this diversion of wealth? And if this investment is profit-driven how do we ensure adequate links to developing markets like Africa, Latin America and some parts of Asia. A global village that only admits half the planet is clearly not what Marshall McLuhan had in mind. These issues are but a few of the challenges of our information technology revolution. They are the tiger to our ability to uphold article 18 and 19 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They cast a shadow over article 3 on security of the person, article 12 on privacy and article 22 through 25 on access to the basic necessities of life. (It might even be argued information technology poses a threat to the basic principle of full human equality in dignity and rights.) This is certainly troubling but what do we do? Could we even abandon technology now if we tried? Before we start considering draconian solutions, maybe it's time to take a look at the lady. Information Technology as a Force for Democracy I mentioned earlier that the debate about information technology and human rights is not new. The two forces have been interrelated for centuries. It is no coincidence, for example, that the great flowering of western civilization during the Renaissance coincided with the invention of moveable type. It's highly likely that the ideas of Erasmus, Machievelli and More would have languished in obscurity were it not for the invention of reproducible books. In a similar fashion, the period we celebrate as the Enlightenment would never have produced the great democracies it did without the invention of the popular press. It's also useful to remember that the primary purpose of the "gutter" press in the eighteenth century was the dissemination of gossip. The great ideas which shaped our views of freedom and equality were virtually filler-copy in the scandal sheets of Paris, London and Philadelphia. Every great democratic advance has been propelled by a new innovation in information technology. Ideas by themselves are impotent. Ideas shared by a wide group of people become a movement. Tyrants certainly understand this. The first act of any repressive regime is usually an attempt to seize the channels of information. Hitler burned books. And then there was Stalin's contribution to the evolution of information technology - Pravda. But modern day despots are discovering that it's getting harder and harder to control the channels of communication. One of the most beneficial by-products of the information technology revolution is that these tools are finding their way into the hands of a growing segment of the world's population. This has meant significant re-distribution of power which has lead to some interesting socio-political results. It all started with television. Around the same time I was studying "The Lady and the Tiger" the war in Vietnam was raging. Every night the news brought pictures of the carnage into my living room from places I'd never heard of like Saigon and Hue (Hu-way). These were images unlike anything the home front had ever witnessed. They weren't the Pentagon screened propaganda pieces that appeared in newsreels during World War II. This was war at its most gruesome and chaotic. These pictures were disturbing. And if we didn't want to look at those we could switch channels for other images of young men burning draft cards or thousand of protesters swarming the Mall in Washington. Television brought American youth both the target of their outrage and a possible remedy for it. Television made it virtually impossible for the government of the day to prosecute that war effectively. Television ultimately brought that war and that government to an end. Since then of course governments have become smarter about how to use television in an armed conflict. In fact some cynics have suggested that the media strategies of both the Falklands and the Gulf War were as well crafted as the military strategies. Fortunately for those concerned about manipulation, other channels are emerging. It is unlikely that the world will soon forget the image of a single frail student determined to halt an armoured tank in Tiananmen Square. But the 1989 student uprising in China could have taken place entirely in the obscurity of the Great Wall of Silence that China has drawn around itself. The uprising could have flared and been suppressed before we even knew it. But what breached the "Great Wall"? A simple fax transmitted in secret by a student to a Western news agency. A simple fax turned the whole of the free world's attention toward this valiant struggle. Alas, a fax can no more stop oppression than a man can stop a tank. But China lives with the consequences of Tiananmen Square even yet. The Internet may prove to be the most potent tool for democratization yet. We're all concerned about the capacity the Internet provides hate mongers to disseminate their ideas, unfiltered, to impressionable Internet users. But diversity rules in Cyberspace. For every site Ernst Zundel creates, there are many others to challenge him. Web sites are powerful tools for the dissemination of ideas but nothing beats the speed, ubiquity and effectiveness of news groups. In recent months the Internet has provided the means for doing everything from healing the pain of Princess Diana's death to bringing down the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (or MAI). Now ITAC supports the MAI. We believe that the best way to ensure Canada competes effectively in all sectors is if arbitrary trade practices be replaced by a clear set of rules. However, opponents to MAI have argued that it simply provides big corporation with an elaborate mechanism to control employment and the flow of goods. Big corporations are powerful. If this were so you'd expect the MAI to be a done deal by now. Instead the agreement is in stall and opponents like Maude Barlow and Linda McCuaig are praising an Internet-fueled worldwide movement of activists for bringing it to a halt. The point of all this is not to paint a picture of cyber-utopia. It's simply to suggest that our recent experiences with information technology have produced some pretty interesting outcomes. And given that we're dealing with instruments that are still in their infancy, the democratic potential of information technology tools could be significant. Significant enough to mitigate many of the concerns we have about the issues and hazards of technology. Responsible Stewardship of the Information Technology Revolution Which brings me to Article 29. William Butler Yeats late in his life observed "With dreams begins responsibility." The Universal Declaration puts it more directly: Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the full development of his personality is possible. Those of us who dream of the power of information technology to foster freedom, create wealth and improve the quality of life for all have a significant responsibility. We must through careful stewardship intervene to produce a positive outcome. We must through our advocacy and actions ensure the issues information technology presents are thoughtfully addressed. This means adopting a responsible stand on the protection of privacy. ITAC looks forward to the adoption of a clear set of rules and standards for Canada. ITAC has been a strong supporter of the Canadian Standards Association in its work to establish a model code for use by the information technology industry. We believe that the CSA Model Code helps to create the means necessary to assure Canadians the right to privacy without unduly restricting the evolution of information technology. ITAC was an early proponent of framework federal privacy legislation. We believe that balancing concerns for privacy against the benefits of wider deployment of technology will be an ongoing and delicate process. To ensure Canada makes the right choices will require a great deal of public education. ITAC is committed to working with government and industry to develop the public information campaigns necessary to ensure that Canadians understand personal privacy and security issues. One of my favourite initiatives in public education was launched earlier this month by the Media Awareness Network. This organization is a non-profit group committed to helping parents, teachers and children better understand information technologies. On May 12 they launched Privacy Playground an interactive game to help children learn to critically evaluate Internet sites. The game stresses how important it is for children using the Internet to protect the privacy of their personal information. This is just one of the creative public education initiatives the Media Awareness Network has planned. Responsible stewardship of the information technology revolution also demands interventions to ensure market forces aren't the only ones determining access. Canada has shown tremendous leadership in this area through SchoolNet and the Community Access Programs. SchoolNet began as a modest initiative to provide Internet access and tools to First Nation schools under federal charter. It has grown to embrace all 16,500 of the nation's public schools. You have only to access it and witness students from Bella Coola sharing points of view with students from Bonavista to understand the Internet's power as a tool of expression. Through SchoolNet and its sister programs, all Canadian school children have access to the huge treasure trove of information that resides on the net. And they are learning new ways to make their own contribution to that store of knowledge. Our responsibility for ensuring access to information technology doesn't end at our borders either. We in the developed world must ensure appropriate links to those who have not yet heard dial-tone. Last year ITAC with the International Research and Development Council launched Project Acacia. This initiative positions Canada to take a leadership role in the development of an IT infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa. It is designed to build partnerships with Canadian firms to develop appropriate solutions for Africa. Acacia's objective is to give African communities the power to apply IT and communications technologies to accelerate their social and economic development. We must also work hard to ensure positive economic outcomes and employment growth from information technology here at home. This means responsible deployment of IT - not as a slash and burn cost cutter, but as an engine for growth and the creation of widely distributed wealth. This requires identifying and championing best practices in IT deployment in Canada. ITAC is proud to be in the forefront of this activity, through initiatives such as the Canadian Information Productivity Awards. The reality is that thoughtful men and women around the world have already recognized their responsibilities in relation to the information technology revolution. But the task of building toward a positive outcome is huge and will require many more hands. I am confident that if we can engage the wider community in this responsible stewardship we can effect the outcome of this ongoing debate about information technology and human rights. Yes, it may present an outcome similar to that created in "The Lady or the Tiger", but with leadership and care - well, my money's on the lady.
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© 2007 Atlantic Human Rights Centre, St. Thomas University |
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