Big business and techie libertarians dominate debate
about the internet. The rest of us need to catch up.
Internet activists are becoming better
organised and financed. They have an ideology too, a kind of libertarian
anti-politics. For many of them, the internet’s ability to bypass scrutiny by
public bodies is its greatest virtue. Predictably, the debate early in 2000
about the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Bill, which sought to codify
the powers of the police in relation to the internet and data encryption, became
a rallying point for this freemasonry of the net.
The Foundation for Information Policy
Research (FIPR), one of the main bodies to draw together internet activists, was
at the centre of the campaign against the bill. In a major part of its
activities, briefing the media, the FIPR succeeded brilliantly, persuading many
journalists to parrot its libertarian anti-RIP line.
The FIPR, with an advisory council
boasting many of the most prominent internet cheerleaders and the leading
lawyers in the field, was ready and waiting when the RIP debate began. So who
funded the FIPR in that first year of its existence? Microsoft, 100 per cent.
Who sits on the FIPR’s governing council and is one of its trustees? Roger
Needham, managing director of Microsoft Research.
In the US, if big business wants certain
things to emerge in the public domain which it does not want to say itself, it
funds organisations known as surrogates. The FIPR has never denied that it has
been funded by Microsoft. And I am sure that the distinguished members of the
FIPR's advisory council are in no sense beholden to Microsoft. But did they
never stop to ask why such largesse was forthcoming at that time from such a
significant interested party and whether it compromised their activities?
Dogs bark. Cats miaow. Business resists
regulation. Without quite realising it, many techie libertarians - even some on
the left - have lined up with big business’s traditional hostility to public
authority. What is perhaps a little surprising is the way in which other groups,
including Journalists, which are normally wary of becoming the instruments of
big business, seem to have focused only on the civil liberties aspects of the
debate.
The government gave a lot of ground as the
RIP Bill went through parliament, significantly adapting it to suit industry
demands. Virtually the only organised lobby which spoke in support of what the
government was trying to do were the children’s organisations-the NCH, the
NSPCC and the Children’s Society-who were concerned about the way online paedophiles
and child pornographers were abusing encryption technologies to conceal evidence
of their crimes. (My own lobbying efforts on behalf of NCH were
attacked by the FIPR when it was discovered that my partner of 25 years had
been a Labour life peer for the previous two and a half years.) In recognition
of its efforts, the FIPR has won an award for “raising awareness of the
threats posed to press freedom by the RIP Bill” in the European Online
Journalism Awards 2000, and it was nominated for another one from
Liberty/Justice.
Civil society needs to catch up with the
net. Techies and lawyers should not be the only voices in the debate about how
the internet is changing Britain and journalists should be more sceptical of
those who preach unbridled deregulation. There is a huge public interest at
stake. We have to find ways of enabling the institutions of our imperfect
democracy to take account of this new technology.
Governments elsewhere are beginning to
realise the wider implications of the internet’s development, and that leaving
it all to industry self regulation is insufficient. They are also beginning to
understand that the internet need not be above the law. The French courts
recently banned the sale of Nazi memorabilia over the internet in France. The
big internet service providers belong to ordinary national jurisdictions, and
French experts believe that the ban on Nazi memorabilia will be about 90 per
cent effective.
The French government has recently
established a new national forum, made up of representatives of the internet
industry and French civil society, to discuss the direction the internet is
taking. It will advise government on policy and lead public debate, rather as
our own Human Genetics Advisory Commission does in another field where
technology and society meet. The French body will be financed entirely from
French public funds. In the US, a commission recently reported to Congress on proposals
to protect children online. Its report envisaged the establishment of a body
which would be independently financed and would advise the public and government
on the issues raised by the internet. We
need something similar in Britain. The speed of the internet’s growth makes
this urgent. Techie oligarchs and unaccountable companies are taking decisions
today which could be a global reality tomorrow.
John Carr