Korea Progressive Network ‘Jinbonet’
Statement on paragraphs 34-37 of the new Draft Declaration of Principles
Document WSIS03/PICP/DT/4(Rev.2)-E
Civil Society Information Security and Privacy Working Group submitted a Statement on the new Draft of Principles on 17. July. We appreciate the endeavor of the Working Group and we basically agree with the comments. Moreover we want to comment more to the new draft Declaration of Principles. We hope our comment to be taken into consideration at the future process of WSIS.
In the information society, surveillance by the government, business entity, employer is increasing rapidly. So now surveillance become one of the most dangerous threats to human rights and democracy. Information is the source of power in the information society. While one has more power to monitor the others are discriminated and excluded. And owing to the rapid development of technologies including ICT, the government, business entity, employer have the ability to collect and process all kinds of information as they want. So, if we fail to control the surveillance power, the information society shall be an Owellian dystopia. So protecting the human rights and democracy from the surveillance is a very urgent and important task that we have faced. Because of the importance of this issue, until now we have many treaties, conventions and guidelines about this issue.
But in the Declaration, to our disappointment, there is little considerations on this issue. Only in the paragraph 34-37, the privacy issue is raised. But the paragraph 34-37 is originally dedicated to the security issue, that has a tention with the privacy and free speech. We think that Protect Human rights and Democracy from the Surveillance in the Information Society is one of the most important issues to be discussed and to be settled in WSIS. So we insist that this issue shall be stated as a new chapter. At that chapter we must declare that the surveillance in the information society must be limited for the human rights and democracy. And to protect human rights and democracy from surveillance, the right to participate in designing the information systems, and determine the information systems, the right to know and control the information and information systems shall be given to the information subject. And technologies shall be under control of the information subject and the surveillance of government, business entity and employer shall be supervised by independent authority.
18th, July, 2003
Korean participants from Jinbonet :
Eun-woo Lee, Un-hee Lee, Yeo-Kyung Chang
* Jinbonet(Korea Progressive Network) is a Korea based non-profit organization and a member of APC(Association for Progressive Communications).
2003-07-17
