(MENAFN- The Peninsula) During the second session at the International Conference on ‘Social Media: Challenges and Ways to Promote Freedoms and Protect Activists'' organised in Doha on February 16 and 17 by QNHRC in cooperation with its partners, Joseph A. Cannataci, Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy at the OHCHR, called on social media companies to respect human rights, privacy and cooperate with governments in order to make progress in this regard.
The Peninsula met him at the sidelines of the conference and when asked whether social media was serving growing nationalism in the world, Cannataci said that he did not think that social media was serving the trend more or less, because social media exist almost a life of itself. ''People who want to use it, they use it and people who do not want to use it, they do not. People can use or abuse it. When they abuse it you need to take certain measures including surveillance of the social media.
''When it comes to more intense surveillance, you need to be sure that the society has the rights'' safeguards in any country whether you are looking at the UK or Qatar. These safeguards have to include a law which provides a legal basis for surveillance which must include independent oversight. So you need an independent authority with judicial status to grant permission for surveillance.
Regarding protection of minorities in a nationalist environment, he said that there are various ways to protect minorities. ''Minorities can be protected not by one single measure but by many measure brought together. Surveillance is one of these measures. There are many minorities, whether we are talking about religious minority, or ethnic or national minority. Fundamental human rights law protects all those minorities.
He added: ''You need to have measures that protect privacy, from surveillance, and cultural identity of minorities. In some countries, minorities have separate voting rights, they have been granted number of seats in parliaments. We should all live under the rule of law.
To a question whether international laws and conventions on human rights could apply on social media to protect minorities and privacy of individuals, he said the UN holds that all rights which we are enjoyed offline should be enjoyed online. ''This is a nice principle. But the question is do we have the mechanisms to enforce that? The answer is no.
Joseph said that the most important problem we have, is the jurisdiction and who has the jurisdiction over the Internet. ''In many places you will find countries will attempt to exert jurisdiction on the servers in their territory but they can do nothing or very little on the servers on information stored outside of their territories. That is why we need an international agreement.
He said that Facebook has published a new call for regulation of Internet, but in doing so it has highlighted the issue that needs to be responded. ''It (Facebook) has not identified the solution and we need international agreement to agree on those solutions. At the moment, we have one piece of internationally-agreed law inside the space which is the cybercrime convention and even this has been signed by only 57 countries, so far, out of 193 UN member countries.
For example, he said, in this convention, hate speech against minorities is not part of the main convention but it is an additional protocol which has not been signed by all countries. ''So there are always difficulties in getting countries to come together towards international agreement.
On attempts to reach a common definition on hate speech, Cannataci pointed out that there is some attempts which have been made like additional protocols of cybercrime convention. ''At this moment, there are some UN initiatives on hate speech but none of which is completely effective to this point.
When asked about the fine line between freedom of speech and responsible speech and how to protect the line from a breach, he said: ''This question is a very difficult one because, traditionally, some religions for example have held the right to be offended.
''In reality when it comes to free speech (in my personal opinion not of a UN official), I feel that as long as somebody is not trying to incite other people to a violent action they should be allowed to say whatever they want. So there is a clear distinction between fact and opinion. To me, everybody has a right to express their opinion.
He added that people should be punished for trying to spread fake news. ''Let the battle of ideas take place without violence.
For the need of having regulatory bodies on social media or encouraging governments to establish them, he said to his knowledge, so far there was no UN initiative in this regard. ''But governments are encouraged to have safeguard on privacy, data protection, and international safeguard on surveillance.
''One of the most important things that governments should do is to adopt a very intensive programs of education starting from early age to enable children to know how Internet works, how ideas are transmitted, how they are being monitored and how people will try to influence and manipulate their commercial or political decisions? He continued saying that children should understand what to use, what to refuse, how advertising works, how much reliable is the information they get through the Internet.
When asked to comment on the fact that individuals are punished on violating privacy of others or damaging reputation of people but governments are not accountable when they do so under the pretext of security or other reasons, he answered: ''This is (for which) I encourage governments in a kind of safeguard. For instance, if you are a citizen of Europe and member of the 47 states of the Council of Europe you can take your government to court and you can take it to the European Court of Human Rights. It is a system which has given a good result over the past years. Unfortunately this may not be available or effective in other parts of the world.
Therefore, Cannataci said, states need to have a proper law and growth of regional courts should be encouraged. ''The European experience may not be perfect model but it is a positive model, he answered when asked whether he considered that model as a good model.
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