10 rules for Internet human rights

In its recent editorial “Tech companies’ unsavory partners,” the Los Angeles Times described the efforts by prominent software and Internet corporations to develop a code of conduct for doing business in countries with histories of human rights abuses.

Almost two years ago, as news reports surfaced about major tech companies’ collaboration with the Chinese government’s authoritarian behavior, tech firms, activists and legal thinkers established a task force to consider a formal human rights code of conduct. Much has happened since. Just in the last six weeks, Yahoo received a congressional lashing and made a financial settlement with the families of dissidents who were jailed in China after Yahoo turned over private user information to the government. The Global Online Freedom Act was passed unanimously in the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. And Cisco, which chose not to involve itself in the code of conduct drafting, squashed a shareholder resolution that would have limited the company’s ability to sell its equipment to regimes with a track record of violating basic human rights. We imagine that the challenges posed by these unexpected seismic developments have kept the drafters busy producing their code, and we suggest the following 10 planks for consideration:

1. Establish an industrywide reporting mechanism in which all sovereign requests to censor, and also violations of human rights or breaches of U.S. law are reported to the U.S. State Department.

2. Establish rules governing not only information sharing but labor and environmental practices. This includes, but is not limited to, identifying existing vulnerabilities and monitoring entire transnational high technology commodity chains.

3. Establish a dispute-resolution procedure through which individuals can bring grievances. This should include financial and legal support to individuals making a claim and a compensation fund to settle successful claims.

4. Establish an external monitoring mechanism to ensure compliance with the code of conduct by signatory members.

5. Establish a permanent sector-specific committee aimed at influencing non-signatory companies to join and to support complementary regulation and legislation among states that limit universally accepted human rights.

6. Demand and support U.S. legislation that governs U.S. high-tech corporate behavior abroad based on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977.

7. Provide financial and technological support for community groups and nongovernmental organizations advocating a human rights and environment-respecting transnational high-tech economy.

8. Limit data retention on individual consumers, particularly in authoritarian regimes.

9. Support and develop technologies that usurp censorship and allow for anonymity among targeted users.

10. Allow for a period of public comment on a draft of the code to be considered before its finalization.

Michael Shtender-Auerbach is managing director and founder of Social Risks, LLC. Michael Likosky is a Reader in International Economic Law at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, a principal at Social Risks, LLC, and author of “Law, Infrastructure and Human Rights,” (Cambridge University Press).