As White House and Tech Companies Meet on Terrorism, Privacy & Human Rights Organizations Demand Seat at Table

Today, New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI) and a coalition of privacy and human rights organizations pressed the White House to include civil society in its conversations with Internet companies about its so-called “combatting violent extremism” (CVE) efforts. In a joint letter addressed to top White House staff, groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International emphasized the importance of human rights and the need for greater transparency when it comes to collaboration between the government and the technology industry to address terrorists’ use of the Internet.

Today’s letter comes on the heels of a private January meeting between tech CEOs and White House officials in Silicon Valley and another private meeting last month when tech company representatives were summoned by the White House to the Justice Department’s offices in Washington, DC. As the letter explains when pressing for civil society participation in such discussions and greater transparency around the government’s efforts in this area,

[W]hen billions of people rely on the Internet to exercise their human rights to speak freely and communicate privately, it only makes sense that experts and advocates whose primary goal is to protect those rights be included in discussions about the Internet’s future. Such participation helps ensure that governments do not unduly pressure companies to take steps that would harm human rights….

In pressing for a greater consideration of human rights when government and tech stakeholders discuss collaborative efforts to combat online extremism, the letter highlights the particular risk from such efforts to the privacy and free expression rights of innocent Muslims. The letter also emphasizes the importance of the US setting a strong pro-rights example for the rest of the world when it comes to the Internet. As the letter continues,

Internet freedom begins at home. When the government sits down secretly with those companies that have practical control over a broad swath of public speech and private communication, and especially if and when those conversations lead to voluntary surveillance or censorship measures that would be illegal or unconstitutional for the government to undertake itself, the consequences are truly global.

The following statement can be attributed to Ross Schulman, OTI Senior Counsel and Co-Director of New America’s Cybersecurity Initiative:

“A free and open Internet is too critical to our civil liberties and our human rights for us to stand by silently while the White House pushes tech companies behind closed doors to take steps that may undermine our cybersecurity or stifle our free speech. We must ensure that in pursuit of terrorists we don’t undermine the very freedoms that we seek to protect, and the best way to ensure those freedoms is for the White House and the tech industry to include Internet freedom advocates in their discussions. Without transparency and input from a wide range of experts, the Administration and the Internet companies it is seeking to collaborate with risk making decisions that—whether intentionally or unintentionally—could threaten the rights of millions of Internet users around the world.”