Information and Access: Human Rights and the Internet

The dust being kicked up by Edward Snowden in Russia now and of Chelsea Manning before him is likely not the latest in a long line of leakers that have challenged and redefined the national and international conversations about what is or is not acceptable limits on privacy in our societies. These conversations are critical, for it is only by consensus that we can come to a collective understanding about the boundaries between personal and public lives. However, the substantially sordid revelations by Snowden has inflamed the discussion to such an extent that it's easy to lose track of an important thread that we might separate from concerns of privacy, and that's that the exceptional progress we've made at making information more accessible at a lower cost to more people on the planet than at any time in human history.

Access is an issue. The older among us can recall the long process of sifting through card catalogs, consulting journals for recommendations or personal networks for word-of-mouth suggestions. In many cases, this would be followed up with the realization that you'd have to request information through an interlibrary loan where a book or periodical would get mailed to you (if you were lucky enough to not simply be told that it was unavailable). In the world of mass media, dependency reigned on being able to afford equipment to pick up free broadcasts and the presumption that you lived in a nation that permitted access to you from diverse sources. At a glance, the notion that Bill Gates pushed that there are more important things than internet access seems true. Who would prioritize being able to read a copy of Le Monde over the pressure to get treatment access to a child dying of malaria, to say nothing of the frivolity implied with getting YouTube or Twitter accounts ahead of the goal of curing HIV/AIDS or ensuring clean water access to communities. And yet, it is precisely the lack of information that leads people to be unaware of the ways to prevent illness with handwashing, to leave them helpless and disempowered in the face of malaria prevention or treatment, and to believe that medical and economic and political problems are either unsolvable or are a feature unique to their culture/geography and thus impossible to address.

(2013-09-09/huffingtonpost)