To address a spike in online child sexual abuse material(CSAM) during the pandemic, the European Commission has published a proposal that would allow courts to order internet service providers to block sites containing CSAM. The law would also require platforms to scan content to detect and remove CSAM and report annually on how much content they remove, while also increasing their obligations to prevent online grooming.
The past year has yielded mixed results for technology and democracy.
Cryptocurrency, like other online platforms that have become increasingly mainstreamed in the digital era, provides both opportunities for and threats to democracy.
Last year, I participated in the UN’s Internet Governance Forum’s (IGF) Best Practice Forum (BPF) on Cybersecurity. The BPF working groups form part of the IGF’s intersessional work between annual forums, and are designed to facilitate collaborative, community-led research around a certain topic affecting the internet and internet governance.
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In today’s world, the exercise of democracy and human rights relies on access to secure, uncensored participation in the digital space. As society continues to move into the digital realm, the fight to defend human rights and civic space is expanding into this new territory: technology and the internet hold the potential to democratize access to information and to opportunity, but at the same time carry the danger of being used as an instrument to further exacerbate unequal power dynamics. The COVID-19 pandemic has made this tension strikingly clear.
5G adoption is happening around the world, even in places with low internet penetration. At the end of 2019, 131 countries had announced plans to invest in 5G, and more than 60 of the 98 countries NDI works in were engaging corporations that have close ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in their 5G plans.
It’s finally summer. Time to get outside, and in some places, enjoy a bit of a reprieve from a challenging year. It’s been a tough one, especially for democratic actors around the world. Democratic activists have never been more at risk.
