17 October 2016, San José (Costa Rica)
At today’s 6th Annual Freedom Online Conference, the FOC working group 1 ‘An Internet Free and Secure’ (WG1*) officially launched its recommendations for human rights based approaches to cybersecurity.
The launch of the Recommendations represents a culmination of a two year multistakeholder dialogue among working group members – representing governments, the private sector, civil society and academia, as well as the broader community, aimed at bringing a human rights framing to ongoing debates on cybersecurity.
“These recommendations”, reads the preamble, “are a first step towards ensuring that cybersecurity policies and practices are based upon and fully consistent with human rights – effectively, that cybersecurity policies and practices are rights-respecting by design.” The recommendations are aimed at policy makers and other stakeholders engaged in issues of cybersecurity. They touch upon, among other issues, the security of persons online and offline, responses to cyber threats, encryption and anonymity, and cybersecurity capacity building.
The governments of the United States and Canada, industry representatives like Mozilla, and civil society organizations like Access Now, the Association for Progressive Communications, and the Center for Democracy & Technology have already expressed support for the recommendations. Support for the Recommendations has also been expressed by the Freedom Online Coalition.
The Recommendations are now open for expressions of support from all stakeholders, and can be endorsed via https://freeandsecure.online/support/
For more information about the Recommendations, its framing narrative, and existing expressions of support, visit https://freeandsecure.online
*Established in 2014, FOC WG1 ‘An Internet Free and Secure’, is a multistakeholder group of experts working to raise the profile of human rights respecting policy-making. It operates under a mandate from the Freedom Online Coalition, a partnership of 30 governments devoted to advance Internet freedom by coordinating their diplomatic efforts and engaging with civil society and the private sector. You can find out more about the Working Group here.
