Human Rights in the Global Information Society

Extract

Human Rights in the Global Information Society. Edited by Rikke Frank Jørgensen. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. 324p. $25.00.

The various authors in this book are activists and scholars associated, in one way or another, with the Human Rights Caucus of the World Summit on the Information Society held in Geneva (2003) and Tunis (2005). They share a “firm commitment to promoting human rights standards as an essential baseline for the assessment and governance of the GIS [global information society]” (p. 7). To that end, the book analyzes how the development of public policy on GIS issues affects the protection and promotion of human rights. How are rights like freedom of expression, to privacy, to freedom from discrimination, and women's rights affected by the rapid spread of the GIS? As the book's introduction suggests, “there is a pressing need to think through how these rights apply in a globally networked and information-intensive world, identify specific policies and practices that could be contrary to their preservation and promotion, and suggest specific reforms that would rectify such problems” (p. 26).