Virtual Violation of Human Rights with Special emphasis on Rights

Violated on Social Media and Online Platforms

Introduction
At present - when most information is spread and carried on in a digital form, when
communication technologies such as smart phones and free internet access ubiquity have
become part of daily life, when commerce, health and financial services, education and
entertainment, social platforms and infrastructures are provided online and in real-time -
contemporary life is increasingly moving in the direction of becoming a “transparent
society”. The advent of technology has led to an unprecedented emphasis on data and
information. As human interactions increasingly go online, privacy is a primary concern. The
amount of data we generate online and its vulnerability to misuse creates a new challenge for
the legal and regulatory framework. On one hand where this information technology has
made access to information extremely easy and readily available at any point of time, its
harmful effects in the form of unnecessary surveillance, data theft, interception of
communication etc on the other hand cannot be ignored. The technological advancement in
storage, retrieval, analysis, and transmission of information (specially the personal
information of individuals) has definitely increased the concerns about violations of privacy.
To get in-depth knowledge as to right to privacy and its implication in the digital age it is
important, first, to understand the meaning of the term ‘privacy’. Legally speaking, the term
“privacy” as such has not been defined anywhere in strict sense. The Merriam Webster
dictionary defines “privacy” as freedom from unauthorized intrusion. Privacy can be
conceptualized as an information space attached to an individual. The content of this space is
personal information. Privacy rights can be understood as rights to control the flow of
information in and out of this private zone. Considering its importance in one’s life the same
has been defined as human right enjoyed by every human by virtue of his existence as a
human. The Supreme Court of India has time and again considered privacy as an essential
element of personal liberty5 which is a crucial human right for the holistic development of
human personality. According protection to one’s privacy and respecting the right to privacy
is a counterbalance against the State’s power extending upon the lives of its citizens.

Right to Privacy as Human Right

Broadly speaking human rights may be regarded as those fundamental and inalienable rights
which are essential for life as human being. It is crystal clear that these rights are not
something which are specially created and then awarded to any individual rather these rights
are those rights which are inherent in any individual by virtue of he being a ‘human’. State
simply recognizes these rights. These rights are possessed by every human being irrespective
of his nationality, race, color, caste, religion, gender etc. After witnessing gross violations of
human rights during world war-II, in order to reaffirm faith in the fundamental human rights,
dignity and worth of the human person, the world community gathered to resolve and device
a mechanism to ensure protection of human rights. When the same was being done regard to
the aspects of privacy was given. Article 12 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(UDHR) is evidence of the same which accords protection to right to privacy as a human
right. The said article reads thus, No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his
privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation.
Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
The aforesaid provision seeks to create a legal regime in the international order that casts an
obligation upon States to protect physical and communication privacy. Further this position
seeks to encompass various facets of human interaction and conduct. These facets include the
right to reputation and familial privacy that are the foundation of dignity essential element of
right to life and personal liberty. The arbitrary intrusion with one’s personal liberty is
extremely dangerous not only to the right of privacy but also to the realization of various
other human rights as right to privacy is the fountain head of other human rights. If one is not
allowed the personal space, the intimate space which he shares with himself it is futile to
provide protection to all other human rights. While freedom of expression is fundamental to
diverse cultural expression, creativity and innovation as well as the development of one’s
personality through self-expression, the right to privacy is essential to ensuring individuals’
autonomy, facilitating the development of their sense of self and enabling them to forge
relationships with others. We live in a world where to have a life worth living mere food,
clothing and shelter is not enough to meet the standards. Education, health care facilities and
privacy do play a major role.
The Supreme Court of India in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India has recognized
right to privacy as fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution of India. Right to
privacy has always been considered an intrinsic part of individual’s life and personal liberty.
In earlier times privacy was essentially related to physical/bodily privacy where rules and
regulations were aimed to provide protection against any kind of intrusion into one’s privacy
physically. Today, in the backdrop of ubiquitous presence of internet, the right to privacy has
come to be understood as multifaceted right meaning thereby that privacy is no more
concerned with the physical aspect only it includes within its ambit the communication
privacy and information privacy as well. This digital age has given multidimensional sphere
to the concept of privacy protection.

Right to Privacy in Digital Age-the Potential Threats

The Internet has opened new channels of communication and self-expression… Countless
individuals use message boards, date matching sites, interactive social networks, blog hosting
services and video sharing websites to make themselves and their ideas visible to the world.
While such intermediaries enable the user-driven digital age, they also create new legal
problems.
In contemporary society, information technology occupies the zenith position in everyone’s
daily life. Every single day every person wittingly or unwittingly generates large amounts of
sensitive personal data while navigating through the World Wide Web. The protection of
privacy of people’s lives has never been more vulnerable. The digital medium has invariably
increased usage of internet in various contexts like online searches, shopping, consumer
activity, smartphone use, social media etc which results in generation of huge amount of data.
In this respect, digital technology has created a symbiotic relationship of sorts. It enables us
to access and share information for our own benefit. At the same time, the data we generate is
of immense value to the public and private entities that facilitate and control our digital
interactions. While this has the potential to produce great benefits and improve social
outcomes, it also poses risks to our fundamental human rights. The surveillance and
collection of vast amounts of personal information and meta-data, and the processing of such
data using new analytical techniques, has major implications for our right to privacy and our
right to be free from discrimination. The United Nations General Assembly in 2014 adopted a
Resolution 68/167 relating to the right to privacy in digital age wherein it has clearly
acknowledged the concern over increasing issues of eroding privacy protection in this
technologically advanced world. The relevant portion of the preamble reads thus, Noting that
the rapid pace of technological development enables individuals all over the world to use new
information and communication technologies and at the same time enhances the capacity of
governments, companies and individuals to undertake surveillance, interception and data
collection, which may violate or abuse human rights, in particular the right to privacy, as set
out in article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and article 17 of the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and is therefore an issue of increasing
concern.
Considering the potential threats in the form of communication surveillance, its interception,
data theft, unauthorized personal data access, trans-border flow of data etc the UN has
affirmed that the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online, including
the right to privacy. The digital medium poses a number of threats to the unbridled enjoyment
of right to privacy in the form of following:
 Communication surveillance
 Data theft
 Trans-border flow of data
 Breach of confidentiality
 Electronic voyeurism
 Unlawful access
 Data retention
 Big data issues etc.
In the context of digital medium apart from surveillance of communication, interception and
data retention containing personal information which renders person to vulnerability threats
to social media privacy are also rampant. “social media”, also known as “social networking”,
is the term used to describe any type of social interaction using technology (primarily the
Internet, but also including modern smartphone and PDA innovations) with some
combination of words, photos, video, and /or audio. The popularity of social networking sites
such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram to name a few is not hidden from anybody. The craze
with which the people specially the younger generation are found glued to these social
networking sites one would not be wrong to term the craze as addiction. These social
networking sites usually set a particular default privacy setting which allow maximum access
unless these are actively changed. This approach places a large number of users at risk given
the fact that user is not effectively informed of the implications of failing to actively change
settings. Since these sites social networking sites allow its users to upload photos, videos,
make comments, express views, build an online network, and share views, opinions and
information with each other privacy concerns creeps in the context as well. These photos,
videos etc if not secured actively by changing privacy settings are prone to misuse by the
notorious element actively present online.
Apart from ignorance or no effective information as to change of privacy settings on the part
of users to actively change the settings there are cases where these so called privacy settings
are available in such a complex fashion that it is some time beyond understanding of a
common man specially one’s from non-computer background to change the settings and
protect their data on social networking site from being unauthorizedly accessed.
Another important privacy concern is that of retention of data for usually long periods. Some
sites on internet are built with default settings to retain users’ data where such retention could
be for certain period of time or in perpetuity. Such unauthorized data retention is quite
dangerous especially in those cases where such data pertains to personal information of the
user putting his privacy at peril. The major reason for the proliferation of these social
networking privacy issues is due to the generation of massive information from these sites
which can easily be misused if there exists a slight lacuna in the system managing these sites.

Social Media: A Tool for Human Rights Awareness

It has already been discussed as to how this digitalization has daunting effects upon the
realization of right to privacy, the discussion would not be complete without reflecting upon
the encouraging efforts made by social media in creating awareness about human rights
among masses. Social media can serve as a powerful platform in launching various human
rights campaigning at a large scale. It can be used as a strong medium for expressing people’s
opinion in this digital age. On Feb 18, 2011, a week after the overthrow of the twenty-eight-
year authoritarian regime of President Hosini Mubarak, the Egyptian government-owned
newspaper, Al-Ahram, reported that an Egyptian father, Jamal Ibrahim, had named his
newborn daughter, “facebook Jamil Ibrahim”, to commemorate the unprecedented role the
networked social medium played in the Egyptian Revolution. The role played by the social
media in mobilizing masses to demand a change of authoritarian regime is remarkable.
Further, it has been time and again said by the Supreme Court of India that the crucial human
right in the form of freedom of speech and expression includes the freedom of propagation of
ideas; to publish and circulate one’s ideas and opinions and the social media, today, is the
best platform to afford such opportunity. With millions of users, social media can easily be
resorted to propagate one’s ideas and opinions with masses. It has not only helped in
circulation of views and ideas to condemn human rights violations but has also helped in
creating human rights awareness among people and has triggered many campaigns to shun
human rights violations. Sometimes single expression of idea on social media has become the
voice of many voiceless in the world. There is also profound plurality and diversity in
thought, opinion and expression in online participation. Social media also constitute spaces of
community sharing extensive cultural contents, and are often explicitly used as platforms for
education: teaching, distributing, exploring. In this sense, social media also contribute to the
formation of human beings as competent members of a community, by supporting them in
gaining critical intellectual capacities to participate in the political and cultural spaces of their
online and offline communities.
Further, social media platforms are cultural spaces on their own and contribute to the
expansion and development of a whole extension of meanings, languages, artistic
expressions, remix activities of cultural products ranging from irony to criticism, from
common places to vanguard. Several scholars explain that the culture of sharing, the practices
of crowd sourcing and the forms of collective production are generating new forms of
literacy, new forms of knowledge and ultimately new forms of solidarity, social awareness
and reflexivity. This corresponds to the right of members to freely participate in the cultural
life of the community.
Social media, mobile communications and digital networks etc. are being successfully used
for human rights awareness in first and second world countries. It can be used for promotion
of human rights even in third world countries which face issues of poor formal education,
communication gap, governments’ passivity etc. Social media can be used to educate people
as to their right, how to complain in case of human right abuse, authority to be approached,
remedies available and so on. Similarly, to organize people and events, communications can
be shared effectively and quickly through social media. This can also serve for close
monitoring of human right compliance from authorities. Social media is a good platform for
citizens’ journalism through blog, Facebook, YouTube etc. to promote human rights and
legal awareness by social networking. Human right activists such as Wael Abbas (Egypt),
Wen Yunchao (China), Andreas Harsono (Indonesia), Rosebell's (Uganda), Aung San Thar
(Myanmar), Kwon Eun Kyoung ( Korea), Henda Chennaoui (Unisia) are few to name to
show how blogs and online articles can sensitize people on human rights. Alongside, it brings
more transparency in governance and human right administration. Social media also creates
deterrence in the mind of people since any human right violation may be recorded and shared
online; this fear considerably reduces crime in the society and also helps to bring the culprit
to book.

Conclusion
The advancement of technology with the omnipresence of internet has both pros and cons.
On one hand it poses potent threats to the realization of human right of right to privacy in the
form of surveillance of communication, interception and data retention containing personal
information which renders person to vulnerability. Privacy issues are the biggest concern in
the world of social networking. Social networking sites are often used for nefarious purposes
like cyber-bullying, cyber-stalking-invading into someone’s privacy violating the right
thereof. The cases pertaining to unauthorized access to data and the misuse of such illegally
retrieved data or information are rampant posing serious threats to privacy concerns in digital
age. However, on the other hand, the social media can potentially be used as a platform in
fostering the realization and protection of human rights by creating awareness among the
masses. If used prudently, social media can open innovative vistas of discourse on human
rights, create an interconnected environment and bring great difference in the protection,
promotion and enforcement of human rights.