Challenges and Critiques

From Identifying Difficult Problems in Cyberlaw
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Foundational Considerations: Defining the Problem


For example, internet penetration in Africa remains low—one 2010 study estimates that only about 10.9 percent of the population in the continent has internet access.&#91;2&#93; The lack of internet access could explain why human rights activists make limited use of video technologies to upload human rights content onto the web. Social norms may also drive whether and how technologies are used to further human rights. In addition, some activists might choose not to film and circulate videos documenting human rights abuses because increasing international exposure of a particular type of government abuse may not stop government abuses.&#91;3&#93; The “range of human rights abuses” is wide, and human rights advocacy taking the form of “pursuing reform through formal judicial routes or diplomatic channels” might be more effective in a variety of situations.&#91;4&#93; The solution offered by Pharos may be ill-suited to addressing first-order issues like network connection and practices surrounding technology use.


Human rights videos are not widely disseminated on the internet because:

  • Current technologies (like Tor) that can be used by human rights activists are underleveraged because human rights activists do not know about their existence.

Some of the problems above can be addressed without the creation of a new organization and the design of a new technological system. For example, in order to address human rights activists’ lack of technical expertise, some researchers have run technology training sessions.&#91;5&#93; Patrick Meier, a researcher studying the use of technologies in civil resistance against repressive regimes, has led technology training sessions to teach individuals how to use technologies like Ushahidi, a tool that uses crowdsourced information to map the emergence of natural disasters and government abuses against citizens.&#91;6&#93;



Practical Concerns


Costs and Funding




Even though many philanthropists might be initially attracted to the broad goals of Pharos, some of them may object to the organization’s definition of acceptable content.&#91;7&#93; For example, an American philanthropist that generally supports ending human rights abuses may object to Pharos’s willingness to release video content exposing American troops’ firing on Iraqi or Afghani civilians because of the video’s potential to further deepen anti-American sentiment in the Middle East.

Governance and Defining Acceptable Content

Extremist groups might submit videos to Pharos that are intended to terrorize a population. Determining whether it is appropriate to disseminate a video showing the capture or the killing of a civilian would be difficult. When the video of journalist Daniel Pearl’s beheading circulated on the internet, many video hosting services decided to continue hosting the video even though some individuals, including Senator Joe Lieberman, asked for YouTube to remove graphic and violent videos that seemed to further the end of terrorists.&#91;8&#93; Like Lieberman, some philanthropists might object to content that is distributed to further the end of a terrorist or extremist organization.&#91;9&#93; YouTube’s Community Guidelines advises uploaders not to post content that contains “graphic or gratuitous violence”&#91;10&#93; and yet YouTube decided that First Amendment rights and the right of the public to know what had happened to Daniel Pearl trumped other concerns. In a similar situation, what position would Pharos take? Should the board remove the video to refuse satisfying the whims of a terrorist organization? Or should a larger interest in human rights or in circulating the truth trump other considerations? What positions would the former political leaders on the Pharos board take and how would those views influence Pharos’s decision?


One set of policy guidelines the Pharos team intended to model was the CNN iReport Community Guidelines.&#91;11&#93; CNN iReport asks individuals to not post:

  • Content that infringes someone's copyright.
  • Content that you know to be untrue.
  • Pornography/sexually explicit content.
  • Obscene/lewd content.
  • Content that advocates violent behavior.
  • Hate Speech/Racially or ethnically offensive content.&#91;12&#93;


Furthermore, what is a human rights violation in one country might very well be venerated tradition in another society and determining the right level of deference to pay a particular society will be challenging. The Satere-Mawe, an indigenous people in Brazil, perform a male adulthood initiation ritual in which boys stick their hands in a glove filled with bullet ants whose bites inject venom into their victims, causing severe pain, temporary paralysis in the arms, and uncontrollable shaking that may last up to twenty-four hours.&#91;13&#93; In other societies, un-anaesthetized male circumcision is performed on teenage boys without sterilized medical instruments as part of a religious ritual, and botched circumcisions routinely leads to death.&#91;14&#93; Do these rituals constitute human rights abuses?


Other Challenges


Another area of concern is ease of use by the end users. To be successful, Pharos would ideally make video upload easier than currently available tools do. One of the methods of video upload discussed by the team would require accessing a VPN or Pharos-specific Tor network.&#91;15&#93; These methods of uploading videos to Pharos might be prohibitively complicated for the average human rights activist.

Finally, it is disputable just how secure the direct channels between human rights activists and the centralized Pharos organization can be, from a technical standpoint.&#91;16&#93;

Unintended Consequences

Threats to Human Security




Government Crackdowns on Internet Access

Other problems related to the internet architecture within countries will likely play a larger role in the adoption of any technology liberation tool than the mere existence of the tool. In reaction to political unrest, the government of Egypt took its entire country offline on January 27, 2011.&#91;17&#93; Other countries like China block internet access in certain portions of the country where political unrest—and human rights abuses—exists.&#91;18&#93;


Worsening of Human Rights Conditions


First, the impulse to take human rights activism online might distract citizens—and governments—from participating in meaningful, real-world reforms.&#91;19&#93; The internet is not always the best forum or outlet for pursuing relief from human rights abuses.

“The right path of action to help solve human rights problems is context-specific. If you really want a bad situation to change, you need to think about timing issues, framing issues, who to go to in order to publicize news about an abuse…. You have to examine what is the incident involved and who is the actor perpetrating the incidents. Tweeting or posting a video documenting a human rights abuse in most contexts will not induce the perpetrator to stop.” &#91;20&#93;


For example, in 2002, the Nigerian government sentenced Amina Lawal to death by stoning after she gave birth out of wedlock.&#91;21&#93; Her case quickly gained international attention, and the media and human rights activists in the West organized an international letter-writing campaign demanding the courts to reverse the sentence.&#91;22&#93; During this time, Lawal was not in danger and her case was still pending appeal.&#91;23&#93; As international uproar over the case increased, tensions between the local NGO representing Lawal and the Nigerian judicial system increased.&#91;24&#93; Significantly, many Western audiences had gotten the facts of Lawal’s case wrong and the local NGO representing Lawal feared that the inaccuracies in the media were hurting Lawal’s case.&#91;25&#93; The NGO urged the well meaning, but misdirected, petitioners to stop.&#91;26&#93; They had reason to believe that the international scrutiny and mangling of the facts would do Lawal more harm than good: earlier, an unmarried teenager convicted of extramarital sex was flogged “deliberately . . . to defy” what a local official described as “letters from infidels.” &#91;27&#93;



  2. Internet World Stats, Usage and Population Statistics,;;
  3. Interview with Jennifer Gibson, former human rights activist for Save the Children (Feb. 3, 2011) (on file with author). See, infra, Unintended Consequences.
  4. Gibson, supra, note 3.
  5. See generally, (detailing Patrick Meier’s insight on deploying crisis mapping technologies to further civil resistance against repressive regimes).
  6.; see also (mapping civil resistance by Sudanese citizens against the government and indicating times and places where protesters have been killed).
  7. See Governance and Defining Acceptable Content.
  8. See J. Lieberman and S. Collins, Violent Islamist Extremism, the Internet, and the homegrown Terrorist Threat. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (Mar. 8 2008),
  9. See, e.g., Peter Finn, Khalid Sheik Mohammed Killed U.S. Journalist Daniel Pearl, Report Finds, WASH. POST, Jan. 20, 2011, (David Pearl’s killer said that the video of the beheading was made to serve Al Qaeda propaganda objectives).
  12. Id.
  13. Steve Backshall, Bitten by the Amazon, THE TIMES, Jun. 6, 2008,
  14. Thandisizwe Redford Mavundla, et. al., Rationalization of Male Circumcision as a Sacred Religious: Custom: Health Beliefs of Xhosa Men in South Africa, 20 J. TRANSCULT. NURSING 395, 396 (2009).
  15. See Central Idea.
  16. See Technical Capabilities.
  19. See generally Evgeny Morozov, THE NET DELUSION 197-203 (2011) (arguing that young people’s participation in online political campaigns might produce an illusion of offline political reform).
  20. See Gibson, supra, note 3.
  21. Deborah L. Rhode and Amanda Packel, Leadership in a Global Context: Corporate Social Responsibility and International Human Rights, LEADERSHIP: LAW, POLICY, AND MANAGEMENT (forthcoming, Aspen Publishers, 2011).
  22. Id.
  23. Id.
  24. Id.
  25. Letter from BAOBAB for Women's HUman Rights to paticipants of letter-writing campaign,
  26. Id.
  27. See, Rhode supra, note 21.