Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLC

(World Wide?) WebAuthor(s): Eric GoldsteinSource: Foreign Policy, No. 116 (Autumn, 1999), pp. 164-165Published by: Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLCStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1149663 .

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LETTERS (WORLD WIDE?) WEB

To the Editor: In his article "Think Again: The Internet" (Summer 1999), Andrew Shapiro correctly observes that democracy and free speech do not just spontaneously occur on the World Wide Web. Intelligent policy choices must be made if the new information technology is to measure up to its hype as a tool of political empowerment and expression.

It is no accident that the Middle East and North Africa lag well behind other regions of the world in terms of the percentage of their populations that use the Internet. As Human Rights Watch noted in a recently published report, The Internet in the Middle East and North Africa: Free Expression and Censorship (available at www.hrw.org), gov- ernments wary of losing their traditional control over the news media and the flow of information generally have stymied Internet growth through policies that include blocking political and human rights Web sites, monitoring online communication, and-perhaps most pervasively- imposing high costs for access.

The exclusionary price of Internet accounts often has less to do with censorship than with protecting profits for state telecommuni- cations monopolies. Whatever the motive, the high price of access- the equivalent of $70 per month in some countries-is one of the main reasons that only about 1 million out of 220 million people liv- ing in the Arab world are online, even though local access is now offered in every country except Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

Governments can do much to help their publics exploit the Inter- net. They can promote computer education, establish free or afford- able points of access to the Internet at libraries or other public institutions, and place official information online to enhance gov- ernment transparency and public deliberation. Egypt and Jordan have taken some steps in this direction.

Tell us what you think. We welcome letters to the editor, which should be no more than 300 words in length. Send letters to fpletters@ceip.org, or "Letters to the Editor," FOREIGN POLICY magazine, 1779 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20036.

164 FOREIGN POLICY

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Letters

But governments must also be encouraged to protect online free- doms, including the right to free expression and association and the right to privacy. Internet service providers should generally not be held liable for content, since the regulatory burdens involved would threaten the free flow of information. Strong encryption should be made avail- able to individuals, and any surveillance of electronic communications should comport with civil rights and be subject to the requirements of due process. Finally, governments should avoid all forms of top-down censorship and leave decisions on content filtering in the hands of the users themselves.

Eric Goldstein Deputy Director Human Rights Watch Washington, DC

ON TERRORISM, EUROPE GETS RESULTS

To the Editor: It is refreshing to read Bruce Hoffman's article "Is Europe Soft on Ter- rorism?" (Summer 1999), because he is not repeating what is so often heard in the United States. His positions probably stem from the fact that he has been working in Europe and does not look at the issue through ideological glasses. Unlike the United States, Europe does not consider antiterrorism to be a moral crusade. Hoffman properly suggests that many European countries do not share the same foreign-policy interests as the United States (consider, for instance, the Middle East). These divergent interests, of course, determine differences in attitudes toward terrorism.

European countries have been tough on domestic and regional ter- rorism: France with Action Directe, Germany with the Red Army Fac- tion, Italy with the Red Brigades, and Spain with ETA (Basque Homeland and Freedom). In the case of transnational terrorism, most terrorist organizations have no formal allegiance to any country. They are increasingly loose associations of self-funded groups-as is the case with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda or Algeria's Armed Islamic Group (GIA), to name but a few. Iran and Libya are no longer on the forefront.

FALL 1998 165

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