Creating Internet Accountability

“I tend to be described as a journalist/advocate,” said Rebecca MacKinnon, author of Consent of the Networked. “We’re at a point in history that whether the Internet is going to evolve in a way that’s compatible with democracy and human rights is really kind of up in the air. However you want to pigeonhole me, with whatever label, I’d like to make a contribution to it going in the right direction. Call me what you want.” But she does have a strong view of where her strengths lie.

She wasn’t, for instance, going to be the one to implement her own suggestion that citizens of the Internet from across the world band together to demand civil rights. “I’m not a rabble-rousing movement leader,” she says. A fact-based research project that would increase accountability and transparency of powerful companies seemed like a better way to expand on the ideas she had developed. To create criteria on which to rank these companies, MacKinnon has been drawing on the United Nation’s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and consulting with human rights groups, academics, technologists, and socially responsible investors. The ranking system she comes up with needs to be meaningful to stakeholders like these and to reflect what’s reasonable to expect from companies and how they deal with the demands of governments across the world.