Question:
Monitoring is lazy parenting.

The proposition substitutes the good, old-fashioned way of teaching children how to be responsible, with invasions of their privacy, so violating an inherent rights [1]. Such parenting is called remote-control parenting. Parents who monitor their children’s digital behavior feel that they satisfactorily fulfil their parental role when in fact they are being lazy and uninvolved in the growth of their child. Children, especially the youngest, are “dependent upon their parents and require an intense and intimate relationship with their parents to satisfy their physical and emotional needs.” This is called a psychological attachment theory. Responsible parents would instead spend more time with their children teaching them about information management, when to and when not to disclose information, and interaction management, when to and when not to interact with others. [2] That parents have the ability to track their children is true, but doing so is not necessarily likely to make them better adults [3]. The key is for parents and children to talk regularly about the experiences of the child online. This is a process that cannot be substituted by parental monitoring.

[1] United Nations Children’s Fund. Implementation Handbook for the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Fully revised 3rd edition. Geneva. United Nations Publications. Google Search. Web. May 2013.

[2] Shmueli, Benjamin, and Ayelet Blecher-Prigat. “Privacy for Children.” Columbia Human Rights Review. Rev. 759 (2010-2011): 760-795. Columbia Law School. Web. May 2013.

[3] “You Can Track Your Kids. But Should You?” New York Times. 27 June 2012: 1. New York Times. May 2013.

Opposition claims that monitoring is ‘laziness’. Admittedly, monitoring makes digital parenting more efficient and comprehensive. But, such technology makes parenting practical, not ‘lazy’. As it is, many people blame technology for their own shortcomings. [1] Thus, parents need to know that monitoring will not do all the work for them. It is not lazy to monitor your children, it is clearly essential that children are monitored when involved in activities such as sports. The internet is a dangerous environment just as the sports field is and should have similar adult supervision.

[1] Bradley, Tony. “Blaming Technology for Human Error: Trying To Fix Social Problems With Technical Tools.” About. About. 30 Mar 2005.

Governments are often obliged to do things that the population doesn’t like – raising taxes is an obvious example. However, it is also recognised that sometimes the government has to do these things in order to represent the long-term, best interest of its people – whether or not it is a popular measure at the time.

If it is true that people cannot easily get jobs in the developed world for lack of language skills then there will surely still be a pressure to learn the language or languages of international discourse. What this policy offers is access by a much wider audience to the various benefits that expanded academic knowledge can offer. It will expand the developing world's knowledge base and not in any way diminish the desire to learn English and other dominant languages. It should be remembered that it is not just academics that use academic papers; students do as well, as do professionals in everyday life. Clearly there cannot be an expectation that everyone learns English to be able to access research. While there may be fewer languages in academic use there is not such a narrowing of language for everyone else.

It is wrong that civil society should have reduced influence over the governance of the internet with governments making all the key decisions. Many governments around the world are not democratic and so cannot be said to represent their people while even those that are democratic are prone to advancing the interests of minorities of their constituents as shown by treaties and legislation such as SOPA and ACTA. Governments of all stripes whether authoritarian or democratic do not have a good record of transparency; ICANN on the other hand does. [1] ICANN works on a "bottom-up, consensus-driven, multi-stakeholder model" meaning that ICANN is very inclusive bringing together governments, experts, private companies and ngos, potentially even individuals can get involved and have their say. [2]

[1] ‘ICANN Accountability & Transparency’, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

[2] ‘About Us’, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers .

People are capable of assessing a biased idea after discovering its bias, while it is dangerous to present potentially biased ideas as genuine, for this limits discussion. This is especially so in the status quo, where the suspicions of who may be funding think tanks remain when they choose not to disclose their funders. A blanket obligation of all think tanks to reveal their funding allows for open discourse and thus more space to discuss the ideas themselves.

Many politicians in their campaigns make an explicit or implicit point out of emphasizing their family values and other aspects of their “private” life, for example by being photographed with their loyal family and through taking a stance on such issues as divorce, single mothers, sex education or drugs. If the public image such people seek to create is at variance with their own practices, such hypocrisy deserves to be exposed. This would not be to the detriment of democracy but in fact may improve it as it would encourage future politicians to ensure that they live by what they preach, rather than cynically trying to manipulate the media into creating a false image of who they are only for it to be fatally undermined by their own actions.

How do we determine what is proportionate? If some valuable intellectual property, such as part of the designs for the US's latest fighter jet the F35, which were hacked in 2009. [1] Then what can be the response to this? Can it simply be the cost of developing this design? If so then what about the strategic loss the state has suffered, how can that be calculated in? So long as it is excluded state sanctioned cyber-attacks will not be deterred.

[1] Gorman, Siobhan, Cole, August, and Dreazen, Yochi, ‘Computer Spies Breach Fighter-Jen Project’, The Wall Street Journal, 21 April 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124027491029837401.html.html

Oppressive regimes have turned to the use of advanced surveillance technology in response to activists’ learning to evade more conventional methods of surveillance, and by moving their organizations online. Western surveillance technology has filled a niche that was once open for dissidents. By placing this ban, even if the regimes turn back to old methods, they will still be hampered in the crushing of dissent. Furthermore, no regime has the resources or power to have physical surveillance as pervasive as the technology denied them would allow. Electronic surveillance therefore can cast a much broader net that would allow the government to repress many more people who would not be subject to more labour intensive physical surveillance.

It may be costly and sometimes ineffective to police copyright, but that does not make them any less of a right worth protecting. If artists or firms feel that they might benefit from fighting infringers of their rights, they should have the right to do so, not simply be expected to roll over and give in to the pirates and law breakers. The state likewise, has an obligation to protect the rights, physical and intangible, of its citizens and cannot give up on them simply because they prove difficult and costly to enforce. Furthermore, the ensuring health of the economy is a primary duty of the state and this means aiding its domestic businesses and one of the ways it does that is by acting to enforce copyright both internally and if possible externally.

Real politick is not the only consideration democracies should entertain when they engage in international relations. Indeed, the Western powers have sought since World War II to develop a system of international justice that recognizes the primacy of peoples’ rights irrespective of where they are born. This principle is constantly compromised as democracies jockey for influence with undemocratic regimes, bolstering those regimes and their repressive norms in the process. In order to be consistent, and to serve the true interests of justice, democracies must not aid undemocratic governments in the repression of their people.

Appeasement does not work to increase internet freedom. This has been shown time and time again with China. China has slowly been becoming more and more accepted into the international system; it gained Security Council membership in 1971, joined the WTO in 2000, and held the Olympics in 2008 to celebrate its new role on the world stage. Yet this has not meant they have relaxed internet censorship, far from it, it simply becomes more refined and difficult to detect. [1] Even China’s version of twitter is very fast at censoring posts, despite there being 70,000 messages per minute, almost a third of deletions are completed within 30 minutes. [2] Engagement simply shows that there is no cost to repressive regimes if they continue as they have been. It is therefore enabling them to continue their repression.

[1] Roberts, Eric, ‘Where Censorship in China is Headed’, International Trends concerning Freedom of Information on the Electronic Commons, 2008, http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~eroberts/cs181/projects/international-freedom-of-info/china.html

[2] Mozur, Paul, ‘Just How Fast Are China’s Internet Censors? Very.’ China Realtime Report, 8 March 2013, http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013/03/08/just-how-fast-are-chinas-internet-censors-very-a-new-study-finds/

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
Monitoring is a hindrance to forming relationships both outside and inside the family.

If children are being monitored, or if it seems to children that they are being monitored, they would immediately lose trust in their parents. As trust is reciprocal, children will also learn not to trust others. This will result in their difficulty in forging human connections, thereby straining their psychosocial growth. For them to learn how to trust therefore, children must know that they can break their parents’ trust (as said by the proposition before). This will allow them to understand, obey, and respect their parents on their own initiative, allowing them to respect others in the same manner as well. [1] This growth would only be possible if parents refuse this proposition and instead choose to educate their children how to be responsible beforehand.

[1] Shmueli, Benjamin, and Ayelet Blecher-Prigat. “Privacy for Children.” Columbia Human Rights Review. Rev. 759 (2010-2011): 760-795. Columbia Law School. Web. May 2013.

It is true that trust is a cornerstone of relationships. Admittedly, the act of monitoring may initially stimulate feelings of distrust which are particularly destructive in relationships. But nonetheless, trust is earned, not granted. The only proactive way to gauge how much trust and responsibility to give a child in the digital world is monitoring. By monitoring a child, parents come to assess the initial capability of the child in digital responsibility and ultimately the level of trust and the level of responsibility he or she deserves and to be assigned subsequently. Ideally, the initial level of monitoring and follow-through should be maximum in order to make clear to the child that he is being guided. Only when a child proves himself and grows in digital maturity can monitoring and follow-through be gradually minimized and finally lifted. [1]

[1] Bodenhamer, Gregory. Parents in Control. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995 Inc. Web. May 2013.

Governments are often obliged to do things that the population doesn’t like – raising taxes is an obvious example. However, it is also recognised that sometimes the government has to do these things in order to represent the long-term, best interest of its people – whether or not it is a popular measure at the time.

If it is true that people cannot easily get jobs in the developed world for lack of language skills then there will surely still be a pressure to learn the language or languages of international discourse. What this policy offers is access by a much wider audience to the various benefits that expanded academic knowledge can offer. It will expand the developing world's knowledge base and not in any way diminish the desire to learn English and other dominant languages. It should be remembered that it is not just academics that use academic papers; students do as well, as do professionals in everyday life. Clearly there cannot be an expectation that everyone learns English to be able to access research. While there may be fewer languages in academic use there is not such a narrowing of language for everyone else.

It is wrong that civil society should have reduced influence over the governance of the internet with governments making all the key decisions. Many governments around the world are not democratic and so cannot be said to represent their people while even those that are democratic are prone to advancing the interests of minorities of their constituents as shown by treaties and legislation such as SOPA and ACTA. Governments of all stripes whether authoritarian or democratic do not have a good record of transparency; ICANN on the other hand does. [1] ICANN works on a "bottom-up, consensus-driven, multi-stakeholder model" meaning that ICANN is very inclusive bringing together governments, experts, private companies and ngos, potentially even individuals can get involved and have their say. [2]

[1] ‘ICANN Accountability & Transparency’, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

[2] ‘About Us’, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers .

People are capable of assessing a biased idea after discovering its bias, while it is dangerous to present potentially biased ideas as genuine, for this limits discussion. This is especially so in the status quo, where the suspicions of who may be funding think tanks remain when they choose not to disclose their funders. A blanket obligation of all think tanks to reveal their funding allows for open discourse and thus more space to discuss the ideas themselves.

Many politicians in their campaigns make an explicit or implicit point out of emphasizing their family values and other aspects of their “private” life, for example by being photographed with their loyal family and through taking a stance on such issues as divorce, single mothers, sex education or drugs. If the public image such people seek to create is at variance with their own practices, such hypocrisy deserves to be exposed. This would not be to the detriment of democracy but in fact may improve it as it would encourage future politicians to ensure that they live by what they preach, rather than cynically trying to manipulate the media into creating a false image of who they are only for it to be fatally undermined by their own actions.

How do we determine what is proportionate? If some valuable intellectual property, such as part of the designs for the US's latest fighter jet the F35, which were hacked in 2009. [1] Then what can be the response to this? Can it simply be the cost of developing this design? If so then what about the strategic loss the state has suffered, how can that be calculated in? So long as it is excluded state sanctioned cyber-attacks will not be deterred.

[1] Gorman, Siobhan, Cole, August, and Dreazen, Yochi, ‘Computer Spies Breach Fighter-Jen Project’, The Wall Street Journal, 21 April 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124027491029837401.html.html

Oppressive regimes have turned to the use of advanced surveillance technology in response to activists’ learning to evade more conventional methods of surveillance, and by moving their organizations online. Western surveillance technology has filled a niche that was once open for dissidents. By placing this ban, even if the regimes turn back to old methods, they will still be hampered in the crushing of dissent. Furthermore, no regime has the resources or power to have physical surveillance as pervasive as the technology denied them would allow. Electronic surveillance therefore can cast a much broader net that would allow the government to repress many more people who would not be subject to more labour intensive physical surveillance.

It may be costly and sometimes ineffective to police copyright, but that does not make them any less of a right worth protecting. If artists or firms feel that they might benefit from fighting infringers of their rights, they should have the right to do so, not simply be expected to roll over and give in to the pirates and law breakers. The state likewise, has an obligation to protect the rights, physical and intangible, of its citizens and cannot give up on them simply because they prove difficult and costly to enforce. Furthermore, the ensuring health of the economy is a primary duty of the state and this means aiding its domestic businesses and one of the ways it does that is by acting to enforce copyright both internally and if possible externally.

Real politick is not the only consideration democracies should entertain when they engage in international relations. Indeed, the Western powers have sought since World War II to develop a system of international justice that recognizes the primacy of peoples’ rights irrespective of where they are born. This principle is constantly compromised as democracies jockey for influence with undemocratic regimes, bolstering those regimes and their repressive norms in the process. In order to be consistent, and to serve the true interests of justice, democracies must not aid undemocratic governments in the repression of their people.

Appeasement does not work to increase internet freedom. This has been shown time and time again with China. China has slowly been becoming more and more accepted into the international system; it gained Security Council membership in 1971, joined the WTO in 2000, and held the Olympics in 2008 to celebrate its new role on the world stage. Yet this has not meant they have relaxed internet censorship, far from it, it simply becomes more refined and difficult to detect. [1] Even China’s version of twitter is very fast at censoring posts, despite there being 70,000 messages per minute, almost a third of deletions are completed within 30 minutes. [2] Engagement simply shows that there is no cost to repressive regimes if they continue as they have been. It is therefore enabling them to continue their repression.

[1] Roberts, Eric, ‘Where Censorship in China is Headed’, International Trends concerning Freedom of Information on the Electronic Commons, 2008, http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~eroberts/cs181/projects/international-freedom-of-info/china.html

[2] Mozur, Paul, ‘Just How Fast Are China’s Internet Censors? Very.’ China Realtime Report, 8 March 2013, http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013/03/08/just-how-fast-are-chinas-internet-censors-very-a-new-study-finds/

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
This proposal is simply an invasion of privacy.

Children have as much right to privacy as any adult. Unfortunately there is yet to be a provision on the protection of privacy in either the United States Constitution or the Bill of Rights, though the Supreme Court states that the concept of privacy rooted within the framework of the Constitution. [1] This ambiguity causes confusion among parents regarding the concept of child privacy. Many maintain that privacy should be administered to a child as a privilege, not a right. [2] Fortunately, the UNCRC clearly states that “No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honour and reputation,” [3] making child privacy an automatic right. Just as children should receive privacy in the real world, so too should they in the digital world. Individual rights, including right to privacy, shape intrafamilial relationships because they initiate individuality and independence. [1]

[1] Shmueli, Benjamin, and Ayelet Blecher-Prigat. “Privacy for Children.” Columbia Human Rights Review. Rev. 759 (2010-2011): 760-795. Columbia Law School. Web. May 2013. P.764

[2] Brenner, Susan. “The Privacy Privilege.” CYB3RCRIM3. Blogspot. 3 April 2009. May 2013.

[3] United Nations Children’s Fund. Implementation Handbook for the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Fully revised 3rd edition. Geneva. United Nations Publications. Google Search. Web. May 2013.

The individual right to privacy must certainly encompass the digital realm as proposition says. It is also undeniable that individual privacy enhances individuality and independence. However, this privacy can and should be regulated lest parents leave children ‘abandoned’ to their rights. [1] “One cannot compare reading a child’s journal to accessing his or her conversations online or through text messages,” says Betsy Landers, the president of the National Parent-Teacher Association of the US and explains, “It’s simply modern involvement.” [2] Thus, Hillary Clinton argues, “children should be granted rights, but in a stage-by-stage manner that accords with and pays attention to their physical and mental development and capacities.” [1] Applying this principle, children should be given digital privacy to an equitable extent and regulated whereby both conditions depend upon the maturity of the child.

[1] Shmueli, Benjamin, and Ayelet Blecher-Prigat. “Privacy for Children.” Columbia Human Rights Review. Rev. 759 (2010-2011): 760-795. Columbia Law School. Web. May 2013.

[2] Landers, Betty. “It’s Modern Parental Involvement.” New York Times. 28 June 2012: 1. New York Times. May 2013.

Governments are often obliged to do things that the population doesn’t like – raising taxes is an obvious example. However, it is also recognised that sometimes the government has to do these things in order to represent the long-term, best interest of its people – whether or not it is a popular measure at the time.

If it is true that people cannot easily get jobs in the developed world for lack of language skills then there will surely still be a pressure to learn the language or languages of international discourse. What this policy offers is access by a much wider audience to the various benefits that expanded academic knowledge can offer. It will expand the developing world's knowledge base and not in any way diminish the desire to learn English and other dominant languages. It should be remembered that it is not just academics that use academic papers; students do as well, as do professionals in everyday life. Clearly there cannot be an expectation that everyone learns English to be able to access research. While there may be fewer languages in academic use there is not such a narrowing of language for everyone else.

It is wrong that civil society should have reduced influence over the governance of the internet with governments making all the key decisions. Many governments around the world are not democratic and so cannot be said to represent their people while even those that are democratic are prone to advancing the interests of minorities of their constituents as shown by treaties and legislation such as SOPA and ACTA. Governments of all stripes whether authoritarian or democratic do not have a good record of transparency; ICANN on the other hand does. [1] ICANN works on a "bottom-up, consensus-driven, multi-stakeholder model" meaning that ICANN is very inclusive bringing together governments, experts, private companies and ngos, potentially even individuals can get involved and have their say. [2]

[1] ‘ICANN Accountability & Transparency’, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

[2] ‘About Us’, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers .

People are capable of assessing a biased idea after discovering its bias, while it is dangerous to present potentially biased ideas as genuine, for this limits discussion. This is especially so in the status quo, where the suspicions of who may be funding think tanks remain when they choose not to disclose their funders. A blanket obligation of all think tanks to reveal their funding allows for open discourse and thus more space to discuss the ideas themselves.

Many politicians in their campaigns make an explicit or implicit point out of emphasizing their family values and other aspects of their “private” life, for example by being photographed with their loyal family and through taking a stance on such issues as divorce, single mothers, sex education or drugs. If the public image such people seek to create is at variance with their own practices, such hypocrisy deserves to be exposed. This would not be to the detriment of democracy but in fact may improve it as it would encourage future politicians to ensure that they live by what they preach, rather than cynically trying to manipulate the media into creating a false image of who they are only for it to be fatally undermined by their own actions.

How do we determine what is proportionate? If some valuable intellectual property, such as part of the designs for the US's latest fighter jet the F35, which were hacked in 2009. [1] Then what can be the response to this? Can it simply be the cost of developing this design? If so then what about the strategic loss the state has suffered, how can that be calculated in? So long as it is excluded state sanctioned cyber-attacks will not be deterred.

[1] Gorman, Siobhan, Cole, August, and Dreazen, Yochi, ‘Computer Spies Breach Fighter-Jen Project’, The Wall Street Journal, 21 April 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124027491029837401.html.html

Oppressive regimes have turned to the use of advanced surveillance technology in response to activists’ learning to evade more conventional methods of surveillance, and by moving their organizations online. Western surveillance technology has filled a niche that was once open for dissidents. By placing this ban, even if the regimes turn back to old methods, they will still be hampered in the crushing of dissent. Furthermore, no regime has the resources or power to have physical surveillance as pervasive as the technology denied them would allow. Electronic surveillance therefore can cast a much broader net that would allow the government to repress many more people who would not be subject to more labour intensive physical surveillance.

It may be costly and sometimes ineffective to police copyright, but that does not make them any less of a right worth protecting. If artists or firms feel that they might benefit from fighting infringers of their rights, they should have the right to do so, not simply be expected to roll over and give in to the pirates and law breakers. The state likewise, has an obligation to protect the rights, physical and intangible, of its citizens and cannot give up on them simply because they prove difficult and costly to enforce. Furthermore, the ensuring health of the economy is a primary duty of the state and this means aiding its domestic businesses and one of the ways it does that is by acting to enforce copyright both internally and if possible externally.

Real politick is not the only consideration democracies should entertain when they engage in international relations. Indeed, the Western powers have sought since World War II to develop a system of international justice that recognizes the primacy of peoples’ rights irrespective of where they are born. This principle is constantly compromised as democracies jockey for influence with undemocratic regimes, bolstering those regimes and their repressive norms in the process. In order to be consistent, and to serve the true interests of justice, democracies must not aid undemocratic governments in the repression of their people.

Appeasement does not work to increase internet freedom. This has been shown time and time again with China. China has slowly been becoming more and more accepted into the international system; it gained Security Council membership in 1971, joined the WTO in 2000, and held the Olympics in 2008 to celebrate its new role on the world stage. Yet this has not meant they have relaxed internet censorship, far from it, it simply becomes more refined and difficult to detect. [1] Even China’s version of twitter is very fast at censoring posts, despite there being 70,000 messages per minute, almost a third of deletions are completed within 30 minutes. [2] Engagement simply shows that there is no cost to repressive regimes if they continue as they have been. It is therefore enabling them to continue their repression.

[1] Roberts, Eric, ‘Where Censorship in China is Headed’, International Trends concerning Freedom of Information on the Electronic Commons, 2008, http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~eroberts/cs181/projects/international-freedom-of-info/china.html

[2] Mozur, Paul, ‘Just How Fast Are China’s Internet Censors? Very.’ China Realtime Report, 8 March 2013, http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013/03/08/just-how-fast-are-chinas-internet-censors-very-a-new-study-finds/

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
Other parental controls are more practical and reasonable to administer.

Monitoring would be extremely tedious and time-consuming. Many teens send over 100 texts a day, it would clearly be very time consuming to read them all along with all other digital communication.[1] By contrast content filtering, contact management, and privacy protection parental controls, which can be used to block all incoming and outgoing information, require only minimal supervision. Parents who meanwhile deem their children immature when it comes to social networking and gaming can instead impose user restrictions on the relevant websites and devices. [2] Administering these alternative parental controls leave for more quality time with children. In this case, only when children acquire sufficient digital maturity and responsibility can these controls be lifted. As they have learnt to be mature in the digital environment the children would most likely continue to surf safely even when the parental controls are lifted.

[1] Goldberg, Stephanie, “Many teens send 100-plus texts a day, survey says”, CNN, 21 April 2010

[2] Burt, David. “Parental Controls Product Guide.” 2010 Edition. n.d. PDF File. Web. May 2013.

While it is practical to use these parental controls, it is not always realistic to set such limited parameters to the digital freedom of children. Children need to understand that they have the capacity to breach their parents’ trust. [1] This not only allows a child to understand how to interact sensibly with the internet, but to experience taking an initiative to actually obey parents in surfing only safe sites. Selectively restricting a child’s digital freedom does not help in this case. Thus, monitoring is the only way for children to experience digital freedom in such a way that they too are both closely guided and free to do as they wish. Moreover, this is also self-contradictory because opposition claimed that children are capable of circumvention which children would be much more likely to do when blocked from accessing websites than simply monitored.

[1] Shmueli, Benjamin, and Ayelet Blecher-Prigat. “Privacy for Children.” Columbia Human Rights Review. Rev. 759 (2010-2011): 760-795. Columbia Law School. Web. May 2013.

Governments are often obliged to do things that the population doesn’t like – raising taxes is an obvious example. However, it is also recognised that sometimes the government has to do these things in order to represent the long-term, best interest of its people – whether or not it is a popular measure at the time.

If it is true that people cannot easily get jobs in the developed world for lack of language skills then there will surely still be a pressure to learn the language or languages of international discourse. What this policy offers is access by a much wider audience to the various benefits that expanded academic knowledge can offer. It will expand the developing world's knowledge base and not in any way diminish the desire to learn English and other dominant languages. It should be remembered that it is not just academics that use academic papers; students do as well, as do professionals in everyday life. Clearly there cannot be an expectation that everyone learns English to be able to access research. While there may be fewer languages in academic use there is not such a narrowing of language for everyone else.

It is wrong that civil society should have reduced influence over the governance of the internet with governments making all the key decisions. Many governments around the world are not democratic and so cannot be said to represent their people while even those that are democratic are prone to advancing the interests of minorities of their constituents as shown by treaties and legislation such as SOPA and ACTA. Governments of all stripes whether authoritarian or democratic do not have a good record of transparency; ICANN on the other hand does. [1] ICANN works on a "bottom-up, consensus-driven, multi-stakeholder model" meaning that ICANN is very inclusive bringing together governments, experts, private companies and ngos, potentially even individuals can get involved and have their say. [2]

[1] ‘ICANN Accountability & Transparency’, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

[2] ‘About Us’, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers .

People are capable of assessing a biased idea after discovering its bias, while it is dangerous to present potentially biased ideas as genuine, for this limits discussion. This is especially so in the status quo, where the suspicions of who may be funding think tanks remain when they choose not to disclose their funders. A blanket obligation of all think tanks to reveal their funding allows for open discourse and thus more space to discuss the ideas themselves.

Many politicians in their campaigns make an explicit or implicit point out of emphasizing their family values and other aspects of their “private” life, for example by being photographed with their loyal family and through taking a stance on such issues as divorce, single mothers, sex education or drugs. If the public image such people seek to create is at variance with their own practices, such hypocrisy deserves to be exposed. This would not be to the detriment of democracy but in fact may improve it as it would encourage future politicians to ensure that they live by what they preach, rather than cynically trying to manipulate the media into creating a false image of who they are only for it to be fatally undermined by their own actions.

How do we determine what is proportionate? If some valuable intellectual property, such as part of the designs for the US's latest fighter jet the F35, which were hacked in 2009. [1] Then what can be the response to this? Can it simply be the cost of developing this design? If so then what about the strategic loss the state has suffered, how can that be calculated in? So long as it is excluded state sanctioned cyber-attacks will not be deterred.

[1] Gorman, Siobhan, Cole, August, and Dreazen, Yochi, ‘Computer Spies Breach Fighter-Jen Project’, The Wall Street Journal, 21 April 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124027491029837401.html.html

Oppressive regimes have turned to the use of advanced surveillance technology in response to activists’ learning to evade more conventional methods of surveillance, and by moving their organizations online. Western surveillance technology has filled a niche that was once open for dissidents. By placing this ban, even if the regimes turn back to old methods, they will still be hampered in the crushing of dissent. Furthermore, no regime has the resources or power to have physical surveillance as pervasive as the technology denied them would allow. Electronic surveillance therefore can cast a much broader net that would allow the government to repress many more people who would not be subject to more labour intensive physical surveillance.

It may be costly and sometimes ineffective to police copyright, but that does not make them any less of a right worth protecting. If artists or firms feel that they might benefit from fighting infringers of their rights, they should have the right to do so, not simply be expected to roll over and give in to the pirates and law breakers. The state likewise, has an obligation to protect the rights, physical and intangible, of its citizens and cannot give up on them simply because they prove difficult and costly to enforce. Furthermore, the ensuring health of the economy is a primary duty of the state and this means aiding its domestic businesses and one of the ways it does that is by acting to enforce copyright both internally and if possible externally.

Real politick is not the only consideration democracies should entertain when they engage in international relations. Indeed, the Western powers have sought since World War II to develop a system of international justice that recognizes the primacy of peoples’ rights irrespective of where they are born. This principle is constantly compromised as democracies jockey for influence with undemocratic regimes, bolstering those regimes and their repressive norms in the process. In order to be consistent, and to serve the true interests of justice, democracies must not aid undemocratic governments in the repression of their people.

Appeasement does not work to increase internet freedom. This has been shown time and time again with China. China has slowly been becoming more and more accepted into the international system; it gained Security Council membership in 1971, joined the WTO in 2000, and held the Olympics in 2008 to celebrate its new role on the world stage. Yet this has not meant they have relaxed internet censorship, far from it, it simply becomes more refined and difficult to detect. [1] Even China’s version of twitter is very fast at censoring posts, despite there being 70,000 messages per minute, almost a third of deletions are completed within 30 minutes. [2] Engagement simply shows that there is no cost to repressive regimes if they continue as they have been. It is therefore enabling them to continue their repression.

[1] Roberts, Eric, ‘Where Censorship in China is Headed’, International Trends concerning Freedom of Information on the Electronic Commons, 2008, http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~eroberts/cs181/projects/international-freedom-of-info/china.html

[2] Mozur, Paul, ‘Just How Fast Are China’s Internet Censors? Very.’ China Realtime Report, 8 March 2013, http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013/03/08/just-how-fast-are-chinas-internet-censors-very-a-new-study-finds/

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
Western states have a duty to aid those striving for the ideals they cherish

The West stands as the symbol of liberal democracy to which many political dissidents aspire in emulation. It is also, as a broad group, the primary expounder, propagator, and establisher of concepts and practices pertaining to human rights, both within and without their borders. The generation and dissemination of anonymity software into countries that are in the midst of, or are moving toward, uprising and revolution is critical to allowing those endeavours to succeed. This obligation still attains even when the technology does not yet exist, in the same way that the West often feels obligated to fund research into developing vaccines and other treatments for specifically external use, thus in 2001 the United States spent $133million on AIDS research through the National institutes of Health. 1 The West thus has a clear duty to make some provision for getting that software to the people that need it, because it can secure the primary platform needed to build the groundswell to fight for their basic rights by ensuring its security and reliability. 2 To not act in this way serves as a tacit condolence of the status quo of misery and brutality that sparks grassroots uprisings. If the West cares about civil liberties and human rights as true values that should be spread worldwide and not just political talking points, then it must adopt this policy.

1 Alagiri, P. Et al., “Global Spending on HIV/AIDS Tackling Public and Private Investments in AIDS Prevention, Care, and Research”, July 2001. http://ari.ucsf.edu/science/reports/global_spending.pdf p.5

2 Paul, I. and Zlutnick, D. “Networking Rebellion: Digital Policing and Revolt in the Arab Uprisings”. The Abolitionist. 29 August 2012. http://abolitionistpaper.wordpress.com/2012/08/29/networking-rebellion-digital-policing-and-revolt-in-the-arab-uprisings/

Western states, like all states, owe their primary responsibility to their own citizens, not those in a distant land claiming to be striving for common notions of rights. It is difficult for Western states to ascertain the actual motivations of the body of risers in any given scenario, let alone the motivations of specific individuals utilizing the technology. The West is not necessarily aiding seekers after freedom by providing this technology, but may rather be abetting crimes and violence worse than the regime being challenged. The nature of the technology is that it would have to be indiscriminate, making it unsuited to the task of aiding in the liberation of oppressed peoples.

Governments are often obliged to do things that the population doesn’t like – raising taxes is an obvious example. However, it is also recognised that sometimes the government has to do these things in order to represent the long-term, best interest of its people – whether or not it is a popular measure at the time.

If it is true that people cannot easily get jobs in the developed world for lack of language skills then there will surely still be a pressure to learn the language or languages of international discourse. What this policy offers is access by a much wider audience to the various benefits that expanded academic knowledge can offer. It will expand the developing world's knowledge base and not in any way diminish the desire to learn English and other dominant languages. It should be remembered that it is not just academics that use academic papers; students do as well, as do professionals in everyday life. Clearly there cannot be an expectation that everyone learns English to be able to access research. While there may be fewer languages in academic use there is not such a narrowing of language for everyone else.

It is wrong that civil society should have reduced influence over the governance of the internet with governments making all the key decisions. Many governments around the world are not democratic and so cannot be said to represent their people while even those that are democratic are prone to advancing the interests of minorities of their constituents as shown by treaties and legislation such as SOPA and ACTA. Governments of all stripes whether authoritarian or democratic do not have a good record of transparency; ICANN on the other hand does. [1] ICANN works on a "bottom-up, consensus-driven, multi-stakeholder model" meaning that ICANN is very inclusive bringing together governments, experts, private companies and ngos, potentially even individuals can get involved and have their say. [2]

[1] ‘ICANN Accountability & Transparency’, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

[2] ‘About Us’, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers .

People are capable of assessing a biased idea after discovering its bias, while it is dangerous to present potentially biased ideas as genuine, for this limits discussion. This is especially so in the status quo, where the suspicions of who may be funding think tanks remain when they choose not to disclose their funders. A blanket obligation of all think tanks to reveal their funding allows for open discourse and thus more space to discuss the ideas themselves.

Many politicians in their campaigns make an explicit or implicit point out of emphasizing their family values and other aspects of their “private” life, for example by being photographed with their loyal family and through taking a stance on such issues as divorce, single mothers, sex education or drugs. If the public image such people seek to create is at variance with their own practices, such hypocrisy deserves to be exposed. This would not be to the detriment of democracy but in fact may improve it as it would encourage future politicians to ensure that they live by what they preach, rather than cynically trying to manipulate the media into creating a false image of who they are only for it to be fatally undermined by their own actions.

How do we determine what is proportionate? If some valuable intellectual property, such as part of the designs for the US's latest fighter jet the F35, which were hacked in 2009. [1] Then what can be the response to this? Can it simply be the cost of developing this design? If so then what about the strategic loss the state has suffered, how can that be calculated in? So long as it is excluded state sanctioned cyber-attacks will not be deterred.

[1] Gorman, Siobhan, Cole, August, and Dreazen, Yochi, ‘Computer Spies Breach Fighter-Jen Project’, The Wall Street Journal, 21 April 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124027491029837401.html.html

Oppressive regimes have turned to the use of advanced surveillance technology in response to activists’ learning to evade more conventional methods of surveillance, and by moving their organizations online. Western surveillance technology has filled a niche that was once open for dissidents. By placing this ban, even if the regimes turn back to old methods, they will still be hampered in the crushing of dissent. Furthermore, no regime has the resources or power to have physical surveillance as pervasive as the technology denied them would allow. Electronic surveillance therefore can cast a much broader net that would allow the government to repress many more people who would not be subject to more labour intensive physical surveillance.

While cyberbullying is indeed a danger to children, it is not an excuse to invade their personal life-worlds. The UNCRC clearly states that “(1) No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honour and reputation,” and that, “(2) The child has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attack.” These ‘interferences’ or ‘attacks’ not only apply to third parties but to parents as well. [1] Moreover in less traditional ‘offline’ spaces children have far greater ability to choose which information they share with their parents and what they do not. As online spaces are not inherently more dangerous than those offline, it seems reasonable to suggest that similar limitations and restrictions on invasions of privacy that apply online should also apply offline. What a parent can do is to be there for their children and talk to them and support them. They should also spend time surfing the Internet together with them to discuss their issues and problems. But the child should always also have the opportunity to have his or her own protected and private space that is outside the every watchful surveilant eye of the parent..

[1] United Nations Children’s Fund. Implementation Handbook for the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Fully revised 3rd edition. Geneva. United Nations Publications. Google Search. Web. May 2013.

It may be costly and sometimes ineffective to police copyright, but that does not make them any less of a right worth protecting. If artists or firms feel that they might benefit from fighting infringers of their rights, they should have the right to do so, not simply be expected to roll over and give in to the pirates and law breakers. The state likewise, has an obligation to protect the rights, physical and intangible, of its citizens and cannot give up on them simply because they prove difficult and costly to enforce. Furthermore, the ensuring health of the economy is a primary duty of the state and this means aiding its domestic businesses and one of the ways it does that is by acting to enforce copyright both internally and if possible externally.

Real politick is not the only consideration democracies should entertain when they engage in international relations. Indeed, the Western powers have sought since World War II to develop a system of international justice that recognizes the primacy of peoples’ rights irrespective of where they are born. This principle is constantly compromised as democracies jockey for influence with undemocratic regimes, bolstering those regimes and their repressive norms in the process. In order to be consistent, and to serve the true interests of justice, democracies must not aid undemocratic governments in the repression of their people.

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
Incentives are the best way to produce effective, affordable software

The West has clear reasons to seek to provide the software necessary for anonymity to people involved in uprisings, and it has the means. Western countries are the most advanced technologically and have been the leaders in creating and developing the internet and thus they are best suited to producing and disseminating this technology. Firstly, as they are more advanced in software development, the products they distribute will be much more difficult for the target regimes’ to hack or subvert to their own advantage, or at least significantly more difficult to than were it produced in any other locale. 1 Secondly, the efficient production of software requires special industry clusters. These exist almost exclusively in the West. Silicon Valley, for example is the high tech capital of the world, and were companies there incentivized to produce software for the participants of uprisings it would be a simple matter of efficient distribution, which these firms are best in the world at doing. The need for subsidy is also clear. People involved in uprisings tend not to have huge amounts of disposable income, so to date there has been little market for the production of these sorts of software devices. With a subsidy from Western governments the incentive is created and a top quality product that will save lives and make the uprising more likely to succeed is born.

1 Paul, I. and Zlutnick, D. “Networking Rebellion: Digital Policing and Revolt in the Arab Uprisings”. The Abolitionist. 29 August 2012. http://abolitionistpaper.wordpress.com/2012/08/29/networking-rebellion-digital-policing-and-revolt-in-the-arab-uprisings/

All software can be hacked, even with cruder hardware and software. The ability of Chinese hackers to undermine businesses’ advanced firewalls in the United States, having demonstrated a potent ability to penetrate several major media companies. 1 Products made in the West with government subsidy will just have a bloated price tag thanks to the extra costs of production in the West, and the tendency to overrun costs that tends to occur when government is involved. The incentive may not even be enough to persuade many software companies to work on such a project, as they will wish to maintain their markets in authorotarian states such as China which such an innitiative would annoy. China in particular has a history of blacklisting and retaliating against companies that are involved in activities that it sees as being against its national interests.

1 Pakzad, X. “Depth of Cyber Attacks from Chinese Hackers on American News Outlets”. IVN. 9 February 2013. http://ivn.us/2013/02/09/depth-of-cyber-attacks-from-chinese-hackers-on-american-news-outlets/

Governments are often obliged to do things that the population doesn’t like – raising taxes is an obvious example. However, it is also recognised that sometimes the government has to do these things in order to represent the long-term, best interest of its people – whether or not it is a popular measure at the time.

If it is true that people cannot easily get jobs in the developed world for lack of language skills then there will surely still be a pressure to learn the language or languages of international discourse. What this policy offers is access by a much wider audience to the various benefits that expanded academic knowledge can offer. It will expand the developing world's knowledge base and not in any way diminish the desire to learn English and other dominant languages. It should be remembered that it is not just academics that use academic papers; students do as well, as do professionals in everyday life. Clearly there cannot be an expectation that everyone learns English to be able to access research. While there may be fewer languages in academic use there is not such a narrowing of language for everyone else.

It is wrong that civil society should have reduced influence over the governance of the internet with governments making all the key decisions. Many governments around the world are not democratic and so cannot be said to represent their people while even those that are democratic are prone to advancing the interests of minorities of their constituents as shown by treaties and legislation such as SOPA and ACTA. Governments of all stripes whether authoritarian or democratic do not have a good record of transparency; ICANN on the other hand does. [1] ICANN works on a "bottom-up, consensus-driven, multi-stakeholder model" meaning that ICANN is very inclusive bringing together governments, experts, private companies and ngos, potentially even individuals can get involved and have their say. [2]

[1] ‘ICANN Accountability & Transparency’, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

[2] ‘About Us’, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers .

People are capable of assessing a biased idea after discovering its bias, while it is dangerous to present potentially biased ideas as genuine, for this limits discussion. This is especially so in the status quo, where the suspicions of who may be funding think tanks remain when they choose not to disclose their funders. A blanket obligation of all think tanks to reveal their funding allows for open discourse and thus more space to discuss the ideas themselves.

Many politicians in their campaigns make an explicit or implicit point out of emphasizing their family values and other aspects of their “private” life, for example by being photographed with their loyal family and through taking a stance on such issues as divorce, single mothers, sex education or drugs. If the public image such people seek to create is at variance with their own practices, such hypocrisy deserves to be exposed. This would not be to the detriment of democracy but in fact may improve it as it would encourage future politicians to ensure that they live by what they preach, rather than cynically trying to manipulate the media into creating a false image of who they are only for it to be fatally undermined by their own actions.

How do we determine what is proportionate? If some valuable intellectual property, such as part of the designs for the US's latest fighter jet the F35, which were hacked in 2009. [1] Then what can be the response to this? Can it simply be the cost of developing this design? If so then what about the strategic loss the state has suffered, how can that be calculated in? So long as it is excluded state sanctioned cyber-attacks will not be deterred.

[1] Gorman, Siobhan, Cole, August, and Dreazen, Yochi, ‘Computer Spies Breach Fighter-Jen Project’, The Wall Street Journal, 21 April 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124027491029837401.html.html

Oppressive regimes have turned to the use of advanced surveillance technology in response to activists’ learning to evade more conventional methods of surveillance, and by moving their organizations online. Western surveillance technology has filled a niche that was once open for dissidents. By placing this ban, even if the regimes turn back to old methods, they will still be hampered in the crushing of dissent. Furthermore, no regime has the resources or power to have physical surveillance as pervasive as the technology denied them would allow. Electronic surveillance therefore can cast a much broader net that would allow the government to repress many more people who would not be subject to more labour intensive physical surveillance.

While cyberbullying is indeed a danger to children, it is not an excuse to invade their personal life-worlds. The UNCRC clearly states that “(1) No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honour and reputation,” and that, “(2) The child has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attack.” These ‘interferences’ or ‘attacks’ not only apply to third parties but to parents as well. [1] Moreover in less traditional ‘offline’ spaces children have far greater ability to choose which information they share with their parents and what they do not. As online spaces are not inherently more dangerous than those offline, it seems reasonable to suggest that similar limitations and restrictions on invasions of privacy that apply online should also apply offline. What a parent can do is to be there for their children and talk to them and support them. They should also spend time surfing the Internet together with them to discuss their issues and problems. But the child should always also have the opportunity to have his or her own protected and private space that is outside the every watchful surveilant eye of the parent..

[1] United Nations Children’s Fund. Implementation Handbook for the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Fully revised 3rd edition. Geneva. United Nations Publications. Google Search. Web. May 2013.

It may be costly and sometimes ineffective to police copyright, but that does not make them any less of a right worth protecting. If artists or firms feel that they might benefit from fighting infringers of their rights, they should have the right to do so, not simply be expected to roll over and give in to the pirates and law breakers. The state likewise, has an obligation to protect the rights, physical and intangible, of its citizens and cannot give up on them simply because they prove difficult and costly to enforce. Furthermore, the ensuring health of the economy is a primary duty of the state and this means aiding its domestic businesses and one of the ways it does that is by acting to enforce copyright both internally and if possible externally.

Real politick is not the only consideration democracies should entertain when they engage in international relations. Indeed, the Western powers have sought since World War II to develop a system of international justice that recognizes the primacy of peoples’ rights irrespective of where they are born. This principle is constantly compromised as democracies jockey for influence with undemocratic regimes, bolstering those regimes and their repressive norms in the process. In order to be consistent, and to serve the true interests of justice, democracies must not aid undemocratic governments in the repression of their people.

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
Anonymity software helps to guarantee protection for people involved in uprisings

The past few years have been marked by an explosion of uprisings around the world, particularly in the Middle East, North Africa, and Arab world generally. These uprisings have all been marked by the extensive and pervasive use of social media and social networking tools, like Twitter, BlackBerry Mobile, and other platforms. The Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, for example, wherein people mobilized to overthrow their dictator has even been called the Twitter Revolution after the huge number of people using that platform to lead and chronicle the successful uprising. 1 It was the sophistication of physical surveillance technology and the resourcefulness of the security forces that forced dissenters onto the internet, which quickly became, prior to the start of large scale demonstrations, the primary mode of expressing discontent with governments. But the internet is no safe haven, and technology has caught up, allowing governments to crack down on individuals who engage in dissent online. Anyone using the internet to coordinate demonstrations therefore faces the threat of being tracked and arrested as a result. This was the case in Iran after the failed Green Revolution, dissenters were rounded up and punished for challenging the government. 2 Without anonymity, participants in uprisings are liable to face reprisals. Only external help from the technologically advanced West can these freedom fighters maintain their safety and still be able to fight for what they believe in.

1 Zuckerman, E. “The First Twitter Revolution?”. Foreign Policy. 14 January 2011. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/14/the_first_twitter_revolution

2 Flock, E., “Iran Gets Back E-mail Access, But Other Sites Remain Blacked Out Ahead of Protest”. Washington Post. 13 February 2012. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/iran-gets-back-e-mail-access-but-other-sites-remain-blacked-out-ahead-of-protest/2012/02/13/gIQAgxz5AR_blog.html

First it is wrong to simply assume that this will guarantee protection for people involved in uprisings. Previous attempts at providing software to help dissenters have had security vulnerabilities that could have allowed the regime to expose its users identities. This was the case with Haystack a tool that was meant to keep users anonymous during the failed green revolution in Iran. 1

Second providing anonymity and thus snubbing the regimes that survive uprisings means those states will be less willing to envision working with the West toward reforms. When an uprising occurs clearly something needs to change. But when the West is putting such undue pressure on a government, it will not react in a way that would benefit the civil rights of the people. Operating from a position of weakness, it will seek to retrench its strength, through force if necessary. Anonymity means little in this scenario, as governments can simply round up all participants in protests and enact harsh punishments to deter future acts.

1 Zetter, K., “Privacy Tool for Iranian Activists Disabled After Security Holes Exposed”, WIRED, 14 September 2010. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/haystack/

Governments are often obliged to do things that the population doesn’t like – raising taxes is an obvious example. However, it is also recognised that sometimes the government has to do these things in order to represent the long-term, best interest of its people – whether or not it is a popular measure at the time.

If it is true that people cannot easily get jobs in the developed world for lack of language skills then there will surely still be a pressure to learn the language or languages of international discourse. What this policy offers is access by a much wider audience to the various benefits that expanded academic knowledge can offer. It will expand the developing world's knowledge base and not in any way diminish the desire to learn English and other dominant languages. It should be remembered that it is not just academics that use academic papers; students do as well, as do professionals in everyday life. Clearly there cannot be an expectation that everyone learns English to be able to access research. While there may be fewer languages in academic use there is not such a narrowing of language for everyone else.

It is wrong that civil society should have reduced influence over the governance of the internet with governments making all the key decisions. Many governments around the world are not democratic and so cannot be said to represent their people while even those that are democratic are prone to advancing the interests of minorities of their constituents as shown by treaties and legislation such as SOPA and ACTA. Governments of all stripes whether authoritarian or democratic do not have a good record of transparency; ICANN on the other hand does. [1] ICANN works on a "bottom-up, consensus-driven, multi-stakeholder model" meaning that ICANN is very inclusive bringing together governments, experts, private companies and ngos, potentially even individuals can get involved and have their say. [2]

[1] ‘ICANN Accountability & Transparency’, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

[2] ‘About Us’, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers .

People are capable of assessing a biased idea after discovering its bias, while it is dangerous to present potentially biased ideas as genuine, for this limits discussion. This is especially so in the status quo, where the suspicions of who may be funding think tanks remain when they choose not to disclose their funders. A blanket obligation of all think tanks to reveal their funding allows for open discourse and thus more space to discuss the ideas themselves.

Many politicians in their campaigns make an explicit or implicit point out of emphasizing their family values and other aspects of their “private” life, for example by being photographed with their loyal family and through taking a stance on such issues as divorce, single mothers, sex education or drugs. If the public image such people seek to create is at variance with their own practices, such hypocrisy deserves to be exposed. This would not be to the detriment of democracy but in fact may improve it as it would encourage future politicians to ensure that they live by what they preach, rather than cynically trying to manipulate the media into creating a false image of who they are only for it to be fatally undermined by their own actions.

How do we determine what is proportionate? If some valuable intellectual property, such as part of the designs for the US's latest fighter jet the F35, which were hacked in 2009. [1] Then what can be the response to this? Can it simply be the cost of developing this design? If so then what about the strategic loss the state has suffered, how can that be calculated in? So long as it is excluded state sanctioned cyber-attacks will not be deterred.

[1] Gorman, Siobhan, Cole, August, and Dreazen, Yochi, ‘Computer Spies Breach Fighter-Jen Project’, The Wall Street Journal, 21 April 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124027491029837401.html.html

Oppressive regimes have turned to the use of advanced surveillance technology in response to activists’ learning to evade more conventional methods of surveillance, and by moving their organizations online. Western surveillance technology has filled a niche that was once open for dissidents. By placing this ban, even if the regimes turn back to old methods, they will still be hampered in the crushing of dissent. Furthermore, no regime has the resources or power to have physical surveillance as pervasive as the technology denied them would allow. Electronic surveillance therefore can cast a much broader net that would allow the government to repress many more people who would not be subject to more labour intensive physical surveillance.

While cyberbullying is indeed a danger to children, it is not an excuse to invade their personal life-worlds. The UNCRC clearly states that “(1) No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honour and reputation,” and that, “(2) The child has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attack.” These ‘interferences’ or ‘attacks’ not only apply to third parties but to parents as well. [1] Moreover in less traditional ‘offline’ spaces children have far greater ability to choose which information they share with their parents and what they do not. As online spaces are not inherently more dangerous than those offline, it seems reasonable to suggest that similar limitations and restrictions on invasions of privacy that apply online should also apply offline. What a parent can do is to be there for their children and talk to them and support them. They should also spend time surfing the Internet together with them to discuss their issues and problems. But the child should always also have the opportunity to have his or her own protected and private space that is outside the every watchful surveilant eye of the parent..

[1] United Nations Children’s Fund. Implementation Handbook for the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Fully revised 3rd edition. Geneva. United Nations Publications. Google Search. Web. May 2013.

It may be costly and sometimes ineffective to police copyright, but that does not make them any less of a right worth protecting. If artists or firms feel that they might benefit from fighting infringers of their rights, they should have the right to do so, not simply be expected to roll over and give in to the pirates and law breakers. The state likewise, has an obligation to protect the rights, physical and intangible, of its citizens and cannot give up on them simply because they prove difficult and costly to enforce. Furthermore, the ensuring health of the economy is a primary duty of the state and this means aiding its domestic businesses and one of the ways it does that is by acting to enforce copyright both internally and if possible externally.

Real politick is not the only consideration democracies should entertain when they engage in international relations. Indeed, the Western powers have sought since World War II to develop a system of international justice that recognizes the primacy of peoples’ rights irrespective of where they are born. This principle is constantly compromised as democracies jockey for influence with undemocratic regimes, bolstering those regimes and their repressive norms in the process. In order to be consistent, and to serve the true interests of justice, democracies must not aid undemocratic governments in the repression of their people.

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
It is a means of vocalizing support for uprisings and liberty at a remove, preventing the backlash of direct intervention

By enacting this subsidy, the West makes a tacit public statement in favour of those involved in uprisings without coming out and publicly taking a side. This is a shrewd position to take as it blunts many of the fall-backs opposed regimes rely upon, such as blaming Western provocateurs for instigating the uprising. Rather than making a judgment call involving force or sanction, the simple provision of anonymity means the people involved in the uprisings can do it themselves while knowing they have some protections to fall back on that the West alone could provide. This is a purely enabling policy, giving activists on the group access to the freedom of information and expression, which aids not only in their aim to free themselves from tyranny, but also abets the West’s efforts to portray itself publicly as a proponent of justice for all, not just those it happens to favour as a geopolitical ally. In essence, the policy is a public statement of support for the ideas behind uprisings absent the specific taking of sides in a particular conflict. It throws some advantages to those seeking to rise up without undermining their cause through overbearing Western intervention. And that statement is a valuable one for Western states to make, because democracies tend to be more stable, more able to grow economically and socially in the long term, and are more amenable to trade and discourse with the West. By enacting this policy the West can succeed in this geopolitical aim without making the risers seem to be Western pawns.

Whether the West thinks it is being clever by hiding behind the intermediary of private companies and acting as if the software they are creating is not for use in destabilizing undemocratic, or perhaps just unfriendly, regimes, that story will not fly on the ground. If the west wants to support uprisings then it is better for it to do so in the open. Without open western support authoritarian regimes will feel they are enabled to crack down on uprisings when they occur. When such crackdowns occur democratic states can either stay silent and so tacitly endorse the regime or condemn it so supporting the uprising.

Governments are often obliged to do things that the population doesn’t like – raising taxes is an obvious example. However, it is also recognised that sometimes the government has to do these things in order to represent the long-term, best interest of its people – whether or not it is a popular measure at the time.

If it is true that people cannot easily get jobs in the developed world for lack of language skills then there will surely still be a pressure to learn the language or languages of international discourse. What this policy offers is access by a much wider audience to the various benefits that expanded academic knowledge can offer. It will expand the developing world's knowledge base and not in any way diminish the desire to learn English and other dominant languages. It should be remembered that it is not just academics that use academic papers; students do as well, as do professionals in everyday life. Clearly there cannot be an expectation that everyone learns English to be able to access research. While there may be fewer languages in academic use there is not such a narrowing of language for everyone else.

It is wrong that civil society should have reduced influence over the governance of the internet with governments making all the key decisions. Many governments around the world are not democratic and so cannot be said to represent their people while even those that are democratic are prone to advancing the interests of minorities of their constituents as shown by treaties and legislation such as SOPA and ACTA. Governments of all stripes whether authoritarian or democratic do not have a good record of transparency; ICANN on the other hand does. [1] ICANN works on a "bottom-up, consensus-driven, multi-stakeholder model" meaning that ICANN is very inclusive bringing together governments, experts, private companies and ngos, potentially even individuals can get involved and have their say. [2]

[1] ‘ICANN Accountability & Transparency’, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

[2] ‘About Us’, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers .

People are capable of assessing a biased idea after discovering its bias, while it is dangerous to present potentially biased ideas as genuine, for this limits discussion. This is especially so in the status quo, where the suspicions of who may be funding think tanks remain when they choose not to disclose their funders. A blanket obligation of all think tanks to reveal their funding allows for open discourse and thus more space to discuss the ideas themselves.

Many politicians in their campaigns make an explicit or implicit point out of emphasizing their family values and other aspects of their “private” life, for example by being photographed with their loyal family and through taking a stance on such issues as divorce, single mothers, sex education or drugs. If the public image such people seek to create is at variance with their own practices, such hypocrisy deserves to be exposed. This would not be to the detriment of democracy but in fact may improve it as it would encourage future politicians to ensure that they live by what they preach, rather than cynically trying to manipulate the media into creating a false image of who they are only for it to be fatally undermined by their own actions.

How do we determine what is proportionate? If some valuable intellectual property, such as part of the designs for the US's latest fighter jet the F35, which were hacked in 2009. [1] Then what can be the response to this? Can it simply be the cost of developing this design? If so then what about the strategic loss the state has suffered, how can that be calculated in? So long as it is excluded state sanctioned cyber-attacks will not be deterred.

[1] Gorman, Siobhan, Cole, August, and Dreazen, Yochi, ‘Computer Spies Breach Fighter-Jen Project’, The Wall Street Journal, 21 April 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124027491029837401.html.html

Oppressive regimes have turned to the use of advanced surveillance technology in response to activists’ learning to evade more conventional methods of surveillance, and by moving their organizations online. Western surveillance technology has filled a niche that was once open for dissidents. By placing this ban, even if the regimes turn back to old methods, they will still be hampered in the crushing of dissent. Furthermore, no regime has the resources or power to have physical surveillance as pervasive as the technology denied them would allow. Electronic surveillance therefore can cast a much broader net that would allow the government to repress many more people who would not be subject to more labour intensive physical surveillance.

While cyberbullying is indeed a danger to children, it is not an excuse to invade their personal life-worlds. The UNCRC clearly states that “(1) No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honour and reputation,” and that, “(2) The child has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attack.” These ‘interferences’ or ‘attacks’ not only apply to third parties but to parents as well. [1] Moreover in less traditional ‘offline’ spaces children have far greater ability to choose which information they share with their parents and what they do not. As online spaces are not inherently more dangerous than those offline, it seems reasonable to suggest that similar limitations and restrictions on invasions of privacy that apply online should also apply offline. What a parent can do is to be there for their children and talk to them and support them. They should also spend time surfing the Internet together with them to discuss their issues and problems. But the child should always also have the opportunity to have his or her own protected and private space that is outside the every watchful surveilant eye of the parent..

[1] United Nations Children’s Fund. Implementation Handbook for the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Fully revised 3rd edition. Geneva. United Nations Publications. Google Search. Web. May 2013.

It may be costly and sometimes ineffective to police copyright, but that does not make them any less of a right worth protecting. If artists or firms feel that they might benefit from fighting infringers of their rights, they should have the right to do so, not simply be expected to roll over and give in to the pirates and law breakers. The state likewise, has an obligation to protect the rights, physical and intangible, of its citizens and cannot give up on them simply because they prove difficult and costly to enforce. Furthermore, the ensuring health of the economy is a primary duty of the state and this means aiding its domestic businesses and one of the ways it does that is by acting to enforce copyright both internally and if possible externally.

Real politick is not the only consideration democracies should entertain when they engage in international relations. Indeed, the Western powers have sought since World War II to develop a system of international justice that recognizes the primacy of peoples’ rights irrespective of where they are born. This principle is constantly compromised as democracies jockey for influence with undemocratic regimes, bolstering those regimes and their repressive norms in the process. In order to be consistent, and to serve the true interests of justice, democracies must not aid undemocratic governments in the repression of their people.

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
Clandestine aid to dissidents will serve to alienate and close off discourse on policy

Reform in oppressive regimes, or ones that have less than stellar democratic and human rights records that might precipitate an uprising, is often slow in coming, and external pressures are generally looked upon with suspicion. The most effective way for Western countries to effect change is to engage with repressive regimes and to encourage them to reform their systems. By not directly antagonizing, but instead trading, talking, and generally building ties with countries, Western states can put to full use their massive economic power and political capital to good use in coaxing governments toward reform. 1 Peaceful evolution toward democracy results in far less bloodshed and instability, and should thus be the priority for Western governments seeking to change the behaviour of states. Militant action invariably begets militant response. And providing a mechanism for armed and violent resistance to better evade the detection of the state could well be considered a militant action.

The only outcome that would arise from this policy is a regime that is far less well disposed to the ideas of the West. This is because those ideas now carry the weight of foreign governments seeking actively to destabilize and abet the overthrow of their regimes, which, unsurprisingly, they consider to be wholly legitimate. A policy of flouting national laws will demand a negative response from the regimes, leading them to take harsh measures, such as curtailing access to the internet at all in times of uprising, which would be a major blow to domestic dissidents who, even with heavy censorship, still rely on the internet to organize and share information. This action would serve simply to further impoverish the people of useful tools for organization and uprising, such as occurred in Russia when the government ejected American NGOs they perceived as trying to undermine the regime. 2

1 Larison, D. 2012. “Engagement is Not Appeasement”. The American Conservative. Available: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/engagement-is-not-appeasement/

2 Brunwasser, M. “Russia Boots USAID in a Big Blow to Obama’s ‘Reset’ Policy”. September 2012. http://www.theworld.org/2012/09/russia-boots-usaid-in-a-big-blow-to-obamas-reset-policy/

It is often not enough simply to encourage gradual change, many states when given such encouragement simply take what the west offers and ignores what the west asks. This indeed was the case with Mubarak's Egypt for three decades, it took billions in aid from the United States yet did not reform, the U.S. even strengthened the regime by respecting restrictions on which NGOs could get funding. 1 If people are able to act and organize with more limited government reprisal, their chance of success is significantly increased. The incentive of the West should be to bet on the dissidents when they rise up and to take the gamble so that they can welcome a new, freer regime into the congress of nations.

1 Bery, S., “Roots of Discontent: Egypt's Call for Freedom”, Harvard Kennedy School Review, 2011. http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k74756&tabgroupid=icb.tabgroup124714

Governments are often obliged to do things that the population doesn’t like – raising taxes is an obvious example. However, it is also recognised that sometimes the government has to do these things in order to represent the long-term, best interest of its people – whether or not it is a popular measure at the time.

If it is true that people cannot easily get jobs in the developed world for lack of language skills then there will surely still be a pressure to learn the language or languages of international discourse. What this policy offers is access by a much wider audience to the various benefits that expanded academic knowledge can offer. It will expand the developing world's knowledge base and not in any way diminish the desire to learn English and other dominant languages. It should be remembered that it is not just academics that use academic papers; students do as well, as do professionals in everyday life. Clearly there cannot be an expectation that everyone learns English to be able to access research. While there may be fewer languages in academic use there is not such a narrowing of language for everyone else.

It is wrong that civil society should have reduced influence over the governance of the internet with governments making all the key decisions. Many governments around the world are not democratic and so cannot be said to represent their people while even those that are democratic are prone to advancing the interests of minorities of their constituents as shown by treaties and legislation such as SOPA and ACTA. Governments of all stripes whether authoritarian or democratic do not have a good record of transparency; ICANN on the other hand does. [1] ICANN works on a "bottom-up, consensus-driven, multi-stakeholder model" meaning that ICANN is very inclusive bringing together governments, experts, private companies and ngos, potentially even individuals can get involved and have their say. [2]

[1] ‘ICANN Accountability & Transparency’, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

[2] ‘About Us’, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers .

People are capable of assessing a biased idea after discovering its bias, while it is dangerous to present potentially biased ideas as genuine, for this limits discussion. This is especially so in the status quo, where the suspicions of who may be funding think tanks remain when they choose not to disclose their funders. A blanket obligation of all think tanks to reveal their funding allows for open discourse and thus more space to discuss the ideas themselves.

Many politicians in their campaigns make an explicit or implicit point out of emphasizing their family values and other aspects of their “private” life, for example by being photographed with their loyal family and through taking a stance on such issues as divorce, single mothers, sex education or drugs. If the public image such people seek to create is at variance with their own practices, such hypocrisy deserves to be exposed. This would not be to the detriment of democracy but in fact may improve it as it would encourage future politicians to ensure that they live by what they preach, rather than cynically trying to manipulate the media into creating a false image of who they are only for it to be fatally undermined by their own actions.

How do we determine what is proportionate? If some valuable intellectual property, such as part of the designs for the US's latest fighter jet the F35, which were hacked in 2009. [1] Then what can be the response to this? Can it simply be the cost of developing this design? If so then what about the strategic loss the state has suffered, how can that be calculated in? So long as it is excluded state sanctioned cyber-attacks will not be deterred.

[1] Gorman, Siobhan, Cole, August, and Dreazen, Yochi, ‘Computer Spies Breach Fighter-Jen Project’, The Wall Street Journal, 21 April 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124027491029837401.html.html

Oppressive regimes have turned to the use of advanced surveillance technology in response to activists’ learning to evade more conventional methods of surveillance, and by moving their organizations online. Western surveillance technology has filled a niche that was once open for dissidents. By placing this ban, even if the regimes turn back to old methods, they will still be hampered in the crushing of dissent. Furthermore, no regime has the resources or power to have physical surveillance as pervasive as the technology denied them would allow. Electronic surveillance therefore can cast a much broader net that would allow the government to repress many more people who would not be subject to more labour intensive physical surveillance.

While cyberbullying is indeed a danger to children, it is not an excuse to invade their personal life-worlds. The UNCRC clearly states that “(1) No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honour and reputation,” and that, “(2) The child has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attack.” These ‘interferences’ or ‘attacks’ not only apply to third parties but to parents as well. [1] Moreover in less traditional ‘offline’ spaces children have far greater ability to choose which information they share with their parents and what they do not. As online spaces are not inherently more dangerous than those offline, it seems reasonable to suggest that similar limitations and restrictions on invasions of privacy that apply online should also apply offline. What a parent can do is to be there for their children and talk to them and support them. They should also spend time surfing the Internet together with them to discuss their issues and problems. But the child should always also have the opportunity to have his or her own protected and private space that is outside the every watchful surveilant eye of the parent..

[1] United Nations Children’s Fund. Implementation Handbook for the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Fully revised 3rd edition. Geneva. United Nations Publications. Google Search. Web. May 2013.

It may be costly and sometimes ineffective to police copyright, but that does not make them any less of a right worth protecting. If artists or firms feel that they might benefit from fighting infringers of their rights, they should have the right to do so, not simply be expected to roll over and give in to the pirates and law breakers. The state likewise, has an obligation to protect the rights, physical and intangible, of its citizens and cannot give up on them simply because they prove difficult and costly to enforce. Furthermore, the ensuring health of the economy is a primary duty of the state and this means aiding its domestic businesses and one of the ways it does that is by acting to enforce copyright both internally and if possible externally.

Real politick is not the only consideration democracies should entertain when they engage in international relations. Indeed, the Western powers have sought since World War II to develop a system of international justice that recognizes the primacy of peoples’ rights irrespective of where they are born. This principle is constantly compromised as democracies jockey for influence with undemocratic regimes, bolstering those regimes and their repressive norms in the process. In order to be consistent, and to serve the true interests of justice, democracies must not aid undemocratic governments in the repression of their people.

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim