The whole world is facing a unique hardship in relation to e-democracy and protecting Human rights in a world riddled with information security threats. Now, every county around the globe is in the formation of new laws to meet these human rights and provide every citizen with an opportunity to express their concerns online, leveraging their access to democracy in a digital world.
Social media encourages the use of free speech-democracy by nurturing movements, uncovering social activities and groups, and allowing them to speak up when receiving unfair or unethical treatment. While this has provided humans around the world with a set of digital human rights, the digital revolution has also created new opportunities for limiting and controlling forms of cultural participation, interaction, and opening up a number of information security threats for participants of a democracy.
“In a Democratic world, Human Rights should be exercised online the same as offline”
E-Democracy
Democracy means government by the people. The government acts on behalf of its people, through an elected member. E-democracy is an electronic communication for democracy where people are more active in exercising their rights on the internet.
E- democracy particular attracts the younger generation, where they can use more expressive for their speech and expression rights. Covid-19 has greatly impacted the concept of online democracy.
Human Rights and Online Democracy
The internet has provided more power to freedom of expression and association. The government authorities and other stakeholders are trying hard to protect against these attacks. The rapid challenge, democracies face in managing the complex era of digital technology. It has become a defining domestic and foreign policy issue with direct implications for human rights and the democratic health of nations.
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Governments serve a crucial role in protecting human rights and sustaining healthy democracies across the globe. However, the growing assertion of internet regulation by nation-states across jurisdictional and territorial boundaries, increasingly threatens the principles of free speech and expression of political ideologies.
COVID-19 brought the world to its knees and enforced in a pandemic situation, forcing countries around the world to introduce new safety measures to protect its people. The sudden change in society limited social gatherings and activities, which paused all the political issues in general.
However, people are fortunate to have digital platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, individuals continue to voice their opinions and ideas, This digital platform creates exposure for social online activities, and intend to adopt change and raise awareness through democracy in social media.
Information Security Meets E-Democracy to protect Human Rights
Some countries deny human rights online. In some countries, people are acting under undue restrictions on and infringements of their rights. Now the question of concerns is what measures should the countries take to protect the individual’s human rights. Australia is always forward while adapting the safety measures for it’s people.
As per the Government in Australia, To attain this goal, Australia will:
- Advocate for the protection of human rights and demographic principles online:
- Support international efforts to promote and protect human rights online
- Ensuring respect for and the protection of the human rights of its people. As per the new strategy of Australia, the new cybersecurity includes Human rights as shown in Fig 1:
Australia will bring conversations concerning development assistance and cybersecurity capacity together, reconciling the goals, priorities, and terminology discussed.
In this digital world, where education, trade, infrastructure, planning is going online. Australia will be supporting international standards where digitization is more powerful and not compromising with the security of the nation. By applying proper regulations in terms of cybersecurity Australia will be able to implement technologies where democratic rights can be assessed online.
