RUI Research 2-3-23
Why are Americans losing liberties and rights?
By Scott Cleland
In 2013, Americans considered individual freedoms America’s top virtue, per Gallup. Today, most Americans are concerned they are losing, and will continue to lose, their individual freedoms and rights, per surveys by APM and PBS.
A leading cause of Americans losing their liberties and rights is U.S. Internet unaccountability policy of minimal government online in Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act.
This ‘Wild West’ Internet policy approves anarchism in abandoning rule-of-law, rights, and a duty-of-care online. It also approves amoralism in not legislating or adjudicating right vs. wrong, or legal vs. illegal, online.
This abdication of government authority unwittingly subverts the virtuous essence of American freedom -- the righteous reciprocity of the Golden Rule of ‘treat others as one wants to be treated,’ that every major religion and ethical tradition believes in some form and that 92% of Americans support per Marist.
Government reversing its purpose from promoting accountability to unaccountability in 1996 has ultimately proved a radical, reckless policy experiment on autopilot. The existential threat to Americans’ freedoms and rights here is the U.S. government embraced an untested, Internet Experiment of anarchism and amoralism over the exceptionally successful American Experiment of constitutionalism, religious liberty, and virtue.
Philosopher Isaiah Berlin’s Two Concepts of Liberty is instructive here; they are negative liberty (freedom from harm) versus positive liberty (freedom to harm).
The American Experiment constitutionally governs based on accountable liberty’s freedom from harm, i.e., individual freedom with responsibility (rule-of-law, duty of care), and government power with accountability (separation of powers, checks and balances, rule-of-law, and rights.)
The Internet Experiment de-governs via anarchism and amoralism, so it subverts Americans’ equal and inalienable rights. It is based on unaccountable liberty’s perverse freedom to harm others, i.e., individual freedom without responsibility and government power without accountability.
Reason and the evidence show 1996, U.S. Internet unaccountability policy, has resulted in Americans losing liberties and rights. They are Americans’ God-given inalienable rights of being “created equal” and “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” per our founders’ in the 1776 Declaration of Independence.
Lost Equal Rights. U.S. Internet unaccountability policy took away your equal rights in protecting Internet technology by prohibiting protection of people from technology. This unequally values protecting technology over humanity and profit over people. It unsafely grants technology impunity over people. And it unjustly empowers technology to govern people without their consent, rights, recourse, or access to justice.
Lost Life Security. Prior to 1996, Americans had a well-established, offline right to privacy based on the Fourth Amendment and federal privacy statutes passed in 1974, 1974, 1978, 1984, 1986, 1988, 1994, and 1996.
Now most know they have lost all their privacy online and want it back per Pew Research. Lose your privacy, lose your inalienable right to security to stay alive. Why? Privacy is integral to the natural human need for self-preservation. Privacy is akin to being able to hide from potential predatory harm. Without privacy, one can’t protect one’s security, identity, reputation, or dignity.
Lost Liberty. Humans enjoy liberty and rights, things do not. Offline a person is a living being: human, individual, citizen, voter, customer, or adult/minor with liberty. However, online a person tellingly is not a living thing: they are data, a user, a product, or an avatar without liberty.
Tragically, people have lost their humanity online. Online we’re dehumanized inanimate data products, commercial chattel that’s bought and sold with impunity by data brokers, without meaningful consent, rights, or recourse. We’re indentured servants online, disenfranchised commercial captives of unfair, one-sided, legal terms, indentures, and market power. Minors are prey for predators of all kinds, neglected and devalued with minimal age-appropriate protections.
Lost Personal Sovereignty. Lose your privacy. Lose your personal sovereignty to choose and control how you live your life. Online we no longer control our own destinies because others can largely control our virtual value, private data, and identity. And unfettered Big Tech monopolies largely control what we find, believe, see, say, and share online. U.S. Internet unaccountability policy also unnecessarily preempts citizens’ State rights making Americans second-class citizens online via unnecessary Federal preemption of States’ authority to protect their citizens from harm.
The Restore Us Institute’s solutions to losing liberties and rights online, and to most other Internet unaccountability problems, is either to restore Constitutional authority over the U.S. Internet in U.S. policy, or repeal Section 230 to restore constitutional authority online. Both deliver same rules and rights offline and online. Illegal offline illegal online. And they both enable Internet good (legal conduct) while disabling Internet bad (illegal conduct.)
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Scott Cleland is Executive Director of the Restore Us Institute (RUI), an Internet policy think tank and nonpartisan, faith-based nonprofit with a mission to restore Internet accountability to protect people from online harm. Cleland was Deputy U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and information Policy in the H.W. Bush Administration. To learn more, visit www.RestoreUsInstitute.org