Holding on to our values

Terror aims to divide and isolate us. As Hannah Arendt wrote, this is true for the rule of terror in totalitarian regimes, but it is also the aim of fundamentalist extremists today whatever their ideology. They aim to disrupt our lives and frighten us to force us to change our values, beliefs and behaviour. In this fear we already lost our way for a while as evidenced by torture and extrajudicial detention in secret prisons, mass surveillance of everything and everyone, etc.

Instincts and emotions tells us to give in to fear, to blame an entire religion or group of people, to make compromises that should not be made etc.

As rational and moral human beings interested in organising our lives so that we can live peacefully together, we should not give in to those raw emotions and instincts. Instead, we must be even better at adhering to our values of democracy, freedom, pluralism, equality and tolerance.

Human beings are currently living together in an increasingly interdependent and interconnected world, having empathy with other individuals, and their human dignity, because of rational and moral choices people have made, because of the constitutional states and international legal system that we have built up. We are all not born equal, we have decided to organize our lives so as to treat everyone equally, because it is good for us all.

This means that we currently live in the most peaceful, least violent times for the human species. Statistically speaking, in terms of reduction of violence in the world we live in an utopian paradise that could not have been dreamed of even 100 years ago. So lets not let anyone change this and strive to be even better at achieving those values.

Fuzzy borders

There has been recently some discussion in Estonia on the culture of complaint, especially in the rather influential conservative-libertarian circles. This concept, which was initially proposed by the late art critic Robert Hughes in his bestseller book in the US in 1993, was expressed in Estonia in modern terms by Elver Loho in his post on nihilist.fm. Obviously I disagree with both Robert Hughes and Elver on these issues, but that is for another post at another time. However, this has started me thinking on group-based approaches to categorising people.

It used to be easy to define and label individuals based on specific stereotypes and assign them to ingroups and outgroups, i.e. Estonian and Russian, woman or man, gay or straight, which could then become basis for discrimination or even worse as history has witnessed. However, there are additional facets to this because people’s identities and group boundaries are changing too because of social progress and also technological progress that has made unparalleled mobility and connectivity possible for many people around the globe.

Ingroups and outgroups are becoming at the same time fragmented and globalised due to the impact of social media. Fragmented in the sense that people find new ingroups based on extremely specific criteria (fans of an obscure singer) that allows them to cultivate their individual interests while sharing them with people from around the world. Globalised in the sense that there are new global ingroups and outgroups (Beliebers, Apple fans, chemtrail conspiracy theorists, etc etc) that come and go. These seemingly superficial categories have much more impact than one thinks, comparisons with religious cults are not totally out of place.

On the other hand, the perceived borders between groups based on which people used to be labelled and grouped together are becoming fuzzy. Distinct human races have been proven not to exist, ethnicity is more and more self-defined and unlimited (how would you objectively define an Estonian?). People migrate and get multiple relationships with different ethnic and national communities.

Country borders are becoming porous, because states cannot any more decide who can live in their country. In Estonia’s case, 500+ million EU citizens have a rights and obligations in relation to Estonian state, as well as the huge number of permanent residents who are non-citizens, not to mention refugees under international law. Although non-citizens have no access to traditional representative democracy through elections (which is a problem), they can wield power in other ways (for example through the judiciary and the executive branch). Citizenship has little meaning left for defining ingroup/outgroup. E-resident Edward Lucas is probably considered by many Estonians belonging to an ingroup more than many of the 300 000 Russians living here on a permanent basis.

One cannot really base one’s attitudes towards people based on perceived gender and sexuality, either. Gender and sexuality is not binary, because in addition to cis gender persons there are people who identify as various forms of trans* and in addition to strictly heterosexual people there are a range of (closeted and non-closeted) lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, etc people. Also, disability as a social construct can now under anti-discrimination law mean any long-term physical or mental impairment that prevents from participating in work-life equally with others (i.e. including certain overweight people).

This variety of differences, which is also intersecting in each individual and unique human being, some of which has always existed and some of which has been made possible by technology (i.e. mobility and connectivity) is the thing that seems to making people uneasy and uncertain, because they cannot rely on their prejudice and stereotyping. I do not have an easy stereotype for a cis gender, lesbian, Chinese businesswoman, who lives in India and has a British spouse. What if she is also a Belieber and uses Linux? Stereotypes that used to be good for easier living are increasingly unreliable and also unacceptable (which is why sensitivities and so-called political correctness has become an issue).

In order to cope, one cannot but to have tolerance for all the various individual differences and find common ground on shared humanity, which leads us closer to Benhabib’s cosmopolitan federalism.

Read: Benhabib, Seyla. “Borders, Boundaries, and Citizenship.” PS: Political Science and Politics 38.4 (2005): 673-677.

The case for investing in human rights in Estonia

Note: The bulk of this post was originally written in November 2014 for publication at an another site, but since it has still not been published, I will publish it now here with minor changes.

My country, Estonia, has changed tremendously in the last decades. In many ways, a lot of progress has been made. Estonia is a member of the EU, NATO and OECD, it ranks among highest in various rankings, including the Press Freedom Index and Freedom Online index.

Estonia has build up a modern and efficient state. There is relatively little open corruption, the state seems very open and transparent and there seems to be no problems with human rights. It is a hotbed for startup and innovation. And there are no hate crimes reported. Estonia seems to be an ideal place to live in many ways.

At the same time the success seems to be largely for show. It is an open question still whether the mechanical and formal reforms have actually made a change in the hearts and minds of people? Has it all been a huge lie, self-deception to live the Western dream? At the latest Estonian Lawyers Days the word self-colonization was used to describe application of European law in Estonia. The state is efficient, but ultimately meaningless, because it holds no values. The same could be said for the business sector or civil society.

What has happened in Hungary is not an exception. It is a rather extreme form of the processes that take place elsewhere, including in Estonia. There is gap between how things are and how things are shown to be. In Estonia, there is a word combination JOKK that means “legally it is all correct”, which is used derisively for business deals that use legal loopholes to make money. It seems that the Estonian state has been built up using the same principle.

In order to integrate to the Western structures which is driven by current fear of Russia and historical experiences, Estonia has had to bow to external forces in the form of conditions and prove itself as worthy of protection. This has resulted in formal, but strict fulfilment of all demands with very little understanding or analysis of what these mean or what is behind those demands.

Because these requirements were set at a time of neo-liberal rule in Western Europe, Estonia became a poster boy of these reforms. The thin state mentality has created a state that is largely irrelevant and cannot do much for economic or social development, its toolbox is rather empty. The state has become a very well-developed machine that has little corruption and is transparent, but does not deliver the growth and progress that it should.

The Estonian state is very good at the outward promotion of Estonian success stories, which mostly deal with technological achievements (Skype, paperless government, e-voting, etc), but not only. Estonia tries to show itself as a beacon of human rights and democracy as well. Many of the technological advancements have been possible not because Estonia is a particularly creative and innovative, but because of the lack of constraints by the state. There is no strongly developed understanding of human rights, which means that e-government solutions that represent a massive possibility for infringement of human rights, are not critically evaluated, but just adopted. In Estonia, there has been no serious and critical discussion about data retention laws and mass surveillance, instead a state infrastructure has been developed that allows the state rather easily to track a lot of things. Likewise, any criticism of the dangers of e-voting is met with derision and accusations of lack of patriotism.

At the same time, civil society has not taken to fulfil its democratic role. Largely dependent on state funding and mostly interested in service provision, there are only very few organisations that engage in advocacy. As the interest of foreign private donors in the region has vaned, these organisations are struggling to find funding in the form of project-based support, which prevents them from working effectively.

So there is a state that is more interested in efficiency of government and not in development of tricky value-based issues that require smarter, inclusive and sometimes unpopular decisions, a mostly irrelevant civil society and a free press that is however struggling with its business model, there is a growing danger towards backsliding in human rights and democracy.

The three main topics of discussion this year in Estonia has been the disability benefits reform that was opposed by most independent disabled people organisations, but adopted nevertheless; the same-sex partnership act, which has been left half-adopted with implementing legislation delayed until after the next elections in March; the creation of the Russian language TV channel to battle Russian propaganda. In these discussions, human rights based arguments have not taken center stage.

Thus, there is still a way to go towards functioning democracy and inclusion of minorities. The reason for the lack of interest in my opinion is the lack of willingness to actually to change something as human rights and democracy are seen as foreign transplants even by many inside the political establishment that are either not really necessary or just a part of a transaction in exchange for access to EU and NATO.

Thus there is an enormous opportunity in Estonia for stable and prosperous development, but this requires a fundamental change of mindset towards recognizing the flaws in terms of human rights and democratic development. This requires a huge investment in human rights and democracy involving the state and citizens, but also genuine political and moral leadership.

A Russian-language TV channel would be a mistake for Estonia

The Estonian public discourse is engulfed in fear and paranoia about Russia, even more so today than usual. This is understandable because of the Russian actions in Ukraine and other countries and because of the large ethnic Russian population living in Estonia. According to the results of the latest census, there are ca 890 000 ethnic Estonians living in Estonia and ca 320 000 ethnic Russians. All other ethnic minorities have smaller numbers.

Many Russians (especially the majority that has either a Russian citizenship or is stateless) have little to no political representation rights, because non-citizens are not allowed to belong to political parties, vote or stand as candidates in the parliamentary elections and stand as candidates in the local elections (they can vote in local elections, however). This was a decision made by the Estonian political elites when Estonia regained its independence, to ensure smooth integration with Western political structures and escape influence of Russia. These decisions made 23 years ago have resulted in fast economic development (at least in terms of neo-liberal model) and membership of EU, NATO and OECD. The cost has been the political disenfranchisement of the ethnic Russian population which has fueled societal segregation and a created a flawed democracy.

Recently, however, the Estonian political elite has become worried that the Russian minority might be used against Estonian territorial integrity in a way similar to what happened in Crimea and is happening in Eastern Ukraine. The prevailing view is that many Estonian Russians watch Russian TV stations and are thus subjected to anti-Western propaganda. Thus it is necessary to offer them a more balanced and objective media channel, which is why the Estonian government decided last week that Estonian public broadcasting ERR will get 4 million euros to create a Russian-language TV channel.

This is fundamentally a wrong decision, albeit a convenient one.

It is a wrong decision because it treats Estonian Russians as objects not subjects and reinforces the idea that they are the problem and their minds need to be changed, very much similar to the employment benefits reform, which also saw the main obstacle for disabled people not working the lack of motivation of people with disabilities. This paternalistic view reinforces the understanding that people are not capable of thinking for themselves, that they can be influenced by propaganda and that it is the governments job to tell people what is right and what is wrong, who is enemy of Estonia and who is not.

It also creates a false impression that there is one ‘objective’ way of looking at things, which can easily lead into propaganda. I mean, if the Estonian government is creating a TV channel, which it says is not to be used for propaganda, then that they even have to mention this makes one doubt the objectivity of it. Coupled with the recent serious discussions on the need for “psychological defense” for Estonia, impartiality on issues of integration seems to be impossible if not intentionally then because of the difficult historical context. This is such a difficult topic for Estonia that wading into it cost Jürgen Ligi his job as the Minister of Finance a few weeks ago.

There are no easy solutions, because all the effective options need more equal treatment of Estonians with Russians, which is more difficult for Estonians to handle, because of historical wrongs perpetrated against Estonians and Estonia.

If I was in charge, this is what I would do to make sure that there is a democratic and independent Estonia:

1. Ensure that any and all instances of discrimination of Russians (and other minorities) in Estonia can receive an adequate legal response, either in employment or in other areas. Investigate in detail where are the more systematic problems (rental market, recruitment) and deal with them. Invest money in this, because this means a more just society that is more stable. The Estonian equality body (Gender Equality and Equal Treatment Commissioner) suffers from chronic lack of funding (it receives annually ca 70 000 euros from the state budget), last year only 2 people turned to the office with complaints based on ethnic or national origin. There are very few cases in courts and employment dispute commissions. This means that there are massive number of unresolved discrimination claims. If we deal with these claims and give access to remedies, the perception of Estonia discriminating against Russians can be easily countered.

2. Ensure that all people that live and intend to continue living in Estonia are part of the Estonian public sphere. This means that there has to be a solution to statelessness and citizenship issues. It is possible to create a radical plan to ensure that in 10 years almost all people who are permanently living in Estonia have (at least) Estonian citizenship. If there is enough time to prepare and everyone knows that it will happen, the political parties will have to be more inclusive or face the loss of the Russian votes to others. Any other solution for integration does not work, because citizenship is fundamental. This means that many more Russians will get a say in Estonian politics, which is more democratic and leads to a better governance on the whole. If Russians are 25% of Estonian people, then this should be also reflected in government, its policies and resource allocation.

3. Spend considerably more on educating all citizens to make up their own minds. The best guarantee of the continuation of Estonian democratic statehood is a citizenry of independent autonomous individuals that are able to make up their own minds. So what is needed is education of people to recognise propaganda, to evaluate and analyse information based on source and strength of argument, to make rational, research-based, not emotional decisions. I see every day that people cannot cope with all the information, they are unable to understand what is authentic and what is astroturfing, many people seem to lack functional reading skills and critical thinking is not appreciated or taught. Media has a key role in this, but not only. This also means that civil society must play a larger role than the state-dependent sideshow it is today.

Thus it is my argument that the Russian-language TV channel is really meant to placate the majority population that something is being done. It will have no impact on the situation or mindset of Estonian Russians, because it conveniently misidentifies the problem, as there is not enough political courage and/or will to do something that has a real impact.

Additional reading:

• Kjetil Duvold: Between Flawed and Full Democracy: 20 Years of Baltic Independence
  
• Peet Kask: Lonkava demokraatia ravi
• Licia Cianetti: Granting Local Voting Rights to Non-Citizens in Estonia and Latvia: The Conundrum of Minority Representation in Two Divided Democracies
• Aleksandr Aidarov and Wolfgang Drechsler: Estonian Russification of non-Russian ethnic minorities in Estonia?

Same-sex partnership debate in Estonia: battle for egalitarian and liberal values

On Wednesday, the Estonian parliament Riigikogu will consider the draft partnership act, which will be gender-neutral. It will thus offer protection of law for same-sex couples and their children as well as different-sex couples who have opted not to get married. It would be the first time* a country that used to be in the Soviet Union would offer recognition for same-sex couples. If passed in the first reading, there will be second reading in September and law will hopefully pass before the end of the year for the law to become in force from 1 January 2015.

The draft law was submitted by 40 Members of Parliament out of 101, belonging to three of the four parties in Riigikogu. The only parliamentary party against this is the conservative IRL, but some prominent members of that party have also supported the law, while some members of the other parties have been against. The government of Estonia has stated that they support the law, although this was not a part of the coalition agreement. In terms of popular support, same-sex partnerships are supported by roughly half of the population while the other half is against, which is not so bad for a country in which homosexual acts were criminal acts 25 years ago.

There are some specific reasons why the window of opportunity exists. In Spring, the government changed in Estonia as a result of preparing for the parliamentary elections next Spring. In order to improve the image of the party, the Reform party switched out their prime minister and their coalition partner: the anti-LGBT IRL was replaced with pro-LGBT Social Democrats. As the partnership act had been in consideration for a long time already, IRL being in government holding it up, the obstacle was removed and the draft was to go forward.

The strategy of those for the law has been remarkably peaceful and quiet. There has been very little coordination and a number of messages have been used by different parties. The members of parliament who have initiated the act, have downplayed the significance of same-sex partnerships, focusing instead on those different-sex couples who live together, but have not married. There are more than 100 000 of these couples as marriage is not particularly popular among Estonians. When LGB angle has been brought up, this has been communicated as a part of Western values that we have to accept unless we want to be under Russian influence. LGB equality has not been among the main arguments brought forward and although there has been a huge number of supporting opinions for the law from various NGOs and groups (such as a feminist Facebook group), there has not been any demonstrations and even the annual Baltic Pride, which took place in Estonia two weeks ago, did not see any substantial controversy (it also lacked the basic Pride march).

Those against same-sex partnerships have been more organised and their messages have been better coordinated. The main antagonists are the Foundation for Protection of Family and Tradition (Sihtasutus Perekonna ja Traditsiooni Kaitseks, SAPTK), headed by Varro Vooglaid, the Estonian Council of Churches and its member organisations and the conservative IRL party as well as the more far-right EKRE party (which is not in the parliament currently). There are also some populist politicians from other parties that have opposed the law.

SAPTK has tried all types of direct and less direct actions to influence and intimidate people as well as parliamentarians, including gathering signatures (they managed to collect more than 40 000, which is considerable for a population of 1,3 million), publishing a booklet called “The Lies of the Homosexual Propaganda”, making weekly videos, organising a Facebook group, mass-emailed all members of parliament, etc. They refuse to publish their sources of funding, and a few years ago their leader Varro Vooglaid was involved with bringing a well-known anti-gay activist Paul Cameron to Estonia.

SAPTK does not make a secret of the fact that it seeks to spread a rather extreme form of traditional catholicism, which is based on the ideology of Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, a Brasilian intellectual who founded the international movement Tradition, Family and Property (TFP). The basic ideology of Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira is expressed in the book “Revolution and Counterrevolution”, which has been translated to Estonian by SAPTK and which basically sees the protestant reformation, the Enlightenment and French revolution as well as Communism destructive to societal values, calling for a traditionalist counter-revolution to stop egalitarian and liberal developments and re-impose a hierarchical, sacral and austere social order that dates back not decades but centuries. It is somewhat paradoxical how in the least religious country in Europe, a group that follows this kind of fringe ideology has gathered a substantial number of supporters.

The basic arguments used for and against same-sex partnerships are centered around the definition of family. In Estonia family, unlike marriage, is not defined in law and different laws consider families to include different types of families. Following some recent decision of the European Court of Human Rights, the majority of the legal experts in the field (including the Chancellor of Justice) have adopted a view that same-sex couples can enjoy a ‘family life’ and this means that the Estonian Constitution requires that same-sex families must be afforded some kind of legal protection by the state. This argument is based on the prevailing egalitarian and liberal values and laws that the TFP movement tries to fight against.

Therefore, one can say that non-religious Estonia has surprisingly ended up as one of the battlegrounds between two very different ideologies: one that is extremely socially conservative and the other based on the Enlightenment values. Surely one of the reasons why there is a lot of resistance to the draft law is that homophobic attitudes are still present in the society, which SAPTK has successfully channeled to achieve their goals. For some, homophobia has trumped their distrust of organized religion, for others it is really the lack of contact and understanding of who LGBT people are, because there has not been and still is no wide-spread awareness-raising among the majority of people living in Estonia. The natural distrust of government and the extraordinary way that the draft partnership law has been introduced by its proponents, has probably created a more fertile ground for SAPTK. There are no other forces countering their fieldwork, as pro-parternship law NGOs and groups prefer to work on lobbying and not so much in the grassroots level. The only grassroots organising indirectly supporting the law has been a Facebook page called “thank you, but my traditional family does not need protection” that was created a few days ago and already has ca 10 000 followers (compared to less than 4 000 for SAPTK page).

It remains to be seen if the partnership law will be adopted, I think it will be, but there are a number of lessons to learn from what has been happening and for the wider equality debate. It shows that there are still a lot of people who do not consider liberalism in the wider sense and egalitarianism as shared values.  Even though SAPTK may lose this time, the process has radicalised and focused the forces working against the further entrenchment of these liberal and egalitarian values. It should not be taken for granted that everyone in Estonia shares these values and more work should be done to explain why these values are important in the grassroots level, an opportunity that has not been used very well in the context of the debate surrounding the partnership act.

* Currently, limited legal protection is already available in Estonia for same-sex partners of citizens of other EU Member States who are not EU citizens, based on the Citizen of European Union Act.

The end of collective technophilia?

2014 could be the year that a serious shift happened in our attitudes towards technology.  A more critical, perhaps mature attitude seems to be developing, initiated by the Black Swan event created by Snowden revelations, the so-called Snowden effect. Our societies will be better because of it, especially in terms of protection of human rights and democracy.

For a long time, there has been a concern that human rights do not get enough emphasis in our constant drive for better and more efficient living through constant improvement of technology. This has meant that technology has become and end and not means to achieve something.

In Estonia, this is even more prevalent, because the national narrative and international image of the country has been built to depend on technology. The success of e-stonia is seen as source of national pride and international scholars are also usually not focused on such a small country, which prevents any critical analysis of the situation and opens Estonia up to huge vulnerabilities. This perverse view of technology is seen particularly strongly now, when e-voting is touted by the ruling political elite (while one major party is totally against it). This view can be seen for example in the statement by President Ilves: “Minule on e-hääle andmine mitte ainult mugav, aga eelkõige usaldusavaldus maailma ühele paremale IT-süsteemile, usaldusavaldus Eesti riigile.” (“For me, e-voting is not only convenient, but foremost a statement of trust towards one of the world’s best IT-systems, a statement of trust towards the Estonian state”).

Worldwide, the shift to a more reasonable, less hype-filled approach is evidenced by various courts trying to better balance freedom of information and speech with privacy rights and other rights. Freedom of information and speech has seen an unparalleled Golden Age with the Internet, however, previously there was not much discussion related to the fact that human rights are interdependent and indivisible. Thus, a much greater emphasis on freedom of information also means that some other rights are going to be less protected.

In some remarkable recent court decisions courts have finally begun to critically evaluate the impact of technology to the society and, specifically, human rights. They have attempted (arguably not most successfully), to rebalance freedom of information with other rights. This has been mostly happening in Europe, since the EU has the strongest data protection laws in the world.

• In the Delfi vs Estonia ECtHR case the ECtHR placed the responsibility for libelous anonymous comments on the online news portal that published them, rather than the author of the comment. The case has been referred to the Grand Chamber so there still might be a change, but the initial chamber decision stated pretty clearly: “The ease of disclosure of information on the Internet and the substantial amount of information there means that it is a difficult task to detect defamatory statements and remove them.”
• The CJEU invalidated the Data Retention Directive in its landmark judgment in which it declared mass surveillance illegal. The CJEU went further than anyone expected when it said: “As for the question of whether the interference caused by Directive 2006/24 is limited to what is strictly necessary, it should be observed that /…/ the directive requires the retention of all traffic data concerning fixed telephony, mobile telephony, Internet access, Internet e-mail and Internet telephony. It therefore applies to all means of electronic communication, the use of which is very widespread and of growing importance in people’s everyday lives. Furthermore, in accordance with Article 3 of Directive 2006/24, the directive covers all subscribers and registered users. It therefore entails an interference with the fundamental rights of practically the entire European population.”
• The CJEU also ruled in its very recent Google Spain decision that there is a strong “right to be forgotten” and the search engine must remove links to information that a person does not want to be linked to. The CJEU said: “As the data subject may, in the light of his fundamental rights under Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter, request that the information in question no longer be made available to the general public by its inclusion in such a list of results, it should be held, /…/ that those rights override, as a rule, not only the economic interest of the operator of the search engine but also the interest of the general public in finding that information upon a search relating to the data subject’s name.”

There are also some other interesting developments:

• In popular culture, tech culture has increasingly become subject of criticism. See the series Silicon Valley and, most poignantly, a recent episode of HBO’s Veep.
• Recently it was reported that German economy minister Sigmar Gabriel suggested that it might be necessary to break up Google, while current President of the European Parliament and one of the top candidates for the next president of the European Commission Martin Schulz stated on Google: “Whoever knows everything about citizens, firms and politicians achieves a level of power which doesn’t belong in a pluralistic democracy.”
• There are also growing grassroots citizen movements that target the tech giants such as Europe v Facebook.
• MOOC courses are increasingly seen as mostly hype and not the transformation that it was claimed to be.
• The Estonian Supreme Court also decided in a less reported case last December that charging less for online court proceedings than traditional ones is unconstitutional, because of the importance of fundamental rights at stake (access to justice). The Court among other things heavily criticised the concept of efficiency behind the introduction of the e-justice system and accused the government that it is trying to shift the burden of entering and submitting complicated legal documents from the courts to the general public who might not be best prepared for it.
• The Estonian online election system has been called highly vulnerable and recommended to be abondoned by leading scholars in the area.

Thus the shift consists of better rebalancing freedom of speech and information with other human rights in the online context and a more cautious and realistic view towards the danger that the likes of Google and Facebook are posing to the lives of all individuals, our human rights and democracy due to their omnipresence in the Internet. In terms of Carlota Perez’s Techno-Economic Paradigm Shift theory, this could be signal that the world has moved on the a more stable and peaceful deployment period of the currently dominant ICT paradigm from the turbulent installation period.

The invalid Data Retention Directive and Estonia

One of the most important decisions about protection of human rights in Europe (and perhaps the world) in recent times, was the 8 April 2014 decision of the European Court of Justice in Joined Cases C-293/12 and C-594/12 Digital Rights Ireland and Seitlinger and Others. The case concerned the contentious Data Retention Directive, which required all Member States to keep so-called metadata about mobile and fixed phone and internet connections. The Court found that the directive interfered disproportionately the right to private life of all European residents and declared the so-called Data Retention Directive invalid in its entirety and from the time it came into force. There case came about because of Digital Rights Ireland and more than 12 000 private individuals in Austria had contested the validity of the data retention requirement (as it amounts to mass surveillance). There had already been constitutional challenges to the laws adopted based on the directive in many member states (Germany, Romania) and several refused to transpose the directive (Sweden), so it is clear that the directive was controversial. After all, it had been adopted in a three-month expedited proceeding after the London and Madrid terrorist attacks.

In Estonia the data retention requirements have so far not raised in formal legal constitutional issues. Looking through the procedure of adoption of the law, it seems that privacy rights argumentation was never really raised and there was almost no opposition to this (what many call totalitarian) law. The law was passed after six month legislative procedure with 82 members of parliament out of 101 voting in favour (with no votes against or abstaining). The explanatory note of the draft law states that the proposal was put together by two public officials (one from the Communications Board and another from the Ministry of Economy and Communications), with participation of “surveillance and security authorities” and the Estonian Information and Telecommunications Union. The only contentious issue that was raised seemed to be that the telecoms were not happy with having to pay for the data retention themselves (they still do).

The Estonian provision seems to be much wider than the directive, for example allowing the retained data to be used not only for serious crimes, but has been expanded to include also misdemeanours (even by the tax authorities!). This in itself seems excessive and disproportionate even if the directive was still valid. There are a number of other issues, but the most fundamental one is that according to European Court of Justice, mass surveillance is not allowed by law. It is disproportionate (even to fight terrorism) to preemptively gather, retain and process data about every single person.

So why did our constitutional system of protection of basic human rights (and the right to privacy) fail so spectacularly in this issue? In my opinion the reasons were the following:

• Not enough detailed human rights scrutiny of laws made due to harmonisation of laws based on EU directives. The Estonian authorities seemed to assume that since this was based on an EU directive, there was no inherent risk to human rights protection. The human rights architecture in Europe assumes that there is scrutiny in terms of human rights BOTH in EU level and in national level, but this time there seemed to be neither worked. President Ilves failed in his duties as he can refuse to sign the laws he believes are unconstitutional and instead proclaimed it without problems.
• The lack of independent NGOs dealing critically with human rights (and specifically with data protection). There was simply not enough specific expertise in Estonia to challenge the draft at any stage of the process.
• Lack of discourse critical of technological development, also unfounded trust in technology. Since the belief in the positive impact of technology is so engrained, any opposition to using mass data collection could be seen as standing against the ‘normal’ technological development of the society. The so-called tech and data protection experts are rather evangelists who stand to personally benefit from lack of critical discourse.
• Overall weak position and awareness of human rights. In many ways human rights are seen as declaratory, self-evident principles that have little impact in the daily lives of Estonian people, especially in specific matters.
• Hightened sense of vulnerability brought about by fear of terrorism. I think that in Estonia this is not so relevant, since the number one fear is still Russia and there has been no terrorist attacks on Estonian soil. However, decision makers might be influenced by this.

So what now? At the moment the law in Estonia is in place and the massive breach of privacy rights is allowed to continue. There has been almost no public debate and the governmental authorities seem to be waiting for the reaction of someone else (in Finland, the review of retention laws was announced a couple of days after the judgement).

The situation is remarkably problematic not only because of the continuing disproportionate infringement of privacy rights, but the credibility problem this poses for Estonia’s image as a technologically advanced country both internally and externally. Are Estonian people going to continue to trust in e-services when it is clear that the human rights safeguards are not working? Is the international community ready to admit that Estonia is not such a great example of tech-friendly society after all if it also means lack of regard to basic human rights?

Annex: The provision in question is as follows (English translation is only available for the future version, but there seems to be no change in terms of this provision):

§ 1111. Obligation to preserve data
(1) A communications undertaking is required to preserve the data that are necessary for the performance of the following acts:
1) tracing and identification of the source of communication;
2) identification of the destination of communication;
3) identification of the date, time and duration of communication;
4) identification of the type of communications service;
5) identification of the terminal equipment or presumable terminal equipment of a user of communications services;
6) determining of the location of the terminal equipment.
(2) The providers of telephone or mobile telephone services and telephone network and mobile telephone network services are required to preserve the following data:
1) the number of the caller and the subscriber’s name and address;
2) the number of the recipient and the subscriber’s name and address;
3) in the cases involving supplementary services, including call forwarding or call transfer, the number dialled and the subscriber’s name and address;
4) the date and time of the beginning and end of the call;
5) the telephone or mobile telephone service used;
6) the international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) of the caller and the recipient;
7) the international mobile equipment identity (IMEI) of the caller and the recipient;
8) the cell ID at the time of setting up the call;
9) the data identifying the geographic location of the cell by reference to its cell ID during the period for which data are preserved;
10) in the case of anonymous pre-paid mobile telephone services, the date and time of initial activation of the service and the cell ID from which the service was activated.
(3) The providers of Internet access, electronic mail and Internet telephony services are required to preserve the following data:
1) the user IDs allocated by the communications undertaking;
2) the user ID and telephone number of any incoming communication in the telephone or mobile telephone network;
3) the name and address of the subscriber to whom an Internet Protocol (IP) address, user ID or telephone number was allocated at the time of the communication;
4) the user ID or telephone number of the intended recipient of an Internet telephony call;
5) the name, address and user ID of the subscriber who is the intended recipient in the case of electronic mail and Internet telephony services;
6) the date and time of beginning and end of the Internet session, based on a given time zone, together with the IP address allocated to the user by the Internet service provider and the user ID;
7) the date and time of the log-in and log-off of the electronic mail service or Internet telephony service, based on a given time zone;
8) the Internet service used in the case of electronic mail and Internet telephony services;
9) the number of the caller in the case of dial-up Internet access;
10) the digital subscriber line (DSL) or other end point of the originator of the communication.
(4) The data specified in subsections (2) and (3) of this section shall be preserved for one year from the date of the communication if such data are generated or processed in the process of provision of communications services. Requests submitted and information given pursuant to § 112 of this Act shall be preserved for two years. The obligation to preserve the information provided pursuant to § 112 rests with the person submitting the request.
(5) The data specified in subsections (2) and (3) of this section shall be preserved in the territory of a Member State of the European Union. The following shall be preserved in the territory of Estonia:
1) the requests and information provided for in § 112 of this Act;
2) the log files specified in subsection 113 (5) and the applications provided for in subsection 113 (6) of this Act;
3) the single requests provided for in § 1141 of this Act.
(6) In the interest of public order and national security the Government of the Republic may extend, for a limited period, the term specified in subsection (4) of this section.
(7) In the case specified in subsection (6) of this section the Minister of Economic Affairs and Communications shall immediately notify the European Commission and the Member States of the European Union thereof. In the absence of an opinion of the European Commission within a period of six months the term specified in subsection (4) shall be deemed to have been extended.
(8) The obligation to preserve the data provided for in subsections (2) and (3) of this section also applies to unsuccessful calls if those data are generated or processed upon providing telephone or mobile telephone services or telephone network or mobile telephone network services. The specified obligation to preserve data does not apply to call attempts.
(9) Upon preserving the data specified in subsections (2) and (3) of this section, a communications undertaking must ensure that:
1) the same quality, security and data protection requirements are met as those applicable to analogous data on the electronic communications network;
2) the data are protected against accidental or unlawful destruction, loss or alteration, unauthorised or unlawful storage, processing, access or disclosure;
3) necessary technical and organisational measures are in place to restrict access to the data;
4) no data revealing the content of the communication are preserved.
(10) The expenses related to the preserving or processing of the data specified in subsections (2) and (3) of this section shall not be compensated to communications undertakings.
(11) The data specified in subsections (2) and (3) of this section are forwarded to:
1) an investigative body, a surveillance agency, the Prosecutor’s Office or a court pursuant to the Code of Criminal Procedure;
2) a security authority;
3) the Data Protection Inspectorate, the Financial Supervision Authority, the Environmental Inspectorate, the Police and Border Guard Board, the Security Police Board and the Tax and Customs Board pursuant to the Code of Misdemeanour Procedure;
4) the Financial Supervision Authority pursuant to the Securities Market Act;
5) a court pursuant to the Code of Civil Procedure;
6) a surveillance agency in the cases provided for in the Organisation of the Defence Forces Act, the Taxation Act, the Police and Border Guard Act, the Weapons Act, the Strategic Goods Act, the Customs Act, the Witness Protection Act, the Security Act, the Imprisonment Act and the Aliens Act.

Delfi vs Estonia ECHR judgment

Today, the European Court of Human Rights issued their long-awaited judgment in the case of Delfi vs Estonia. The case has implication for many human rights issues, including hate speech, anonymous speech, liability of internet portals for comments on their website etc.

As I currently understand the law, the provider is not liable when there is a notice-and-take-down system in place. This means that for example YouTube is not liable for any derogatory or infringing content that is uploaded until it has received a take down notice (which can be submitted by anyone) after which the content is made unavailable. This system is, of course, not perfect, because it allows to block also material that might not be infringing. It also means that the service provider should have the knowledge and expertise to identify content that is infringing from what is not, which poses specific problems. The lack of clarity and inconsistency of the notice-and-take-down system was also pointed out by the intervening third party Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights in Warsaw (which I had the pleasure of visiting and meeting with during the last weekend). See their written comments to the court (PDF).

The Delfi case involved a number of derogatory comments against Mr Leedo, who owns the company that provides ferry services between mainland Estonia and the two larger islands. The comments were extremely offensive (and are reproduced in English in para. 14 of the judgment).

The case will be commented in detail by many people, but here are my preliminary observations:

1. Not all news stories require the same degree of moderation of comments by the publisher. The court held that Delfi should have expected a number of hateful or defamatory comments due to the nature of the article and thus exercise extra caution:

86. /—/ Therefore, the Court considers that the applicant company, by publishing the article in question, could have realised that it might cause negative reactions against the shipping company and its managers and that, considering the general reputation of comments on the Delfi news portal, there was a higher-than-average risk that the negative comments could go beyond the boundaries of acceptable criticism and reach the level of gratuitous insult or hate speech. It also appears that the number of comments posted on the article in question was above average and indicated a great deal of interest in the matter among the readers and those who posted their comments. Thus, the Court concludes that the applicant company was expected to exercise a degree of caution in the circumstances of the present case in order to avoid being held liable for an infringement of other persons’ reputations.

This is an important distinction as the same could be said about articles that deal with other, sensitive topics such as issues related to ethnic minorities, migrants, LGBT rights etc in which areas at the moment there is uncontrolled hate speech. Does this mean that the publisher should put extra resources on moderation of the comments for these topics or should ban commenting altogether?

2. The notice-and-take-down system has to be effective in order to exclude liability of the publisher. Although there was a word-based automatic filtering system as well, the portal relied on a notice-and-take-down system, which allowed users to report comments they thought were offensive or illegal. Delfi had made it very easy to report offensive content with a single click (unlike twitter, which is only now starting to work out a reasonable system to report hate speech). The court thought that the systems were not adequate:

89. The Court notes that in the interested person’s opinion, shared by the domestic courts, the prior automatic filtering and notice-and-take-down system used by the applicant company did not ensure sufficient protection for the rights of third persons. The domestic courts attached importance in this context to the fact that the publication of the news articles and making public the readers’ comments on these articles was part of the applicant company’s professional activity. It was interested in the number of readers as well as comments, on which its advertising revenue depended. The Court considers this argument pertinent in determining the proportionality of the interference with the applicant company’s freedom of expression. It also finds that publishing defamatory comments on a large Internet news portal, as in the present case, implies a wide audience for the comments.

3. Liability of the publisher is related to the fact that submitters of comments were unable to modify or delete comments later. This means, according to the court, that Delfi had a substantial degree of control over the comments:

/…/ The Court further notes that the applicant company – and not a person whose reputation could be at stake – was in a position to know about an article to be published, to predict the nature of the possible comments prompted by it and, above all, to take technical or manual measures to prevent defamatory statements from being made public. Indeed, the actual writers of comments could not modify or delete their comments once posted on the Delfi news portal – only the applicant company had the technical means to do this. Thus, the Court considers that the applicant company exercised a substantial degree of control over the comments published on its portal even if it did not make as much use as it could have done of the full extent of the control at its disposal.

4. It is up to the publisher to decide which means to use in order to stop hate speech and defamatory comments. The court considered it to be an important factor that the domestic courts did not prescribe a specific remedy (i.e. moderation before publishing, etc). This means that it is up to the publisher to ensure that the exisiting protection system is adequate and effective.

5. The court does not ban anonymous expression or find that it is the cause of hate speech or defamation. The only thing the court said was that since users were not registered, it would have been more difficult to sue them directly. Since it allows comments for users that are not registered, it has a ‘certain responsibility’ for those comments. It goes on to state:

92. The Court is mindful, in this context, of the importance of the wishes of Internet users not to disclose their identity in exercising their freedom of expression. At the same time, the spread of the Internet and the possibility – or for some purposes the danger – that information once made public will remain public and circulate forever, calls for caution. The ease of disclosure of information on the Internet and the substantial amount of information there means that it is a difficult task to detect defamatory statements and remove them. This is so for an Internet news portal operator, as in the present case, but this is an even more onerous task for a potentially injured person, who would be less likely to possess resources for continual monitoring of the Internet. The Court considers the latter element an important factor in balancing the rights and interests at stake.

This approach by the court is problematic, because it might lead to anonymous commenting option to be removed in fear of liability. One wonders if similar comments made on a website which does not have a media company behind them would also result in a similar conclusion. Given the worrying trends of possibly illegal surveillance of internet activities, data-mining and the like, does it not make sense for people not to identify themselves and try to increase anonymity?

Finally, the court considered that the fine of 320 euros was not in any way disproportionate given the fact that Delfi was one of the largest Internet portals in Estonia. It seems that the court could have accepted a much higher financial penalty.

My advice to the news portals would be:

1. Make notice-and-take-down system more effective by training the moderators and informing the users better;
2. For stories for which hateful and defamatory comments are expected (high-risk stories), utilise a quick pre-moderation system or proactively and constantly screen comments for hate speech or defamation;
3. Clarify the policies and increase transparency of the notice-and-take-down system;
4. Allow users to modify or delete their own comments while remaining anonymous.

I have previously written that anonymous comments are not evil in themselves and removing the possibility is too severe infringement of freedom of expression that would not also have the intended effect. I am not happy that the court did not use this case to explore in more detail the issues related to anonymous expression online. I am a bit disappointed by the case made by Delfi, which they could have argued in a more powerful way, but the government’s lawyers should be commended for their thorough work.

The case does show very well the complexity of the issue and the difficulty in balancing different rights in the context of the Internet. Better and more clear rules on this are a necessity.

Why it is not a good thing to have only one law school in Estonia

Disclaimer: I am currently employed by Tallinn Law School at Tallinn University of Technology.

Recently, a little fight broke up in the media between the Faculty of Law at University of Tartu (UT) and Tallinn University  (TLU) Law School, in which the Dean of the former claimed that TLU lacks resources and capacity to teach lawyers. The latter of course responded and others have chimed in, including Ministry of Education and my own boss from Tallinn Law School at Tallinn University of Technology (TUT).

The backstory is a bit long and complicated: The Faculty of Law of University of Tartu has enjoyed a dominant position among law schools in Estonia. It used to be the only law school in Estonia before Estonia re-gained its independence, and is still considered by many as the only ‘true’ law school in Estonia. In many ways it is, as although many private law schools were established in the 1990s, these have not survived various financial and administrative challenges (some of which were possibly orchestrated by University of Tartu and Ministry of Education and Research). However, two private ‘new’ law schools merged with the other bigger public universities and thus pose a greater potential challenge for UT. This is the way I ended up working at TUT (the law school was based on the law school at now defunct American-style, international-oriented Concordia International University Estonia). TLU ended up getting merged with Academy Nord, politically well connected more widely oriented law school.

The current higher education policy favors consolidation and avoidance of duplication. After the financing reform of higher education, ‘responsibility’ of teaching law was assigned to UT. TUT and TLU thus were not supposed to teach law in Estonian and tuition-free. Our law school sensibly chose to offer studies in English, with some Estonian law courses in Estonian (which has been the strength of our law school). TLU, however, is admitting 90 students this year to study law tuition-free, which has ticked off both UT and Ministry. Some of their concern regarding capacity and capability of TLU is legitimate, but mostly TLU goes against government policy.

But is it a good policy to have only one strong law school in Estonia? The obvious argument is that Estonia with 1.3 million inhabitants is unable to support more than one high quality law school. Arguments of efficiency and most rational use of public funds are used to argue that only UT should teach law. This is the way it has been previously (and in many fields is still today).

However, what is the impact of the dominance of one law school?

Everyone knows everyone. Estonian legal community is already incredibly small. In a situation where almost all of the practicing lawyers, judges, prosecutors, many politicians and policymakers, know each other from the university, it means that important legal decisions might not be made based on justice, but based on other things such as personal friendships or animosity. Former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Märt Rask has stated that there are serious issues regarding the Tartu Court House, into where both judges and prosecutors work. Mr Rask claimed that judges and prosecutors had become so familiarised working in the same building that judges no longer asked prosecutors any questions during trials. Indeed, when one new judge challenged this practice, prosecutors got angry at the judge. Having more than one law school would help to alleviate this problem somewhat (and not putting judges and prosecutors into the same building as well).

All students study under the same faculty members. If there is only one professor of criminal law, or labour law or European law, then this means that students are exposed to only one point of view. Professors and instructors are not machines, they are human beings with specific leanings and understandings. Some are good, some are bad, some emphasise certain things, some other things. Having only one person teaching all lawyers legal principles and approached in any field is a huge incentive for groupthink. This is compounded by the lack of problem-based learning and overreliance on lectures.

Lack of diversity in terms of schools of thought and development directions. There is a difference in what kind of values are instilled into students at law schools. There are law schools that value legal positivism, there are more liberal law schools. There is a difference in how law is taught at different universities as well as what is emphasised. The Estonian educational authorities seem to think that there is only one way and that this role can only be played by UT. This means that the institutional choices made by this one law school apply for all of Estonia. For example, the internationalisation efforts of UT are rather limited in the field of law. They teach exclusively in Estonian and Estonians, their faculty is Estonian (excluding a few visiting scholars). Thus, if they were the only law school in Estonia, Estonia would be rather blank in the international legal space.

Lack of diversity leads to stagnation and poor quality of teaching and learning. So having only one law school would lead to further diminishing of the status of legal education and law in general.

The remedy would be to be more lenient regarding diversity in the area of teaching and research in law in which international competition is limited (it is hardly likely that any other university outside Estonia gets involved with Estonian law), supporting more universities to offer studies in Estonian and about Estonian legal system. This means that state educational policy must change considerably, which is extremely unlikely at the moment. The only other solution is to study abroad and hope that students return to Estonia, but this takes much more resources from the society and skills and knowledge acquired from other jurisdictions can only be applied in Estonia to a limited degree.

It would be interesting to see a more detailed analysis on the impact that havinga domionant law school has for the society in terms of protection of human rights (especially procedural rights), the legal profession in the country and the quality of legal education. Sadly, no-one has looked into this, because there are very few countries in a similar situation.

The impact of technology on the right to privacy

In 1890 Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren published in the Harvard Law Review an article called “The Right to Privacy”. They wrote:

“Instantaneous photographs and newspaper enterprise have invaded the sacred precincts of private and domestic life ; and numerous mechanical devices threaten to make good the prediction that “what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the house-tops.””

It was the dawn of the age of the mass circulation gossip newspapers, aided by the improvements of the printing press and the invention of photography. This technological change prompted Brandeis and Warren to write their article and to call for legal protection of the right to privacy, which had already been enacted in France in 1868 (“11. Toute publication dans un écrit périodique relative à un fait de la vie privée constitue une contravention punie d’un amende de cinq cent francs.” Rivière, Codes Français et Lois Usuelles. App. Code Pen., p. 20.). In the article, Brandeis and Warren set out many of the principles that we follow to this day. Also, they called for both tort action with substantial compensation, injunctions as well as possible criminal sanctions for the violation of this right. Thus the right to privacy was born as a reaction to specific technological changes.

In the 1970s and 80s, when mass computing and databases had started to become prevalent, work started on international regulation of the right to privacy in the specific context. This resulted in the 1981 Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data (also known simply as Convention 108). The Convention entered into force in 1985 and has been ratified by 45 European states and Uruguay, including most recently by Russia in May 2013. This forward-looking document is the foundation of European rules on data protection. It sets the main principles related to data processing, including rights of individuals. Thus Europe already had before IT became commonplace a set of rules to adhere to.

In the European Union, data protection has recieved more attention than almost any other fundamental right. It is one of the more strongly protected rights in the EU level, having both its own Article in the founding treaties (since Treaty of Lisbon), strong protection in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, which became binding in 2009 together with the ToL, and a large body of secondary EU law (mostly directives), already since 1995’s Data Protection Directive. Again, these strong protections have been put to place as a consequence of advances in technology.

The fact that data has been protected in such a high degree in Europe and at the European level, has facilitated cross-border transmission of data, without which there would be a quagmire of different rules to follow. The EU data protection rules are currently being updated to react to the spreading of business models which involve trading with personal data (by mostly American companies such as Facebook, Google, Apple, Yahoo and Microsoft). These include the much debated right to be forgotten and the right of data portability, which means that you could move your data from one social media service provider to another, preventing customer lock-in.

With the NSA snooping scandal, an aspect of privacy has come about that had been forgotten by many. Although the focus has been on the private sector lately, it has become clear that the governments are more than ever capable and interested in finding out what people do and say online. No-one is off-limits, it appears.

In much of the same way as Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren denounced the activities of gossip rags, it is important that there is a strong reaction in the form of legislation for the kind of invasion of privacy that has happened now. The answer is not to claim that privacy is dead (linked text in Estonian), but the opposite, rules and oversight must be made even stronger as a reaction to technological advances, just as we did when photography was invented. Those rules have to be smart and take into account the changing technological paradigm. Ultimately mankind can be successful if it can make technology work for it, rather than using it as an excuse to decrease human rights standards. We have outlawed reproductive cloning of human beings, eugenic practices and many other things that are technologically possible, but against the values on which our society is based on. So why cannot we keep 100% privacy in the digital age?

Of course the right to privacy as applied to Facebook is somewhat different than as applied to the tabloid newspapers. The underlying philosophical and ethical values are similar, but their application can vary. The individual has become much more empowered to control information about him or her than ever before. And that is a positive thing. Harvard scholars did recently a literature review on the privacy practices of the younger generation, and found surprisingly that privacy is as valuable as ever:

“The prevailing discourse around youth and privacy is built on the assumption that young people don’t care about their privacy because they post so much personal information online. The implication is that posting personal information online puts them at risk from marketers, pedophiles, future employers, and so on. Thus, policy and technical solutions are proposed that presume that young would not put personal information online if they understood the consequences.

However, our review of the literature suggests that young people care deeply about privacy, particularly with regard to parents and teachers viewing personal information. Young people are heavily monitored at home, at school, and in public by a variety of surveillance technologies. Children and teenagers want private spaces for socialization, exploration, and experimentation, away from adult eyes. Posting personal information online is a way for youth to express themselves, connect with peers, increase popularity, and bond with friends and members of peer groups. Subsequently, young people want to be able to restrict information provided online in a nuanced and granular way.”

The above research suggest we should not be worried about privacy becoming unimportant in the future, but rather how to guarantee that we can control the privacy of our online lives. This should include being informed about when and what the government (or other governments) are able to know about us and what are the oversight mechanisms that protect us from it. The national intelligence community should be also interested in this, because otherwise they will be faced with another snowden, another wikileaks every couple of years. If people are in general terms aware of what, why and how is being gathered and have reassurances about sufficient oversight then Edward Snowden’s revelations would not have had much news value. If, however, it will be business as usual, more revelations are bound to take place.

P.S. In a way governments, especially the US, have fallen victims of the technological change even more than any individual. Wikileaks and Snowden revelations have been deeply embarrassing and probably hugely damaging. So the governments too must decide whether aiming for more secrecy is viable or should openness and transparency be better in the long run.