FREEDOM SECURITY SECURITY PRIVACY FREEDOM The Future of Childhood in the Digital World FREEDOM SECURITY PRIVACY The Future of Childhood in the Digital World Published and distributed by 5Rights Foundation Copyright © 5Rights Foundation, 2020 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission from the publishers or in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act, 1988. Designed by David Weller and Daniel McGhee Printed by Park Communications Ltd. Original cover photograph by Anchalee Yates 5Rights Foundation Charity number: 1178581 Company number: 11271356 www.5rightsfoundation.com FREEDOM SECURITY PRIVACY The Future of Childhood in the Digital World 9 Introduction ON FREEDOM 18 Susie Alegre Data Daemons: Protecting the Child’s Right to Dream 24 Audrey Tang A Young Democracy is a Strong Democracy: Civil Rights of Taiwan’s Children 30 Kade Crockford A New Digital Divide? Protecting Lower- Income People from Hyper-Digitalisation 36 Dr Towela Nyirenda-Jere A Child is a Child is a Child: Conversations in Africa About Children in the Digital World 42 Baroness Helena Kennedy QC New Freedom? How the Digital Environment Poses Complex Legal Challenges for the Promotion of Children’s Rights 50 Laura Higgins How Fear is Affecting Our Ability to Accept Digital Rights to Play. And Our Common Sense… 56 Farida Shaheed Cultural Rights of Children and Young Adults in the Digital World ON SECURITY 68 Dr Ian Levy On the Need for Software Safety in a Digital World 76 Uri Sadeh Who Are We Afraid Of? 84 RX Radio Our Voices: The Importance of Listening to Young People to Make the Digital Environment a Safe and Inclusive Place 90 H.E. Dr Amani Abou-Zeid Harnessing the Power of Digital Transformation for Young People in Africa 94 Adrian Lovett As The World Wide Web and the Convention on the Rights of the Child Both Turn Thirty, the Web Can Help to Secure Children’s Basic Rights 102 Professor Hany Farid Protecting Children Online: The Past, Present, and Future ON PRIVACY 114 Jānis Sārts Securing Digital Natives! 120 Francesca Fajardo My Data Isn’t Even Mine 126 Professor Sonia Livingstone OBE “It’s None of Their Business!” Children’s Understanding of Privacy in the Platform Society 134 James Graham OBE Past Norms, Future Dangers and Acceptable Compromises: What Does Freedom, Security and Privacy Mean for the Future of Young People Online? 140 John Carr OBE Privacy Lawyers Need to Up Their Game: An Internet that is Safer and Better for Children is Going to be Safer and Better for Everyone 146 John Edwards Children and Privacy Online: It’s Time to Change the Dynamic – More Responsibility on the Platforms, More Autonomy for the Kids 152 Professor Dr Eva Lievens The Rights of the Child in the Digital Environment: From Empowerment to De- Responsibilisation ON THE FUTURE OF CHILDHOOD 162 Henrietta H Fore From Privacy to Power: Children’s Rights in a Digital Age 168 Dr Ing Konstantinos Karachalios The Five Singularities We Have Created and What They Mean for Our Children 178 Amandeep Singh Gill Being a Child in the Digital Age 184 Amy Shepherd Right Click for the Kids: Open Rights Group’s Views on Building an Empowered Digital Childhood 190 Kathryn Montgomery and Jeff Chester Creating a Quality Digital Media Culture in the Big Data Era 198 Elettra Ronchi, Andras Molnar and Lisa Robinson Addressing the Needs of Children in the Digital Environment 204 Jay Harman The Enormous Potential of Technology – and the Absence of Children in the Design of the Digital World Introduction The discourse about children and the digital world is plagued by false binaries. They must pay for responsible corporate behaviour with their freedom, for access with their privacy, for personal security with 24/7 surveillance, and for services with their attention. These binaries protect the business interests of the data-driven companies of Silicon Valley, but they do not adequately meet the needs of children and young people. The digital world was not anticipated as a place in which childhood in all its complexity would be played out. Yet for a 21st-century child, it mediates every part of their experience: from the most public to the most intimate. Far from providing children and young people with a welcoming and respectful environment, their digital world is high on adult content, low on protections and, in many instances, hides behind the pretence that children are not there at all. The idea for this volume was born over lunch with someone from Facebook, who suddenly turned to me and said, “you really are the woman who wants to turn off the lights at Christmas.” I was horrified: was the cumulative result of everything that I was fighting for going to extinguish the joy of the one billion children and young people online? 9 Of course, the digital holds within it the promise of unimaginable benefits. Who in their right mind would want to turn the lights off on that? Not me. But what of those one billion kids? Do the protections and privileges of childhood need to be formally integrated into the digital world? Should we demand greater responsibility and transparency from those building the technology itself? Are we all going to have to give up some freedom to give children and young people more protection? Does one person’s freedom of expression trump the silencing of another person or group of people? Has the idea of freedom itself been undermined by practices of data extraction and digital nudging? What constitutes an appropriate balance of freedom, security (both individual and national) and privacy for a 21st-century child? The authors of the essays that make up this volume start to answer some of these questions from multiple perspectives. They are loosely divided into four chapters: Freedom, Security, Privacy and the Future of Childhood; although many could have been in more than one chapter. Between them, they offer a much more sophisticated conversation than the public conversation we are currently having. The authors, all experts in their fields and writing in personal capacities, focus on issues of their choosing and, whatever their differences, they overwhelmingly deliver the message that we have failed to properly design a digital world for children. Lawyers Susie Alegre and Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, and Executive Director of UNICEF, Henrietta H Fore, argue that children have existing rights and that the digital is a part of, not separate from, all other environments. Susie defends a “child’s right to dream” and that freedom of thought represents their “budding inner life.” Children and young people's inability to realise rights that allow them control over their reputation and personal information concerns New Zealand’s Privacy Commissioner, John Edwards. In her uplifting essay, Taiwan’s Digital Minister Audrey Tang (herself one of the world’s youngest government ministers) chronicles the contribution of empowered young people to the democratic agenda, demonstrating what access can mean; whilst Farida Shaheed, former UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, highlights cultural 10 and language barriers which prevent millions of children and young people from truly participating in the digital space. In her compelling essay, she points out that two-thirds of the world’s population live in Asia, but that only one-quarter of internet communication is in Asian languages: “take out Mandarin and that drops to a shocking 7%.” Meanwhile Dr Towela Nyirenda-Jere, one of Malawi’s first female engineers, outlines the specific experiences and hopes of children and young people already online in Africa. Dr Ing Konstantinos Karachalios, Managing Director of the IEEE Standards Association, takes us back in time to show us the long tail of what is being undermined or challenged (take your pick) by the new world order. Unsurprisingly for an engineer, he has a schema to put things right. Meanwhile, Kade Crockford, Director of the Technology for Liberty Program at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, considers history, knowledge, power and authority, cautioning that we have allowed technology into the lives of young people without first asking some fundamental questions. “What does Alexa say when a child asks why Daddy hurts Mommy?”, Kade demands to know. Director of Digital Civility at Roblox, Laura Higgins, takes a different tack, remarking on the media’s ‘sensationalist’ portrayal of the online space, which she fears demonises the digital and diminishes the ability of children to play freely. In his very moving essay, Uri Sadeh, who works on the frontline of child online protection at Interpol (like all our authors, writing in a personal capacity), outlines the tragic way in which children have become collateral damage as governments and businesses fail to put their safety above all other considerations. Similarly defiant are Dr Ian Levy and Jānis Sārts, of the UK National Cyber Security Centre and NATO respectively. Jānis argues that “not everything should be allowed” and Ian calls for “safe software” that embodies (and prevents) both hazards and harms, as is standard practice in any other area of life. Professor Hany Farid, the co-developer of photoDNA, and John Carr OBE, one of the world’s leading authorities on children’s protection online, express deep frustration that both industry and civil governments’ inaction is Introduction 11 and was “never one of technological limitation”, but merely one of corporate and political will. H.E. Dr Amani Abou-Zeid, the Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy at the African Union, cites issues specific to Africa (although familiar to all territories) when she says that we must strengthen online security, so that children and young people can access the digital environment safely.