Principles for Defining Access to and Behavior Within the Global Network
The modern global network relies on information and communication technology to traverse national borders and create global economic benefits. At the international level, nations must ensure that equitable access to this technology occurs for individuals. Access provides reassurance that an individual may participate in the global economy. Participation in the global economy fosters a global identity’s sense of belonging.[1] Nations must design standards within the global economy that protect this sense of belonging by establishing the permissible behaviors and burdens for market actors. Channeling market behavior reassures individuals that the formation of customs, beliefs, and a sense of self occurring in the space of selective privacy will not be monetized. By designing regulations at the national level and legal norms at the international level, nations protect the individual security underpinning traditional identity. A nation will renew individual security in its social contract because its regulations protect equitable access to the global network and channel behaviors within that global network. Therefore, a global legal norm for an Equitable Network Standard that focuses on equity of access and acceptable behavior within the global economy must emerge.
An Equitable Network Standard could embrace several principles. Similar to National Treatment for goods, the standard could look to set a not less than reciprocal privacy standard for individuals when a nation’s citizens are within another nation’s territory or digital infrastructure. This would help to ensure that nations do not distinguish between protections for their own citizens that differ for foreign nationals and aliens. Like the Most Favored Nation treatment for goods, nations could agree that protections not less favorable than to other member nations could occur. Efforts such as these could help establish, disseminate, and maintain a minimum level of protection for individuals as they access and engage in the global economy. A minimum level could assist developing nations in bringing their populations online because individual identities would be less vulnerable to data exploitation by large market actors located in developed countries. Within a developed nation, vulnerable populations such as minorities and children could experience increased security in forming and maintaining their identity. By creating a baseline across regulatory frameworks, individual identity can gain stable and sustainable protections.
The case for an Equitable Network Standard to emerge across regulatory frameworks arguably was made in 2020 as COVID spread. The global pandemic highlighted the dramatic inequities in accessing the global network and in the treatment of individuals once within that global network.[2] COVID demonstrated a profound need to address the vertical and horizontal regulatory frameworks that permitted inequitable barriers and burdens to medical treatment and accurate information.[3] The collective vulnerability to COVID disrupted shared communities as the disease quickly spread across the globe. And just as quickly, information and communication technology, optimized to trade in identity, collected and monetized individual responses to the virus and the disruption. Misinformation, polarization, and deeper intrusion into online activities exploded across the globe.[4] Vertical frameworks failed to adequately protect individual security in a time of crisis and the horizontal framework proved far too willing to permit the intrusive behaviors of market actors to infect the global economy.[5]
During COVID, vertical frameworks laid bare the broken nature of the social contract between nations and citizens. Individuals experienced an overt reliance on telecommunications for basic needs, a sense of place, and access to their community of customs and beliefs.[6] Locked down in homes and apartments, families forwent funerals, students vacated classrooms, and businesses emptied workplaces.[7] Prior to COVID, telecommunication actors allocated resources that determined who, where, and how individuals might access information and communication technology. Under COVID, these decisions directly exposed how inequitable access leads to a deficiency of needs.[8] Among the social ills inflicted unequally by inequitable access to the global economy, we could count: medical care, remote employment, online education, remote worship, online banking, delivery services, and accurate information.[9] Nations had not aligned their vertical framework to ensure telecommunications provided equitable access. As a result, individual security suffered because global identity weakened, and the social contract frayed.
Additionally, COVID provided information and communication technology increased opportunities for data collection and exploitation of individuals with access to the global economy.[10] Transitions from online schooling to shopping to remote work permitted rapid harvesting of the big data that fuels the trade of identity.[11]An individual’s ability to determine and control selective privacy during this time of crisis was penetrated with apparent abandon by information and communication technology. The vertical framework overexposed individuals to market actors entrenching their competitive advantage with big data. Market actors are driven to trade in identity because the data informs the decisions behind consumption. Consequently, the massive shift to digital search and shopping during COVID permitted data harvesting on the most personal of choices. Among the choices fed into big data on a massive scale: groceries, fitness, medical decisions, religious worship, entertainment, politics, education of one’s children, and home investments. In other words, the most personal of choices made in the selective privacy that individuals rely on to formulate their identity. Nations had not aligned their vertical framework to police the behavior of information and communication technology for individuals with global network access. As a result, traditional identity suffered because selective privacy weakened, and the social contract splintered further.
Without a global standard for equitable access to and acceptable acts within the global network, the problems of COVID swept the globe. The horizontal framework proved deficient of a legal norm that addressed equity of access to and acceptable acts within the global network on individual security. The telecommunication choices on equitable access (or lack of) were exposed in each nation. Incentivized by global consumption, information and communication technology used the dramatic increase in access to infringe into the selective privacy of individuals. During a crisis, there was no Equitable Network Standard to hold nations accountable for the individual security of their social contracts in the face of these modern information and communication innovations.
[1] See Frank J. Garcia, Convergences: A Prospectus for Justice in a Global Market Society, 29 Manchester Journal of International Economic Law 128, 148 (2016).
[2] See Frank J. Garcia, Convergences: A Prospectus for Justice in a Global Market Society, 29 Manchester Journal of International Economic Law 128, 143, 150 (2016): Joseph E. Stiglitz, Conquering the Great Divide, Finance & Development, September 2020 at 17.
[3] See Joseph E. Stiglitz, Conquering the Great Divide, Finance & Development, September 2020 at 17.
[4] See European Commission, Joint Communication on Tackling COVID-19 Disinformation – Getting the Facts Right, JOIN (2020) 8 final (Oct. 6, 2020).
[5] See Frank J. Garcia, Convergences: A Prospectus for Justice in a Global Market Society, 29 Manchester Journal of International Economic Law 128, 138, 143, 146 (2016); Shi-Ling Hsu, Capitalism and the Environment: A Proposal to Save the Planet, 32 (Cambridge University Press, eds. 2021).
[6] See European Commission, Joint Communication on Tackling COVID-19 Disinformation – Getting the Facts Right, JOIN (2020) 8 final (Oct. 6, 2020).
[7] See Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lockdowns (last visited Apr. 22, 2022); Moreland A, Herlihy C, Tynan MA, et al. Timing of State and Territorial COVID-19 Stay-at-Home Orders and Changes in Population Movement — United States, March 1–May 31, 2020. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2020;69:1198–1203. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6935a2; https://www.theguardian.com/global/2020/apr/14/its-grief-upon-grief-the-harsh-reality-of-funerals-in-lockdown (last visited May 10, 2022); https://www.edweek.org/leadership/the-coronavirus-spring-the-historic-closing-of-u-s-schools-a-timeline/2020/07 (last visited May 10, 2022); https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/12/09/how-the-coronavirus-outbreak-has-and-hasnt-changed-the-way-americans-work/ (last visited May 10, 2022).
[8] See Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow’s_hierarchy_of_needs (last visited Apr. 22, 2022).
[9] See Joseph E. Stiglitz, Conquering the Great Divide, Finance & Development, September 2020 at 17; European Commission, Joint Communication on Tackling COVID-19 Disinformation – Getting the Facts Right, JOIN (2020) 8 final (Oct. 6, 2020); Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lockdowns (list visited Apr. 22, 2022).
[10] See European Commission, Tackling COVID-19 disinformation – Getting the facts right, 2-4 (Oct. 6, 2020).
[11] See Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lockdowns (list visited Apr. 22, 2022); Moreland A, Herlihy C, Tynan MA, et al. Timing of State and Territorial COVID-19 Stay-at-Home Orders and Changes in Population Movement — United States, March 1–May 31, 2020. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2020;69:1198–1203. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6935a2; https://www.edweek.org/leadership/the-coronavirus-spring-the-historic-closing-of-u-s-schools-a-timeline/2020/07 (last visited May 10, 2022); https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/12/09/how-the-coronavirus-outbreak-has-and-hasnt-changed-the-way-americans-work/ (last visited May 10, 2022); European Commission, Tackling COVID-19 disinformation – Getting the facts right, 2-4 (Oct. 6, 2020).
