Global Networks and Local Values A Comparative Look at Germany and the United States (2001) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
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conducted a study whose goal was to help policymakers understand the issues, how they are linked to one another, and how action targeting one problem or issue can have effects often-times unintended on others. To keep the scope of the study manageable, the Committee to Study Global Networks and Local Values concentrated its work on Germany and the United States, two countries that are different enough to contrast on a variety of critical issues yet similar enough to invite useful comparisons.
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Nevertheless, direct control over future development of the Internet through comprehensive action plans will be even more difficult in the future, if only because the Internet has now extended itself across so many national borders and has mobilized such a diverse ensemble of interested parties. Because the Internet is not subject to centralized management over its operations (and arguably should not be in the future)
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are, to a first approximation, those associated with social processes rules of behavior that facilitate discourse and, indeed, can be a key element in making a community possible while substantive values come closer to moral convictions or beliefs. While the committee recognizes that this distinction is not always crisp, it is useful for this report.
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Established political arenas are more easily engaged through the Internet than through conventional channels, and the existence of new arenas may challenge existing institutions, especially those in government. Political actors gain leverage by virtue of the Internet's ability to facilitate organization; the Internet also allows for better or worse a larger degree of unmediated communication between the public and its political leaders.
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The Internet poses different challenges to the legal and constitutional environments in which the United States and Germany operate. To the extent that the courts are able to rely on the values expressed in their respective constitutions (rather than rights that have been explicitly articulated in the documents themselves)
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the war," but these laws have not been seriously challenged in court. The global nature of the Internet makes it extremely difficult and costly for national authorities to unilaterally implement laws and regulations that reflect national, rather than global, moral standards.
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For example, because routine consumer transactions can easily involve players in a number of countries, applying national regulations represents a major extraterritorial extension of domestic or regional law. Furthermore, attempts to find a common solution to privacy problems in a globally networked world are difficult because nations such as Germany and the United States approach privacy from very different political and legal viewpoints and traditions.
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Such "primary legal information" information having the force of law, such as parliamentary enactments, judicial decisions, and comparable instruments from administrative agencies such as rules and orders must be public for effective governance. But as noted above, public records containing personal information can pose a conflict between freedom of information and privacy rights a conflict exacerbated by advances in information technology that make it more practical to extract and cross-link personal data from public records.
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The differences arise because in the FOI area, the principle underlying national law is to compel disclosure of government information, while in the privacy arena the principle is to prohibit disclosure of personal information. Therefore, transborder data flows are a lesser threat to freedom-of-information values than they are to privacy values.
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GOVERNANCE The examples addressed above commerce, free speech, privacy, freedom of information, democracy illustrate that Germany and the United States differ on the role of the state in promoting social integration and protecting local value systems. Americans emphasize individual liberty, reliance on markets to organize economic activity in the face of technological change, and the use of a variety of nongovernmental organizations to mediate political change.
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Thus, when rules are necessary, legal tools of one sort or another will generally prove more effective. National law and regulation are likely to be of limited effectiveness, however, because global networks make national boundaries highly porous with respect to information.
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Thus some fear that the preponderance of the information available on the network is likely to reflect the interests and culture of American users more than those from less influential states. The Committee to Study Global Networks and Local Values believes that these fears are overdrawn at least for Western industrial nations.
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Encryption technologies, for example, can increase the effective domain of private space; on the other hand, connecting to the Web can increase public space by exposing the contents of one's computer to inspection or alteration. PRINCIPLES AND CONCLUSIONS Global networks present a variety of new challenges to national governments.
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Command-and-control regulation often attacks a well-balanced status quo; because hybrid regulation builds on the status quo, it is more likely to be successful. Finally, the history of the Internet's technology suggests that it would be a mistake for governments to seek to control the future development through comprehensive action plans.
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