Internet and democratic stability: the legal challenge to face the threat.

• Author: Card, Duncan Cornell
• Position: Canada - Forum: Democracy & the Internet

There are few political scientists who would deny that access to current and reliable information, by as many citizens as possible, is one of the most important ingredients to maintaining and protecting a free and democratic society. There are few others who would refute that the Internet, whether used as a personal communication medium, as a research tool, or as the backbone of data communications that underpins vast segments of our economy, is crucial to the social and economic fabric of democratic society. Therefore, when one considers which aspects of the relationship between the Internet and democracy are the most important and challenging, our dependence on information reliability, data integrity, authenticity, and media dependability stands out.

As both a political institution and as a social and economic way of life, our democracy stands on the shoulders of a network of infrastructures that we depend and rely upon. Generally, as those infrastructures emerged at various intervals of our history, our political and legal systems adapted to recognize their importance and the role they play in enabling our democratic society. Through a series of laws, regulations, regulatory bodies, and various arrays of public policy initiatives (perhaps driven by funding decisions of some sort), those infrastructures are secured and protected in the public interest in ways that ensure their essential contributions to our political economy.

In fact, it is difficult to think of an infrastructural component of a free and democratic society that is not insulated from abuse, corruption, and erosion by highly defined laws and regulations, international agreements or treaties, the supervision by expert regulatory bodies, and by law enforcement agencies that monitor compliance. Whether it is our financial infrastructure (banking and securities), or infrastructures that are related to telecommunications, transportation, education, health care, agriculture and food safety, or even our own labour force, our political and legal leadership in most, if not all, cases has done an acceptable job of assessing the relationship between the needs of a free and democratic society and the dependence of our society on the infrastructures that support it. In essence, at some point along the infrastructure development curve, those who act in the public interest must step back and question the vulnerability of our democratic society if a particular infrastructure were to be threatened or compromised, whether safe food, safe roads, well-tested and effective drugs, the ability of civil defence personnel to...