Stefano Rodotà

For an Electronic Citizenship. Democracy and the New Technologies of Communication

1. Under the pressure of the information and communication technologies, times are a-changing, democracy too. After the times of the élites democracy, followed by the mass democracy of our century, are we entering the new age of the "democracy of the public", made possible by information and communication technologies? Is Athens coming back? We are faced with a peculiar mix of new possibilities and old models, and one should not wonder that information society is also regarded as an opportunity for political systems to finally achieve what has been considered for centuries the highest type of democracy - i.e., the direct democracy of Athens. Still, new technologies are also regarded as a factor of social fragmentation, a tool which is especially suitable for political populism - paving the way to the establishment of a total control society. Are we going towards an "Orwell in Athens" situation ?

If we look beyond the great positive and negative utopias which have accompanied this century, the world does appear to be nowadays characterised by a whole range of communication technologies which are changing both its features and its very size. The talk is of a borderless, de-localised, desintermediated, globalised world. But the hard lessons taught us by reality and history compel us to face also local conflicts, the revival of ethnic separation, the hindrances posed by national sovereignty. Global unification is continuously accompanied by "tribalisation". Global and local are concepts existing one beside the other, and it is very difficult to harmonize them. "Think globally, act locally" is a beautiful slogan, but difficult to convert into a daily activity. May be the cyberspace could make it easier. At the same time, we cannot accept a technological slippery-slop, without any critical assessment of the technological innovations. As in the field of bioethics, with regard to information and communication technology one has to wonder whether what is technically possible is also socially and politically acceptable, ethically admissible, legally permissible. Looking at this perspective, we can easily discover that Internet is at the same time the most significant exemple and the most impressive metaphor of a new world order that is progressively being established. Information and communication technologies are all-pervasive: they spread up till they include social and personal relationships, commercial transactions, political activities. Private life, market, democracy are being transformed daily. These are not mutually unrelated issues: the way in which privacy is safeguarded is reshaping citizens' rights and may affect political participation; the logic of commerce results into continuous breaches into citizens' private lives; market techniques are applied to political activities, so much so that the concept of political marketing has been referred to. This trend is also the result of the convergence of many devices, Internet among them, giving rise to what we can call "technopolitics". In this framework, we must deal with three main questions. Is privacy ending and which are the basic values of the perspective world order? How can we regulate this world? Which impact on the political system? And for answering these questions we must go beyond the traditional alternatives: privacy v. transparency; law v. self-regulation; direct democracy v. representative democracy. Internet, the emerging cyberspace, the expanding dimension of the e-commerce have strongly contributed to what Anthony Giddens has called "the transformations of intimacy" . They have also determined many of the so called "personal consequences of the capitalism", according to the analysis of Richard Sennet, so giving birth to a "flexible man" . In this context, privacy is becoming, at the same time, more necessary and more fragile. At the beginning of last May two prominent magazines, The Economist and Der Spiegel, published cover stories with the same title - " The End of Privacy", "Das Ende des Privaten" - describing the social consequences of the mass collection of personal data, mainly by commercial organisations, made possible by the information and communications technologies. This wording - the end of privacy - is nothing new. If one considers the huge amount of literature concerning these issues, we can easily find that books bearing titles such as Privacy under Attack , The Assault on Privacy or even The Death of Privacy were already available over thirty years ago. At the same time, the close relationship between privacy, freedom and democracy was especially pointed out in the books by one of the scholars who most contributed to freshening up the debate on such issues, Alan Westin, who used titles such as Privacy and Freedom, Information Technology in a Democracy, Databanks in a Free Socie ty. However, there are two main differencies between the past and the present debate. First: thirty years ago "the end of privacy" was a title of academic books; now it is becoming part of a mass language. Second: there are some substantial change in the way people react to the "end of privacy". Especially in The Economist's inquiry, there is an intepretation saying that privacy has been rather a parenthesis of the modernity between the small villages of the premodern world and the postmodern Global Village, both characterized by a stringent and continuous social control of citizens' life. So they don't conclude asking for a new and more adequate privacy protection. No effort could be useful in this direction. Economic interests are cancelling the privacy realm, so that only the way in which these interests are working could give some room for privacy in the future. In this perspective, privacy is a matter of history, not of regulation. It could be regulated by the market only, not by the law. This pessimistic view, or more precisely this ideological presentation, could be critisized, for instance recalling the increasing number of privacy protection laws enacted in many countries. But it reflects a more general conflict between fundamental rights and market interests, one of the big conflicts of the incoming millennium. The concept of privacy is already expanded beyond the conventional definition of the "right to be left alone". It becomes a basic component of the individual and collective freedom, it "safeguards personal choices against any type of public control and social stygma". It does not consist any longer in the mere right to prevent others from having access to or disclosing information concerning myself. In fact, it is becoming increasingly the right to control the use of such information regardless of the time and the persons using it, the fundamental right to the "informative self-determination", according to the decision taken by the german Bundesverfassungsgericht on 15 .11.83, It is becoming a social power - the power to directly control any public and private bodies holding personal data. Thus, in a society where information is getting to be the main resource, privacy protection contributes significantly to the balance of powers, becomes an essential element of the "electronic citizenship". This is why the end of privacy would not simply endanger individual freedom: in fact, it might really result into a clear and present danger, may be not into the end, of democracy. Furthermore, considering the provision of all data legislations giving a special protection to "sensitive" data, it can be easily seen that they apply not only to those data which are actually related to the "right to be left alone" (concerning health or sex life), but also to data disclosing political opinions or membership of trade unions, parties and other associations. These data are not meant to be kept confidential or secret: in fact, they are a feature of the person's public sphere, they must be made publicly available in order to allow everybody to fully participate in social and political life. They have been subjected to especially strict safeguards in order to prevent discrimination or exclusion. The final objective is not to give traditional privacy a special protection: is to ensure equality. The above considerations cannot but confirm that privacy, in this larger framework, is a basic component of modern citizenship - the emerging "electronic citizenship". Information society requires new tools, a new type of institutional framework. Indeed, the need for an "Information Bill of Rights" has been referred to for years.

2. Language changes accompany and highlight the way things change. "Citizen" has been for century the keyword used in debates concerning democracy. More recently, the word "denizen" has been used in order to point out how the relationship between citizen, territory and State had changed. Nowadays, the talk is increasingly of a "netizen": indeed, the actual capability to use the Internet is becoming fundamental to electronic citizenship. Such citizenship cannot be limited to traditional national borders, but has a more comprehensive, global dimension. However, the concept of a borderless, absolute freedom ensured by Internet cannot but conflict with another kind of reality we have before our very eyes. Remote surveillance, relentless recording of traces left by using credit cards or navigating on the Net, development and sale of analytical personal profiles, interconnection between a wide range of data banks point to the development of a society grounded on control, surveillance and classification. Alongside traditional archives, such as police archives, other types of "population records" are taking on growing importance - especially as regards consumers' habits. Indeed, the title of an article published by the "New York Times" in 1991 read "Remember Big Brother? Now He's a Company Man" . The concept of a number of "Small Brothers" is replacing the orwellian "Big Brother" concept. By providing this description of information society, however, one risks overlooking the equally considerable growth of traditional data banks, i.e. those set up for security purposes, which are also undergoing the transformation resulting from the technology and reality of a borderless world. The sheer size of these data banks is astounding. In the European Union, the only Schengen archive includes over 9 million records, of which 6 million and a half concern natural persons, for security purposes. In many countries, data banks of the Dna of supposedly dangerous persons are already available. The collection of data concerning health is increasingly common. Videosurveillance is also rapidly gaining ground, not only in banks, railway and metro stations, airports and supermarkets, but also for controlling whole urban areas considered to be "at risk": UK is covered by a net of surveillance devices. In many countries telephone service providers are obliged by law to keep traffic! data for a given time and to make them available to judicial and law enforcement agencies: in Italy these data must be kept for five years, which will result in a huge data bank already including almost 100 billion data permitting to track down any phone call made by a given person at a given location to a given person and for a given time. A thin-mesh network will thus be extended over the whole society. There are obviously a number of good reasons for the need to fully exploit the opportunities provided by new technologies in order to defend society against crime, enhance disease prevention, protect the helpless against social dangers. A balance should be struck between the individualistic concept of privacy and the fullfilment of social needs - as pointed out in a recent book by the greatest representative of american communitarians, Amitai Etzioni. Still, exactly on account of the need for the social utilization of technology, it is necessary to devise new institutional safeguards for freedom, so as to prevent the establishment of a totalitarian social system and to protect fundamental human rights in the light of the widespread collection of personal information. One should be wary of the concept according to which honest citizens should not be afraid of disclosing the information concerning them. Indeed, the "vitreous man" is a totalitarian metaphor, as it is exactly the foundation underlying the alleged right of the states to know everything, including the most intimate particulars of citizens' lives. Nor should one be influenced by simplifications such as that proposed in a recently published book , where a description is given of an urban community in which every public space is subjected to videosurveillance and two models of social organizations are confronted: the former based on the power of a small group (e.g.,! police) to use this technology, thereby becoming the sole controller of the whole community; the latter based on the concept that everybody can control everyone, including the agents who, in police stations, use the videosurveillance system. In this way, the same powers of control would be conferred on every single citizen. However, and apart from any other consideration, does this total, generalized transparency actually result into greater democracy? Will not it rather improve the greatest risk - i.e., the possibility to store, match, process the different types of information, which is clearly an opportunity reserved for a small group of persons?

3. The establishment of a new system of checks and balances within society is the final objective. However, the power gap between citizens and data collectors may be quite large and result into undue influence and pressure, thereby preventing any actual control by citizens, because the same consent could be reduced to mere formality. In order to better focus this point, three significant issues can be taken into account: anonymity on Internet; the role played by market logic; the role and the limitations of the law. Internet development has always been accompanied by the demand for anonymity and the possibility to have multiple identities - exactly on account of the fact that the Internet is seen as the place of unrestrained freedom. However, this may lead to conflicts which can be solved either through legal regulations or by means of codes of conduct. Indeed, it has been said that we are faced with the conflict between a liberal approach, which is hostile to law and in favour of self-regulation (the US model), and another approach based exclusively on law and prohibitionism (the European one). If one looks more closely at the situation existing in the US, it can be easily seen that legislative measures have been taken to a considerable extent (there are 768 statutes concerning privacy passed by various States in 1998 and 356 in the firts six month of 1999); that heavy pressure is exerted towards the passing of federal legislation applying to certain sectors - such as the privacy of minors, financial and medical data; that in certain areas, such as the use of cryptography, the US follows a prohibitionist approach whereas Europe is more liberal; that US consumer associations share the same views as European associations and reject the proposals that have been put forward during the current negotiations by the US administratio! n. At the same time, growing attention is paid in Europe to contractual solutions, as shown by the model contracts that have been developed by the Council of Europe and the International Chamber of Commerce; self-regulation is increasingly applied, so much so that the European Working Group (including all the Data Protection Commissioners) set out a specific procedure for the approval of self-regulatory codes.These facts show quite clearly that the protection of personal data can be no longer evaluated by referring to the traditional conflict between law and self-regulation. The development of a lex informatica is in progress, after the lex mercatoria model which resulted from the spontaneous development of common rules during the Middle Ages . More specifically, the regulation of computerised networks can be said to rest nowadays on a plurality of sources, which are different as to their form and contents, though all of them are important for regulatory purposes:

 conventions, agreements, rules, international or supranational guidelines;

 national law;

 State laws (in federal countries) and regional laws (as EU directives);  regulation by supranational or national independent bodies;  case-law;

 codes of conduct and professional ethics;  model contracts;  privacy enhancing technologies;

 technical standards.

This list is all but exhaustive. Still it can serve to show that we are faced with a plurality of sources, that we need a composite and integrated legal strategy, taking into account a plurality of actors and multiple regulatory means..

4. It is exactly the analysis of the various regulatory sources that can identify the fundamental rights to be protected. Regarding at Internet as the place of unbounded freedom, the right to anonymity is accounted for in a number of ways: it is a safeguard against undue appropriation of data by network operators or service providers; it ensures the unrestrained development of personality even by means of taking on multiple identities; it is a safeguard against discrimination and social stigma. Anonymity, however, cannot be used against other's privacy. So a conflict can rise between two demands for privacy protection, when an anonymous communicator damages a person, for instance diffusing false informations on her. For solving this conflicts, there is an alternative between a selective disclosure of the identity of the communicator, in particular cases, and a protection of the anonymity at all costs. In fact, whenever there is a conflict between the interest to preserve anonymity on the network and the interest of a person claiming that she has been damaged by the conduct of someone who violates her private sphere by remaining anonymous, a solution may be represented by the so-called "protected anonymity". This is the possibility to remain anonymous during communications, while judicial authorities are entitled, under specific circumstances, to track the identity of the communicator - who would be obliged to disclose his/her identity exclusively to the network operator, who in turn would be bound to keep it secret. An objection that is often raised in this regard is that, by doing so, one would affect the unbounded freedom which is the true nature of the network, giving room to a "paternalistic" approach. This line of reasoning does not take account, however, of the risks entailed by committing regulation basically to market logic. Indeed, if a person were to claim compensation for a damage resulting from network communications, she would apply for instance to the service provider for recovering damages, since it would be impossible for her to identify the source of the harmful communications. So, if the policy is to give anonymity full protection, one runs the risk of overlooking the fact that market censorship could be actually the price to be paid for. It can be easily argued that service providers will tend to exclude subjects that appear to be potentially dangerous - exactly in order to avoid additional costs such as those related to compensations for damages. This would therefore give further momentum to a trend towards excluding any type of communication that may endanger the property of service providers or other subjects, by making censorship a legitimate measure. In short, the refusal of legislative "paternalism", which is seemingly aimed at ensuring the utmost respect for freedom on the network, will actually give market logic the upper hand in this sector - and this may turn out to be more dangerous for freedom than the abidance by strict legal rules. On the other hand, this approach is not necessarily incompatible with a policy which focuses on codes of conduct and professional ethics - although the results achieved so far in this field are quite unsatisfactory. New forms of self-regulation can actually be also regarded as a tool allowing the most effective, socially acceptable solutions to be tested as a starting point for developing principles regulating the whole sector.

Market-drive approach must be evaluated also taking into account the proposals that envisage payment of a sum of money in exchange for the use of personal data by the subjects profiting from them. Even a well-known scholar such as Alan Westin, who pioneered studies on the relationship between privacy and freedom, has questioned his original view which was basically focussed on the rejection of any regulation that could diminish personal dignity. He wonders whether it is not time for us to recognise by law "a new ownership right for personal data, which have become an indispensable, extremely valuable good in the direct marketing age". This view is also shared by the Electronic Privacy Information Center of Washington, whose proposals are based on the realistic consideration that there is a huge market for personal information; hence, it can as well be provided by law that the persons to which this information refers are entitled to receiving a sum of money. This could be a radical change in the criteria underlying this line of reasoning: they mark the entrance of personal data into the world of commodities, their final commodification. The effects of such an approach would go well beyond the scope of the specific situations in which there is a greater flow of personal data. The very nature of the right to privacy would be modified: from a fundamental personal right it would be turned into a title that can be exchanged on the market.

Additionally, the above proposal has also objective limitations and does not allow achieving the purpose sought - that is to say, to ensure that each person can benefit from the market value of his/her personal information. The costs related to this type of transaction would be so high as to make it actually impossible. Only think of the information included in a mailing list and the costs related to contacting each individual on the list, who would actually receive just a ridiculous compensation, if any. This policy would probably result not so much in discouraging certain data flows, but rather in developing marketing strategies which would be undoubtedly burdensome for information suppliers and would impinge on their private sphere to a greater extent. Nor would this policy allow solving the problem of the two marketplaces for personal data: a "primary" marketplace, where information is exchanged with the data subject's consent irrespective of the benefit accruing and with all the limitations related to the manifestation of a person's will, and a "secondary" marketplace where information is exchanged without any consent by data subjects or else is used for purposes which they had not contemplated. Indeed, this would occur in the absence of any safeguards for privacy, since such safeguards only obtain if privacy is regarded as fundamental personal right and a fundamental component of citizenship - and, therefore, as a non-negotiable item.

If privacy is considered basically within the framework of fundamental rights, account should also be taken of the need to extend the safeguards traditionally applying to freedom of correspondence to any type of communication on the Internet as well. This implies, on the one hand, the possibility to choose the modalities for communication, in particular encryption - which is objected to in the US, whereas it is being liberalised in Europe, and especially in France (where encryption is considered a tool capable to further democratic values on the Internet). On the other hand, the communication inside closed groups and with providers of goods and services should be safeguarded in any case. As to the latter, international instruments point out the need for suitable security measures and, above all, for setting out privacy policies - that is to say, for informing users on the planned utilization of the data which have been collected, to be prominently displayed on the home page of each Web site. Furthermore, hardware and software configuration should allow users to easily access a site, without any form of default collection, storage or transmission of previously collected data on a given visitor. In this case, legal rules should go hand in hand with privacy enhancing technologies, in order to create a privacy-friendly environment by replacing "polluting" technologies with "clean" technologies.

In defining the pratical approaches to privacy protection on the Internet, reference should also be made to other entities which "certificate" the reliability of a given site by granting their seal to its owner. In this case there may be problems in terms of liability for any damage resulting from certifications either outdated or based on inadequate information. Trying to avoid continuous invasions of the private sphere and an increasing pollution of the information environment, all the instruments referred to above call upon users to be cautious in providing their data, to check that the safeguards mentioned are real, to avoid giving their consent for using the data in a way that is not relevant to the purposes for which they have been collected. These considerations apply to privacy protection in respect of outgoing data; as to incoming data, growing importance is attached to the "right not to know", which is reflected by the right not to receive unsolicited communications. A wide range of unsolicited communications is actually available: they include mail, fax, e-mail and any type of electronic messaging. There is an ever expanding array of regulations in this sector, which are aimed at enhancing the possibility for citizens to reject unsolicited information either by making any communication conditional upon their prior consent, or by granting citizens the power to request termination of any further communication - that is to say, cancellation from the mailing lists. Provisions of this kind are being increasingly issued in many European countries, based above all on the 1996 EU directive on telecommunications, as well as in various states of the USA. However, even Bill Gates (who is certainly above suspicion) had to acknowledge that "it is not easy to be cancelled from the mailing lists of spammers", who often take no account of the requests made. Bill Gates therefore suggests that privacy enhancing technologies should be used, as they are more! effective than legal rules - for instance, by means of software for filtering and automatically deleting junk mail. In conclusion, data collection must be made conditional upon compliance with certain fundamental principles (in particular as to purposes). Furthermore, cases of "inalienability" must be provided for: that is to say, there are circumstances under which not even data subjects can consent to the use of their personal data. This applies to sensitive data, especially those concerning health and personal opinions: indeed, based on the expectation of an economic benefit one may be led to consent to his/her own data being used in a way resulting into discrimination or anyhow violation of personal dignity. Generally speaking, it is necessary to prevent commodification of the data concerning the most intimate aspects of a person's private sphere. In the last times, deep concerns have been rised by a law passed by the Iceland Parliament, allowing a private company to exploit exclusively for 12 years the data regarding the whole genetic heritage of the population (the data base was then sold to a pharmaceutical company for 200 million dollars). Furthertmore, we must take into account the "free" services offered to consumers in echange of their personal data or of their acceptance of some violations of their private sphere: Berlin Court ha declared "immoral" and void a contract passed by persons allowing a company to interrupt their phone calls with commercial advertisements in echange of a time for calls free of charge, because the intrusion of the privacy of the recipient; and the same concern was expressed in a very recent decision by the italian Data Protection Commission.

5. Following the use of personal data, we can discover which powers, both public and private, are actually in operation in the information society. The concept of a number of "small brothers" may sound reassuring. In fact, it reflects the multiplicity and pervasiveness of bodies which, it is true, do not represent a single concentration of control powers, but are nevertheless capable of exercising quite as stringent and pervasive a control. Furthermore, the growth in increasingly wide-range and specialised files of personal data collected by an increasing number of subjects challenges the very concept of personal identity - as the latter is splitted and distributed over a number of different data banks in different places. The unity of a person is broken down, to be replaced by so many "electronic persons", so many market-oriented persons as are the interests underlying the collection of information. We are turning into "cyberspace abstractions" : each of us is becoming a "multiplied individual" . We are facing the risk of a new kind of reductionism: as many people say we are only our genes, others could say we are only our data. So we must deal with the problem how to rebuilt the unity of the person. The surveillance society is not disappearing: in fact, it is taking advantage of new opportunities for development. At the same time, the classification society is taking shape, with the inherent capability of unceasingly producing individual, family, group profiles. Thus, depending on the specific circumstances, a person may be the privileged user of a service, the recipient of a specific political message, the target of an advertising campaign, or the subject which is denied certain rights, services, benefits. Exactly on account of these multifaceted mechanisms, and of others which might be referred to, it is necessary to make distinctions, and there can be room for a different appreciation of the way the communication society is taking shape. Thus, it is argued that we are not faced with a de-personalisation trend: in fact, the very possibility of collecting every single item of information concerning opinions, tastes, preferences would result into an increasingly custom-tailored, personalised offer. The new social organisation could therefore be regarded as a "mass individual society", thanks to the overall implementation of information and communication technologies. At this point, it is necessary to outline the features of this new social model - i.e., whether it is only market-driven or also based on respect for human rights. Obviously these two features are not irreconcilable: development of e-commerce requires security in transactions and, therefore, adequate safeguards for consumers' privacy. And privacy protection can become the better ally of freedom of expression, for instance giving anonymous netizens full opportunties for free speech without any risk of discrimination. Still, one has to wonder whether such a far-reaching change is to be left entirely to the spontaneous operation of market forces or, rather, whether a public policy is also required. It is not simply that adequate tools for safeguarding rights are to be devised. A modus operandi is to be found in order to prevent the Network Society from being progressively identified with a commercial environment in which only the rights related to the trading in goods and services are recognised. "The soft new totalitarism of consumerism" is to be prevented, so that citizens are not equated merely to consumers - albeit amply provided with safeguards. It is necessary to prevent the public and private spheres from being taken up into the sphere of production and trade. The danger is real. A recent survey on e-commerce carried out by the Aspen Institute highlighted that "the business rush to colonize the Internet will surely reinvigorate cyberspace and make it more accessible to mainstream Americans". However, it was also added that "it may also marginalize the vast "third sector" of non profits, civic groups and public institutions who generally do not have money and expertise to participate in the on-line culture". Internet and its transformations, the cyberspace, must remain available to allow free development of personality, exercise of the freedom of speech and association, carrying out civic initiatives, experimenting on new forms of democracy. Nowadays the focus is especially on e-commerce, whose overwhelming importance may however end up by transforming the Internet into an aseptic environment where consumers (both adults and children) can enter as into a huge shopping mall, without ever running the risk of being distracted from their consumer activities. In order to achieve this objective, any utilization of the Internet conflicting with the concept of a socially "pacified" environment tends to be discouraged or marginalized. One ought to be concerned for the risks related to any utilization promoting pornography, paedophily, activities against social security. Still, this path may also lead to a new type of censorship, to smothering up dissent, minority opinions, any behaviour carrying social stygma. This is the risk envisaged by the US Supreme Court in its 1998 decision which held that the Communications Decency Act was contrary to the First Amendment, as it limited freedom of expression in order to protect minors against pornographic material on the Internet. This problem of protecting privacy of more weak people on Internet is becoming a crucial issue and rises new concerns about possible limitations of the freedom of expression. If the protection is based mainly on filtering, as it is suggested, it presupposes a classification of the sites and their contents, so opening the way to new forms of censorship. In fact, self-rating could invite self-censorship.

6. In a broader societal perspective, we must look at a number of initiatives aimed at promoting a socially meaningful use of information and communication technologies. Mass training programmes could be implemented in order to prevent the growing use of such technologies from leading to exclusion phenomena - by creating a new separation between haves and have-nots - at individual level, but also among countries. According to many surveys carried out in the USA, new inequalities were created in the past few years: there is a risk of an actual information apartheid, given the widening of the gap between the various categories of subjects that use computers and have access to network services. And this gap is function of social and economic variables such as income, education, age, sex, ethnic group. In order to overcome these risks, training must be accompanied by measures promoting universal service, by facilitating access to the Net and enhancing connectivity. This further confirms the need for an active commitment policy by governments, above all, plans for re-shaping the relationships between the public administration and citizens. A wide range of direct access services are now available at local level, which increases transparency of administration and makes it better controllable. Civic networks are increasingly implemented, as a means to enhance direct participation of citizens in local administration by promoting discussion or even cooperation in the decision-making process. The use of digital signature and electronic documents is being promoted, and the ban on the the use of encryption in electronic communications is progressively lifted. Information and communication technologies can make more transparent all public activities, so opening an electronic window on government . But they encounter also the resistence of traditional bureaucracies, suffering a technology that can cut off their established powers. The many initiatives currently in progress are aimed at an "administrative democracy". May they be considered to herald the coming of a more general "electronic democracy" as well?

We are confronted, once again, with the Athens concept - with the agorà where citizens were convened to take decisions. Is the ideal of a direct democracy finally made possible by the new technologies, which will allow replacing the representative democracy of the past few centuries? However, when considered from the citizens' viewpoint, direct democracy and representative democracy share a common feature: the intermittent participation. Citizens may be called upon to select their representatives or to take decisions directly: however, in both cases their participation takes place at fixed time intervals, within official premises. Citizens do not elect a Parliament every day, nor were they convened in the Athen's agorà every day. Conversely, we are witnessing the development of a continuous democracy - one in which citizens may voice their opinions at any time and from any place, taking part in a daily political concert. The signs of this continuous democracy are already visible. You can meet people continuously on the Net; it is increasingly possible to have continuous access to a wealth of information; opinion polls are regarded as a tool enabling the public pulse to be continuously felt; opportunities and tools for electors to continuously contact and lobby their elected representatives are increasing; the possibility to carry out on-the-spot electronic referenda multiplies the opportunities for continuously expressing citizens' opinions; election campaigns are growingly waged on the Network, and tend to become a permanent feature. But, how will this continuous democracy be shaped, in the light of its connection with the multifarious devices of an emerging technopolitics? First of all, we must avoid the risk to confuse the democratic opportunities coming from networking politics, which is a concept aimed to redistributing and reorganizing powers, with the simple possibility of some political uses of Internet. Furthermore, there are concerns for the risk that electronic democracy may become the most suitable expression of contemporary populism, and therefore a tool of plebiscitarian democracy. Conversely, it is hoped that it will promote a strong democracy, based on the active participation of citizens who are enabled to actually take part in the decision-making process. In order to achieve this objective, it is necessary to make use of all the resources of techno-politics to promote "active" citizenship - which is something quite different from the widespread recourse to electronic referenda, from the generalisation of a push-button democracy, from political participation limited to the play of Yes or Not, from reducing citizens to "numbered voices" listened to by means of opinion polls. In fact, democracy is an endless process, a context, an environment: participation should be enabled throughout all its stages - without being limited exclusively to the final decision or to the elections. Information and communication technologies provide a major opportunity for promoting active citizenship. The shift from a vertical communication, typical for traditional television, towards a horizontal communication, typical for the Internet, allows rescuing citizens from spectator passivity and makes them the focus of a process in which there is no difference between information producers and consumers. A number of experimental initiatives, especially at local level, are going in this direction. Videoconferencing is growingly used, debates are held on the network, citizens are allowed to voice their opinions in the law-making process. Time and space boundaries are overcome, and de-localized communities are born, including persons living in remote places and thus enabled to take part in decision making. Electronic town meetings, consensus conferences, deliberative polls are ways to realize a mix of sampling techniques, candidates discussion and expert panel meetings so as to achieve the reasoned assessment by the whole group rather than the percent distribution of opinions typically resulting from surveys. For that is necessary to realize the conditions for a new type of freedom, ensuring the widest possible access to all socially relevant information, whether public or private, by means of a new generation of freedom of information acts; ensuring freedom of expression by fighting the temptation to introduce a novel form of censorship; preventing personal data banks from becoming so many tools for discrimination; fighting against any attempt at commodification of persons. The endless opportunities provided by the Net to citizens must not be limited to the possibility of selecting the items included in a huge catalogue of goods and services. Otherwise, a true interactivity disappears, replaced by a new kind of vertical communication which can be summarized by three words - "see and buy". Information society challenges democracy in a new way, by offering the possibility to collect any information concerning citizens on the grounds that every single data may be useful for safeguarding security, health and so on. However, democracy means also selcetion of legitimate means, to be sober in the exercise of such powers which can endanger citizens' freedom. Modern civilisation was born after the habeas corpus; electronic citizenship requires a habeas data. Democracy means discussing issue, exchanging opinions, looking for answers. Information technologies should enhance these features, rather than misleadingly provide roundabout ways to achieve plebiscitarian decision-making. They should contribute to increasing citizens' awareness, rather than refining the techniques for their manipulation. So we must reconsider places, conditions and means of the citizenship. In the continuous flood of the democratic process, in a completely new dimension of soace and time, citizenship is rapidly changing. Until yesterday, the first and essential reference of the citizenship was the territory. What we are living now is precisely the end of the "jacobin" territory, with its closed boundaries and could be governed by an unique center. The citizen is lees and less "prisoner" of that kind of territory. He can navigate everywhere, his new dimension can become the Net. How can or must we organize these new spaces? Like a Los Angeles of the information superhighways? Like a Venice of the promised hundreds Tv channels? The problems of citizenship are immediately related with the evolution of the cyberspace. We have seen that Internet is changing its very nature, so being transformed, also partially, from a place of unbound freedom into a commercial space. The commodification of this dimension can transform the citizen-netizen in a pure consumer. The socio-political space could become like New York described by Herman Melville at the beginning of Moby Dick: "commerce sorrounds it with her surf". More dramatically than in the past, we are facing the problem of the autonomy of politics, and more generally of the autonomy of an individual and social space from the pressure of the imperative "mimic the market". Competition cannot be the only driving force, the main social value: at least, it must live together with fundamental rights such as true freedom of choice and personal dignity. For escaping this risk, we need appropriate measures giving all people the same opportunities to access the new "public space". It means literacy; universal service and adequate connectivity; the right to access to a critical mass of informations; a non commercial space giving the possibility to create communities which can reinforce the social linkage, and not only the separation of interests; experimentation of new democratic procedure, mainly at local level, for avoiding the risk of plebiscitarian populism, of what Ortega y Gasset called the "hyperdemocracy". These are the pre-conditions for a "democracy by initiative", where a new "information subject" can be born, transforming the machinery offered by the information and communication technologies into a true right to democracy. In order to fully benefit from the opportunities provided by this new world, which is already our world, suitable public policies are necessary and institutions are to be set up by bearing in mind that technologies eliminate time and space boundaries and make it senseless to attempt to seek shelter inside traditional national borders. A new type of citizenship is developing, and a new concept of sovereignty is to be developed as well.