Leslie Harris - Center for Democracy and Technology : One Web Day

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The Center for Democracy and Technology works to promote democratic values and constitutional liberties in the digital age. With expertise in law, technology, and policy, CDT seeks practical solutions to enhance free expression and privacy in global communications technologies. CDT is dedicated to building consensus among all parties interested in the future of the Internet and other new communications media.

About Leslie Harris

Leslie Harris joined the Center for Democracy and Technology in the fall of 2005 and became Executive Director at the beginning of 2006. Ms. Harris brings over two decades of experience to CDT as a civil liberties lawyer, lobbyist, and public policy strategist Her areas of expertise include free expression, privacy and intellectual property. Ms. Harris is a recognized expert on Internet and technology policy, and she writes and speaks frequently on these subjects. Ms. Harris has served in leadership positions in the American Bar Association, including as the Chairperson of the Section on Individual Rights and Responsibilities. For many years, she served as the Co-Chair of the CDT Public Interest Advisory. She currently serves on the Board of the Health Privacy Project. Ms. Harris received her law degree cum laude from the Georgetown University Law Center and her BA at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa.

One Web Day - An Opportunity to Reflect

The Internet is the single most remarkable communications medium ever conceived. Its "many-to-many" communications model has fulfilled the ultimate promise of the marketplace of ideas the founding fathers had in mind when they drafted the Bill of Rights. But even for those of us involved in the day-to-day battles over privacy, free speech and openness, it is all too easy to take the Internet and its revolutionary effect on global communications for granted.

To help us all remember how profoundly the Internet has affected our lives, longtime Internet advocate Susan Crawford last year on September 22 launched One Web Day: one day a year when we can all take a few moments to celebrate the Internet and think about how it has changed the way we communicate, learn about the world and express ourselves. The One Web Day site is keeping track of events happening around the world surrounding One Web Day 2007.

It may seem a little strange to celebrate a piece of technology, until we take a moment to think of all the ways in which the Internet has fundamentally changed how we live. The One Web Day site suggests ways in which we can remember and celebrate how we found jobs or friends online; how we share stories and photos with friends and family; how we discovered a favorite new hotspot or artist and other subtle but profound benefits. The site also recommends celebrating by teaching an older relative or acquaintance how to blog, or use instant messaging or even send an e-mail.

Behind these celebratory suggestions is a serious message: we can't afford to take the remarkable freedom and innovation fostered by the Internet for granted. As I have highlighted in previous posts, those freedoms and that fundamental openness are under constant strain from legal and regulatory pressures in the United States around the world.

The more indispensable the Internet becomes to global commerce, politics and expression, the more attractive a target it has become to regulators seeking to exert greater control over communications and to criminals looking for ways to profit from exploiting the trust of online consumers. All of these threats, whether in the form of intrusive laws or online scams like spyware and phishing, threaten to undermine the freedom and openness that has made the Internet so worthy of celebration.

So on September 22 as we think about how the Internet as improved our lives, we can also take a moment to consider what we can do to ensure that it remains the robust technology of freedom that has made those changes possible.

Published Friday, September 14, 2007 9:50 AM by Leslie Harris

Filed under: Internet, One Web Day, Freedom

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