http://www.policylaundering.org/
Murray Dobbin. (May 5, 2005). Is contracting out to U.S. policy-laundering? Straight.com.
http://www.straight.com/node/7452/print
The B.C. Civil Liberties Association described the government’s use of international trade treaties to rationalize its actions as ‘policy laundering’. This term is defined in the privacy commissioner’s report as ‘the process by which a government implements what would normally be a controversial policy at home claiming that its international obligations force it to do so’, which seems to be a perfect description of what the government did in defending the Maximus deal.
Scholarly Communications @ Duke. Posted by Kevin Smith, 2007.
http://library.duke.edu/blogs/scholcomm/2007/06/10/policy-laundering/
…at the recent copyright conference at the University of Maryland University College Center for Intellectual Property, Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge used the above phrase to describe a disturbing trend in copyright legislation. “Policy laundering” refers to the practice of negotiating bilateral trade treaties with other countries that include rules about intellectual property that are more strict than US law, then presenting the agreements to Congress as evidence that the US must change its law in order to “enable” the treaties. This use of trade agreements to force legislation without regard to whether it serves the original purpose expressed by the Constitution in its authorization of copyright and patent laws – “to promote the progress of science and useful arts” – represents an end run around the Constitution.
Nadia Caidi and Anthony Ross. (2005) Information Rights and National Security. Government Information Quarterly 22: 663-684.
This article examines the recent multiplicity of challenges that affect citizens’ ccontrol and use of information. In the name of the war on terror, greater national security, and globalization trends, information laws and policies often go further than is necessary and impact on the information rights of citizens…
Gus Hosein. (2004). The Sources of Laws: Policy Dynamics in a Digital and Terrorized World. The Information Society 20: 187-199.
We often assume that policy and laws are the outcome of national deliberative discourse. As we have seen with other domains such as intellectual property and trade, policies that influence privacy and civil liberties are increasingly resulting from international policy dynamics. This article presents a number of these policy mechanisms used to take advantage of international dimensions of our current environment. These mechanisms include policy laundering, modeling, and forum shifting. Using these mechanisms, policies are being developed outside of national deliberative forums and then adopted locally in the interests of national governments, A number of policy instances are presented, tracing the influence of national and international actors, and the implications for national discourse. The article concludes with discussion of some implications for an open society.
Big Brother Goes Global, issue of Index on Censorship, edited by Gus Hosein
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2005-10-25-newsitem-en.html
Peter K. Yu. “The Political Economy of Data Protection” . Chicago-Kent Law Review, Vol. 83, 2008
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1046781
As part of the Data Devolution: Corporate Information Security, Consumers and the Future of Regulation Symposium, this essay recounts the development of two new forms of data protection: sui generis database protection and data exclusivity. It also discusses the concerns raised by the undemocratic processes used to develop such protection. It explains why policy laundering and backdoor lawmaking are harmful to both the United States and the larger international community. The essay then offers suggestions on how to recalibrate the balance of the intellectual property system. It concludes with a plea for caution concerning the development of new intellectual property rights to protect data, drawing on the European Commission’s recent evaluation of the EC Database Directive.
From the “right to communicate” to “consumer right of access”: Telecom policy visions from 1970-2007. (2008). Graham Longford, Marita Moll and Leslie Regan Shade. In For Sale to the Highest Bidder: Telecom Policy in Canada, ed. Moll and Shade. Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
http://shade.flinknet.com/archives/000826.html#more
Helping hands or policy laundering?
The agenda is getting plenty of push from the private sector. In a truly extraordinary move, Bell Canada and Telus have funded Hank Intven, one of the Panel members and Mary Dawson, a former deputy minister at the Department of Justice with lengthy experience in legislation drafting, to draft a model telecommunications act based on the recommendations of the TPRP. This model act was published by the law firm McCarthy Tétrault, which currently includes Intven among its legal experts, and unveiled at the 2007 Canadian Telecom Summit – an annual meeting of the powerhouses of the Canadian Telecom industry. The preamble acknowledges that this is a somewhat “unusual” undertaking. The vested interest of Bell and Telus is acknowledged and readers are assured that they played no role in the drafting of this model act. But, given that the TPRP’s recommendations didn’t provoke any criticism from the telcos, it hardly seems necessary for them to have intervened.
This is an astonishing and dangerous precedent that should have evoked a storm of protest from citizens and elected representatives alike. But instead it has been treated as perfectly normal. Save for one article in the national newspaper The Globe and Mail, the media has been silent.28 How tempting will it be for those who are truly tasked with bringing forward legislation on these issues to start with nicely prepared elements of this industry friendly document rather than starting from the more much difficult point of addressing the needs of Canadian society with respect to telecommunications policy? Commented Liora Salter, an Osgoode Hall Law Professor, the model act reveals how most new laws in the private sector are “fiercely negotiated behind closed doors”. It looks very much like an indirect way of pushing forward policies without the usual democratic political process, something which an international coalition of privacy and civil liberties organizations has dubbed “policy laundering”….
Together with other TPRP recommendations being considered by the government, these recent moves represent an unprecedented attempt to diminish the ability of Canadian citizens, though their democratically accountable legislative and regulatory bodies, to ensure that Canada’s telecommunications system meets the needs of all Canadians.
