How should we view information rights at the dawn of the twenty-first century? What is their basis? How should they be articulated? What is their relationship with other rights and the broad context of the modern political community?
Mark Bovens sets out to answer such questions in ‘Information Rights: Citizenship in the Information Society’, which featured in a 2002 (Vol. 10, No. 3) edition of The Journal of Political Philosophy. His article is, above all, an important contribution to the grounding of information rights within the current age.
Bovens builds on Marshall’s three traditional elements of citizenship (civil, political and social) by adding a fourth (information). He argues that “the arrival of the information society is to be accompanied by consequences for the manner in which the citizenship ideal is given shape and substance.”
Boven asks:
“Is it possible to function as a citizen in the information society without access to essential information distribution and reception channels?”
Considering of the drastic differences between agrarian, industrial and information societies, Boven argues that the shift towards an information society, in which information is a key element in the functioning of everyday life, “not only demands a different definition of the traditional civic, political and social rights, but also the development of a number of digital information rights that extend further than the current regime regarding open government and the freedom of information.”
Information rights are threefold, according to Boven. Citizens require primary, secondary and tertiary information rights. Primary rights allow citizens direct access to actual government information. Secondary rights guarantee citizens government support in gaining access to crucial information channels. Finally, tertiary information rights support citizens in their horizontal information relations with other citizens and with private legal entities.
In the and, Bovan argues the recognition of information rights is an “important constitutional innovation that can help to render the constitutional state an appropriate accommodation for the information society.”
Interestingly, Boven has been a member of the Dutch Commission on Constitutional Rights in the Digital Era, which drafted proposals to adapt the Dutch constitution to the information society. He recommends the first chapter of the Dutch constitution be amended to add:
- Everyone has a right of access to information held by the government. This right can be restricted by or under law.
- Government shall attend to the accessibility of information held by the government.
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