HUMAN rights include among other things rights to life and liberty, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to work and education. Everyone is entitled to these rights without discrimination. Now what is cyberspace? Cyberspace is a space (a virtual world) where people interact with each other through e-mail, facebook, twitter, instagram, whatsapp and many more, people share their information, swap ideas or play games or conduct businesses.
Cyberspace is important because we are all leading a virtual life rather than a real life and virtual life cannot be imagined without the internet. We know from the internet what is happening around us in the world within seconds and we can interact with our dear ones at a long distance without any problem. So the internet is like an extended platform for individuals to exercise their right to freedom of expression and information. Earlier people had to depend on newspapers for information and now we know everything through the internet. Similarly we had to wait for months to interact with our dear ones through letters but now we can mail or message them and get a reply within a few seconds. The internet has so many great advantages for us.
But at the same time with growing development of the internet we are becoming more disadvantaged than before, a phenomenon that has raised a few questions about our human rights in cyberspace. What actually is the disadvantage of cyberspace? We humans always take care of our privacy and security which we do not want to share with others. But while using the internet we forget about it and divulge all our information including the classified ones on the internet. Somehow we manage to forget that there are bad people around us who may capitalize on it which may prove damaging for us. For example: we all use facebook/twitter/instagram or some other social media and share our thoughts with friends through one or more of these.
What happens as a result is that all our private information is disclosed to everyone and if some bad guys want to use this information to fulfil their ulterior motives, they can do so. We should always bear in our minds that our rights are in our hand and there is no need to involve the government in this respect. When we are in cyberspace we can always use it to our advantage and never disclose our private information. We should rather share such information as can be beneficial for people at large. We can help the poor by telling others to help them and raise public awareness against all bad things in society. So, let us raise our voice in the cyberspace and utilize our own human rights to the benefit of all.
Samira Alam
Department of Computer Science & Engineering
East West University, Dhaka
