ABSTRACT
The United Nations World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) process is seen as the first global attempt to assert the status of human rights principles in the development and global governance of the information society. This chapter outlines different perspectives from which the interface between human rights and new digital technologies can be approached. It highlights the variety of approaches to digital rights in academic research and in current digital rights activism. Various groups and movements with less organisational unity and more free-form activities and causes, such as Wikileaks, Anonymous and even individual hacktivists, have emerged to defend human rights and freedom of information against various forms of restrictions in the digital world. Many of these have been seen as disruptive forces, which bring attention to a range of injustices and political issues, without necessarily following any specific political program or manifesto.
