'Internet Freedom' in the Age of Assange

From Egyptian Facebookers to WikiLeaks to China's Great Firewall, the State Department's efforts to promote an open global Internet just got a lot more complicated.

BY REBECCA MACKINNON | FEBRUARY 17, 2011

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's second annual "Internet freedom" speech on Tuesday showcased how the U.S. government is grappling with the question of what it means to be both a superpower and a democracy in the Internet age. 

Describing the Internet as the "public space of the 21st century," she called the debate about whether the Internet is a force for liberation or oppression "beside the point." Whether this digital public space is used well or used badly, she noted, is the responsibility of each and every one of the world's 2 billion-plus Internet users -- alongside all governments who seek to regulate it and companies that build Internet technologies and platforms.

This presents a challenge that she admitted the United States government cannot meet on its own: "To maintain an Internet that delivers the greatest possible benefits to the world, we need to have a serious conversation about the principles that will guide us, what rules exist and should not exist and why, what behaviors should be encouraged or discouraged and how."

Much has changed since Clinton's first "Internet freedom" speech, delivered in January 2010. Over the past year, Google has stopped censoring its search results in China. WikiLeaks published the Afghan War Logs and U.S. diplomatic cables stolen from a classified network by an Army private. Autocrats have been toppled in Egypt and Tunisia, and activists in the Middle East have set their sights on several more regimes.

These events highlight how the Internet is empowering a range of non-state actors in ways that challenge all governments' relationships with their citizens. Clinton's speech acknowledged this development, and reaffirmed the U.S. government's commitment to the free and open, globally interconnected Internet as a core component of its foreign policy.  

Clinton acknowledged -- without naming specific cases -- the extent to which the United States and other democracies face their own unresolved dilemmas about the Internet age. These include the difficulty of balancing the legitimate needs for law enforcement and intellectual property protection with the imperative of protecting free expression, privacy and other civil liberties.

Her comments on WikiLeaks underscored how Washington is grappling with the disruptive implications of a globally interconnected digital network. Still, she said, "WikiLeaks does not challenge our commitment to internet freedom."

Getty Images/Brendan Smialowski

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Rebecca MacKinnon is a Bernard L. Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation. She is co-founder of the global citizen media project Global Voices Online and a founding board member of the Global Network Initiative. Her book, Consent of the Networked, will be published by Basic Books in January 2012.

NAMEYNAME

5:57 AM ET

February 18, 2011

Right.

Is this the same speech during which a silent protested was beaten by official goons?

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8360

 

MTRANCHI

7:12 AM ET

February 18, 2011

freedom of the press, freedom of speech

When the founding fathers gave the right to freedom of the press, they meant the printing press, the only technology available at the time for the mass-dissemination of ideas and information.

Realizing this, freedom of the press is really the same thing as freedom of speech: I write down what i want to say, copy it many times, give it to others.

Article 19 of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights brings this into the 21st century: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom . . . to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Which, as you can see, essentially combines the two concepts of freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and also adds a third, freedom to receive, which was denied the people of Egypt recently with the shutdown of the internet and cell-phone service. And just in case there's confusion as to what media, singular medium means, it's "intermediate agency, channel of communication." In other words, the internet is a member of the media.

If you think about it, all confidentiality agreements, including whatever the gov’t calls whatever they have a gov’t official sign before giving him/her a level of clearance, is unconstitutional, or at least any laws which enforce such agreements. The word “except” is not in the first amendment.

 

XTIANGODLOKI

12:03 PM ET

February 18, 2011

So how is Bradly Manning so different from Liu Xiao Bu again?

Both broke domestic laws, so why support one and not the other. The cable leaks are not as much of a big deal as the videos of civilian killings. Yet the media' treatment of Manning is far different from the "freedom fighters" of other places.

The US state dept is grappling with the concept of "internet freedom" because it knows it's a double edged sword. Like any government the US supports conditional liberalizations and oppose changes which are not in the interest of the US. However publicly the US government will not admit to its realism foreign policy views and instead paint itself as some kind of moralistic saint to save others. The US media happily goes along with the US government, even when its personalities (and people like Mackinnon) go onto criticize how other government's media operate as propaganda machines for the government. When it comes to foreign policy the US media is not much different. So why the hypocrisy?

 

FACEMAN

11:34 PM ET

February 20, 2011

free internet

We understood on egyptian revolution internet is important tool it can even change countries future. Internet should be freer and reachable to anybody. I believe it's one of human right. Facebook, twitter, google all these servicing humanity.

It does not emphasize an idealogy but gather people who has same idea and belief and those people can act on their sorrow together with more power thanks to facebook groups, twits etc.