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Global Internet Freedom
February 15, 2006 ( geek | politics )
The news about the "Global Internet Freedom Task Force" hit the blogosphere yesterday;
The State Department announced plans Tuesday to step up a campaign to combat efforts by foreign governments to restrict use of the Internet. At a news conference, Josette Shiner, a top State Department trade expert, called the Internet "the greatest purveyor of news and information in history" but said too often the flow is blocked by government censors.Shiner announced the formation of a task force that will consider, among other issues, the foreign policy aspects of Internet freedom, including the use of technology to restrict access to political content.
(...)The United States, she said, has "very serious concerns" about the protection of privacy and data throughout the Internet globally, and in particular, some of the recent cases raised in China.
Now, demonstrably, the US is not the biggest fan on "privacy," unless you're trying to keep communications private from them (which, cynically, may be the underlying issue here) with their track record of not only the pains that it took to establish EU/US Safe Harbor, but also the most recent NSA wiretaps, previous methods such as Echelon.
I'm going to chalk this up to grandstanding. I'd hope that human rights issues have a higher priority than Net access, and we've done such a good job at convincing China to address those so far.
Besides, to issue a unilateral statement like that rings false; if anything, we should push this up into the UN and work on it there (Though, I guess it might get shot down too quickly? Can you even see the US signing something like this were it proposed by the EU, for example?)
Being the good little hacker-type I am, I'm taking for granted that government censorship is bad, and information wants to be free, yadda yadda yadda. If the US wants to press something like this, I feel that they'll have to start locally, regulating Internet companies that do business in restrictive regimes (Yahoo, Google, we're looking at you guys) and make it a higher barrier to jump over, force them, for example, to make Google.cn a fully separate entity with trademark/copyright agreements or somesuch.
(Oh, but then, that might open the door to lots of really, really nasty possibilities; say, a township wants to restrict net pr0n locally, there's now legislation giving a blueprint on how to create that effect.)
I can't see how this, though a laudable goal, is at all realistic or enforceable. This has and will continue to be an important issue for China, and we don't have much leverage.
If free, unrestricted, and private communication is what the US gov't really wants to promote, maybe they should grant the EFF and a few choice F/LOSS projects like GnuPG...?
Ah, the times, they are a'changin'
Copyright, 1993. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- A federal grand jury is investigating exports
of a controversial computer program in a case that could affect how
software is distributed worldwide.
U.S. Customs officials asked for an investigation into ViaCrypt of
Phoenix and Austin Code Works of Austin, Texas, and the companies' plans
for foreign distribution of software, including PGP, a program that turns
data into an indecipherable code using encryption technology.
William Keane, an assistant U.S. attorney, confirmed that an
investigation is continuing, but declined to comment on the case.
The PGP program has been distributed worldwide over computer networks
by some computer enthusiasts who oppose the U.S. government's trade
regulations on encryption.
The National Security Agency, which monitors international
communications, has supported strict encryption technology export
regulations, arguing that it would be difficult to keep tabs on hostile
governments and foreign terrorists.
But opponents say the restrictions hurt sales and violate the First
Amendment that protects the right to publish information about encryption.
"I wrote PGP to make democracy healthier. I didn't do it to make
money," said Philip Zimmermann, a computer consultant who developed PGP.
"We believe everything we are doing is above board and well within the
law," said ViaCrypt president Leonard Mikus. He said the company had no
intentions of violating export regulations.
--PGP Subpoena
Posted by griffjon at February 15, 2006 09:14 AM
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