纽约时报今天报道,在美国国务卿克林顿于1月21日发表了关于互联网自由的长篇讲话。她在讲话中,提到几个在过去几年中采取措施封锁信息交流的几个国家,包括中国,突尼斯,乌兹别克斯坦,埃及,伊朗,沙特阿拉伯和越南。克林顿并表示。美国政府会对致力于扩大推动互联网自由的团体提供资金援助。
与此同时,美国驻北京大使馆及上海和广州的领事馆在星期五下午举办了与中国博客社区成员的讨论- 一个华盛顿接触中国的博客成员们,传播其信息的最新方式。 政治,经济及公共事务部门的外交官与博客成员们见面并进行了讨论,对克林顿的讲话回答了提问。 博客名字为''Zuola''的周书广(Zhou
Shuguang)在广州参加了会议,表示克林顿总统的讲话与中国的博客成员们对内容管制的沮丧有很大的共鸣。 "我们欢迎美国把这一问题通过外交途径进行讨论。"
中国媒体几乎没有报道克林顿的讲话。外交部网站刊登了外交部发言人马朝旭的官方回应(注,未能在外交部的网站查到),同时屏蔽了评论的功能。
外交部副部长何亚非:不应过度解读“谷歌事件”
时间:2010-01-22
10:26 来源:新华网
新华网北京1月21日电(记者廖雷 魏建华)中国外交部副部长何亚非21日表示,中国政府欢迎外国互联网企业来华发展,但其应遵守中国法律法规,各界不应过度解读“谷歌事件”。
何亚非在接受记者采访时表示,谷歌等外国企业在中国遇到问题,应通过中国法律进行解决,中国政府也愿意帮助它们解决有关问题。“谷歌事件”不应与两国政府和两国关系挂钩,否则就是过度解读。
关于网络监管问题,何亚非表示,网络监管事关国家安全,许多国家都有相应监管措施,中国也不例外,这也很正常。如果外国企业对此有不同看法,也应该通过法律途径加以解决。
何亚非当天还表示,奥巴马上任一年来来,中美关系发展基本稳定。
外交部发言人马朝旭就美国国务卿克林顿有关“互联网自由”演讲涉华内容答记者问
2010/01/22
问:美国国务卿克林顿21日就“互联网自由”问题发表演讲,其中谈到中国互联网管理政策,认为中方限制互联网自由,请问中方对此有何评论?
答:美方指责中国的互联网管理政策,影射中国限制互联网自由。对于这种违背事实、损害中美关系的言行,我们坚决反对。
中国互联网是开放的,中国也是互联网发展最活跃的国家,到去年底,中国网民达3.84亿,网站达368万个,博客1.8亿。中国宪法保护公民的言论自由,推动互联网的发展是我们的一贯政策。中国有自己的国情和文化传统,中国对互联网坚持依法管理,符合世界通行做法。
中国法律禁止任何形式的网络黑客行为和侵犯公民个人隐私的行为。中国是世界上主要的黑客攻击受害国之一。中国主张通过加强国际合作,共同严厉打击网络黑客行为,维护网络安全和依法保护公民个人隐私。
我们敦促美方尊重事实,停止利用所谓互联网自由问题对中国进行无理指责。我们希望美方同中方一道,认真落实两国领导人就发展新时期中美关系达成的共识,加强对话、交流与合作,尊重彼此核心利益和重大关切,妥善处理分歧和敏感问题,以维护中美关系健康稳定发展。
http://www.mfa.gov.cn/chn/gxh/tyb/fyrbt/dhdw/t653257.htm
Hillary
Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State
The Newseum,Washington, DC, January 21, 2010
录像链接:http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1705667530?bctid=62730021001
SECRETARY CLINTON: Thank you very much, Alberto, for not only that
kind introduction but your and your colleagues’ leadership of this important
institution. It’s a pleasure to be here at the Newseum. The Newseum is a
monument to some of our most precious freedoms, and I’m grateful for this
opportunity to discuss how those freedoms apply to the challenges of the 21st century.
Although I can’t see all of you because in settings like this, the lights are
in my eyes and you are in the dark, I know that there are many friends and
former colleagues. I wish to acknowledge Charles Overby, the CEO of Freedom
Forum here at the Newseum; Senator Edward Kaufman and Senator Joe Lieberman, my
former colleagues in the Senate, both of whom worked for passage of the Voice
Act, which speaks to Congress’s and the American people’s commitment to
internet freedom, a commitment that crosses party lines and branches of
government.
Also, I’m told here as well are Senator Sam Brownback, Senator Ted Kaufman,
Representative Loretta Sanchez, many representatives of the Diplomatic Corps,
ambassadors, chargés, participants in our International Visitor Leadership
Program on internet freedom from China, Colombia, Iran, and Lebanon, and Moldova. And I also
want to acknowledge Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute, recently
named to our Broadcasting Board of Governors and, of course, instrumental in
supporting the work on internet freedom that the Aspen Institute has been
doing.
This is an important speech on a very important subject. But before I begin, I
want to just speak briefly about Haiti, because
during the last eight days, the people of Haiti and the
people of the world have joined together to deal with a tragedy of staggering
proportions. Our hemisphere has seen its share of hardship, but there are few
precedents for the situation we’re facing in Port-au-Prince.
Communication networks have played a critical role in our response. They were,
of course, decimated and in many places totally destroyed. And in the hours
after the quake, we worked with partners in the private sector; first, to set
up the text “HAITI” campaign
so that mobile phone users in the United
States could donate to relief efforts via
text messages. That initiative has been a showcase for the generosity of the
American people, and thus far, it’s raised over $25 million for recovery
efforts.
Information networks have also played a critical role on the ground. When I was
with President Preval in Port-au-Prince on
Saturday, one of his top priorities was to try to get communication up and
going. The government couldn’t talk to each other, what was left of it, and
NGOs, our civilian leadership, our military leadership were severely impacted.
The technology community has set up interactive maps to help us identify needs
and target resources. And on Monday, a seven-year-old girl and two women were
pulled from the rubble of a collapsed supermarket by an American
search-and-rescue team after they sent a text message calling for help. Now,
these examples are manifestations of a much broader phenomenon.
The spread of information networks is forming a new nervous system for our
planet. When something happens in Haiti or Hunan, the rest
of us learn about it in real time – from real people. And we can respond in
real time as well. Americans eager to help in the aftermath of a disaster and
the girl trapped in the supermarket are connected in ways that were not even
imagined a year ago, even a generation ago. That same principle applies to
almost all of humanity today. As we sit here, any of you – or maybe more
likely, any of our children – can take out the tools that many carry every day
and transmit this discussion to billions across the world.
Now, in many respects, information has never been so free. There are more ways
to spread more ideas to more people than at any moment in history. And even in
authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new
facts and making governments more accountable.
During his visit to China in
November, for example, President Obama held a town hall meeting with an online
component to highlight the importance of the internet. In response to a
question that was sent in over the internet, he defended the right of people to
freely access information, and said that the more freely information flows, the
stronger societies become. He spoke about how access to information helps
citizens hold their own governments accountable, generates new ideas,
encourages creativity and entrepreneurship. The United
States belief in that ground truth is what
brings me here today.
Because amid this unprecedented surge in connectivity, we must also recognize
that these technologies are not an unmitigated blessing. These tools are also
being exploited to undermine human progress and political rights. Just as steel
can be used to build hospitals or machine guns, or nuclear power can either
energize a city or destroy it, modern information networks and the technologies
they support can be harnessed for good or for ill. The same networks that help
organize movements for freedom also enable al-Qaida to spew hatred and incite
violence against the innocent. And technologies with the potential to open up
access to government and promote transparency can also be hijacked by
governments to crush dissent and deny human rights.
In the last year, we’ve seen a spike in threats to the free flow of
information. China, Tunisia, and Uzbekistan have
stepped up their censorship of the internet. In Vietnam, access to
popular social networking sites has suddenly disappeared. And last Friday in Egypt, 30
bloggers and activists were detained. One member of this group, Bassem Samir,
who is thankfully no longer in prison, is with us today. So while it is clear
that the spread of these technologies is transforming our world, it is still
unclear how that transformation will affect the human rights and the human
welfare of the world’s population.
On their own, new technologies do not take sides in the struggle for freedom
and progress, but the United
States does. We stand for a single internet
where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas. And we recognize
that the world’s information infrastructure will become what we and others make
of it. Now, this challenge may be new, but our responsibility to help ensure
the free exchange of ideas goes back to the birth of our republic. The words of
the First Amendment to our Constitution are carved in 50 tons of Tennessee marble on
the front of this building. And every generation of Americans has worked to
protect the values etched in that stone.
Franklin Roosevelt built on these ideas when he delivered his Four Freedoms
speech in 1941. Now, at the time, Americans faced a cavalcade of crises and a
crisis of confidence. But the vision of a world in which all people enjoyed
freedom of expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from
fear transcended the troubles of his day. And years later, one of my heroes,
Eleanor Roosevelt, worked to have these principles adopted as a cornerstone of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They have provided a lodestar to
every succeeding generation, guiding us, galvanizing us, and enabling us to
move forward in the face of uncertainty.
So as technology hurtles forward, we must think back to that legacy. We need to
synchronize our technological progress with our principles. In accepting the
Nobel Prize, President Obama spoke about the need to build a world in which
peace rests on the inherent rights and dignities of every individual. And in my
speech on human rights at Georgetown a few days
later, I talked about how we must find ways to make human rights a reality.
Today, we find an urgent need to protect these freedoms on the digital
frontiers of the 21st century.
There are many other networks in the world. Some aid in the movement of people
or resources, and some facilitate exchanges between individuals with the same
work or interests. But the internet is a network that magnifies the power and
potential of all others. And that’s why we believe it’s critical that its users
are assured certain basic freedoms. Freedom of expression is first among them.
This freedom is no longer defined solely by whether citizens can go into the
town square and criticize their government without fear of retribution. Blogs,
emails, social networks, and text messages have opened up new forums for
exchanging ideas, and created new targets for censorship.
As I speak to you today, government censors somewhere are working furiously to
erase my words from the records of history. But history itself has already condemned
these tactics. Two months ago, I was in Germany to
celebrate the 20th anniversary
of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The leaders gathered at that ceremony paid
tribute to the courageous men and women on the far side of that barrier who
made the case against oppression by circulating small pamphlets called
samizdat. Now, these leaflets questioned the claims and intentions of
dictatorships in the Eastern Bloc and many people paid dearly for distributing
them. But their words helped pierce the concrete and concertina wire of the
Iron Curtain.
The Berlin Wall symbolized a world divided and it defined an entire era. Today,
remnants of that wall sit inside this museum where they belong, and the new
iconic infrastructure of our age is the internet. Instead of division, it
stands for connection. But even as networks spread to nations around the globe,
virtual walls are cropping up in place of visible walls.
Some countries have erected electronic barriers that prevent
their people from accessing portions of the world’s networks. They’ve expunged
words, names, and phrases from search engine results. They have violated the
privacy of citizens who engage in non-violent political speech. These actions
contravene the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which tells us that all
people have the right “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas
through any media and regardless of frontiers.” With the spread of these
restrictive practices, a new information curtain is descending across much of
the world. And beyond this partition, viral videos and blog posts are becoming
the samizdat of our day.
As in the dictatorships of the past, governments are targeting independent
thinkers who use these tools. In the demonstrations that followed Iran’s
presidential elections, grainy cell phone footage of a young woman’s bloody
murder provided a digital indictment of the government’s brutality. We’ve seen
reports that when Iranians living overseas posted online criticism of their
nation’s leaders, their family members in Iran were
singled out for retribution. And despite an intense campaign of government
intimidation, brave citizen journalists in Iran continue
using technology to show the world and their fellow citizens what is happening
inside their country. In speaking out on behalf of their own human rights, the
Iranian people have inspired the world. And their courage is redefining how
technology is used to spread truth and expose injustice.
Now, all societies recognize that free expression has its limits. We do not
tolerate those who incite others to violence, such as the agents of al-Qaida
who are, at this moment, using the internet to promote the mass murder of
innocent people across the world. And hate speech that targets individuals on
the basis of their race, religion, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation is
reprehensible. It is an unfortunate fact that these issues are both growing
challenges that the international community must confront together. And we must
also grapple with the issue of anonymous speech. Those who use the internet to
recruit terrorists or distribute stolen intellectual property cannot divorce
their online actions from their real world identities. But these challenges
must not become an excuse for governments to systematically violate the rights
and privacy of those who use the internet for peaceful political purposes.
The freedom of expression may be the most obvious freedom to face challenges
with the spread of new technologies, but it is not the only one. The freedom of
worship usually involves the rights of individuals to commune or not commune
with their Creator. And that’s one channel of communication that does not rely
on technology. But the freedom of worship also speaks to the universal right to
come together with those who share your values and vision for humanity. In our
history, those gatherings often took place in churches, synagogues, mosques and
temples. Today, they may also take place on line.
The internet can help bridge divides between people of different faiths. As the
President said in Cairo, freedom of
religion is central to the ability of people to live together. And as we look
for ways to expand dialogue, the internet holds out such tremendous promise.
We’ve already begun connecting students in the United
States with young people in Muslim
communities around the world to discuss global challenges. And we will continue
using this tool to foster discussion between individuals from different
religious communities.
Some nations, however, have co-opted the internet as a tool to target and
silence people of faith. Last year, for example, in Saudi
Arabia, a man spent months in prison for
blogging about Christianity. And a Harvard study found that the Saudi
Government blocked many web pages about Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and
even Islam. Countries including Vietnam and China employed
similar tactics to restrict access to religious information.
Now, just as these technologies must not be used to punish peaceful political
speech, they must also not be used to persecute or silence religious
minorities. Now, prayers will always travel on higher networks. But connection
technologies like the internet and social networking sites should enhance
individuals’ ability to worship as they see fit, come together with people of
their own faith, and learn more about the beliefs of others. We must work to
advance the freedom of worship online just as we do in other areas of life.
There are, of course, hundreds of millions of people living without the
benefits of these technologies. In our world, as I’ve said many times, talent
may be distributed universally, but opportunity is not. And we know from long
experience that promoting social and economic development in countries where
people lack access to knowledge, markets, capital, and opportunity can be
frustrating and sometimes futile work. In this context, the internet can serve
as a great equalizer. By providing people with access to knowledge and
potential markets, networks can create opportunities where none exist.
Over the last year, I’ve seen this firsthand in Kenya, where farmers have seen
their income grow by as much as 30 percent since they started using mobile
banking technology; in Bangladesh, where more than 300,000 people have signed
up to learn English on their mobile phones; and in Sub-Saharan Africa, where
women entrepreneurs use the internet to get access to microcredit loans and
connect themselves to global markets.
Now, these examples of progress can be replicated in the lives of the billion
people at the bottom of the world’s economic ladder. In many cases, the
internet, mobile phones, and other connection technologies can do for economic
growth what the Green Revolution did for agriculture. You can now generate
significant yields from very modest inputs. And one World Bank study found that
in a typical developing country, a 10 percent increase in the penetration rate
for mobile phones led to an almost 1 percent increase in per capita GDP. To
just put this into context, for India, that would
translate into almost $10 billion a year.
A connection to global information networks is like an on-ramp to modernity. In
the early years of these technologies, many believed that they would divide the
world between haves and have-nots. But that hasn’t happened. There are 4
billion cell phones in use today. Many of them are in the hands of market
vendors, rickshaw drivers, and others who’ve historically lacked access to
education and opportunity. Information networks have become a great leveler,
and we should use them together to help lift people out of poverty and give
them a freedom from want.
Now, we have every reason to be hopeful about what people can
accomplish when they leverage communication networks and connection
technologies to achieve progress. But make no mistake – some are and will
continue to use global information networks for darker purposes. Violent
extremists, criminal cartels, sexual predators, and authoritarian governments
all seek to exploit these global networks. Just as terrorists have taken
advantage of the openness of our societies to carry out their plots, violent
extremists use the internet to radicalize and intimidate. As we work to advance
freedoms, we must also work against those who use communication networks as
tools of disruption and fear.
Governments and citizens must have confidence that the networks at the core of
their national security and economic prosperity are safe and resilient. Now
this is about more than petty hackers who deface websites. Our ability to bank
online, use electronic commerce, and safeguard billions of dollars in
intellectual property are all at stake if we cannot rely on the security of our
information networks.
Disruptions in these systems demand a coordinated response by all governments,
the private sector, and the international community. We need more tools to help
law enforcement agencies cooperate across jurisdictions when criminal hackers
and organized crime syndicates attack networks for financial gain. The same is
true when social ills such as child pornography and the exploitation of
trafficked women and girls online is there for the world to see and for those
who exploit these people to make a profit. We applaud efforts such as the
Council on Europe’s Convention on Cybercrime that
facilitate international cooperation in prosecuting such offenses. And we wish
to redouble our efforts.
We have taken steps as a government, and as a Department, to find diplomatic
solutions to strengthen global cyber security. We have a lot of people in the
State Department working on this. They’ve joined together, and we created two
years ago an office to coordinate foreign policy in cyberspace. We’ve worked to
address this challenge at the UN and in other multilateral forums and to put
cyber security on the world’s agenda. And President Obama has just appointed a
new national cyberspace policy coordinator who will help us work even more
closely to ensure that everyone’s networks stay free, secure, and reliable.
States, terrorists, and those who would act as their proxies must know that the
United States will
protect our networks. Those who disrupt the free flow of information in our
society or any other pose a threat to our economy, our government, and our
civil society. Countries or individuals that engage in cyber attacks should
face consequences and international condemnation. In an internet-connected
world, an attack on one nation’s networks can be an attack on all. And by
reinforcing that message, we can create norms of behavior among states and
encourage respect for the global networked commons.
The final freedom, one that was probably inherent in what both
President and Mrs. Roosevelt thought about and wrote about all those years ago,
is one that flows from the four I’ve already mentioned: the freedom to connect
– the idea that governments should not prevent people from connecting to the
internet, to websites, or to each other. The freedom to connect is like the
freedom of assembly, only in cyberspace. It allows individuals to get online,
come together, and hopefully cooperate. Once you’re on the internet, you don’t
need to be a tycoon or a rock star to have a huge impact on society.
The largest public response to the terrorist attacks in Mumbai
was launched by a 13-year-old boy. He used social networks to organize blood
drives and a massive interfaith book of condolence. In Colombia, an
unemployed engineer brought together more than 12 million people in 190 cities
around the world to demonstrate against the FARC terrorist movement. The
protests were the largest antiterrorist demonstrations in history. And in the
weeks that followed, the FARC saw more demobilizations and desertions than it
had during a decade of military action. And in Mexico, a single
email from a private citizen who was fed up with drug-related violence
snowballed into huge demonstrations in all of the country’s 32 states. In Mexico
City alone, 150,000 people took to the streets in
protest. So the internet can help humanity push back against those who promote
violence and crime and extremism.
In Iran and Moldova and other
countries, online organizing has been a critical tool for advancing democracy
and enabling citizens to protest suspicious election results. And even in
established democracies like the United
States, we’ve seen the power of these
tools to change history. Some of you may still remember the 2008 presidential
election here. (Laughter.)
The freedom to connect to these technologies can help transform
societies, but it is also critically important to individuals. I was recently
moved by the story of a doctor – and I won’t tell you what country he was from
– who was desperately trying to diagnose his daughter’s rare medical condition.
He consulted with two dozen specialists, but he still didn’t have an answer.
But he finally identified the condition, and found a cure, by using an internet
search engine. That’s one of the reasons why unfettered access to search engine
technology is so important in individuals’ lives.
Now, the principles I’ve outlined today will guide our approach
in addressing the issue of internet freedom and the use of these technologies.
And I want to speak about how we apply them in practice. The United
States is committed to devoting the
diplomatic, economic, and technological resources necessary to advance these
freedoms. We are a nation made up of immigrants from every country and every
interest that spans the globe. Our foreign policy is premised on the idea that
no country more than America stands to
benefit when there is cooperation among peoples and states. And no country
shoulders a heavier burden when conflict and misunderstanding drive nations
apart. So we are well placed to seize the opportunities that come with
interconnectivity. And as the birthplace for so many of these technologies,
including the internet itself, we have a responsibility to see them used for
good. To do that, we need to develop our capacity for what we call, at the
State Department, 21st century
statecraft.
Realigning our policies and our priorities will not be easy. But
adjusting to new technology rarely is. When the telegraph was introduced, it
was a source of great anxiety for many in the diplomatic community, where the
prospect of receiving daily instructions from capitals was not entirely
welcome. But just as our diplomats eventually mastered the telegraph, they are
doing the same to harness the potential of these new tools as well.
And I’m proud that the State Department is already working in
more than 40 countries to help individuals silenced by oppressive governments.
We are making this issue a priority at the United Nations as well, and we’re
including internet freedom as a component in the first resolution we introduced
after returning to the United Nations Human Rights Council.
We are also supporting the development of new tools that enable citizens to
exercise their rights of free expression by circumventing politically motivated
censorship. We are providing funds to groups around the world to make sure that
those tools get to the people who need them in local languages, and with the
training they need to access the internet safely. The United
States has been assisting in these efforts
for some time, with a focus on implementing these programs as efficiently and
effectively as possible. Both the American people and nations that censor the
internet should understand that our government is committed to helping promote
internet freedom.
We want to put these tools in the hands of people who will use them to advance
democracy and human rights, to fight climate change and epidemics, to build
global support for President Obama’s goal of a world without nuclear weapons,
to encourage sustainable economic development that lifts the people at the
bottom up.
That’s why today I’m announcing that over the next year, we will work with
partners in industry, academia, and nongovernmental organizations to establish
a standing effort that will harness the power of connection technologies and
apply them to our diplomatic goals. By relying on mobile phones, mapping
applications, and other new tools, we can empower citizens and leverage our
traditional diplomacy. We can address deficiencies in the current market for
innovation.
Let me give you one example. Let’s say I want to create a mobile phone
application that would allow people to rate government ministries, including
ours, on their responsiveness and efficiency and also to ferret out and report
corruption. The hardware required to make this idea work is already in the
hands of billions of potential users. And the software involved would be
relatively inexpensive to develop and deploy.
If people took advantage of this tool, it would help us target our foreign
assistance spending, improve lives, and encourage foreign investment in
countries with responsible governments. However, right now, mobile application
developers have no financial assistance to pursue that project on their own,
and the State Department currently lacks a mechanism to make it happen. But
this initiative should help resolve that problem and provide long-term
dividends from modest investments in innovation. We’re going to work with
experts to find the best structure for this venture, and we’ll need the talent
and resources of technology companies and nonprofits in order to get the best
results most quickly. So for those of you in the room who have this kind of talent,
expertise, please consider yourselves invited to help us.
In the meantime, there are companies, individuals, and institutions working on
ideas and applications that could already advance our diplomatic and
development objectives. And the State Department will be launching an
innovation competition to give this work an immediate boost. We’ll be asking
Americans to send us their best ideas for applications and technologies that
help break down language barriers, overcome illiteracy, connect people to the services
and information they need. Microsoft, for example, has already developed a
prototype for a digital doctor that could help provide medical care in isolated
rural communities. We want to see more ideas like that. And we’ll work with the
winners of the competition and provide grants to help build their ideas to
scale.
Now, these new initiatives will supplement a great deal of important work we’ve
already done over this past year. In the service of our diplomatic and
diplomacy objectives, I assembled a talented and experienced team to lead our 21st century statecraft efforts. This team has
traveled the world helping governments and groups leverage the benefits of
connection technologies. They have stood up a Civil Society 2.0 Initiative to
help grassroots organizations enter the digital age. They are putting in place
a program in Mexico to help
combat drug-related violence by allowing people to make untracked reports to
reliable sources to avoid having retribution visited against them. They brought
mobile banking to Afghanistan and are now
pursuing the same effort in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo. In
Pakistan, they created the first-ever social mobile network, called Our Voice,
that has already produced tens of millions of messages and connected young
Pakistanis who want to stand up to violent extremism.
In a short span, we have taken significant strides to translate the promise of
these technologies into results that make a difference. But there is still so
much more to be done. And as we work together with the private sector and
foreign governments to deploy the tools of 21st century statecraft, we have to remember our
shared responsibility to safeguard the freedoms that I’ve talked about today.
We feel strongly that principles like information freedom aren’t just good
policy, not just somehow connected to our national values, but they are
universal and they’re also good for business.
To use market terminology, a publicly listed company in Tunisia or Vietnam that
operates in an environment of censorship will always trade at a discount
relative to an identical firm in a free society. If corporate decision makers
don’t have access to global sources of news and information, investors will
have less confidence in their decisions over the long term. Countries that
censor news and information must recognize that from an economic standpoint,
there is no distinction between censoring political speech and commercial
speech. If businesses in your nations are denied access to either type of
information, it will inevitably impact on growth.
Increasingly, U.S. companies
are making the issue of internet and information freedom a greater
consideration in their business decisions. I hope that their competitors and
foreign governments will pay close attention to this trend. The most recent
situation involving Google has attracted a great deal of interest. And we look
to the Chinese authorities to conduct a thorough review of the cyber intrusions
that led Google to make its announcement. And we also look for that investigation
and its results to be transparent.
The internet has already been a source of tremendous progress in China, and it is
fabulous. There are so many people in China now online.
But countries that restrict free access to information or violate the basic
rights of internet users risk walling themselves off from the progress of the
next century. Now, the United
States and China have
different views on this issue, and we intend to address those differences
candidly and consistently in the context of our positive, cooperative, and
comprehensive relationship.
Now, ultimately, this issue isn’t just about information freedom; it is about
what kind of world we want and what kind of world we will inhabit. It’s about
whether we live on a planet with one internet, one global community, and a
common body of knowledge that benefits and unites us all, or a fragmented
planet in which access to information and opportunity is dependent on where you
live and the whims of censors.
Information freedom supports the peace and security that provides a foundation
for global progress. Historically, asymmetrical access to information is one of
the leading causes of interstate conflict. When we face serious disputes or
dangerous incidents, it’s critical that people on both sides of the problem
have access to the same set of facts and opinions.
As it stands, Americans can consider information presented by foreign
governments. We do not block your attempts to communicate with the people in
the United States. But
citizens in societies that practice censorship lack exposure to outside views.
In North Korea, for
example, the government has tried to completely isolate its citizens from
outside opinions. This lopsided access to information increases both the
likelihood of conflict and the probability that small disagreements could
escalate. So I hope that responsible governments with an interest in global
stability will work with us to address such imbalances.
For companies, this issue is about more than claiming the moral high ground. It
really comes down to the trust between firms and their customers. Consumers
everywhere want to have confidence that the internet companies they rely on
will provide comprehensive search results and act as responsible stewards of
their own personal information. Firms that earn that confidence of those
countries and basically provide that kind of service will prosper in the global
marketplace. I really believe that those who lose that confidence of their
customers will eventually lose customers. No matter where you live, people want
to believe that what they put into the internet is not going to be used against
them.
And censorship should not be in any way accepted by any company from anywhere.
And in America, American
companies need to make a principled stand. This needs to be part of our
national brand. I’m confident that consumers worldwide will reward companies
that follow those principles.
Now, we are reinvigorating the Global Internet Freedom Task Force as a forum
for addressing threats to internet freedom around the world, and we are urging U.S. media
companies to take a proactive role in challenging foreign governments’ demands
for censorship and surveillance. The private sector has a shared responsibility
to help safeguard free expression. And when their business dealings threaten to
undermine this freedom, they need to consider what’s right, not simply what’s a
quick profit.
We’re also encouraged by the work that’s being done through the Global Network
Initiative, a voluntary effort by technology companies who are working with
nongovernmental organizations, academic experts, and social investment funds to
respond to government requests for censorship. The initiative goes beyond mere
statements of principles and establishes mechanisms to promote real
accountability and transparency. As part of our commitment to support
responsible private sector engagement on information freedom, the State
Department will be convening a high-level meeting next month co-chaired by
Under Secretaries Robert Hormats and Maria Otero to bring together firms that
provide network services for talks about internet freedom, because we want to
have a partnership in addressing this 21st century challenge.
Now, pursuing the freedoms I’ve talked about today is, I believe, the right
thing to do. But I also believe it’s the smart thing to do. By advancing this
agenda, we align our principles, our economic goals, and our strategic
priorities. We need to work toward a world in which access to networks and
information brings people closer together and expands the definition of the
global community. Given the magnitude of the challenges we’re facing, we need
people around the world to pool their knowledge and creativity to help rebuild
the global economy, to protect our environment, to defeat violent extremism,
and build a future in which every human being can live up to and realize his or
her God-given potential.
So let me close by asking you to remember the little girl who was pulled from
the rubble on Monday in Port-au-Prince. She’s
alive, she was reunited with her family, she will have the chance to grow up
because these networks took a voice that was buried and spread it to the world.
No nation, no group, no individual should stay buried in the rubble of
oppression. We cannot stand by while people are separated from the human family
by walls of censorship. And we cannot be silent about these issues simply
because we cannot hear the cries.
So let us recommit ourselves to this cause. Let us make these technologies a
force for real progress the world over. And let us go forward together to
champion these freedoms for our time, for our young people who deserve every
opportunity we can give them.
Thank you all very much. (Applause.)
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/01/135519.htm