Secretary of State makes major address declaring internet freedom a basic human right

It was almost too easy. In a major speech today on net freedom, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reached back to Winston Churchill — and to Ronald Reagan — in arguing for a future in which access to networks and information is a basic human right.

In a deliberate reference to Churchill’s 1946 “iron curtain” speech, Clinton warned that “a new information curtain is descending across much of the world,” even as network technology spreads. And she echoed Reagan’s 1987 challenge to Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, as she called for governments to lift the electronic barriers to communication. “Virtual walls,” she said. “are cropping up in place of visible walls.”

Clinton’s speech, in many ways, was a 21st-century remix of an Cold War theme, comparing internet censorship in countries like China, Uzbekistan and Vietnam to Soviet-style restrictions on press freedom. In the most direct analogy, she described web 2.0 tools like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter as the “samizdat of our day.”

In Iran, for instance, grainy video footage of the death of Neda Agha-Soltan during pro-democracy demonstrations quickly went viral. Clinton said such footage served as a “digital indictment” of the regime in Tehran.

Clinton spoke of reinvigorating the State Department’s Global Internet Freedom Task Force as forum for addressing threats to net freedom. But Clinton also had a message for companies (*cough* Google) that want to do business with countries that restrict digital freedom.

“We are urging U.S. media companies to take a proactive role in challenging foreign governments’ demands for censorship and surveillance,” she said. “The private sector has a shared responsibility to help safeguard freedom of expression. And when their business dealings threaten to undermine those freedoms, they need to consider what’s right — not what’s simply a quick profit.”

A snarky aside: The failed Sovietologist in me was glad to see Clinton dust off a word like samizdat (самиздат, literally: “self-publishing”). But seriously, the State Department needs to do something about its Russian skills. First they screwed up the translation of the “reset” button presented as a gag gift to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. This time, whoever was spelled out the word phonetically for Clinton got it wrong: It’s “sam-is-DOT,” not “some-EASE-dot.”

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