Tech companies seeking business in Syria

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Jan Smith

By John Poirier | Reuters | June 24, 2010

WASHINGTON(Reuters) – The United States is urging Syria to open up its markets to U.S. companies’ computers and software, but fears over piracy and Internet access restrictions are holding back American technology companies from investing there.

Senior executives of five big U.S. technology companies including Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Dell Inc (DELL.O) expressed their concerns to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during a five-day trip last week, two members of the delegation told Reuters.

The trade mission was led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top technology adviser, Alec Ross, and Jared Cohen, a member of her Policy Planning Staff.

U.S. tech companies expect Syria’s population to double in the next seven years and they want to tap into the youth to promote U.S. businesses and Washington’s human rights agenda.

The talks last week represent a new stage in U.S. diplomatic efforts in which the issue of Internet censorship is increasingly placed on the agenda during direct talks with other governments.

U.S. tech companies are carefully watching moves by the State Department, especially after Google Inc (GOOG.O) in March announced that it was going to move its China servers to Hong Kong following the high profile diplomatic spat with Beijing over censorship.

Senior executives from Cisco Systems Inc (CSCO.O), VeriSign Inc (VRSN.O) and Symantec Corp (SYMC.O) also traveled with the delegation in a trip that included meetings with academics, students and small- and medium-size businesses.

One delegation member said that during the trip they tried to clear up a misperception in Syria that U.S. companies can’t invest there because of U.S. sanctions against trade and investment.

They told officials in Damascus that exemptions for some technology granted in 2004 under former President George W. Bush allow for companies to sell their products to Syria as long as those tools are not used against the Syrian people, the delegation member said.

“You can sell Dell computers, you can sell Microsoft Office, you can sell Cisco routers, but despite that waiver that is not happening,” the delegation member told Reuters on Wednesday on the condition of anonymity.

The companies told Syrian officials that they are worried about the lack of enforcement to combat piracy and intellectual property theft, and widespread corruption, another member said.

They also sought assurances by the government that the technology will not be used against Syria’s general population, they said, adding that Syrian officials pledged to adopt some laws aimed at improving the environment for tech investments this year.

Sheldon Himelfarb, an expert on technology and diplomacy at the U.S. Institute of Peace, said U.S. officials need to become smarter about relationships between sanctions and the impact on citizen activists in closed societies.

“We need more trips like this,” Himelfarb said.

The mission to Syria was unique because it was a high-level engagement during a strained relationship between the two countries. Their ties, however, have improved since U.S. President Barack Obama took office.

Syria has emerged from a five-year diplomatic isolation, with the United States and European Union seeking closer ties with Damascus and pushing for a resumption of peace talks between Syria and Israel.

The trip also follows an issue of waivers by Washington in March to allow U.S. technology companies to export chat and social media software to Iran, Sudan and Cuba, with the hope the move will help their citizens communicate with the outside world.

The Internet was an important communication channel for Iranian protesters disputing election results last year.

“If the next generation of Syrians are able to get access to these tools of technology, then they’re going to have connections to the outside world,” another delegation member said.

(Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

Jerry Yang Speaks at Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship

By BHRP

AP Photo | J. Scott Applewhite)

By David Alexander | Reuters | April 26, 2010

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama launched a new effort on Monday to build business and social ties to the Muslim world, but analysts said the need for progress on big issues like Middle East peace would overshadow the initiative.

Obama hosted a two-day Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship that brought together about 250 successful entrepreneurs from more than 50 countries, most with large Muslim populations, fulfilling a pledge he made in his Cairo speech to the Islamic world last June.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke opened the gathering by challenging the entrepreneurs to take “the tremendous success that all of you have had individually and expand it throughout the Islamic world.”

Obama will address the summit at the end of the first day to underscore his commitment to “deepening our engagement around the world with Muslim-majority communities,” Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said.

While the summit was widely viewed as a positive step that demonstrated follow-through on the Cairo speech, analysts said Obama ultimately would be judged on his handling of key issues in the Muslim world — the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Iran’s nuclear program and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“In some ways Cairo is not going to be fulfilled until you get grander solutions to some of the big geopolitical problems,” said Juan Zarate, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and an ex-deputy national security adviser to former President George W. Bush.

“The president is going to be judged by his ability to move those big issues much more so than whether or not he hosts a conference at the White House,” he said.

Obama has struggled to advance many of those issues. His effort to revive the Middle East peace process has been hampered by Israeli settlement activity, and his attempts to engage Iran over its nuclear program have been rebuffed.

SENIOR OFFICIALS, PRIVATE EXPERTS

In addition to Locke, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and other senior U.S. officials were participating in sessions alongside private sector experts like Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang, Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus and Arif Naqvi, head of Abraaj Capital, the largest private equity firm in the Middle East.

The aim was to bring together successful entrepreneurs from different countries, venture capitalists, development bankers and other business experts to discuss ideas and share experiences with a view toward creating support networks that would help promote development in the region.

Yang, in a luncheon address, said entrepreneurs needed an entire ecosystem to flourish, including education, capital and research and development. He said he saw increasing signs of a willingness in the Middle East to support entrepreneurs, noting Yahoo’s recent acquisition of the Arabic-language email service Maktoob.

The White House has urged groups outside the government to take advantage of the summit by organizing related events. That has spawned more than 30 other sessions by groups such as the National U.S.-Arab Chamber of Commerce, the Arab Empowerment Initiative and the Middle East Youth Initiative at the Brookings Institution.

Observers and participants said the success of the event ultimately depended on whether it produced concrete results — financial and otherwise — after it ended.

“What kind of networks does it establish? What kinds of funds will come out of it? What kind of … concrete recommendations for legal reforms that need to take place in certain countries?” said Ehaab Abdou of the Middle East Youth Initiative, which is participating in an event on using entrepreneurial techniques to address social challenges.

Obama planned to announce some new financing to support entrepreneurship, but administration officials made clear the government wants to be seen not as a funder but as a catalyst bringing together entrepreneurs with potential investors.

Rajiv Shah, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, announced 13 partnerships aimed at supporting entrepreneurs in the Muslim world with education and programs to encourage market opportunities and financing.

(Additional reporting by Diane Bartz, Editing by Paul Simao and Cynthia Osterman)

Coalition calls for reform of electronic privacy law

By BHRP

Info Security | 2 April 2010

Tech vendors, interest groups, and academics have formed a coalition advocating for modification of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which they claim is severely out-of-date.

The new coalition, known as Digital Due Process, is calling for what it sees as a long-overdue revamp of the Electronic Communications and Privacy Act, which was designed to protect the privacy of internet and telephone users. The legislation was passed in 1986, which the coalition calls “light years ago in Internet time.”

The ECPA was originally intended to provide a standard framework under which law enforcement could operate in the digital world without infringing on the Constitution’s privacy protections. However, as Digital Due Process noted, the ECPA was passed at a time before email, global positioning tracking, cloud computing, or social networking. The coalition said that the advancement of technology, along with the inconsistent interpretation of the ECPA by the judicial system, led to its formation, whose members are putting forth recommendations to reform the law.

According to the Digital Due Process website, the organization is not seeking to trash the EPCA entirely. However, it would like to see the law reformed to address a number of electronic privacy aspects that were not even considerations in 1986. The coalition provides “guiding principles of EPCA reform” on its site, further requesting a rework of the law to deal with “access to email and other private communications stored in the cloud, access to location information, and the use of subpoenas to obtain transactional information”.

Google, one of the flagship coalition members, said in its official blog that “technology has moved at a record pace”, adding that, in the meantime, the “EPCA has stayed the same”. The company put forth four principles that it would like to see incorporated in a modernized EPCA, including making warrants a necessary precursor to obtaining personal data stored online and location tracking through cell phones and smartphones, in addition to requirements that government and law enforcement demonstrate a clear need to monitor electronic communications and engage in bulk data requests.

Other organizations that have joined the Digital Due Process coalition, Infosecurity notes, include AOL, eBay, the ACLU, Intel, and Microsoft.

Proving the old “politics makes for strange bedfellows” cliché, Electronic Frontier Foundation senior attorney Kevin Bankston highlighted the fact that his organization is willing to work with other coalition members to reform the EPCA, even though the EFF and other members have not always been on the same page. “When it comes to privacy, EFF has had its disagreements with fellow Digital Due Process members such as Google and AT&T”, noted Bankston. “But this diverse coalition of privacy advocates and Internet companies agree on at least one thing: the current electronic privacy laws are woefully outdated and must be updated to provide clear privacy protections that reflect the always-on, location-enabled, Web 2.0 world of the 21st century.”

“The recommendations of the Digital Due Process coalition are not an exclusive list of the reforms to ECPA that EFF would support, and in some cases EFF would urge even stronger protections than those urged by the group,” added Bankston. “However, EFF strongly agrees with its fellow Digital Due Process members that each of the coalition’s recommended changes would significantly strengthen the law and better protect privacy.”

One senior DC lawmaker was quick to comment on the coalition’s call to action. Senator Patrick Leahy – a Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee – said that “while the question of how best to balance privacy and security in the 21st century has no simple answer, what is clear is that our federal electronic privacy laws are woefully outdated.” The senator added that he plans to convene hearings on what can be done to update the EPCA in the near future.

Censorship Cases Revive Net Freedom Bill

By BHRP

By Tom Risen | National Journal | April 2, 2010

In the wake of high-profile Internet censorship cases overseas, some in Congress are renewing their calls for U.S. regulation. But some companies are continuing to call for self-regulation, fearing possible restrictions on doing business in the future.

New Jersey Republican Chris Smith, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, reintroduced the Global Online Freedom Act last month to support companies like Google as they face censorship pressure in foreign markets. He first introduced the bill in 2006.

Since then, Google’s defiance against Chinese censorship and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Internet freedom platform have built momentum on the issue and helped lawmakers reach consensus, according to Jeff Sagnip, Smith’s press secretary.

Smith’s bill would establish an Office of Global Internet Freedom in the State Department to identify repressive countries, and it would make U.S. companies answerable to the attorney general if they collaborate with requests to take part in censorship or divulge personally identifying information.

“By creating an independent office in the State Department that focuses on Internet freedoms, it would simplify the question ‘who do I call?’” Sagnip said. “There’s a lot of momentum on it this year, as opposed to 2006, when there weren’t as many cases of censorship. The bill’s goal is not to inhibit companies seeking work overseas but to give them a legal foundation.”

The degree of violations that could merit punishment under the bill include the allegations made against Cisco Systems of modifying equipment to be used for Chinese censorship. Sagnip said this bill or another may be amended to deal with European-based Nokia Siemens Networks, which has been accused of supplying Iran with equipment also meant for censorship.

When Smith first introduced the bill four years ago, companies like Yahoo were monitoring abuse independent of the government. Yahoo and other Internet heavyweights co-founded the Global Network Initiative in 2008 along with other corporations, nonprofits and universities. Today, the company is wary of potential restrictions on what countries it could or couldn’t do business with, and to what extent.

“While the goals set forth by the sponsors of GOFA are noble, the bill’s scope could ultimately mean that companies will have to cease providing information services in some countries,” said Yahoo spokeswoman Amber Allman. “Yahoo will continue working with Congress on this legislation, to ensure that its goals can be achieved and that companies can continue to bring transformative technology to people in all parts of the world.”

Sagnip said China’s hack of Google and Iran’s suppression of protesters last summer were signs that self-regulation is not enough.

“Everyone was resistant to intervening with legislative effort,” Sagnip said. “Unfortunately, we walked away from 2009 thinking, ‘OK, it’s even worse now.’ Hence, they might need teeth — or that could be the wrong word. Rather ‘legs,’ or ’standing.’”

Smith recently partnered with Rep. David Wu, D-Ore., to form the Global Internet Freedom Caucus, a bipartisan group of lawmakers who will advocate for Internet freedom laws. The Senate followed about two weeks later, creating a similar bipartisan group led by Sens. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and Ted Kaufman, D-Del.

“What I see is that both sides of the aisle are looking for an avenue, and that could be a path for some congressional action,” Sagnip said.

Sen. Durbin blasts local non-participants in GNI; promises IT human rights legislation

By BHRP

Flickr Creative Commons | DW212

by Bonnie Boglioli-Randall | Examiner.com | March 3, 2010

Yesterday, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law convened for part II of its “Global Internet Freedom and Rule of Law” hearing. Among those testifying was Google’s Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Nicole Wong. More conspicuously absent, however, were the many Silicon Valley tech companies that rejected offers to participate in the hearing.

On the heels of the latest internet privacy and human rights issues including Google in China and internet censorship, Senator Richard (Dick) Durbin (D- IL) chaired the meeting to discuss the role of the Global Network Initiative in human rights.  The Global Network Initiative , founded in 2008, seeks to collaborate with ICT companies, human rights organizations, academics and others to promote the freedoms of expression and privacy online. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! are currently the only major participants in the initiative- a subject which the hearing sought to address.

“I’m disappointed that a year and a half after the GNI started and no new companies have joined,” Sen. Durbin candidly told the committee. “Many companies told me that the GNI is not relevant to their companies’ business. The last two years have demonstrated that is simply not true.”

The start of 2010 has seen numerous internet issues come to light, including the recent case in Italy that convicted four Google executives for a video posted by a user on Youtube (and later taken offline). That case, along with the recent cyber attacks emanating out of China, has many wondering what the broader implications will be for Internet companies and privacy rights.

Wong told the Subcommittee that the number of governments engaging in censorship has risen to 40, citing targeted surveillance and malware as just a few tactics most often utilized. More than 25 governments have blocked Google services, including the blockage of Youtube in countries such as Turkey, Brazil, Indonesia, Morocco and others. “This growing problem was underscored by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in her recent speech on Internet freedom,” Wong said. “It is imperative for governments, companies, and individuals to do more to ensure that the Internet continues to be a powerful medium for expressing political opinions, religious views and other core speech without restriction.”

Today, Google urged the Obama Administration to take China’s Internet censorship all the way to the WTO, with some suggesting a new Cold War era for the Internet while others are quick to point out the profound relevance of public diplomacy in the Internet Age. The need for common principles governing the Internet seems to be coming to a head, making some like Sen. Durbin question the lack of participation within the GNI.

“The explosive growth of social networking services like Twitter and Facebook has helped human rights activists organize and publicize human rights violations in Iran and other places in the world,” Sen. Durbin said in his lead address yesterday. “However, repressive governments can use these same tools to monitor and crack down on advocates.”

Singling out numerous Silicon Valley ICT companies unwilling to participate in congressional hearings and the GNI, Durbin named Twitter, Facebook, HP and Apple among others who declined his invitation to appear before the Senate subcommittee. “With a few notable exceptions, the technology industry seems unwilling to regulate itself and unwilling even to engage in a dialogue with Congress about the serious human rights challenges the industry faces,” Durbin said.

In a letter addressed to Senator Durbin in response to the invitation, Facebook’s Director of Public Policy Timothy Sparapani cited Facebook’s lack of involvement in China as its key factor for not involving itself in the Global Internet Freedom Hearing and contributed the following:

(At the same time), we recognize that social norms around information sharing, connection, openness, and privacy vary form country to country and culture to culture. As our business grows internationally, we work hard to offer tools and services that empower users while recognizing the importance of respecting local conditions, traditons and legal requirements… We are carefully watching the experience of similarly situated, but longer tenured companies, and trying to learn from their experience.

-       (Senator Durbin’s Website features this letter and others, dated February 19, 2010)

Ebay and others also noted their decline to participate (in letters addressed to Sen. Durbin on his website) based upon its lack of impact during the Chinese cyber attacks on Google and others earlier this year.

For its part in the Hearing, the Global Network Initiative stated that a “shared, public, credible committment by all companies is essential to protecting the rights of freedom of expression and privacy.” Its delivered statement also read, “We invite all ICT companies to participate in the GNI and draw upon the guidance and insights provided by the GNI’s principles and guidelines in creating a responsible approach to business decisions.”

To ensure American companies are not complicit in violating human rights, Sen. Durbin announced at the hearing that he will introduce legislation to require Internet companies to protect human rights or possibly face civil and criminal consequences.

The complete audio file for Senator Durbin’s remarks and the hearing are available on his U.S. Senate website.

Secretary of State Clinton’s Remarks on Internet Freedom

By Ebele Okobi-Harris | Director, Yahoo! BHRP

Flickr Creative Commons | Marcn

Video: Secretary of State Clinton’s Remarks on Internet Freedom

Today, Secretary Clinton talked about the transformative power of technology and the Administration’s commitment to support Internet freedom.  She talked about the private sector, describing both the opportunity it has to create innovative technology that supports engagement, and about the responsibility we as companies have to respect human rights.  Secretary Clinton also specifically mentioned the GNI, noting:

“[GNI] goes beyond mere statements of principles and establishes mechanisms to promote real accountability and transparency.”

The full text of the speech is below, and video is above; thoughts?

***

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 Richard Lugar* 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.

Are China’s demands for Internet ’self-discipline’ spreading to the West?

By BHRP

Flickr Creative Commons | Future Atlas

By Rebecca MacKinnon | McClatchy Washington Bureau

Every year in China, Internet executives are officially rewarded for their “patriotism.”

Last November in Beijing, I sat in a large auditorium festooned with red banners and watched Robin Li, the CEO of Google’s main competitor, Baidu, parade onstage with executives from 19 other companies to receive the 2009 “China Internet Self-Discipline Award.”

The rhetoric was all about the “strength and confidence of the Chinese Internet” and “harmonious and healthy Internet development.” The reality is: China’s annual “self discipline” award is for private sector censorship.

In English-language news reports about Chinese censorship, we hear a lot about the “Great Firewall,” the system that Chinese network operators use to block objectionable Web sites that are operated from overseas — and to render Twitter, Facebook and YouTube inaccessible to Chinese Internet users. You also may have read about the “Internet police” who keep tabs on what people say and do online.

You may not have heard about “self-discipline” requirements for Chinese Internet companies, however. For some reason, they get a lot less Western media coverage, despite the fact that the government delegates a large part of the censorship and surveillance on the Chinese Internet to private companies.

Here’s how it works: In China, all Internet and mobile companies are held responsible for everything their users post, transmit, or search for. The Chinese call it “self-discipline.” In Anglo-American legal parlance, it’s “intermediary liability,” which in China is taken to its logical extreme with no public accountability or due process.

“Intermediary liability” means that the intermediary, a service that acts as “intermediate” conduit for the transmission or publication of information, is held liable or legally responsible for everything its users do.

In China, if companies fail to track and remove content or block conversations that regulators deem violate laws or regulations (a court or judge is almost never involved), they risk heavy fines at best and permanent shutdown at worst.

Companies’ liability covers a gamut of content, all the way from porn, to pirated intellectual property, to defamation of powerful people, to exposes of corruption leading to poisoned baby formula, to treatises on democratic reform. Dozens of Chinese companies were shut down last year, and many more were fined or warned. Unlike Google, they couldn’t just leave China.

To operate in China, Google’s local search engine, Google.cn, had to meet these “self-discipline” requirements. When users typed words or phrases for sensitive subjects into the box and clicked “search,”

Google.cn was responsible for making sure that the results didn’t include forbidden content.

It’s much easier to force intermediary communications and Internet companies such as Google to police themselves and their users than the alternatives: sending cops after everybody who attempts a risque or politically sensitive search, getting parents and teachers to do their jobs, or chasing down the origin of every offending link. Or re-considering the logic and purpose of your entire system.

Intermediary liability enables the Chinese authorities to minimize the number of people they need to put in jail in order to stay in power and to maximize their control over what the Chinese people know and don’t know.

In its bombshell announcement on Jan. 12, Google cited massive cyber attacks against the Gmail accounts of human rights activists as the most urgent reason for re-evaluating its presence in China. However, the Chinese government’s demands for ever-increasing levels of censorship contributed to a toxic and unsustainable business environment.

Ever since Google.cn launched in 2006, I’ve occasionally run tests to see how its compares to its homegrown competitor Baidu. Google.cn consistently censored less than Baidu did. This is how Google executives justified the ethics of their presence in China: Chinese users, they argued, were still better off with Google.cn than without it.

Things changed for Google in 2009, however. Regulators demanded that it ramp its self-censorship up to Baidu’s level. The Chinese state-run media attacked Google numerous times for failing to protect youth from smutty Web sites when — horror of horrors — those innocent kids happened to type in smutty words and phrases.

Meanwhile in the Western democratic world, the idea of strengthening intermediary liability is becoming increasingly popular in government agencies and parliaments. From France to Italy to the United Kingdom, the idea of holding carriers and services liable for what their customers do is seen as the cheapest and easiest solution to the law enforcement and social problems that have gotten tougher in the digital age — from child porn to copyright protection to cyber-bullying and libel.

I’m not equating Western democracy with Chinese authoritarianism — that would be ludicrous. However, I am concerned about the direction we’re taking without considering the full global context of free expression and censorship.

The Obama administration is negotiating a trade agreement with 34 other countries — the text of which it refuses to make public, citing national security concerns — that according to leaked reports would include increased liability for content hosting companies and service providers. The goal is to combat the global piracy of movies and music.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t fight crime or enforce the law. Of course we should, assuming that the laws reflect the consent of the governed. But let’s make sure that we don’t throw the baby of democracy and free speech out with the bathwater, as we do the necessary work of adjusting legal systems and economies to the Internet age.

Rebecca MacKinnon is a fellow with the Open Society Institute. From 1998-2001, she was CNN’s Beijing Bureau Chief. She’s writing a book about the future of freedom in the Internet age.

CIA Gains Technology to Monitor Social Media Buzz

By BHRP

Flickr Creative Commons | Graham

Online Media Daily | Laurie Sullivan | October 19, 2009

United States intelligence agencies will have a tool to read blog posts, Twitter tweets and chatter across the Internet. In-Q-Tel, the independent strategic investment arm of the U.S. government, has infused cash into Visible Technologies with plans to make the platform available to all 15 agencies it supports, including the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The decision represents a movement now underway by the United States government to become more familiar with emerging social media and Internet technology. In-Q-Tel also has made an investment in ThingMagic, a company deep in radio frequency identification (RFID) technology.

Donald Tighe, vice president of external affairs at In-Q-Tel, says the company made the investment to introduce Visible’s technology to government agencies, but declined to provide specifics. He says In-Q-Tel’s average investment varies between $500,000 and $3 million per company. Since being founded in 1999, In-Q-Tel has invested about 80% in work programs and 20% in partnering with other venture capitalists, Tighe says.

Explaining how U.S. intelligence agencies might use Visible’s platform, Tighe points to technology that companies install to automate analysis of customer service phone conversations. Sophisticated technology can determine when it’s appropriate to bring in a supervisor to resolve disputes based on the tone of the person talking and the words being used in the conversation to convey the message.

Visible Technologies’ platform helps brands to monitor the millions of posts and conversations on blogs, forums, YouTube, Twitter and other online forums. “There is a world full of countries with people who are in online chat rooms,” Tighe says. “They may talk about something important to national security issues, or maybe someone becomes concerned about what they hear in one of these rooms. These scenarios are an example of the type of monitoring technology Visible Technologies offers.”

The government represents a new market segment opportunity for tech companies, according to Blake Cahill, senior vice president of marketing at Visible Technologies. In this case, the CIA has become interested in a feature in one of the platforms the company offers.

Visible crawls about 500,000 Web sites daily to gather information from more than 1 million posts and conversations. In-Q-Tel’s investment is not random, but rather is related to a particular project that Cahill declined to discuss. It could alter Visible’s product roadmap, fast-forward it and open avenues to data that had been closed in the past, he admits.

Congratulations to Michael Posner, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

By BHRP

On October 19th, Secretary Clinton held a swearing-in ceremony for Michael Posner, who was sworn in as the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. Mike Posner has dedicated his life to fighting for a better world.  He spent over two decades (serving as its President and as Executive Director) at Human Rights First, the non-profit, nonpartisan international human rights organization whose mission is to protect people at risk around the world. He co-founded the Fair Labor Association, an organization that brings together corporations, local leaders, universities, and NGOs to promote corporate accountability for working conditions in the apparel industry. He also co-founded, along with Yahoo! and other stakeholders, the Global Network Initiative, which protects and advances freedom of expression in the Internet, communications and technology sector.

To learn more about Mike Posner’s work, please see here.

For the full text of Secretary Clinton’s remarks, please see here.

The BHRP joins Secretary Clinton in congratulating Mike Posner. His passion for and commitment to being a tireless advocate for the rights of the most vulnerable are an inspiration.

UN Rights Body Approves US-Egypt Free Speech Text

By BHRP

Flickr Creative Commons | Scazon

GENEVA (AP) — The U.N. Human Rights Council approved a U.S.-backed resolution Friday deploring attacks on religions while insisting that freedom of expression remains a basic right.

The inaugural resolution sponsored by the U.S. since it joined the council in June broke a long-running deadlock between Western and Islamic countries in the wake of the publication of cartoons depicting the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.

The resolution has no effect in law but provides Muslim countries with moral ammunition the next time they feel central tenets of Islam are being ridiculed by Western politicians or media through ”negative racial and religious stereotyping.”

American diplomats say the measure — co-sponsored by Egypt — is part of the Obama administration’s effort to reach out to Muslim countries.

”The exercise of the right to freedom of opinion and expression is one of the essential foundations of a democratic society,” the resolution states, urging countries to protect free speech by lifting legal restrictions, ensuring the safety of journalists, promoting literacy and preventing media concentration.

Rights groups cautiously welcomed the resolution as an improvement on earlier drafts, but said Egypt was in no position to lecture other countries about free speech as it has a poor record on the matter.

”Egypt’s cosponsorship of the resolution on freedom of expression is not the result of a real commitment to upholding freedom of expression,” said Jeremie Smith, Geneva director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies.

”If this were the case, freedom of expression would not be systematically violated on a daily basis in Egypt,” he said.

Others warned that the resolution appears to protect religions rather than believers and encourages journalists to abide by ill-defined codes of conduct.

”Unfortunately, the text talks about negative racial and religious stereotyping, something which most free expression and human rights organizations will oppose,” said Agnes Callamard, executive director of London-based group Article 19.

”The equality of all ideas and convictions before the law and the right to debate them freely is the keystone of democracy,” she said.

Although the resolution was passed unanimously, European and developing countries made it clear that they remain at odds on the issue of protecting religions from criticism.

Some Asian and African countries had called for stronger condemnation of articles, cartoons and videos they believe defames Islam.