Hillary Clinton Calls For Internet Freedom
Stock Market News Feb 16, 2011
In her speech Clinton cited various policies of China, Vietnam, Syria and Cuba as examples of partially repressive to freedom on the virtual world. She denounced the web restrictions put by Iran recently over the wave of unrest following all the countries in the Middle East.
The United States Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton called the freedom on Internet on Tuesday as a fundamental right and equal to freedom of speech. She said that word wide web is the 21st century city where the governments from all around the world need to find an equilibrium to monitor and preserve transparency and free expression.
The title of the speech given by Clinton at the George Washington University was “Internet Rights and Wrongs: Choices & Challenges in a Networked World”. She called the freedom on the internet as the freedom to connect and as a way to associate online.
She assured that United States supports freedom of internet universally and pushes other countries to make freedom on the internet mandatory.
In her speech Clinton cited various policies of China, Vietnam, Syria and Cuba as examples of partially repressive to freedom on the virtual world. She denounced the web restrictions put by Iran recently over the wave of unrest following all the countries in the Middle East.
She warned that the countries that erect various barriers to bar internet freedom will eventually find themselves boxed in because of all the pressure. Among other things she also said that these countries face dictator’s dilemma and will eventually pay the price of curbing the powers f people. She gave examples of open societies giving lasing progress to the country. These ideals are very important for the county. Clinton also cited other countries such as Vietnam and Myanmar who restrict access to internet for their citizens to which more than $2 billion people are currently connected around the world.
To aid internet freedom, United States has invested more than $20 million to find ways to protect internet repression all around the world. This $20 million will be followed with another $25 million this year. Various laws are being put into place to break down all filters around the internet. There were reports from the republicans about the curbing of Internet freedom in China at which Clinton and her aides have failed to bar. According to Senator Richard Lugar from Indiana, China is selling its internet censorship technologies to other countries which share the same kind of controlling ideals as China.
Vietnam Human Rights Network |