5 posts and columns on dissidents

Will Secretary of State Clinton's "Internet Freedom Agenda" Finally Get Traction?

in News on February 16, 2011 at 7:09 am PT

Yesterday, in a major policy speech in Washington, D.C., Secretary of State Hillary Clinton jumped on the Internet bandwagon again, unveiling a $25 million government investment for entrepreneurs to allow dissidents to thwart “thugs, hackers and censors.” Since that’s about the amount a third-string social photo-sharing site gets while walking down University Avenue in Palo Alto, Calif., from venture capitalists with bags of money to spend, let me just say the money is, well, underwhelming. Clinton’s speech, thankfully, was much better.

In Vietnam, State "Friends" You

in News on October 5, 2010 at 12:00 am PT

The Internet poses a challenge for authoritarian regimes around the world. But Vietnam’s leaders think they have figured out a new way to tame it–by launching their own, Communist-friendly answer to popular social-networking sites like Facebook.

It Was a Bright, Cold Day in Beijing, and the Clocks Were Striking Thirteen…

in News on March 25, 2010 at 2:26 pm PT

Google co-founder Sergey Brin says China’s efforts to censor speech and suppress dissidents smacks of the “totalitarianism” of his youth in the Soviet Union. Here’s a prime example of that: A Beijing directive describing how Google’s defiance of China’s censorship laws is to be portrayed in the country’s media.

Good Effort, Moral Pygmies…

in News on October 28, 2008 at 8:09 am PT

Yahoo’s public shaming before the House Foreign Affairs Committee last November apparently had quite an effect on Internet companies cooperating with Chinese government censorship and demands for information on dissidents. Less than a year after that brutal Capitol Hill humiliation, during which Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D., Calif.) lambasted Yahoo’s leadership as moral “pygmies,” Yahoo, along with Microsoft and Google, is introducing a code of conduct that will govern their business practices in repressive countries.