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US comes to the rescue as China goes tough on Internet

The US has launched the formation of a taskforce to push for “maximum access to information over the Internet” and to monitor challenges to freedom.

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New York: Ahead of a US Congressional hearing this week on China’s imposition of strict laws on Internet use, the state department launched the formation of a taskforce to push for “maximum access to information over the Internet” and to monitor challenges to freedom by repressive regimes around the world.

The taskforce will look to ensure that growing US concerns “over repressive governments co-opting the Internet” are being raised at all levels with governments and international organisations.

“I will say that we have very serious concerns about the protection of privacy and data throughout the Internet globally and, in particular, some of the recent cases raised in China,” Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs Josette Shiner said at the launch.

“We will continue to press our concerns with the Government of China. We seek to work with the European Union and other governments also on our joint challenges on these fronts and have noted that the EU Minister of Information is now raising some of these concerns today in China,” she added.

US Internet giant Yahoo has been pilloried over accusations it gave information to the Chinese government last year that led to the jailing of a journalist for distributing a memo about the Tiananmen Square massacre.

In a press statement that did not refer to China, Yahoo on Tuesday said it was committed to an unrestricted Internet. “If we are required to restrict search results, we will strive to achieve maximum transparency to the user,” it said in a statement.

“Private industry alone cannot effectively influence foreign government policies on issues like the free exchange of ideas, maximum access to information and human rights reform, and we believe continued government-to-government dialogue is vital to achieve progress on these complex political issues,” added the Yahoo statement.

The new taskforce is an answer to Yahoo’s prayers. It will work with companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, Cisco and Google who have been criticised by Congressmen for putting profits before American principles of free speech and helping China censor the Internet.

“We will continue to work with our companies and we applaud their efforts to take voluntary steps that would help ensure privacy of data and protection of data on the Internet. We think this is a serious area of concern and one that we plan to engage in robustly,” said Shiner, who was the managing editor at The Washington Times, before being tapped by President George Bush.

Shiner, who will oversee the task force with Undersecretary for Democracy and Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky, observed that the Internet was a “force multiplier of freedom.”

“From a small band of university researchers sharing documents to people — over a billion people connecting in real-time around the globe, the Internet has proven to be a force multiplier for freedom and a censor’s nightmare as efforts by repressive regimes have failed to fully restrict access to the Internet,” said Shiner.

“Nevertheless, there are severe challenges to this openness. It’s a top priority for the US Government to do all we can to ensure maximum access to information over the Internet and to ensure minimum success by censors to information or silence legitimate debate in this global town hall.”
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