Over on the Global Voices list, two things worth of note.
They are proposing legislation which would make repressing information on the Internet more difficult, as follows:
- No US company would be allowed to host e-mail servers in a 'repressive' country (as defined by a State DSepartment index of freedom of speech); this would require that legal moves to obtain email content or identity would have to be done in US courts.
- No search engine hosted in the US would be allowed to block a list of key words like "freedom" and "democracy."
- No US Internet company would be allowed to host servers originating content in a repressive country.
- No US company would be allowed to sell filtering technology without holes for the above list of protected words.
- Exports of Internet surveillance technology would require a Department of Commerce approval (much like weapons).
- Training foreign nationals in techniques to censor or surveil on the Internet would require Department of Commerce approval as above.
Personally, I can think of some highway-sized holes in this, and that the likelihood of something like this passing Congress - and the standing up in the courts - is vanishing small. But these aren't bad principles at all, and I'd love to see some way of pushing toward them.
Microsoft and Yahoo are very bad corporate citizens for what they have done, as is Cisco (and I'm sure a host of other Internet names). As I make purchasing (and surfing) decisions in the future, I'll be keeping that in mind.
I'll make a suggestion; local governments (Los Angeles, San Francisco and Berkeley come to mind here in California) are notorious for wanting to pass symbolic foreign-policy measures. Here's one that could have some real impact: Don't buy products from vendors who do bad things for freedom. Any local activists want to take this on?
Next, there's also a discussion in which pro-free expression activists are uncomfortable accepting aid from Spirit of America, which is perceived as problematic because of its ties to the Bush Administration and some unfortunate conflicts of interest by the founder.
I'm generally supportive of SoA and the Bush Administration, so that kind of falls on deaf ears here, but I'll suggest a broader and simpler rule when deciding on projects and allies:
"When we're done, will more people's voices be freely heard?"
Kind of a one-step test.
This one just seems kind of, well, silly:
"No US company would be allowed to sell filtering technology without holes for the above list of protected words."
What's the point of this? Some comittee somewhere will come up with a list of words, which are so "good" that no search company may block them? Sure "freedom" and "democracy" will never be blocked, and that's a good thing; but what if the filter is set up to block words and search results for "protest" or "representation"? There's no way you can create a comprehensive list of such words, and a partial list will be inadequate.
On a more pragmatic note, if you make that list of "good" words publicly available, it's laughably easy to work around. A Chinese or Korean firm would simply throw together a filtering technology which blocked that exact list, daisy-chain it in front of any other searches/filters purchased from American companies, and presto! You're back to sqauare one, with the net effect being the creation of a new software product for some shop over in China.
You all see the WaPo blogger strike on Sensing, Blackfive and our charity blogger Fuzzilicious (she did Project Valour IT)?
http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/005110.html
Great idea. It follows Robin's meme about the woman's liberation movement here.