Bill Aims to Curb Tech Firms' Censorship Exports

Pressure mounted Dec 8 on US and Western companies that sell censorship and surveillance technology to repressive regimes, with a congressman introducing a bill that would restrict such exports. Separately, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on corporations to do "human-rights due diligence" before making sales in new markets.

"In recent months we've seen cases where companies' products and services were used as tools of oppression," Sec Clinton told a conference on Internet freedom in the Netherlands. In Washington, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) introduced the latest version of a bill—the "Global Online Freedom Act"—that would prohibit the export of certain telecommunications technology that can be used for online censorship or surveillance to countries that the State Department determined was restricting use of the Internet. "Current export control laws do not take into account the human rights impact of these exports and therefore do not create any incentive for U.S. companies to evaluate their role in assisting repressive regimes," Rep Smith said during a hearing on the proposed bill.