Tangled Web

TANGLED WEB
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Steven Cook & Michael Levi, Council on Foreign Relations]
The Internet has been hailed as a technology that empowers average citizens to make their voices heard. Its dispersed nature, most assume, makes it difficult to control. Yet countries generally route Internet traffic through a small number of checkpoints, allowing governments to efficiently monitor and control what happens on the Web. Many have placed responsibility for promoting Internet freedom squarely on the companies that provide Internet services. When corporate leverage is limited, governments must step in. U.S. efforts have, so far, been anemic. The Global Internet Freedom Task Force, the highest profile effort launched so far, has been little more than a talk shop. Congress has attempted to step in, but its foreign-policy tools are blunt, and leave too little room for creative diplomacy. Real action has to come from the top. Washington should not go so far as to bar U.S. companies from operating in states like Turkey, but it should make clear that its diplomats will not actively facilitate IT investment from U.S. firms in countries that are repressing bloggers and restricting freedom of speech on the Web. Making investment in information technology dependent on good Web citizenship has the potential to encourage meaningful change in emerging economies. The U.S. should also exert global leadership. A first step would be to sponsor a United Nations Declaration of Internet and Electronic Freedom. To be sure, the U.N.'s enforcement mechanisms are hopelessly weak, but the declaration can serve as a standard against which countries can be judged. Using universal standards set forth in the new U.N. Declaration, the State Department should include a status report on Internet freedom in its annual report on human rights around the world. The transformative nature of the Internet is well-documented, but it is not impervious to authoritarian leaders intent on limiting debate. Global Internet companies like Google, Yahoo! and others should not be left alone at the messy junction of ethics, business, corporate citizenship, and technology. Washington must lead the way both in establishing global standards for Internet freedom and implementing a policy to encourage compliance with those principles.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117461374329246343.html?mod=todays_us_opinion
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