Sec Clinton Urges Countries Not to Stifle Online Voices

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other international leaders urged countries and private businesses to fight increasing efforts to restrict access to the Internet by repressive governments and even some democratic ones.

Opening a two-day conference on digital freedom at The Hague sponsored by Google and the Dutch government, Sec Clinton warned that restrictions on the Internet threatened not only basic freedoms and human rights, but also international commerce and the free flow of information that increasingly makes it possible. “When ideas are blocked, information deleted, conversations stifled and people constrained in their choices, the Internet is diminished for all of us,” Sec Clinton said. She added: “There isn’t an economic Internet and a social Internet and a political Internet. There’s just the Internet.” “More and more countries are trying now to regulate and control the Internet,” Uri Rosenthal, the foreign minister of the Netherlands, said after meeting separately with Sec Clinton. “And it is unacceptable that Web sites are blocked, Internet queues are filtered, content manipulated and bloggers are attacked and imprisoned.”