Internet Press Freedom Conference

The Global Internet Freedom Act: An Effective Tool for Democracy?

by Aimee Saginaw

New York City, June 30, 2003 -- Proclaiming the “beginning of a 1,000-mile mile journey with a single step,” U.S. Representative Christopher Cox (R-CA) discussed the proposed Global Internet Freedom Act, and its role in promoting democracy, before attendees of the World Press Freedom Committee’s Press Freedom on the Internet Conference.

The bill, co-sponsored by Cox and fellow Congressman Tom Lantos (D-CA), aims to counter the Internet jamming and monitoring practiced by foreign regimes that repress democratic movements by controlling the dissemination of online news and information.  It would accomplish this by allocating $50 million annually over the next two years to establish an Office of Global Internet Freedom, which would develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to combat government-sponsored Internet-related jamming and persecution.

“The Internet is probably the greatest threat to tyranny of all time,” Cox declared, noting that, with nearly 10% of the world’s population now online, the Internet can become a powerful weapon for democracy, “so that other weapons might not be needed.”

Currently, however, the Internet is employed in certain countries to help authoritarian governments monitor the activities of their citizens. Specifically, the bill notes that such governments block Internet access through the use of firewalls and filters, monitoring e-mail messages and message boards, and prosecuting citizens for publishing anti-government critiques online.

Cox cited various examples of government interference with the Internet, including China’s imprisonment of a online publisher of missing person photos and Russia’s imposition of an Internet tax which funds a government agency that monitors Internet users.

“For a dictator,” Cox stated, “the top priority is keeping ideas about freedom and democracy away from impressionable young minds.” 

The bill cites both the First Amendment and Article 19 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees all individuals the right to “seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” It also notes that the United States has previously deployed technology to overcome the jamming of U.S.-sponsored broadcasts in foreign nations, and that less ambitious efforts to counter Internet jamming in China alone have already resulted in 100,000 electronic hits per day to Voice of America and Radio Free Asia websites.
   
Cox also responded to several questions from WPFC panelists regarding the bill. Jane Kirtley, the Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law at the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication, voiced concern that the bill would be viewed as an attempt to impose U.S. cultural hegemony on the world, and would seem hypocritical in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding a law requiring US libraries in receipt of federal funds to install filters to block obscene or pornographic images.

In response, Cox noted that the bill was intended to allow people to speak “in their native language, about whatever they wished to talk about,” and that the US was not providing content, but simply providing technology to enable people to access content. With respect to Kirtley’s second concern, Cox distinguished “the prohibitions against minors accessing adult material from what’s going on abroad, where adults are prohibited from accessing political information.”

Paige Anderson, Staff Counsel for Global Internet Policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, noted that many access problems stem not from government-sponsored jamming efforts, but from a nation’s telecommunications infrastructure or laws that impose licensing restrictions or limit who can operate Internet service providers (ISP). Describing his bill as the “software solution,” Cox agreed that it might be appropriate for the United States to partner with other nations and focus on such “hardware problems” as well. 

Finally, Kevin Goldberg, a communications attorney with the law firm Cohn & Marks and the WPFC’s general counsel, asked about the role of private enterprise in unjamming the Internet. Cox responded that the government was not attempting to compete with private companies but was simply acting to insure that it had committed some resources to this area. Moreover, Cox said he hoped the bill would encourage the private sector to develop anti-jamming technologies, noting that in some cases, foreign nations have been able to jam the Internet with the help of US technologies.

In response to an inquiry from the floor regarding the bill’s chances, Cox was optimistic, noting that the bipartisan initiative, which is subsumed within a State Department Authorization Bill, would likely pass in the House this July, and should pass in the Senate this term.