Clinton Tips Hat to Google in China Web Spat

(Jan. 21) – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton waded into the row between Google and China during a speech on Web freedom Thursday, declaring that U.S. companies should "take a principled stand" against repressive regimes that block their citizens' access to the Internet and cell phone networks.

"We are urging U.S. media companies to take a proactive role in challenging foreign governments' demands for censorship and surveillance," she told an audience at Washington's Newseum. "The private sector has a shared responsibility to help safeguard freedom of expression. And when their business dealings threaten to undermine those freedoms, they need to consider what's right – not what's simply a quick profit."

Those words were sure to bring a smile to Google executives, who are involved in a standoff with the Chinese state. Last week, the search giant announced that it was "no longer willing to continue censoring" its Chinese site and might pull out of the country after government-backed hackers tried to tap the e-mail accounts of human rights activists.

While Clinton didn't specifically finger the Chinese state as being behind the hack, she pressured the country to conduct a thorough and open investigation into the recent intrusion. "Countries or individuals that engage in cyberattacks should face consequences and international condemnation," she said. "In an interconnected world, an attack on one nation's networks can be an attack on all."

The Chinese government has yet to respond to Clinton's request. But earlier Thursday, it downplayed the impact of Google's boycott threat on Sino-U.S. relations. "If Google has any problems in its business in China, these must be resolved according to Chinese law, and the Chinese government is willing to help resolve these problems," said Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei. "The Google case should not be linked with relations between the two governments and countries; otherwise, it's an overinterpretation."

Clinton's comments on the search company, though, were only a few lines in a 30-minute speech that sought to draw attention to the growing problem of state censorship. Echoing former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's 1946 "iron curtain" address, she warned that "a new information curtain is descending across much of the world."

She noted that China and Saudi Arabia, for example, had "co-opted the Internet as a tool to target and silence people of faith," while in Vietnam "access to popular social networking sites has suddenly disappeared. And last Friday in Egypt, 30 bloggers and activists were detained."

Clinton announced that the Obama administration would make breaking down these "virtual walls" a central plank of its foreign policy. "Countries that restrict free access to information or violate the basic rights of Internet users risk walling themselves off from the progress of the next century," she said, comparing the freedom to connect to the freedom of assembly.

To help boost global Web access, she revealed that the State Department would launch a $15 million program aimed at expanding "civic participation" in the Middle East and North Africa. Groups creating technologies that allow Web users to override Web censorship would also receive funding.

But while freedom-of-speech campaigners have praised the sentiments expressed in Clinton's speech, some point out that these words alone change little on the ground in, say, China. "This is an important line in the sand, as it shows that the administration understands the importance of new technology and how regimes are now using these as tools of repression," said Brett Solomon, executive director of AccessNow.org, which has helped Iranian dissidents send video clips of protests to the outside world. "But the speech missed a key point: that some U.S. companies are actually partners in foreign government censorship and surveillance."

If the State Department truly wants to aid international freedom of speech, it needs to get tough on these companies – such as Microsoft, which not only censors results on its Chinese search engine, but has also reiterated its intention to continue doing so since Google's announcement. "We want to see more than encouragement for companies to behave well," said Solomon. "We want to see legislation."