By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on U.S. technology companies to resist censorship of the Internet and said perpetrators of cyber attacks such as those who targeted Google Inc. must face consequences. “Censorship should not be in any way accepted by any company from anywhere,” Clinton said yesterday in a speech at the Newseum , a media history center in Washington. “American companies need to make a principled stand. This needs to be part of our national brand. I’m confident that consumers worldwide will reward companies that follow those principles.” Clinton’s long-planned address on Internet freedom laid out the Obama administration’s view of an uncensored global Internet where everyone has access to the same information, and governments and corporations don’t block knowledge or steal intellectual property. Mountain View, California-based Google , which runs the most popular Internet search site, said Jan. 12 it would stop censoring its search results as required by the government in China and might end operations there, following what it described as an infiltration of its technology and the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. The U.S. government is looking “to Chinese authorities to conduct a thorough investigation of the cyber intrusions that led Google to make this announcement” Clinton said. The Chinese government has denied involvement in the cyber attacks. Foreign Ministry China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t have any immediate reaction to the speech today. In a statement released yesterday before Clinton’s address, Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei was cited by the official Xinhua News Agency as saying the Google case shouldn’t affect relations between China and the U.S. and any attempt to draw such conclusions would be “over-interpreting” the issue. Google said its investigation found hackers from inside China also targeted the intellectual property of dozens of other U.S. companies. Those firms haven’t publicized the alleged attacks, a silence that analysts have attributed to a fear of worrying investors and depressing their stock prices. “Countries or individuals that engage in cyber attacks should face consequences and international condemnation,” Clinton said. “In an interconnected world, an attack on one nation’s network can be an attack on all.” While the U.S. will promote and defend freedom and security online, private companies also have a corporate social responsibility to safeguard the free flow of information, she said. Economic Growth Constraints on free expression hurt economic growth and revenue, she said. For companies “it comes down to the trust between firms and their customers,” Clinton said. “Consumers everywhere want to have confidence that the Internet companies they rely on will provide comprehensive search results and act as responsible stewards of their information.” Clinton compared firewalls that governments in China, Uzbekistan, Tunisia and elsewhere have erected to keep out information to the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain that divided the West and the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence during the Cold War. “Virtual walls are cropping up in place of visible walls,” she said. “With the spread of these restrictive practices, a new information curtain is descending across much of the world.” Freedom of speech “is no longer defined solely by whether citizens can go into the town square and criticize their government without fear of retribution,” Clinton said. “Blogs, e-mail, and text messages have opened up new forums for exchanging ideas — and created new targets for censorship.” Nearly one-third of the world is subject to Internet censorship, according to Alec Ross , Clinton’s technology adviser. Equal Access “We stand for a single Internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas. And we recognize that the world’s information infrastructure will become what we and others make of it,” Clinton said. Google issued a statement praising Clinton’s remarks. The company said it believes in “unfettered access” to information and will continue “work with governments, human rights organizations and bloggers to promote free expression.” Former Google employees have taken jobs in the Obama administration and Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt , who traveled to Iraq last year on a State Department trip promoting U.S. technology companies, had dinner with Clinton and industry executives this month. The State Department says Google didn’t seek its advice, although the company did brief the administration before announcing the attacks. ‘Balkanize’ the Web Rebecca MacKinnon , an expert on global Internet controls and a fellow with the New York-based Open Society Institute, said one challenge is to “help companies see that it is in their long-term interest not to do things that destroy and Balkanize the Internet,” like acceding to government censorship in important markets such as China. In China, the world’s biggest Internet market, the number of Chinese Web users will grow to 840 million, or 61 percent of the population, by 2013, according to EMarketer Inc. in New York. That is up from 396 million last year. The State Department has $5 million now available in funds appropriated by Congress for organizations that promote technologies to get around firewalls, for training Internet journalists and other online democracy promotion efforts, Michael Posner , assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, said in an interview. The department has already allocated $15 million to similar organizations and expects $10 million more from Congress in the coming year, he said. To contact the reporter on this story: Indira Lakshmanan in Washington at ilakshmanan@bloomberg.net
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Clinton Asks China to Probe Cyber-Attack, Says Censorship Should Be Fought
