Monday, February 5

Global Online Freedom Act of 2007

Some bills are good ideas, and a great many are colossally bad ideas. Every now and then you get a bill that does a good thing the wrong way, and that's what the Global Online Freedom Act of 2007 is. Introduced by Rep Christopher Smith (R-NJ) as a rework of the failed 2006 version, the bill is currently sitting in the House Energy and Commerce Committee as well as the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

So what's all this about then? Here's a short history on the why of this bill:
  • In 2005, Yahoo! provided information on a Chinese journalist who released an internal Communist Party message anonymously via the Internet, leading to his arrest and 10 year prison sentence.
  • On Dec 31st of the same year, Microsoft removed a blog of a Chinese journalist. Microsoft had earlier that year admitted to censoring words like "freedom" and "democracy" from its Internet portal.
  • Early last year, Google admitted that it censored search results for users in China.
What do all three events have in common? In all three cases, the companies stated they were simply complying with Chinese law, and had no choice.

In February 2006, the House held a hearing in with Representative Tom Lantos said "Your abhorrent activities in China are a disgrace. I simply do not understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night."

It should come as no surprise to anyone that I abhor the thought of China censoring the Internet, and it sickens me that American companies are profiting from helping China through pro-democracy activists in the Gulag. But about this bill? Does the ends justify the means? Is the cost worth the result? I don't see a problem with Congress regulating international commerce, that is, prohibiting U.S. corporations from performing certain acts on behalf of foreign governments. There are three basic elements of the bill that bother me:
  1. The price tag of $50 million per year. What the heck is going to cost fifty million dollars per year? How hard is it to tell which countries are censoring the Internet?
  2. The massive reporting requirements. Anyone who removes any content from any server on behalf of a foreign government is basically required to describe the circumstances behind the removal to the State Department. Perhaps the $50 million is to pay for federal workers to read all these reports, but who's going to pay for the guys who waste time writing them?
  3. Export license restrictions. The bill tasks the Secretary of State to perform a feasibility study on restricting export licenses for products that facilitate restrictions on Internet freedom. Almost all networking technology can censor in some fashion, whether operating system, firewall, or router. Could this snowball into a situation like we had in the 90's where all decent cryptology was prohibited from export, holding computer security back for years?
My mind isn't made up quite yet. I offer this post primarily as food for thought. Chew deeply, unless you're in China, in which case you won't be able to find this blog that talks about democracy and freedom.

Ironically, China denies censoring the Internet at all. Not that anyone believes them. Maybe the Chinese do. After all, if you search Google News from within China, I bet you won't find any evidence of censorship.

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