US Department of State efforts to combat Internet censorship in China and other countries have fallen short and funding for the drive should be shifted to another US agency, a US Senate committee report says.
The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee report sharply criticizes the State Department for being slow in spending money allocated by the US Congress for Internet Censorship Circumvention Technology (ICCT).
The report, a copy of which was obtained by reporters, recommends that the funding be given instead to the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which oversees the Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and other US radio and TV networks.
The report is to be released tomorrow, the same day US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is scheduled to deliver remarks on Internet freedom at The George Washington University in Washington.
Clinton also delivered a major Internet freedom speech in January last year, but the Senate committee report said there had been “scant follow-up” in the next 12 months.
Congress has given the State Department US$50 million for Internet freedom programs since -fiscal 2008, the report said, but US$30 million remains unspent and little has gone to ICCT.
“Such technology should be given a much higher priority by the US government,” it said. “US government support for ICCT development is vital, given the weak private sector market interest in funding such technologies.”
The report suggested the delays in allocating funding were partly because some of the most sophisticated ICCT software — DIT and UltraReach — was developed by two US companies founded by members of the Falun Gong, which is banned in China, to allow followers to break through the “Great Firewall.”
The report said DIT and -UltraReach have been used to circumvent Internet censorship in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Myanmar and Vietnam — “countries which have looked to China for lessons in Internet control or to whom China has directly provided technologies to counter such products.”
It said the delays in allocating funding have “strengthened the hands of those governments, including China’s, who seek to restrict their citizens’ access to information.”
“The State Department is poorly placed to handle this issue due to its reliance on daily bilateral interaction with these very same governments, particularly China,” the report said.
It said BBG stations, which also include Radio Marti, which targets Cuba, and the Middle East Broadcasting Network “must all work on a daily basis to ensure their radio, Internet and television programs are being received by audiences in certain countries that try to block, jam or outlaw these efforts.”
“As such, the BBG, and not the State Department, would appear to be the logical lead agency in the federal government to focus current and future ICCT funding,” the report said.
The report also criticized what it called the “inept handling of an untested technology” — ICCT software called Haystack created by the San Francisco-based Censorship Research Center to assist Iranian democracy activists.
“The Haystack team had not sufficiently tested its software nor allowed it to be submitted for -independent cryptological analysis before it released a beta version to unsuspecting Iranians,” the report said.
“In September 2010, just after the beta version was released, an independent team was able to crack the code in six hours and also determined that the Iranian government would be able to manipulate the software to identify any users,” it said. “Once these weaknesses were made public, the Haystack project quickly collapsed.”
The report, which also called for the US government to increase its public diplomacy efforts to counter China’s “vigorous” moves on the outreach front, was prepared at the request of US Senator Richard Lugar, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Restaurant chain Din Tai Fung (鼎泰豐) today announced it is to close 14 stores in northern China, completely exiting the market by the end of October. Beijing Hengtaifeng Catering Co (北京恆泰豐餐飲), which operates Din Tai Fung restaurants in northern China, said its 20-year operating license expires this year. As the board was unable to reach a consensus on continuing operations, its 14 restaurants in the region are to close by Oct. 31, it said. The company apologized for the inconvenience and disappointment the news would cause among its customers, and said it would provide compensation for its workers. “We continue to be optimistic about
EXPANDING: The European Commission has contributed 5 billion euros in state aid to TSMC’s 12-inch wafer fab in Dresden, Germany, which broke ground on Tuesday Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Saturday said that it has received a total of NT$62.5 billion (US$1.95 billion) in subsidies from China and Japan since 2022. In the first half of this year, TSMC received NT$7.96 billion in subsidies from China and Japan after receiving about NT$47.55 billion last year and obtaining NT$7.05 billion in 2022, financial data compiled by the world’s largest contract chipmaker showed. The company, which makes about 90 percent of the world’s high-end semiconductors, said the subsidies were used to finance its investments in Kumamoto, Japan, and Nanjing, China. TSMC owns a 12-inch wafer fab in
STRATEGIC SHIFT: Diversifying away from the volatile flat-panel industry, AUO aims to boost sales contribution from non-panel business to half of total revenue by 2027 AUO Corp (友達) yesterday said it has agreed to sell its idled manufacturing facility and land in Tainan to Micron Technology Inc for NT$7.4 billion (US$231.8 million) as the company shifts strategy to reduce the impact from the boom-and-bust flat-panel display industry. The company expects to book NT$4.17 billion in disposal gains from the sale, it said in a Taiwan Stock Exchange filing. The Tainan factory produced color filters used in monitors, notebook computers and flat-panel TVs before being shut down last year, as AUO sought to optimize its asset utilization. The company has been striving to diversify and broaden its business
Micron Technology Inc has reportedly set its sights on two facilities owned by flat-panel maker AUO Corp (友達) after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) recently clinched a deal to buy a facility and equipment from Innolux Corp (群創), another major flat-panel maker. Micron, the world’s third-largest memorychip maker, is expected to purchase two AUO plants in Tainan to expand its advanced chip packaging and testing services and high-bandwidth memory production, local media reports said. The two plants were shut down in August last year and AUO is seeking to dispose of the facilities, the reports said. They are expected to cost Micron