The US is about to join the fight against censorship of the World Wide Web by introducing legislation that would ban US companies such as Yahoo from revealing individuals' personal details to repressive governments.
The news that members of the US Congress are to introduce the measures comes as a campaign for freedom of speech on the Internet, run by Amnesty International, prepares to launch this week in the US. More than 24,000 people have already signed the Irrepressible.info online petition.
Representative Chris Smith has drafted the Global Online Freedom Act in a bid to stop major Internet companies cooperating with regimes which restrict free expression and use personal information to track down and punish democracy activists.
"China has forced US companies operating in China, specifically Yahoo, to hand over personally identifiable user information used to convict and imprison democratic activists on trumped-up charges," said Smith, a Republican.
Smith believes that the Internet has become "a cyber sledgehammer of repression for the government of China" and that the abuse is repeated around the world.
"Unfortunately, authoritarian regimes including Belarus, Cuba, Ethiopia, Iran, Laos, North Korea, Tunisia and Vietnam as well as China all block, restrict and monitor the free flow of information on the Internet," Smith said.
"Web sites that provide uncensored news and information, such as the Web sites of the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, are routinely blocked in such countries," he said.
If passed by Congress and the Senate, the bill would prohibit US companies from revealing the identity of a user to officials of an Internet-restricting country except for legitimate law enforcement.
Smith has cited the example of information from Yahoo being used to convict Shi Tao (師濤), a Chinese journalist sentenced to 10 years hard labor for sending an e-mail about the anniversary of the democracy protests in Tiananmen Square.
The bill would also make it illegal for US businesses to host an e-mail server or search engine within an Internet-restricting country, censor US government Web sites or alter products to yield different results when terms such as "human rights" are searched.
It cleared its first major hurdle in Congress when it was passed unanimously by a cross-party foreign policy panel that oversees human rights.
During a hearing earlier this year, executives from Cisco Systems, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo were told by Republican Representative Tom Lantos: "Your abhorrent activities in China are a disgrace. I cannot understand how your corporate executives sleep at night."
There are fears that the Silicon Valley giants will lobby against the bill. But Mila Rosenthal, director of the business and human rights programme at Amnesty International USA, said: "We think the companies should be welcoming this. They say `There's nothing we can do -- if we're in China, we have to do what the Chinese government tells us to do.' This act would give them the legal strength to say, `We can't hand over information which will see someone thrown in jail for 10 years because it's out of our hands.'"
Rosenthal is expecting a huge response to the launch of Irrepressible.info in the US, where thousands of bloggers have expressed their anger at attempts to curb the free Web.
"This feels like a time to draw a line in the sand and say these are absolute values and international human rights that are worth standing up for," she said.
Meanwhile, China intends to launch a fresh crackdown on Internet blogs and search engines. according to Cai Wu (
"As more and more illegal and unhealthy information spreads through the blog and search engine, we will take effective measures to put the BBS [bulletin board system], blog and search engine under control," Cai said recently.
Earlier this month the European Parliament adopted a resolution condemning government-imposed restrictions on Internet content which conflict with freedom of expression.
GEARING UP: An invasion would be difficult and would strain China’s forces, but it has conducted large-scale training supporting an invasion scenario, the report said China increased its military pressure on Taiwan last year and took other steps in preparation for a potential invasion, an annual report published by the US Department of Defense on Wednesday showed. “Throughout 2023, Beijing continued to erode longstanding norms in and around Taiwan by employing a range of pressure tactics against Taiwan,” the report said, which is titled “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China (PRC) 2024.” The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) “is preparing for a contingency to unify Taiwan with the PRC by force, if perceived as necessary by Beijing, while simultaneously deterring, delaying or denying
PEACEFUL RESOLUTION: A statement issued following a meeting between Australia and Britain reiterated support for Taiwan and opposition to change in the Taiwan Strait Canada should support the peaceful resolution of Taiwan’s destiny according to the will of Taiwanese, Canadian lawmakers said in a resolution marking the second anniversary of that nation’s Indo-Pacific strategy on Monday. The Canadian House of Commons committee on Canada-Chinese relations made the comment as part of 34 recommendations for the new edition of the strategy, adding that Ottawa should back Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations. Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, first published in October 2022, emphasized that the region’s security, trade, human rights, democracy and environmental protection would play a crucial role in shaping Canada’s future. The strategy called for Canada to deepen
TECH CONFERENCE: Input from industry and academic experts can contribute to future policymaking across government agencies, President William Lai said Multifunctional service robots could be the next new area in which Taiwan could play a significant role, given its strengths in chip manufacturing and software design, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman and chief executive C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said yesterday. “In the past two months, our customers shared a lot of their future plans with me. Artificial intelligence [AI] and AI applications were the most talked about subjects in our conversation,” Wei said in a speech at the National Science and Technology Conference in Taipei. TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, counts Nvidia Corp, Advanced Micro Devices Inc, Apple Inc and
QUICK LOOK: The amendments include stricter recall requirements and Constitutional Court procedures, as well as a big increase in local governments’ budgets Portions of controversial amendments to tighten requirements for recalling officials and Constitutional Court procedures were passed by opposition lawmakers yesterday following clashes between lawmakers in the morning, as Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) members tried to block Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators from entering the chamber. Parts of the Public Officials Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) and Constitutional Court Procedure Act (憲法訴訟法) passed the third reading yesterday. The legislature was still voting on various amendments to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) as of press time last night, after the session was extended to midnight. Amendments to Article 4
RSS