Lawmakers Prepare to Tackle Internet Filtering in China

Organizers of this week’s briefing, chaired by Rep. Ryan (D-O.), invited the State Dept., Cisco, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to brief the caucus. Human rights and Internet experts from Reporters Without Borders, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Harvard U.’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Toronto U. are also set to attend. A spokeswoman for caucus co-chmn. Lantos (D-Cal.) told us Fri. no industry officials have RSVPed or declined. A few have offered written statements, she said, adding that appearing in person would be more effective. Executives from Internet firms that have done business with China could “take advantage of this opportunity to help straighten this out and not make it worse,” she said.

The formal hearing, announced by Subcommittee Chmn. Smith (R-N.J.) (WID Jan 17 p1), has a similar wish list of witnesses. Invitations have been sent to Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cisco. At our deadline, only Cisco had confirmed its participation. State Dept. Senior Adviser- China James Keefe and Deputy Asst. Secy.-International Communications & Information Policy David Gross are scheduled to testify, alongside Reporters Without Borders’ Julien Pain, and Harry Wu from the LaoGai Research Foundation. Besides spearheading the hearing, Smith is “researching and developing legislation” a spokesman told us.

In the 108th Congress, elements of the Global Internet Freedom Act (HR-48) were written out of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act (HR-1950), passed by the House in July 2003. Last May, Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Cal.) reintroduced the bill as HR-2216, weeks before being named SEC chmn. The measure would authorize $50 million in fiscal 2006 and 2007 to develop and implement a global Internet freedom policy. The bill also would establish an office within the FCC International Bcstg Bureau to counter Internet jamming by foreign govts.

Human rights crusaders have complained about suppression of expression and Internet censorship in China for years. Yahoo recently faced criticism for giving the e-mail address of Chinese journalist Shi Tao to his govt. Shi landed in prison for 10 years for leaking “state secrets” by e-mailing his notes from a govt. document to U.S.-based democracy groups (WID Sept 8 p8). Under pressure from Chinese authorities, other online firms have shut journalists’ blogs and censored their own search engines and blogging tools. Most recently, Google unveiled a controversial Chinese search engine that censors search results.

Cisco said it won’t participate in Wed.’s briefing, but will appear at the subcommittee hearing. The company has been and will remain a key driver of Internet growth in China and doesn’t take part in any govt. censorship, it said. The Cisco router functionality in question is the same used by libraries and corporate network administrators use to block sites they don’t want clients or employees to access, a spokesman said. The device can be used for many purposes and Cisco hasn’t specially designed or marketed products for any govt. or regional market or to censor Internet content, he said.

Reporters Without Borders last week accused Google of hypocrisy in its China entry. “The launch of Google.cn is a black day for freedom of expression in China,” the group said: “The firm defends the rights of U.S. Internet users before the U.S. government but fails to defend its Chinese users against theirs.” RSF called Google’s claim that it must obey Chinese laws “a tired argument” heard before. “Freedom of expression isn’t a minor principle that can be pushed aside when dealing with a dictatorship. It’s a principle recognized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and features in the Chinese national constitution itself,” the group said.

In an April 2004 report, OpenNet said that compared with filtering efforts elsewhere, China’s is “pervasive, sophisticated and effective.” The paper said China’s system comprises multiple levels of legal regulation and technical control and involves numerous state agencies and thousands of public and private personnel. Berkman Center Exec. Dir. John Palfrey, who plans to testify on Capitol Hill, told the U.S. China Economic Commission in April that China’s filtering systems “lack transparency in nearly every sense,” have “global ramifications” and should worry all Internet users. China’s growing Internet population represents nearly 1/2 of Web users worldwide and soon will overtake the U.S.’s in number, Palfrey said. China acts as a model for countries with similar censorship policies and serves as a regional ISP for Vietnam, Uzbekistan, N. Korea and Kyrgyzstan, he said.

China’s policy of throttling information constrains the growth of democracy and the rule of law, Rep. Smith said. “Many Chinese have suffered imprisonment and torture in the service of truth -- and now Google is collaborating with their persecutors,” he said. China uses the Internet to suppress its citizens, but the Web also is a powerful tool that “could be used to empower voices calling for freedom and democracy across the globe,” Smith said.

American Internet firms attract some of the world’s best high-tech talent to develop new products that can be used for good, Smith said. “The ability to communicate openly is the key to unlock the door to freedom for those who cannot feel its touch, and these companies can help to provide that,” he said. Just as the U.S. created Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia, Smith said, Americans must “empower those who seek the path of democracy, not stifle their ability to speak.”

On the Senate side, key staffers weren’t aware of any action in the wake of increased attention to China’s filtering system. A spokesman for Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Biden (D-Del.) told us nothing was brewing in his boss’s committee or in the Senate Judiciary Committee.