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WikiLeaks and Internet Freedom
12-9-2010
By Elisa MassiminoPresident and CEO
This is how it happens.
An organization publishes information on the Internet thats
embarrassing and arguablyharmful to the government. Citing an
alleged threat to national security, the governmentpressures
companies to deny access to the information and to choke off the
organizationsfunding. The companies acquiesce.
This how we begin to lose ourInternet freedom.Wikileakss
decision to publish classified State Department cables has
triggered justifiedconcerns about the safety of innocent people.
Prior to the publication of the cables, I wrote toJulian Assange
urging him to do everything he could to protect human rights
activists. (Sofar it appears that Wikileaks has taken care to
redact the names of activists where their
exposure would put them at risk.) And now the response of the
government and businessexecutives to the release of the cables is
triggering justified concerns about the openness ofthe
Internet.
This issue transcends the particulars of the Wikileaks case. No
matter what you think ofJulian Assange, anyone who cares about
Internet freedom should be concerned that in itszeal to cripple
Wikileaks, governments and companies are taking steps in this case
thatpose a threat to fundamental rights.
The Obama Administration has been a vocal champion of Internet
freedom. In a landmarkspeech earlier this year, Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton couldnt have been more eloquent
or clear in explaining why Internet freedom is a crucial human
rights issue. The freedom toconnect, she said, is a Fifth Freedom,
no less important than the Four Freedoms cited byPresident
Roosevelt 70 years ago. But, she warned, [T]echnologies with the
potential toopen up access to government and promote transparency
can also be hijacked bygovernments to crush dissent and deny human
rights.
Secretary Clinton regularly urges corporate entities not to
restrict access to information onthe Internet. As do we. Human
Rights First is part of theGlobal Network Initiative (GNI),which
brings together human rights groups, academics, investors, and some
of the worldslargest technology companies in an effort protect
Internet freedom. We helped to form theGNI because repressive
governments try to enlist businesses in their efforts to
restrictInternet freedom, offering them access to markets and
applying political pressure.
Pressure to restrict information is no less troubling when it
comes from the U.S. government.And companies shouldnt be any more
willing to acquiesce. After Senator Joe Lieberman,Chairman of the
Homeland Security Committee, called on companies to boycott
Amazon,and his office contacted the online giant, Amazon quickly
dropped Wikileaks from itsservers. I wrote a letter to Amazon CEO
Jeff Bezos urging him to explain publicly whichparts of the U.S
government had contacted Amazon and to detail the process that had
led tothe companys decision.
Bezos didnt respond, and his subsequent statements left key
questions unanswered.Theres no such ambiguity in the case of
PayPal, which acknowledges that it decided to stop
processing payments to Wikileaks in light of the U.S. State
Departments position. Visa andMastercard have also stopped
processing these payments. However other companies like
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/2010/12/09/wikileaks-and-internet-freedom/http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/our-work/business-and-human-rights/internet-freedom-and-privacy/http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/our-work/business-and-human-rights/internet-freedom-and-privacy/http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/our-work/business-and-human-rights/internet-freedom-and-privacy/http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/2010/12/09/2010/11/28/letter-from-human-rights-first-president-ceo-elisa-massimino-to-julian-assange/http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/2010/12/09/2010/11/28/letter-from-human-rights-first-president-ceo-elisa-massimino-to-julian-assange/http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/2010/12/09/2010/1/21/Clinton-Speech-Marks-Major-Turning-Point-for-Promoting-Freedom-of-Expression/http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/2010/12/09/2010/1/21/Clinton-Speech-Marks-Major-Turning-Point-for-Promoting-Freedom-of-Expression/http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/our-work/business-and-human-rights/internet-freedom-and-privacy/#GNIhttp://www.humanrightsfirst.org/our-work/business-and-human-rights/internet-freedom-and-privacy/#GNIhttp://www.humanrightsfirst.org/2010/12/09/2010/12/02/rights-group-seeks-answers-from-amazon-in-wake-of-wikileaks-drop/http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/our-work/business-and-human-rights/internet-freedom-and-privacy/http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/2010/12/09/2010/11/28/letter-from-human-rights-first-president-ceo-elisa-massimino-to-julian-assange/http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/2010/12/09/2010/11/28/letter-from-human-rights-first-president-ceo-elisa-massimino-to-julian-assange/http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/2010/12/09/2010/1/21/Clinton-Speech-Marks-Major-Turning-Point-for-Promoting-Freedom-of-Expression/http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/2010/12/09/2010/1/21/Clinton-Speech-Marks-Major-Turning-Point-for-Promoting-Freedom-of-Expression/http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/our-work/business-and-human-rights/internet-freedom-and-privacy/#GNIhttp://www.humanrightsfirst.org/2010/12/09/2010/12/02/rights-group-seeks-answers-from-amazon-in-wake-of-wikileaks-drop/http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/2010/12/09/wikileaks-and-internet-freedom/
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Twitter have so far resisted this pressure, and we encourage
them to continue waiting untilall the facts have been determined
before preemptively shutting down the conversation.
Companies have the right to make business decisions, but they
shouldnt become proxycensors or otherwise help the government
restrict Internet freedomat least not without anextremely
compelling reason to do so. Given the stakes, companies should have
clear andtransparent policies for decision-making when governments
request them to censorinformation on the web, and these policies
should be weighted heavily on the side ofpreserving Internet
freedom and the Internet itself, which, after all, gives them
theirlivelihood. (Or in the case of a company like Visa, a
lucrative source of income.)
In many countries where there is no independent media and civil
society groups are underthreat, the only public square open to
dissenting voicesfor exposing government abuses,sharing
information, and organizingis the virtual public square. We must be
vigilant inensuring that the furor over Wikileaks does not
establish a norm that these repressivecountries would welcome and
seek to universalize.
Because a threat to Internet freedom in one place is a threat to
Internet freedom
everywhere, it is also a threat to the companies themselves. As
Hillary Clinton pointed out inher speech, its in both the moral and
financial interests of companies to protect Internetfreedom:
[C]ensorship should not be in any way accepted by any company from
anywhere.And in America, American companies need to make a
principled stand. This needs to bepart of our national brand. Im
confident that consumers worldwide will reward companiesthat follow
those principles.
The credibility of the United States is at stake. Under the
Obama Administration, the countryhas been a worldwide leader on
Internet freedom. But a gap is now emerging between whatwe practice
and what we preach. Countries around the world will be less likely
to listen tocalls by the United States to keep the Internet open
when the U.S. itself pressurescompanies to restrict Internet
freedom. Companies, having acquiesced to pressure from theUnited
States government, will see little reason not to acquiesce to
pressure from foreigngovernments.
And its people living under repression who will pay the severest
price, people for whom theInternet is a lifeline, an essential tool
to open up closed societies. Iryna Vidanyava, anactivist fighting
for free speech in her native Belarus, has called information
technologycompanies the last resort of freedom, and urged them to
consider that, for human rightsactivists, Internet freedom is not
just about business, its about life.
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