Are American Calls For Internet Freedom Two-Faced?

David Makarewicz, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

It was so nice to hear Hillary give a speech, claiming that America stands against global Internet oppression. Words, words, words.  But aren’t her words empty if America is going to act like a digital dictatorship itself?

Dutch blogger Willemien Groot calls the Secretary of State’s words “two-faced.”  Recent evidence suggests that she has a point.

Congress is once again considering modeling itself after bastions of freedom like Egypt by arming the government with an Internet kill switch that continues to draw the ire of free speech advocates.  Also, the Department of Homeland Security has also been on quite the rampage lately, seizing domain names and shutting down websites for merely linking to sites accused of infringing copyright.  Then, as recently as this past weekend, DHS mistakenly suspended 84,000 websites when the government cast too wide a net as it seized domain names accused of child pornography.  No decent person is in favor of child porn, but if the U.S. government continues to play it fast and loose with due process rights, American warnings about Internet oppression will continue to crumble under the weight of their own hypocrisy.

David Makarewicz is a lawyer specializing in Internet law concerning privacy rights and copyright defense for websites and blogs.  Visit his new blog to keep up with breaking Internet news.