[liberationtech] Fwd: [oni] The Battle over Internet Freedom

[Rebecca MacKinnon]

On Oct 29, 2010, at 9:31 PM, David-Sarah Hopwood wrote:
>>> 
> 
> ... because of course, there's no way that any self-respecting liberal
> democracy would allow an illegal warrantless government wiretapping
> programme. The very idea! There'd be rioting on the streets.

Haha. Yup. Which is why in the conclusion of the paper she cited I wrote: 

"Finally, citizens and policymakers of democratic nations must not forget that global Internet freedom begins at home. One of the most urgent tasks of the world’s democracies is to develop best practices for openness, accountability, rule of law, and transparent governance of their own digital networks.  That is the best possible long-term weapon against the spread of networked authoritarianism. It is also essential in order to ensure the long-term health of the world’s existing democracies."

More strident and much less academic variant of that point here: 
http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2010/09/internet-freedom-is-dead-long-live-internet-freedom.html

Best,
R

Rebecca MacKinnon
Schwartz Senior Fellow, New America Foundation
Co-founder, GlobalVoicesOnline.org
Cell: +1-617-939-3493
E-mail: rebecca.mackinnon at gmail.com
Blog: http://RConversation.blogs.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/rmack


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/attachments/20101030/d0622ca3/attachment.html>