Global Internet Freedom Act

Legislation

By: Christopher Cox and Thomas Lantos

Date: October 2, 2002

Source: U.S. Congress. House. Global Internet Freedom Act of 2002. HR 5524. 107th Congress, 2nd session. Available online at 〈http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c107:H.R.5524:%20This%20act,%20proposed%20in%202002,%20predates%20Yahoo%20and%20Google's%20willingness%20to%20incluse%20censorship%20technology%20in%20its%20products%20for%20the%20Chinese%20market〉 (accessed April 30, 2006).

About the Author: Representative Christopher Cox (R, CA) served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1989 to 2005. Representative Tom Lantos (D, CA) has served in the House since 1981 and, as of 2006, was still serving.

INTRODUCTION

House Resolution 5524, the Global Internet Freedom Act, was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in October 2002 by Representatives Christopher Cox (R, CA) and Tom Lantos (D, CA). It was a bipartisan effort to counter censorship of the Internet by various non-U.S. countries. The act would have established an Office of Global Internet Freedom inside the International Broadcasting Bureau, which is the federal agency that oversees all U.S. government propaganda broadcasts abroad. The act would also have provided $50 million per year for 2004 and 2005 to fund implementation of a global Internet freedom policy.

The bill stalled in committee and was not voted on by the House during the 108th Congress. Its provisions were subsumed into Title V, subtitle B of H.R. 1950 during the 109th Congress (Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 2004–05). This bill was passed by the House in July 2003. However, the Internet-freedom provisions did not take effect because the corresponding Senate bill, S. 925, did not contain them.

The Global Internet Freedom Act was re-introduced by Representative Cox during the 109th Congress on May 10, 2005 as H.R. 2216. The bill was referred to the House Committee on International Relations, and, as of May 2006, it had not come to the House for a vote.

PRIMARY SOURCE

Mr. COX (for himself and Mr. LANTOS) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on International Relations.

                  A BILL.

To develop and deploy technologies to defeat Internet jamming and censorship.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled.

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the 'Global Internet Freedom Act'.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

The Congress makes the following findings:.

(1) Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of association are fundamental characteristics of a free society. The first amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that 'Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble.' These constitutional provisions guarantee the rights of Americans to communicate and associate with one another without restriction, including unfettered communication and association via the Internet. Article 19 of the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights explicitly guarantees the freedom to 'receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers'.

(2) All people have the right to communicate freely with others, and to have unrestricted access to news and information, on the Internet.

(3) With nearly 10 percent of the world's population now online, and more gaining access each day, the Internet stands to become the most powerful engine for democratization and the free exchange of ideas ever invented.

(4) Unrestricted access to news and information on the Internet is a check on repressive rule by authoritarian regimes around the world.

(5) The governments of Burma, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, the People's Republic of China, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Vietnam, among others, are taking active measures to keep their citizens from freely accessing the Internet and obtaining international political, religious, and economic news and information.

(6) Intergovernmental, nongovernmental, and media organizations have reported the widespread and increasing pattern by authoritarian governments to block, jam, and monitor Internet access and content, using technologies such as firewalls, filters, and 'black boxes'. Such jamming and monitoring of individual activity on the Internet includes surveillance of e-mail messages, message boards, and the use of particular words; 'stealth blocking' individuals from visiting websites; the development of 'black lists' If users that seek to visit these websites; and the denial of access to the Internet.

(7)The Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, as well as hundreds of news sources with an Internet presence, are routinely being jammed by repressive governments.

(8) Since the 1940s, the United States has deployed antijamming technologies to make Voice of America and other United States Government sponsored broadcasting available to people in nations with governments that seek to block news and information.

(9) The United States Government has thus far commenced only modest steps to fund and deploy technologies to defeat Internet censorship. To date, the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia have committed a total of $1,000,000 for technology to counter Internet jamming by the People's Republic of China. This technology, which has been successful in attracting 100,000 electronic hits per day from the People's Republic of China, has been relied upon by Voice of America and Radio Free Asia to ensure access to their programming by citizens of the People's Republic of China, but United States Government financial support for the technology has lapsed. In most other countries there is no meaningful United States support for Internet freedom.

(10) The success of United States policy in support of freedom of speech, press, and association requires new initiatives to defeat totalitarian and authoritarian controls on news and information over the Internet.

SEC. 3. PURPOSES.

The purposes of this Act are—.

(1) to adopt an effective and robust global Internet freedom policy;.

(2) to establish an office within the International Broadcasting Bureau with the sole mission of countering Internet jamming and blocking by repressive regimes;.

(3) to expedite the development and deployment of technology to protect Internet freedom around the world;.

(4) to authorize the commitment of a substantial portion of United States international broadcasting resources to the continued development and implementation of technologies to counter the jamming of the Internet;.

(5) to utilize the expertise of the private sector in the development and implementation of such technologies, so that the many current technologies used commercially for securing business transactions and providing virtual meeting space can be used to promote democracy and freedom; and

(6) to bring to bear the pressure of the free world on repressive governments guilty of Internet censorship and the intimidation and persecution of their citizens who use the Internet.

SEC. 4. DEVELOPMENT AND DEPLOYMENT OF TECHNOLOGIES TO DEFEAT INTERNET JAMMING AND CENSORSHIP.

(a) ESTABLISHMENT OF OFFICE OF GLOBAL INTERNET FREEDOM—There is established in the International Broadcasting Bureau the Office of Global Internet Freedom (hereinafter in this Act referred to as the 'Office'). The Office shall be headed by a Director who shall develop and implement a comprehensive global strategy to combat state-sponsored and state-directed Internet jamming, and persecution of those who use the Internet.

(b) AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS—There are authorized to be appropriated to the Office $50,000,000 for each of the fiscal years 2003 and 2004.

(c) COOPERATION OF OTHER FEDERAL DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES—Each department and agency of the United States Government shall cooperate fully with, and assist in the implementation of, the strategy developed by the Office and shall make such resources and information available to the Office as is necessary to the achievement of the purposes of this Act.

(d) REPORT TO CONGRESS—On March 1 following the date of the enactment of this Act and annually there-after, the Director of the Office shall submit to the Congress a report on the status of state interference with Internet use and of efforts by the United States to counter such interference. Each report shall list the countries that pursue policies of Internet censorship, blocking, and other abuses; provide information concerning the government agencies or quasi-governmental organizations that implement Internet censorship; and describe with the greatest particularity practicable the technological means by which such blocking and other abuses are accomplished. In the discretion of the Director, such report may be submitted in both a classified and nonclassified version.

(e) LIMITATION ON AUTHORITY—Nothing in this Act shall be interpreted to authorize any action by the United States to interfere with foreign national censorship for the purpose of protecting minors from harm, preserving public morality, or assisting with legitimate law enforcement aims.

SEC. 5. SENSE OF CONGRESS.

It is the sense of the Congress that the United States should—.

(1) publicly, prominently, and consistently denounce governments that restrict, censor, ban, and block access to information on the Internet;.

(2) direct the United States Representative to the United Nations to submit a resolution at the next annual meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Commission condemning all governments that practice Internet censorship and deny freedom to access and share information; and.

(3) deploy, at the earliest practicable date, technologies aimed at defeating state-directed Internet censorship and the persecution of those who use the Internet.

SIGNIFICANCE

The anti-blocking activities proposed by the Global Internet Freedom Act would not be entirely new. The Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees the U.S. International Broadcasting Bureau, already conducts federally funded anti-Internet-blocking activities. However, as noted in the Global Internet Freedom Act, only $1 million was appropriated for the Broadcasting Board of Governors' Internet anti-censorship program in fiscal year 2004. Another million dollars was appropriated in 2005. Most of this money was spent on the creation of Chinese-language e-mail programs that would enable Internet users inside China to exchange forbidden information—especially political information—using frequently-changing proxy servers. A proxy server is a computer that an Internet user employs to access the Internet indirectly; a proxy server can accelerate access to Web pages by compressing and archiving them, it can censor or filter content, and it can strip identifying information from a user's messages, rendering the user anonymous. The latter ability makes proxy servers particularly useful for Internet users in China who wish to evade that country's strict and comprehensive controls on Web access. However, proxy servers must be changed frequently lest they be tracked down by government agents.

China is, as the Act notes, not the only country to censor or filter Internet content. Even some countries not generally thought of as anti-democratic, such as Germany, block Internet access to certain sites (in Germany's case, Nazi websites). However, China has by far the greatest number of blocked Internet users of any country—about 103 million as of June 2005. It employs approximately 30,000 full-time Internet police censors to monitor e-mail, Web usage, chat rooms, and the like. It also uses powerful computers located at points where international data lines leave and enter China to search for key terms and block objectionable material. Through threats of punishment it motivates Internet service companies inside China to self-censor, so that the government censorship apparatus need only catch whatever material evades private network censorship. Banned subject matter includes pro-democracy websites, any reference to the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing in 1989, and any reference to the forbidden Falun Gong religious movement, which the government in China has outlawed.

It is difficult to evaluate the success of the U.S. Board of Broadcast Governors' efforts to improve Web and e-mail access to persons in countries such as Iran and China. This would require detailed in-country surveys that are not feasible, given the level of political repression in those countries. However, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission noted in its 2005 annual report to Congress that efforts to provide uncensored Web access to computer users in Iran and China had been partly defeated by U.S. efforts to block sexual content from those users. By attempting to censor the Web for Iranian and Chinese users in a way that it is not censored for U.S. users, the United States ended up blocking, the Commission reported, "thousands of useful and non-controversial sites such as sites for the U.S. Embassy, a presidential election campaign, and a popular email service." The United States, the Commission concluded, "was over-blocking in its own effort to control what Iranian and Chinese users could view." Blockage of sexual content inside the United States, with the exception of child pornography, would be a violation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Independent computer experts have also sought to develop software to bypass Internet censorship by governments. Such private efforts are not hampered by a desire to censor sexual material, but their effectiveness is as difficult to evaluate as that of U.S. government efforts.

Attempts to view forbidden material remain personally risky in China. Scores of individuals (possibly many more) have been sentenced to long prison terms for accessing forbidden websites. In Iran, similar numbers of Web users have received, and continue to receive, similar punishments.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Chase, Michael, and James Mulvenon. You've Got Dissent! Chinese Dissident Use of the Internet and Beijing's Counter-Strategies. Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand, 2002.

Periodicals

MacLeod, Calum. "Web Users Walk Great Firewall of China." USA Today (April 3, 2006).

Web sites

Congressional Research Service. "Internet Development and Information Control in the People's Republic of China." February 10, 2006. 〈fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/64789.pdf〉 (accessed May 2, 2006).