US to protest censorship of Internet by Beijing
A US diplomat will meet with Chinese officials to object to that country's tough Internet censorship policies as leaders of major US Internet companies testify before Congress today about their roles in China's censorship of the Internet.
Barry Lowenkron, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor, had already been scheduled to visit China this week. But Lowenkron added the issue to his agenda to express growing US concern about Internet censorship in China.
''It's a top priority for the State Department and to the US government to do all we can to ensure maximum access to information over the Internet," said Josette Shiner, undersecretary of state for economic, business, and agricultural affairs. At a briefing yesterday in Washington, Shiner disclosed the formation of a task force that will study the foreign policy implications of the Internet. The group will consult with corporations and nongovernmental organizations, and make recommendations on Internet policy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
David Gross, the State Department coordinator for international communications and information policy, said the task force will not attempt to set policy for US Internet firms in China. ''We allow, as we always do, American companies to make their own best choices," Gross said.
The Bush administration sees the free flow of information over the Internet as a major source of encouragement to the development of democracies worldwide. Last year, the administration successfully fended off an effort by other countries to put the Internet's domain naming system under the control of the United Nations. Administration officials said that nondemocratic UN member states could use their influence to impose a global regime of Internet censorship.
Repressive countries like China and Saudi Arabia are still able to limit access to Internet information in their own countries. The Chinese government yesterday defended its censorship policies, saying they were mainly intended to filter out pornography, not political speech.
''Major US companies do this, and it is regarded as normal," Liu Zhengrong, supervisor of Internet affairs for the information office of the Chinese State Council, told The New York Times. ''So why should China not be entitled to do so?"
But human rights groups say Chinese authorities have compelled the American Internet company Yahoo Inc. to hand over information on Chinese users guilty only of free speech. Former civil servant Li Zhi was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2003 for posting Internet messages that criticized the government. Another, journalist Shi Tao, was sentenced last year to 10 years in prison for publicizing a secret government memo to newspaper editors telling them how to cover the 15th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
News of Yahoo's involvement in these cases, along with reports that Microsoft Corp., Google Inc., and Cisco Systems Inc. have helped Chinese authorities censor Internet information, led members of Congress to demand today's hearing. Executives from the four companies will testify, as well as Chinese human rights activists and State Department officials.
Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford University, praised the State Department initiative.
''I think that it's an appropriate counterpart to simply bawling out the tech companies at a congressional hearing," he said.
But Zittrain questioned how far the United States would go in fighting Internet censorship. He said technologists are developing systems that could bypass any Internet filtering system.
The US government could fund the development of such systems to fight political censorship. But the same technologies could make it easy to spread pornography or exchange illegal music and movie files, Zittrain added.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com. 
