Hillary Clinton has just announced that it’s now official US policy for countries to allow their internet access to be free and uncensored:
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton unveiled on Thursday a new U.S. policy that encourages the world’s governments to ensure their citizens have open access to the Internet.
The speech comes a little more than a week after Google’s blunt declaration about Chinese censorship and illegal electronic intrusions, and the company’s assertion that it will pull out of China if it can’t reach a reasonable understanding with the Beijing government.
9:54 a.m. EST Clinton took the stage here at the Newseum, a museum dedicated to the news industry, and appealed to the audience to think of the communications networks that have been destroyed in last week’s massive earthquake in Haiti. She also noted how a mother and daughter in Haiti enabled their rescue by sending a text message. Clinton called communication networks a “new nervous system” for the world.
“In many respects, information has never been so free,” Clinton said. She referred to the way that virtually anyone can broadcast information to the Internet at any time. But governments can also use Internet and communications technologies to repress their people, she said, “just as steel can be used to build hospitals or machine guns.”
My first thought was, “Good for her,” and by extension, Barack Obama.
My one, and the the one that falls into the “Deep Thought” category, is that picture really looks like that “1984” ad that an Obamanite put out during the primaries.