US Secretary of State against censorship on Internet
18:37, — Politics
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke against attempts of some countries to control the internet.
“We believe that it is both wrong and probably impossible to sensor the internet,” Rice said in Georgetown University in Washington on Tuesday. As the US Secretary of State thinks, “the internet is going to be a vehicle and a force for freedom, and state control over it won’t be effective and will harm society and economic development of the countries, which will impose such control, RIA Novosti reports.
”I don't believe that governments are really going to be very effective at harnessing that power,” Rice said. She also reminded that there are always hackers who can get around it.
The Secretary of State criticised such “authoritarian capitalism.”
“Countries -- and I know that there's a kind of fascination in some places with what I'll call authoritarian capitalism. You know, that well let's get the economics right first, then we'll worry about those political rights,” she said and emphasised she didn’t believe it and considered such approach to be sustainable.
According to C. Rice, “so harnessing the internet in this way is going to lead to harness it in a way that doesn't give it its full power in helping the society and the economy to develop.”
“I don't think it will be effective. And I think that those countries that recognize that the free flow of information is one of the most important sources of creativity are ultimately going to be the ones that benefit,” Secretary Rice said.
Belarus is one of the countries where the internet is being harnessed. The Belarusian Ministry of Information began to speak about necessity to license the informational sources in order to expand the acting laws on media to the internet. After long talks a draft law appeared, with its objective being struggle against dissent on the internet. The law hasn’t been adopted only because the officials haven’t yet thought up a means of control over such global phenomenon as the internet, AFN notes.
But such arguments don’t stop the Belarusian authorities to press on the internet sites. So, A. Lukashenka required in 2007 to “stop anarchy” on the internet. And yesterday the head of state spoke for total control over media by the state, explained his good intentions with state interests. According to Lukashenka, media can “destroy the state in a moment.”
