Hillary Clinton on Internet Freedoms
Hillary Clinton has been making some pretty interesting policy statements lately when it comes to issues of religious freedom and of speech, particularly with regard to how these are expressed on the web.
In the past few months, she has been explaining the Obama administration's policies about internet freedom, and tying those to the American government's diplomatic policies.
It seems that free speech on the internet has become one of the international issues that other countries are going to have to add to their agenda as they interact with the United States.
Ms.
Clinton began with a response to the 2009 Report on International Religious Freedom.
In her remarks, Clinton urges that people remember dual values espoused both by the American Bill of Rights and the U.
N.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights: freedom of religion, and of expression.
She recognizes it for people to practice their own religion, or not practice any, as being an absolute right.
Yet Hillary Clinton also insists that this means people should be allowed to criticize religions if they wish, and not have their writings banned or censored.
People have every right to express their own critiques too, even if they include negative comments.
Government involvement should only be in the area of protecting people from discrimination, and reaching out to minority religious groups.
Hillary Clinton goes even farther in her second speech in January of 2010.
In this speech, she talked about internet freedom in general, and how it gives people the opportunity to discover ideas and markets that they might never have had access to before.
She refers to the practice of government censorship as an "information curtain" descending the way the Iron Curtain did.
And she praises the free speech potential of the web, as it gives every person on earth the potential chance to speak and be heard.
Probably the two main targets of these speeches by Hillary Clinton were Iran and China, yet there are other repressive governments attempting to censor both freedom of religion and of speech on the web.
One only has to remember the calls to ban the Danish illustrator's cartoons about Mohammed to know that attempts to ban freedom of expression are everywhere.
President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton are demonstrating that this kind of censorship is simply unacceptable.
In the past few months, she has been explaining the Obama administration's policies about internet freedom, and tying those to the American government's diplomatic policies.
It seems that free speech on the internet has become one of the international issues that other countries are going to have to add to their agenda as they interact with the United States.
Ms.
Clinton began with a response to the 2009 Report on International Religious Freedom.
In her remarks, Clinton urges that people remember dual values espoused both by the American Bill of Rights and the U.
N.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights: freedom of religion, and of expression.
She recognizes it for people to practice their own religion, or not practice any, as being an absolute right.
Yet Hillary Clinton also insists that this means people should be allowed to criticize religions if they wish, and not have their writings banned or censored.
People have every right to express their own critiques too, even if they include negative comments.
Government involvement should only be in the area of protecting people from discrimination, and reaching out to minority religious groups.
Hillary Clinton goes even farther in her second speech in January of 2010.
In this speech, she talked about internet freedom in general, and how it gives people the opportunity to discover ideas and markets that they might never have had access to before.
She refers to the practice of government censorship as an "information curtain" descending the way the Iron Curtain did.
And she praises the free speech potential of the web, as it gives every person on earth the potential chance to speak and be heard.
Probably the two main targets of these speeches by Hillary Clinton were Iran and China, yet there are other repressive governments attempting to censor both freedom of religion and of speech on the web.
One only has to remember the calls to ban the Danish illustrator's cartoons about Mohammed to know that attempts to ban freedom of expression are everywhere.
President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton are demonstrating that this kind of censorship is simply unacceptable.
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