WASHINGTON—Representatives from Google and The Go Daddy Group spoke of the increasing difficulties in doing business in China without becoming complicit in its censorship on the Internet and monitoring of its citizens’ free expressions on the Internet.
They spoke at the hearing by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) on March 24 to examine developments in the last couple of months regarding China’s censorship of the Internet.
Google announced that it will no longer filter searches in China, and is redirecting its China searches through its Hong Kong site. At this hearing, Go Daddy, the world’s largest domain name register, announced it would “discontinue offering new .CN domain names at this time.”
The reason given for this decision is that the Chinese entity that authorizes Go Daddy in China, China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC), expanded its requirements last December for domain registration, including color headshot photos, Chinese business registration number and signed registration forms of registrants who are Chinese nationals.
In addition, the new requirements are to be retroactively applied to registrants Go Daddy had previously registered, sometimes years before. Apparently, Chinese authorities want to increase control over content of domain name registrations by Chinese citizens.
“We are concerned for the security of the individuals affected by CNNIC’s new requirements, as well as for the chilling effect we believe the requirements will have on new .CN domain name registrations,” said Christine Jones, Executive Vice-President and General Counsel for the Go Daddy Group, Inc. She said that only 20 percent of their affected customers provided the required documentation for Go Daddy to submit to the CNNIC.
Google representative Alan Davidson, Director of Public Policy, said, “The Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement.” The company was never completely comfortable with China’s requirements as indicated by the fact that Google was “the first search engine in China to let users know when the results had been removed to comply with Chinese law,” said Davidson.
However, the limitations on free speech in China increased last year making it difficult for Google to continue. Davidson observed that numerous sites have been blocked in China, including YouTube, The Guardian, Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, and Wikipedia.
Davidson referred to the “highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating in China.” Independently of those attacks was the targeting of Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China. Both attacks were the topic of Google’s January 12th news conference.
The CECC invited the Chinese Embassy to provide a representative at the hearing. They declined to send anyone but for the first time provided a written statement which was entered into the hearing record. It said the Chinese met twice with Google representatives and responded “with great patience” to the questions raised by Google. Their statement said, “China still welcomes Google’s operation and development in China provided that it abides by Chinese laws.”
The CECC maintains a political prisoner database for China of 1,000 entries; profiles of ten of these prisoners convicted for their postings on the Internet were distributed at the hearing. For instance, Huang Qi was sentenced to three years for investigating the Sichuan earth quake zone, writing about the collapsed schools and posting parents’ appeals on his Web site. His crime was “illegal possession of state secrets.”
Last November, Tibetan Buddhist Konchong Tsephel was sentenced 15 years. While he was formally convicted for “disclosing state secrets,” the real reason appears to be promoting Tibetan culture on his Tibetan language Web site.
Getting the State Department’s Attention
Representatives from human rights organizations spoke of the need for U.S. companies and the U.S. Government to be cognizant of the communist regime’s Internet surveillance and suppression and not to be intimidated and do nothing to counter it.
Mark Palmer, former ambassador to Hungary during the Cold War and a 26-year veteran of the State Department, expressed his frustration at his former employer’s apparent refusal to use the Global Internet Freedom Consortium (GIF), which he says has developed a system of software and servers that is the world’s largest Internet circumvention system, “providing for roughly 90 percent of anti-censorship traffic in China and worldwide.” Palmer said that about one million Chinese and hundreds of thousands of Iranians use this system frequently.
The main problem with GIF is that it has maxed out on the number of users it can serve, and its staff is composed of all volunteers, Palmer said. These limitations became very apparent when they had to choose last summer between serving Iranian users during the election crisis and their Chinese users who are faced with enormous barriers to free access to the Internet from China, policed by over 50,000 engineers and censors.
With a little money, GIF could serve many more users and support some full-time staff. For this end, a bipartisan group of Senators and Congressmen appropriated $15 million in 2008 and an additional $30 million this year to scale up this system to break through the Internet walls.
But the State Department was slow to spend the money and when it did, not a dime went to GIF or any other firm that had much experience with circumvention technology.
“I have never been more appalled at the State Department’s refusal to do what is so clearly in the national interest of the United States,” said Palmer. He referred to his “old home” refusing to use appropriated funds to scale up an existing, successful circumvention system, and accused State Department staff officials of making a mockery of their bosses, Secretary Rice and Clinton, who have expressed a willingness to help ensure freedom of the Internet.
The language of the legislation states that the funding is to be awarded to applicants who use field-tested protocols that demonstrably are able to expand Internet access by pro-democracy demonstrators in Iran and China. According to Palmer, the State Department violated the intent of the appropriation of 2008 and is delaying now implementing the will of Congress.
Ambassador Palmer quoted extensively in his testimony Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) at Brownback’s March 18th news conference. Brownback said that the funds should be dispersed without delay to groups that have the “capability of immediately opening access to the Internet for millions of users.” He cited GIF as one such group, but said he was open to others so long as they demonstrated the capability.
“The gateway for achieving success or failure on shattering the firewall is the State Department. Since 2008, Congress has given the State Department more than $45 million dollars for this very purpose, to help people around the world living in closed societies circumvent the Internet repression. But during that time we have watched the State Department delay, procrastinate, and misspend these funds contrary to the spirit of the law and without any sensible explanation.”
To get the attention of the State Department, Brownback placed holds on the confirmation of several State Department nominations. Although he relented, Sen. Brownback said that, if necessary, he would place holds on future State Department nominations to move the Department to take action to bring down the firewalls. At Brownback’s news conference, Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) agreed to join him in future holds.
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