Hillary Clinton’s speech: Shades of hypocrisy on internet freedom

“Hillary Clinton is back, lecturing the world on internet
freedom, but thirteen months after her original speech on the
topic, the dimension of the debate has changed. Back then she
targeted the Chinese, whom she could confidently and credibly
criticise in the wake of attacks on Google.

“Last year, the secretary of state made her position clear,
warning that “countries that restrict free access to information or
violate the basic rights of internet users risk walling themselves
off from the progress of the next century” – a pointed
criticism of China’s ‘great firewall’ approach to a technology that
many previously thought inherently democratising.

“Yet after the WikiLeaks affair it is harder for the United
States to so readily moralise. It is only two months ago that
WikiLeaks saw its US domain name briefly taken away. Julian
Assange’s site was also stripped of its ability to raise money via
PayPal, MasterCard and Visa.”

Complete Story