Rebecca MacKinnon
Rebecca MacKinnon
Rebecca MacKinnonis an author, researcher, Internet freedom advocate, and co-founder of the citizen media network Global Voices Online. She is notable as a former CNN journalist who headed the CNN bureaus in Beijing and later in Tokyo. She is on the Board of Directors of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a founding board member of the Global Network Initiative and is currently director of the Ranking Digital Rights project at the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth16 September 1969
CountryUnited States of America
Rebecca MacKinnon quotes about
Ultimately, if you're not behaving ethically, especially when it comes to information technology, especially when it comes to dictators, you are helping shape a world in which dictatorships are stronger.
Whether or not the U.S. government funds circumvention tools, or who exactly it funds and with what amount, it is clear that Internet users in China and elsewhere are seeking out and creating their own ad hoc solutions to access the uncensored global Internet.
In Russia, they do not generally block the Internet and directly censor websites.
I haven't heard of any cases of anti-American blog posts being censored or bloggers encountering consequences for anti-American speech on the web in China.
Clearly Google is searching for a way to do business in China that avoids them sending someone to jail over an e-mail.
Clear limits should be set on how power is exercised in cyberspace by companies as well as governments through the democratic political process and enforced through law.
Citizens continue to demand government help in fighting cybercrime, defending children from stalkers and bullies, and protecting consumers.
Can companies just claim a total lack of political responsibility in how their technology is used in all instances? It's something that companies should be thinking about when they sell their technologies around the world.
In the physical world, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a wanted man.
'Intermediary liability' means that the intermediary, a service that acts as 'intermediate' conduit for the transmission or publication of information, is held liable or legally responsible for everything its users do.
Intermediary liability enables the Chinese authorities to minimize the number of people they need to put in jail in order to stay in power and to maximize their control over what the Chinese people know and don't know.
Internet freedom is not possible without freedom from fear, and users will not be free from fear unless they are sufficiently protected from online theft and attack.
Internet freedom is a bit of a Rorschach test: it means different things to different people.
Internet companies created the social-media tools that fueled the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street insurgencies, and that have helped political candidates rally grass-roots support.