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
Digital power is every bit as likely to be abused as physical power, but is often more insidious because it is often wielded in the background until its results manifest themselves in the offline world.
Even in democratic society, we don't have good answers how to balance the need for security on one hand and the protection of free speech on the other in our digital networks.
The potential for the abuse of power through digital networks - upon which we the people now depend for nearly everything, including our politics - is one of the most insidious threats to democracy in the Internet age.
It is time to stop debating whether the Internet is an effective tool for political expression and instead to address the much more urgent question of how digital technology can be structured, governed, and used to maximize the good and minimize the evil.
It's time to take decisive action to stop American and other multinationals from aiding and abetting the wrong side in the global digital arms race.
I am well aware of the facts presented by numerous security experts on the many ways in which the United States' digital networks have come under siege by cybercriminals and under daily assault by hackers in league with various foreign governments.
The Egyptian Revolution makes it clear, if anybody was in doubt, that digital technologies are going to play a powerful role in the future of global politics.
We have to start thinking of ourselves as citizens of the Internet, not just passive users. I don’t see how we can bring about change in our digital lives if we don’t take responsibility.
It would be normal for anybody running a high-profile, politically controversial operation in China to anticipate worst-case scenario, and to do everything possible to guard against them.
The way I think liberties get eroded is not that all of a sudden you become an Orwellian state, but gradually it becomes harder for people with unpopular views to speak out without being in danger, be it from the state or just from the majority of the people who don't like them.
Pretty much anybody who does creative work in China navigates the gray zone. People aren't clear about where the line is any more, beyond which life gets really nasty and you become a dissident without having intended ever to be one.
QQ is not secure. You might as well be sharing your information with the Public Security Bureau.
Public trust in both government and corporations is low, and deservedly so.
Radio was used powerfully by Josef Goebbels to disseminate Nazi propaganda, and just as powerfully by King George VI to inspire the British people to fight invasion.