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
Facebook and Google are battling over who will be our gateway to the rest of the Internet through 'like' buttons and universal logins - giving them huge power over our online identities and activities.
While Google no longer has a search engine operation inside China, it has maintained a large presence in Beijing and Shanghai focused on research and development, advertising sales, and mobile platform development.
It's much easier to force intermediary communications and Internet companies such as Google to police themselves and their users than the alternatives: sending cops after everybody who attempts a risque or politically sensitive search, getting parents and teachers to do their jobs, or chasing down the origin of every offending link.
There is clearly a constituency that appreciates the message that Google is sending, that it finds the Chinese government's attitude to the Internet and censorship unacceptable.
Google transformed the way most of us get our information with a search engine that enables us to find citizen-created media content alongside the work of professionals.
Google attempted to run a search engine in China, and they ended up giving up.
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.
Professional camera crews are rarely there when a bomb goes off or a rocket lands. They usually show up afterwards.
We like to think of the Internet as a border-busting technology.