[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 57 (Wednesday, April 24, 2013)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E530]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            U.S. PRODUCTS SHOULD NOT AID INTERNET CENSORSHIP

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, April 24, 2013

  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, about 2 billion people in the 
world regularly communicate or get information on the Internet. Well 
over half a billion people of these people do so in repressive 
countries. As the Internet use has become a vital and even the standard 
means to disseminate beliefs, ideas and opinions, so we see a growing 
number of countries that censor or conduct surveillance on the 
Internet, in conflict with internationally recognized human rights laws 
and standards.
  The Internet, in many countries, has been transformed from a freedom 
plaza to big brother's best friend. The technologies to track, monitor, 
block, filter, trace, remove, attack, hack, and remotely take over 
internet activity, content and users has exploded. Many of these 
technologies are made in the U.S.A. Many of them have important and 
legitimate law-enforcement applications. But, sadly, many of them are 
also being exported, every day, to some of the most unsavory 
governments in the world--whose use of them is far from legitimate. 
Every day we learn about more activists being arrested through the use 
of newly-developed technologies--much of it American technology--in 
China, Belarus, Egypt, Syria and many other countries around the world. 
The stakes are life and death for online democracy activists, and they 
deserve our support and protection.
  We only have to look around the globe at Belarus, Iran, China, and 
Vietnam to see horrific examples of the internet gone wrong. I have 
introduced the Global Online Freedom Act of 2013 (G0FA), H.R. 491, that 
addresses this fundamental threat to the democracy activists abroad.
  GOFA requires the State Department to beef up its reporting on 
Internet freedom in the annual Country Report on Human Rights 
Practices, and to identify by name Internet-restricting countries. This 
country designation will be useful not only in a diplomatic context in 
helping to advance Internet freedom through naming and shaming 
countries, but will also provide U.S. technology companies with the 
information they need in deciding how to engage in repressive foreign 
countries.
  And GOFA addresses what Google's Eric Schmidt calls the ``dark side'' 
of the digital revolution. This bill will prohibit the export of 
hardware or software that can be used for surveillance, tracking and 
blocking to the governments of Internet-restricting countries. Current 
export control laws do not take into account the human rights impact of 
these exports and therefore do not create any incentive for U.S. 
companies to evaluate their role in assisting repressive regimes. GOFA 
will not only help stop the sale of these items to repressive 
governments, but will create an important foreign policy stance for the 
United States that will help ensure that dissidents abroad know we are 
on their side, and that U.S. businesses are not profiting from this 
repression.
  This export control law is long overdue, and thoroughly consistent 
with the approach Congress has taken, for example, in restricting 
exports of certain crime control equipment to China. It makes no sense 
for us to allow U.S. companies to sell technologies of repression to 
dictators, and then turn around and have to spend millions of dollars 
to develop and deploy circumvention tools and other technologies to 
help protect dissidents from the very technologies that U.S. companies 
exported to their persecutors.
  Mr. Speaker, I believe the United States has a unique role to play in 
preserving online freedom; and export controls can send a strong 
message to repressive governments that the Internet must not become a 
tool of repression.

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