In light of recent events at the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) and its grantee networks, we want to express our hope that with the many changes taking place, we will see a greater commitment to the cause of Internet Freedom (IF) and that this commitment will take place with transparency and openness.
Beginning with the Lantos Foundation’s efforts in 2009 to re-direct a portion of the US Government’s IF funds to the predecessor to USAGM (then known as the BBG), we have been on a roller coaster ride of highs and lows – seeing great potential for breakthroughs and then finding oursleves disappointed time after time by obfuscation, misdirection, and at times even blatant discrimination. We have been in dialogue with former leadership at all levels of USAGM and the Open Technology Fund (OTF), often feeling hopeful initially about potential progress – but ultimately witnessing a lack of follow through on support for some of the most effective circumvention tools currently available.
Our goals throughout this process have been simple and well defined: Open the internet to those in closed societies. Provide funding and tools to empower those people to see beyond the constrained and censored views of their own totalitarian governments. Give them the freedom to learn, to organize and to thrive the same way we do in open societies. Recognize that Internet Freedom is the next frontier of human rights work.
The Lantos Foundation is a proponent of Internet Freedom in all its forms. This encompasses both open and closed source technologies that provide secure communications, apps that can protect a user’s privacy, tools that can protect users under repressive surveillance, and – very importantly, existing tools that currently circumvent firewalls for millions of users in closed societies. Moreover, we support the continuing development of new technologies that can get around anything totalitarian governments may do to thwart such freedom.
These are our hopes for the future of Internet Freedom:
We hope the leadership at USAGM and OTF will be dedicated to Internet Freedom in all of its forms.
We hope this commitment will ensure that different forms of effective technologies will receive equal consideration and be granted appropriate levels of support.
We hope that the vast majority of funds will be spent on actions that will directly open the internet for those in closed societies.
We hope that never again will a reporter or a USG employee question the religion of a tool developer in a disparaging way that suggests there should be a religious litmus test before receiving funding.
We hope that the intent of good and well-meaning Members of Congress to make progress on truly opening the internet will come to fruition in the near future.
We hope that IF tool developers who receive USG funding will be held to the same standards as other technology companies who work with our government – security audits required, 100% open source technology not required.
We hope the new leadership at USAGM and whomever takes the helm at OTF will live up to the promise of Internet Freedom and join us in recognizing the significant role that the United States can and should play in this human rights struggle.
Perhaps the most telling indications of the great potential of Internet Freedom to bring profound change and freedom to repressive societies are the vast resources China and others are spending to keep their citizens locked in a digital information prison. Their actions speak loud and clear. They are telling us that they view free access to the internet as an existential threat to their continued authoritarian rule. We should listen to them and we should deploy adequate resources to make it possible for those locked in these information prisons to escape.
This was the mission of Voice of America and other noble broadcast services during the dark days of World War II and the long years of the Cold War. In the 21st century, IF carries forward this vital mission through the technologies that now drive our world. When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt spoke of a “curious grapevine” that would carry its message of empowerment and hope “behind barbed wire and stone walls”. In our day the “curious grapevine” of freedom is the internet, and we stand ready to work with all those who are laboring to make it free.