From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2010/dec/07/wikileaks-us-embassy-cables-live-updates
11.40am: Internet guru Clay Shirky has an interesting post on WikiLeaks and how America’s pursuit of the site opens it up to the charge of hypocrisy:
“The leaders of Myanmar and Belarus, or Thailand and Russia, can now rightly say to us: “You went after WikiLeaks’ domain name, their hosting provider, and even denied your citizens the ability to register protest through donations, all without a warrant and all targeting overseas entities, simply because you decided you don’t like the site. If that’s the way governments get to behave, we can live with that.”
In this context comments by Hillary Clinton (left) in a Foreign Policy article earlier this year are coming back to haunt her:
“On their own, new technologies do not take sides in the struggle for freedom and progress. But the United States does. We stand for a single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas. And we recognise that the world’s information infrastructure will become what we and others make of it.
This challenge may be new, but our responsibility to help ensure the free exchange of ideas goes back to the birth of our republic. The words of the first amendment to the constitution [guaranteeing freedom of speech] are carved in 50 tons of Tennessee marble on the front of this building. And every generation of Americans has worked to protect the values etched in that stone.”