The May 4, 2012 edition of “This Week on Foreign Affairs.com features the article, A Clunky Cyberstrategy: Washington Preaches Internet Freedom But Practices Surveillance by Rebecca McKinnon. According to the article’s summary:
As the White House sanctions Iran and Syria for using technology to target their citizens, other parts of the U.S. government are driving the development of policies, regulatory norms, and business practices that embolden authoritarian governments to electronically police their populations.
This dichotomy likely is unavoidable at this stage for two reasons: 1) despite issuing several “strategies” for specific fields or interests, the White House has yet to adopt an overall strategy for cyber security; 2) the International Strategy for Cyberspace and Secretary Clinton’s January 21, 2010, speech contain the conflicting, if not schizophrenic, goals of “supporting the development of new tools that enable citizens to exercise their rights of free expression by circumventing politically motivated censorship” while at the same time pledging that “[t]hose who use the internet to recruit terrorists or distribute stolen intellectual property cannot divorce their online actions from their real world identities.”
The entire Foreign Affairs article can be read at: A Clunky Cyberstrategy | Foreign Affairs .
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