Thanks to the Internet in general and social media in particular, the Chinese people now have a mechanism to hold authorities accountable for wrongdoing - at least sometimes - without any actual political or legal reforms having taken place. Major political power struggles and scandals are no longer kept within elite circles.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Time Power Legal

Would the Protestant Reformation have happened without the printing press? Would the American Revolution have happened without pamphlets? Probably not. But neither printing presses nor pamphlets were the heroes of reform and revolution.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Would Without Wit

The potential for the abuse of power through digital networks - upon which we the people now depend for nearly everything, including our politics - is one of the most insidious threats to democracy in the Internet age.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Work Power Politics

There is respect for law, and then there is complicity in lawlessness.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Respect Then T

The Patriot Act, passed overwhelmingly but hastily after 9/11, allows the FBI to obtain telecommunication, financial, and credit records without a court order.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Communication Without Wit

Authoritarian systems evolve. Authoritarianism in the Internet Age is not your old Cold War authoritarianism.

Rebecca MacKinnon

War Age Your

Digital activism did not spring immaculately out of Twitter and Facebook. It's been going on ever since blogs existed.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Wit Twitter Ted

There is no country on Earth where Internet and telecommunications companies do not face at least some pressure from governments to do things that would potentially infringe on users' rights to free expression and privacy.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Men Government Communication

The Internet is an empowering force for people who are protesting against the abuse of power.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Power Who Use

In a pre-Internet world, sovereignty over our physical freedoms, or lack thereof, was controlled almost entirely by nation-states.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Freedom World Tire

If China someday gains a more fair, just, and accountable system of government, it will be due to the hard work and efforts of the Chinese people, not due to the inexorable workings of any particular technology.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Work Technology Men

Despite the Obama administration's proclaimed commitment to global Internet freedom, the executive branch is not transparent about the types and capabilities of surveillance technologies it is sourcing and purchasing - or about what other governments are purchasing the same technology.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Technology Men Government

We're going to get the Internet we deserve, and those people who are the most active in shaping the Internet to their liking are going to win out.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Win Who Those

The relationship between citizens and government is increasingly mediated through the Internet.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Relationship Men Government

Trade shows such as the wire tappers' ball are highly secretive and ban journalists from attending. None of the U.S. agencies that attended the wire tappers' ball - including the FBI, the Secret Service, and every branch of the military - were willing to comment when a reporter queried them about their attendance.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Men Age Wire

In China, the problem is that with the system of censorship that's now in place, the user doesn't know to what extent, why, and under what authority there's been censorship. There's no way of appealing. There's no due process.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Wit Why Way

There are many cases of activists having their Facebook pages and accounts deactivated at critical times, when they are right in the middle of a campaign or organising a demonstration.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Time Age UN

We willingly share personal information with companies for the convenience of using their products.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Wit Willingly Willing

When Google went into China, there were some people who said they shouldn't compromise at all - that it is very bad for human rights to do so. But there were other people, particularly Chinese people, who said they were glad Google had gone in.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Art Who Were

While sanctions against Iran and Syria are intended to constrain those countries' governments, they have had the unfortunate side effect of constraining activists' access to free online software and services used widely across the Middle East, including browsers, online chat applications, and online storage services.

Rebecca MacKinnon

War Men Government

To have a .cn domain, you have to be a registered business. You have to prove your site is legal.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Legal Business Your

While the federal government is required by law to document publicly its wiretapping of phone lines, it is not required to do so with Internet communications.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter should be urged to adhere to business practices that maximize the safety of activists using their platforms.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Normalization of U.S.-China relations in 1979, combined with economic reforms and opening, transformed the Chinese people's lives.

Rebecca MacKinnon

The better-informed we are, the more we can do to make sure what's happening is in our interests and is accountable to us.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Citizens' rights cannot be protected if their digital activities are governed and policed by opaque and publicly unaccountable corporate mechanisms.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Human freedom increasingly depends on who controls what we know and, therefore, how we understand our world. It depends on what information we are able to create and disseminate: what we can share, how we can share it, and with whom we can share it.

Rebecca MacKinnon

While the Internet can't be controlled 100 percent, it's possible for governments to filter content and discourage people from organizing.

Rebecca MacKinnon

The 'Shawshank Redemption' has nothing to do with China, but that hasn't kept social media censors from blocking the movie's title from searches on the country's most popular Twitter-like microblogging service, Weibo.

Rebecca MacKinnon

In the wake of the Internet getting shut down in Egypt - something that also happened in Xinjiang - I know that there are groups working on ways to help people get online when domestic networks get shut down. This could also be of use to some people in China.

Rebecca MacKinnon

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.

Rebecca MacKinnon

It is not inevitable that the Internet will evolve in a manner compatible with democracy.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Whether or not Americans supported George W. Bush, they could not avoid learning about Abu Ghraib.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Every year in China, Internet executives are officially rewarded for their 'patriotism.'

Rebecca MacKinnon

I haven't heard of any cases of anti-American blog posts being censored or bloggers encountering consequences for anti-American speech on the web in China.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Congress may not get the Internet, but the Internet doesn't get Congress, either.

Rebecca MacKinnon

The Chinese government clearly does pay attention to public opinion expressed on the Internet - the extent to which they choose to adapt their practices based on it, or ignore it, seems to vary.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Over time, if you want rights, you have to also show that you can use them responsibly and that you can build a positive world in the online space, and that's also very important.

Rebecca MacKinnon

For centuries, the Yangtze River - the longest in Asia - has played an important role in China's history, culture, and economy. The Yangtze is as quintessentially Chinese as the Nile is Egyptian or the Rhine is German. Many businesses use its name.

Rebecca MacKinnon

The Tunisian blogger and activist Sami Ben Gharbia has written passionately about how U.S. government involvement in grassroots digital spaces can endanger those who are already vulnerable to accusations by nasty regimes of acting as foreign agents.

Rebecca MacKinnon

In China's big cities, American products - say, for instance, Proctor and Gamble shampoos or many other goods - are widely coveted by a lot of Chinese consumers.

Rebecca MacKinnon

On Apple's special store for the Chinese market, apps related to the Dalai Lama are censored, as is one containing information about the exiled Uighur dissident leader Rebiya Kadeer. Apple similarly censors apps for iPads sold in China.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Every news organization needs a social media strategy.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Facebook has conquered much of the world.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Any new legal measures, or cooperative arrangements between government and companies meant to keep people from organizing violence or criminal actions, must not be carried out in ways that erode due process, rule of law and the protection of innocent citizens' political and civil rights.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Negative views of Pakistan expressed by prominent members of the global business community are taken more seriously by government functionaries than are appeals by human rights groups.

Rebecca MacKinnon

China's censorship and propaganda systems may be complex and multilayered, but they are obviously not well coordinated.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Yahoo! had a choice. It chose to provide an e-mail service hosted on servers based inside China, making itself subject to Chinese legal jurisdiction. It didn't have to do that. It could have provided a service hosted offshore only.

Rebecca MacKinnon

While American intellectual property deserves protection, that protection must be won and defended in a manner that does not stifle innovation, erode due process under the law, and weaken the protection of political and civil rights on the Internet.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Professional camera crews are rarely there when a bomb goes off or a rocket lands. They usually show up afterwards.

Rebecca MacKinnon

It took a generation for companies to recognise their responsibilities in terms of labour practices and another generation for them to recognise their environmental obligations.

Rebecca MacKinnon