Thursday, February 17, 2011
David Makarewicz is a lawyer specializing in Internet law concerning privacy rights and copyright defense for websites and blogs. Visit his new blog to keep up with breaking Internet news.
Activist Post
It was so nice to hear Hillary give a speech, claiming that America stands against global Internet oppression. Words, words, words. But aren’t her words empty if America is going to act like a digital dictatorship itself?
Dutch blogger Willemien Groot calls the Secretary of State’s words “two-faced.” Recent evidence suggests that she has a point.
Congress is once again considering modeling itself after bastions of freedom like Egypt by arming the government with an Internet kill switch that continues to draw the ire of free speech advocates. Also, the Department of Homeland Security has also been on quite the rampage lately, seizing domain names and shutting down websites for merely linking to sites accused of infringing copyright. Then, as recently as this past weekend, DHS mistakenly suspended 84,000 websites when the government cast too wide a net as it seized domain names accused of child pornography. No decent person is in favor of child porn, but if the U.S. government continues to play it fast and loose with due process rights, American warnings about Internet oppression will continue to crumble under the weight of their own hypocrisy.
David Makarewicz is a lawyer specializing in Internet law concerning privacy rights and copyright defense for websites and blogs. Visit his new blog to keep up with breaking Internet news.
The PPJ Gazette 
Feb 17, 2011 @ 22:25:58
I thought much the same thing when I saw Clinton saying that Mubarak should allow his people to assemble freely and to have free speech. All I could think was…you damn hypocrit. This report of yours Alan, only cements it. I hope McGovern is doing alright. I’m sure before all of this is over there will be many of us bruised and bleeding. Marti
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Feb 17, 2011 @ 21:58:55
I’m sorry to criticize an otherwise seemingly noteworthy commentary. I just have to. Why do you, David Makarewicz, cast the title of your article as a question? Why pull the punch?! Clintonian rhetoric, whether from SHE or HE, is (to put this politely) disengenuous at best.
Consider another recent post RE Ms. Clinton:
http://redactednews.blogspot.com/2011/02/at-clinton-speech-veteran-bloodied.html
Ray McGovern, a kindred soul and dear fellow activist, reportedly beaten up as Ms. Clinton intoned words to the contrary:
As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave her speech at George Washington University yesterday condemning governments that arrest protestors and do not allow free expression, 71-year-old Ray McGovern was grabbed from the audience in plain view of her by police and an unidentified official in plain clothes, brutalized and left bleeding in jail. She never paused speaking. When Secretary Clinton began her speech, Mr. McGovern remained standing silently in the audience and turned his back. Mr. McGovern, a veteran Army officer who also worked as a C.I.A. analyst for 27 years, was wearing a Veterans for Peace t-shirt.
Blind-sided by security officers who pounced upon him, Mr. McGovern remarked, as he was hauled out the door, “So this is America?” Mr. McGovern is covered with bruises, lacerations and contusions inflicted in the assault.
Mr. McGovern is being represented by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF). “It is the ultimate definition of lip service that Secretary of State Clinton would be trumpeting the U.S. government’s supposed concerns for free speech rights and this man would be simultaneously brutalized and arrested for engaging in a peaceful act of dissent at her speech,” stated attorney Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the PCJF.
Mr. McGovern now works for Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C.
David, please reconsider the question marks, OK?
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