The original appearance of this entry was in Danny Weitzner - Open Internet Policy

I just can’t resist blogging this one: Andrew McLaughlin, Google’s wise and experienced senior policy counsel, said at today’s Computers Freedom and Privacy conference roundtable on China, that Google’s slogan — “don’t be evil” — was developed as a lighthearted slogan to help geeks at Google express their corporate values, has now become an albatross around Google’s neck. In all seriousness, the panel discussion that followed was fascinating and underscored the deep importance of evolving a global support for the free flow of information on the Web.

Sharon Hom, Executive Director of Human Rights in China amplified Andrew’s point with a very thoughtful comment on how good vs. evil extremism has degraded politics in the United States. When we simply issues using rhetorical models such as: “either you’re with us or against us” or “xyz position is evil” you end up with a political culture that is unable to deal with or make progress on difficult, nuances issues which require a long-term view of how to create more openness in China.

Andrew went on to state a set of principles that Google seeks to follow

1. transparency to users: including an indication of what’s blocked
2. transparency to the world: letting everyone else know what Google blocks and, where possible, why
3. protection of customer information
4. insistence on rule of law and due process (Andrew points out that this will only work when enough companies with sufficient combined market share demand this. Fred Tipton from Microsoft adds to this that this list of companies must be broadened beyond just companies in the Internet market.)
5. Shareholders in companies (especially minority shareholders) should insist on compliance with openness principles.

In response to a question about the details about what transparency would mean in practice, Andrew stated what the ideal is, in Google’s view, and the reality of what they believe is possible in China today. Google’s ideal can be seen in the way that they handle copyright and other type of takedown requests in democratic countries. When legally required to remove some part of a search result, they indicate that removal at the bottom of the search page, send a copy of the legal request or law that requires the remove to an independent site called ChillingEffects.org, and provide a link from the bottom of the search results page to the relevant order. For example, a search on google.de for B-J-E (a neo-Nazi, racists organization that is illegal in Germany, yields a page with the following statement at the bottom:

Aus Rechtsgr?hat Google 1 Ergebnis(se) von dieser Seite entfernt. Weitere Informationen ?iese Rechtsgr?a> finden Sie unter ChillingEffects.org.

Google does something similar for DMCA (US copyright-related) takedown requests.

The problem, according to Andrew is that Google can’t do this much in China because identity of sites filtered probably constitute a state secret (even though Google itself makes blocking decisions). Sharon Hom explained that any violation of state secrets law in China can result in a secret trial after which defendants tend to be sent to jail for a long time. She stressed that under Chinese law as it stands today, what constitutes a State Secret is determined after the fact and can certainly include data that isn’t even created by the government. Information that the Chinese government considers sensitive (the number of political prisoners, the number of protests, the number of abortions, etc.) will be classified as a state secret and those who discuss this information are subject to prosecution.

On the subject of traparency, Sharon when on to discuss the value of: Value of transparency varies significantly: Transparency can be used against NGOs (for example, Chinese government tried to require HR In China to disclose list of funders as a condition of participation in the WSIS process). Transparency isn’t very useful for Chinese users, who know that sites are being blocked anyway. However, transparency is important for NGOs who are trying to monitor freedom of expression and human rights from outside China.

My own view (see some slides from a talk I gave at the University of Southampton) of this issue is that the actions of China reveal a significant weakness in the global regulatory framework of the Internet and the Web. During the first decade of the global use of the Internet, we saw the Net spread and prosper largely through a deregulatory, hands-off model pushed by the United States through the work of Ira Magaziner. While this worked of a while, it left the Internet without any affirmative, globally recognized protections for the free flow of information. I believe we are coming to a point where we need more affirmative and binding international agreements in support of the free flow of information as a fundamental value for the Web around the world.