希拉里·克林顿讲话中英全文《互联网的是与非：网络世界的选择与挑战》

2月15日星期二，美国国务卿希拉里·克林顿在乔治华盛顿大学(George Washington University)以“互联网的是与非：网络世界的选择与挑战”为题发表讲话，指出21世纪通讯技术最近在中东（Middle East）发生的事件中发挥的作用。国务卿克林顿重申美国支持国际互联网的自由与开放，强调保障自由与安全、透明与保密，以及言论自由与包容的重要意义。

以下是国务卿希拉里·克林顿讲话中英文全文：

2011年2月15日

互联网的是与非：网络世界的选择与挑战

国务卿希拉里∙克林顿

乔治∙华盛顿大学

华盛顿哥伦比亚特区

国务卿克林顿:非常感谢大家，下午好。十分高兴能再次来到乔治∙华盛顿大学，过去近20年时间里，我在不同的背景下在这里度过了不少时光。我要特别感谢纳普（Knapp）校长和勒曼（Lerman）教务长，因为这给了我一个极好的机会来阐述一个如此重要的问题。这个问题值得各国人民与政府的关注，而且我知道也引起了这样的关注。或许在我今天的演说中，我们可以开始一场更加热烈的辩论，对我们从电视机上实时看到的需求作出反应。

1月28日午夜过后几分钟，整个埃及的互联网被屏蔽。在此前四天的时间里，成千上万的埃及民众走上街头要求有一个新政府。整个世界，从电视机上、手提电脑上、手机上和智能手机上注视着局势的每一步发展。来自埃及的图片和视频在网上大量涌现。通过脸谱（Facebook）和推特（Twitter），新闻记者传递现场报道。抗议民众协调下一步的行动。各阶层公民在国家的这一历史关头相互交流着希望与担忧。

世界各地亿万人民作出了实时反应：“你们不是孤军奋战，我们同你们在一起。”而后，政府动用了切断机制。手机服务中断，电视卫星信号遭到干扰，几乎整个国家都无法上网。政府不愿意人民相互交流，不愿意让新闻媒体向公众传递消息，当然不愿意让全世界目击一切。

埃及发生的事件让人们联想起18个月以前在伊朗发生的另一次抗议活动，那时，在有争议的选举结束后，成千上万的民众举行了游行。伊朗的抗议者也通过网站进行组织。手机拍摄的一个视频显示一位名叫妮达（Neda）的女青年被一名准军事部队成员打死，在几个小时内，各地的人都看到了这个视频。

伊朗当局也利用了技术。革命卫队（Revolutionary Guard）通过查找绿色运动（Green Movement）成员的网上档案追踪他们。而且，如同埃及，伊朗政府曾一度完全关闭互联网和移动网络。在当局查抄抗议者住宅，袭击大学宿舍，实施大规模逮捕，虐待并向人群射击后，抗议活动终止。

但在埃及出现了不同的结果。尽管网络被关闭，但抗议活动继续进行。人们通过传单和口头传话组织示威游行，他们使用拨号调制解调器和传真机与世界联络。五天后，政府的行动有所收敛，人们在埃及又可以上网了。随后，埃及当局力图通过互联网控制抗议活动，下令移动电话公司发亲政府短信，逮捕博文作者和抗议活动的网络组织者。然而，在抗议活动进行了18天之后，政府失败，总统辞职。

在埃及发生的事情和在伊朗发生的事情——伊朗本周再次使用暴力对付争取基本自由的抗议民众——远非仅仅事关互联网。在这两种情况中，人们都是因为对生活中的政治与经济条件的极度不满而举行抗议。他们上街游行，高呼口号，而当局则跟踪、阻止和逮捕他们。这些都不是互联网所为，而是人的作为。在这两个国家，公民和当局使用互联网的方式反映了互联技术的力量——它一方面发挥了加速政治、社会和经济变革的作用；而另一方面，又成为扼杀或压制这一变革的手段。

目前，一些方面正在就互联网是一种解放力量还是压制力量展开辩论。但我认为，这样的辩论在很大程度上不得要领。埃及之所以鼓舞人心并非因为他们使用推特作为联络手段，而是因为人们走到一起，坚持要求有一个更美好的未来。伊朗的情况之所以恶劣并非因为伊朗当局使用脸谱来跟踪和逮捕反对派人士，而是因为其政府时时侵犯伊朗人民的权利。

因此，无论这些行动让我们倍受鼓舞或义愤填膺，均是我们的价值观使然，包括我们作为人类的尊严感、由此衍生的各种权利、以及以此为基础的各项原则。正是这些价值观驱动我们去思考我们前行的道路。现在有20亿人上网，接近世界人口的三分之一。我们来自世界的每一个角落，生活在不同类型的政体之下，抱有各种不同的信仰；然而，我们生活中的许多重要方面越来越离不开互联网。

互联网已经成为21世纪的公共场所——世界的公民广场、课堂、市场、咖啡馆和夜总会，我们所有20亿网民以及每时每刻还在增加的人们都对互联网上发生的事情产生影响，同时也受其影响。这就产生了一个挑战。为了保持一个能够给世界带来最大利益的互联网，我们必须认真讨论一下有关指导原则：现有哪些规则、哪些规则不应当存在、理由是什么；哪些行为应加以鼓励或阻止，如何去做。

此处的目的不是要告诉人们如何使用互联网，一如我们不应告诉人们如何使用任何公共广场，无论是解放广场（Tahrir Square）还是时报广场（Times Square）。这些公共场所的价值来自于人们能够在那里从事的各种活动，无论是举行一次集会、出售蔬菜、或是私下交谈。这些场所提供了一个开放的平台，互联网提供的也正是这样一个平台，它并不也绝不应当服务于某一特定议程。但是，如果全世界的人们每天要在网上走到一起，进行安全与富有成果的活动，我们必须有一个共同的愿景来指导我们。

一年前，作为该愿景的一个起点，我曾呼吁全球承诺保障互联网自由，以保护网上的人权，就如同我们在网络以外保护人权一样。个人自由表达其观点的权利、向领导人请愿的权利、基于他们的信仰进行礼拜的权利——这些都是普世权利，无论是在公共广场还是在私人博客中行使。集会与结社自由同样适用于网络空间。在我们这个时代，人们常常在网上聚集起来谋求共同利益，正如聚集在教堂或工会大厅一样。

我把网络上的表达自由、集会自由和结社自由共同称为相互联络的自由。美国支持世界各地人民享有这一自由，我们呼吁其他国家也这样做。因为我们希望人们有机会行使这种自由。我们也支持让更多人上网。另外，由于互联网必须平稳、可靠地运行才有价值，我们支持当今由多个利益相关方组成的管理体制。这种体制使互联网能够经受跨越网络、边界和区域的各种形式的干扰而始终保持畅通。

在我讲话后的一年来，全世界人民继续使用互联网来解决共同的问题，并在网上揭露政府腐败，俄罗斯的民众在网上跟踪荒火并组织起志愿消防队，叙利亚的孩子们利用“脸谱网”(Facebook)揭露老师对他们的虐待，中国的网民在互联网上组织帮助父母们寻找失踪孩子的大规模活动。

与此同时，互联网继续在许多国家受到多种限制。在中国，政府审查互联网内容，把搜索请求重新定向到错误页面；在缅甸，独立的新闻网站被分布式拒绝服务攻击所破坏；在古巴，政府正试图建立一个全国内联网，而不让其公民进入全球性的互联网；在越南，批评政府的博客作者遭到逮捕和凌辱；在伊朗，当局封锁反对派和新闻媒体的网站，打击社交媒体，并为迫害其公民在网上窃取他们的个人身份资料。

这些行为反映出一种复杂且极不稳定的局面，在以后数年中，随着更多的数以十亿计的人们与互联网连接，情势必将变得更为严重。我们今天所作的选择将决定未来互联网的面貌。企业必须选择是否以及如何进入那些互联网受到限制的地区的市场；人们必须选择在网上如何规范自己的行动、哪些信息可以与人共享以及与谁共享、哪些观点可以表达以及如何表达；各国政府则必须选择是否履行它们保护言论、集会与结社自由的承诺。

对于美国而言，选择一清二楚。在互联网自由的尺度上，我们将自己置于开放的一端。我们认识到开放的互联网会带来种种挑战。它要求有基本规则，防范不端和有害行为。就像所有自由一样，互联网自由也会引起紧张，但是我们相信其利大于弊。

今天我想要讨论几个我们在保护与捍卫自由开放的互联网时必须应对的挑战。我会率先指出，我本人或者美国政府都没有全部的答案。我们甚至不确定我们知道全部的问题。但我们致力提出问题，协助引导对话，不仅捍卫普世原则，也捍卫我们人民和伙伴的利益。

第一个挑战是实现自由与安全。自由与安全通常被视作平等而对立：拥有其中一个越多，另一个就相对越少。事实上，我认为它们是相辅相成，缺一不可的。没有安全，自由是脆弱的。没有自由，安全是压制性的。我们的挑战在于找到恰当的尺度：有足够的安全让我们享有自由，但不使其过多或过少而危害自由。

为互联网找出这种恰当尺度至关重要，因为带给互联网史无前例的力量的那些特征——开放、平等效应、广度与速度——也能让有害行为达到前所未有的程度。恐怖份子和极端份子集团利用互联网来吸收成员、策划和发起攻击。人贩子利用互联网来寻找及诱拐新的受害者使之沦为现代奴隶。儿童色情狂通过互联网利用儿童。骇客闯入金融机构、移动电话网络以及个人电子邮件帐户。

因此，我们需要有成功的战略来打击这些以及其他威胁，但又不至于限制互联网最了不起的特征——开放。美国正在网上积极追查与遏止犯罪份子和恐怖份子的活动。我们投资于本国的网络安全，旨在既预防网络事件，也减少它们的影响。我们正在与其他国家合作，共同打击网络空间的跨国犯罪。美国政府倾注投资，协助其他国家培养各自的执法实力。我们也批准了《布达佩斯网络犯罪公约》（Budapest Cybercrime Convention）。该公约确定出各国必须采取的步骤，以确保互联网不被犯罪份子与恐怖份子利用，同时仍然保护本国公民的自由。

在我们竭力防范攻击或逮捕犯罪份子的同时，我们继续坚持对人权和基本自由的承诺。美国有决心制止网上和网下的恐怖主义和犯罪活动，在这两个领域中，我们都将依照我们的法律和价值观来追求这些目标。

然而，其他人采取了不同的途径。安全经常被用来作为蛮横镇压自由的借口。这种战术在数字时代并非新技俩，但是随着互联网赋予政府新的能力来追查及惩罚维权人士和政治异议人士，它现在带来新的影响。那些逮捕博客作者、窥探公民的和平活动、限制公民上网的政府，可能宣称这是出于安全原因。按照他们的定义，这也许甚至是诚心实意的。但是他们采取的是错误路线。那些箝制互联网自由的政府或许可以在短时间内使人民无法充分表达自己的意愿，但不可能永久。

第二个挑战在于既保护透明度，也保护机密。互联网强大的透明文化是基于它能够使各种各样的信息唾手可得。然而，除了作为公共空间外，互联网也是私人交流的渠道。要使这一点得以继续，就必须能够保护在线的机密交流。设想一下人们和组织机构依靠保密交流来运作的种种方式。企业开发新产品以便领先同业时会举行秘密商谈。新闻记者对某些具体的信息来源予以保密，以保护他们不被曝光或遭到报复。政府也仰赖网上和网下的机密交流。联机技术的存在可能使保密更加困难，但是这并没有改变保密的需要。

我知道，近几个月来因为“维基解密”（WikiLeaks）的缘故，政府的保密工作已成为人们议论的话题。但从许多方面看，这方面的议论并不切实际。从根本上看，“维基解密”事件一开始就是一种盗窃行为。政府文件遭到盗窃，如同有人用公文包偷走文件一样。有人认为，这样的盗窃没有什么不对，因为政府有责任使我们的一切工作在我国公民众目睽睽之下公开进行。对此，恕我不敢苟同。如果我们行动的每一步都必须公诸于众，则美国既不能为我国公民提供安全保障，又不能促进全世界的人权和民主。保密通讯使我国政府有可能顺利开展工作，否则将一事无成。

请考虑一下我们与前苏联诸国为保障流失核材料的安全共同进行的工作。由于我们对具体细节实行保密，恐怖主义分子或罪犯就不太可能找到并盗走核材料为他们自己所用。再考虑一下 “维基解密”公诸于众的文件内容。在不考虑任何具体文件是否真实的情况下，我们可以发现，“维基解密”公布的许多电文都与全世界各地的人权工作有关。我们的外交人员与维权人士、新闻记者和公民密切合作，共同抵制专制政府的恶行。这是一项危险的工作。“维基解密”公布这些外交电文，增加了人们面临的危险。

保密工作对于上述这类行动至关重要，在互联网时代尤其如此，因为只要敲击键盘就可以把能够造成危险的信息发往世界各地。当然，各国政府也有责任保持透明。我们获得人民的许可进行治理，但这种许可必须在了解工作性质的情况下才有意义。因此，对于在什么情况下还不能向公众公布我们的工作内容，我们必须有明智的判断。我们必须经常审查我们的标准，坚持严格的标准。在美国，我们有各种法律，保证政府的工作向人民公开。奧巴馬政府还启动了一个史无前例的计划，在网上公布政府的有关资料，目的是鼓励公民参与，普遍提高政府的开放程度。

美国政府为保护美国，为保障我国人民的自由及支持全世界其他国家人民的权利和自由拥有的能力，取决于哪些情况需要公开及哪些情况应该而且必须不予公开，对两者需要进行权衡。这杆天平应该而且将始终向公开化倾斜，但天平完全倾向一边不符合任何人的利益。我需要明确一点。我说过“维基解密”事件一开始就是一种盗窃行为，这种做法如同有人用公文包偷走文件一样。我们批评“维基解密”的行为，并不是因为它使用了互联网。我们致力于互联网自由的承诺不因“维基解密”受到影响。

关于这个问题最后还要说一句：在泄密事件发生后的一些日子里，有报道说美国政府进行了干预，强迫民营企业拒绝向“维基解密”提供服务。情况并非如此。现在，有些政治人士和专家学者公开号召企业断绝与“维基解密”的关系，而其他人则批评他们这种做法。公务员是我国公开辩论中的组成部分，但表达意见与强制行动仍然有区别。为实现自己的价值观或执行涉及“维基解密”的决策，工商业可能已经作出的业务决定并非按照奧巴馬政府的指令行事。

第三个挑战是，在保护言论自由的同时采取包容和谦和的态度。我不需要告诉在座各位：互联网上有各种各样的言论 — 虚假的、 攻击性的、 煽动性的、新奇的、真实的和美好的，应有尽有。

互联网上大量出现的多种多样的意见和想法，既说明了互联网的开放性，又反映了我们人类的多样性。在互联网上，每一个人都能发出自己的声音。《世界人权宣言 》（Universal Declaration of Human Rights ）保护所有人的言论自由。但我们说的话会产生后果。仇视性或诽谤性的话语有可能煽起敌对情绪，加深分裂并引发暴力行为。这股力量在互联网上得到提升。偏执的言论往往会被扩大，达到无法收回的地步。当然，因特网也为人们提供了一个化解分歧、建立信任和理解的特殊空间。

一些人认为，为了鼓励宽容，政府必须封杀煽动仇恨的观点。我们认为，限制言论的措施很少奏效，往往还会成为侵犯言论自由的借口。相反，历史一再证明，对付恶意言论的更好办法是鼓励更多的言论。人们能够也应该公开反对不宽容与仇恨。通过自由辩论，那些 有价值的观点一般会得到加强，而站不住脚的观点和错误的观点一般会被淘汰，这一过程或许不会立即完成，但终将如此。

这种做法虽然不会立刻使每一个煽动仇恨的观点丧失欺骗性或说服每一位偏执狂改变想法，但作为一个社会我们认识到，这种做法的效果远胜于任何其他做法。删除文字、封杀内容、逮捕发表意见的人，这些行为压抑言论，但并不触及所表达的思想。这只会迫使持那些观点的人们走向边缘，其结果是他们的信念加深，也不会受到挑战。

去年夏天，美国负责追踪和打击反犹太主义活动的特使汉娜·罗森塔尔（Hannah Rosenthal）率领美国伊玛目和穆斯林领袖代表团访问了达豪（Dachau）和奥斯威辛集中营。他们中有许多人曾不承认[纳粹对犹太人的]大屠杀，也没有人谴责否认大屠杀的言论。然而通过参观这些集中营，他们表示愿意听取不同观点。此行产生了实效。他们在一起祈祷，他们用笔留下和平的祝愿，游客留言簿中的许多文字是用阿拉伯语写成。参观结束时，他们宣读了一份共同起草和签名的声明，毫无保留地谴责否认大屠杀的言论以及其他各种形式的反犹太行为。

思想交流的平台发挥了作用。这些领袖人物并未因其过去的立场遭到逮捕或被勒令保持沉默，他们的清真寺没有被关闭。国家并没有用暴力迫使他们就范。人们只是向他们陈述事实，与他们沟通和交换看法。

美国根据法规以及我们的国际义务对某些类别的言论加以限制。我们有关于诽谤和诋毁、损害名誉以及直接煽动暴力的言论的法规。不过，我们以公开透明的方式执行这些法规，而且公民有权就这些法规的具体实施提出上诉。即使大部分人认为某一言论具有侵犯性，我们也不加以限制。的确，历史上基于我们今天看来是错误的理由禁止某种观点的例子不胜枚举。人们曾因为否认君权神授或呼吁不分种族、性别或宗教人人平等而受到处罚。此类限制手段可能代表了当时的主流观点，今天，类似的限制在世界上某些地区依然存在。

然而，在网络言论方面，美国选择恪守我们那些经过时间检验的原则。我们敦促我国人民言语文明，认识到其网络语言的威力及影响力。我们在本国目睹了网上的恃强凌弱言行所造成的可怕而悲惨的后果。我们这些在政府中任职的人员应该作出表率，这体现于我们所确定的基调和倡导的思想。不过，作出表率还意味着帮助别人作出自己的选择，而不是干涉和剥夺那些选择。我们以法律的力量保护言论自由，我们借助理性的力量战胜仇恨。

这三大原则并非总是能够毫不费力地同时得到促进。它们会导致紧张关系，构成挑战。但是，我们不必作出取舍。自由与安全、透明度与保密性、言论自由与宽容——这些要素共同奠定了自由、开放、稳定的社会以及自由、开放、稳定的因特网，使普世人权得到尊重，也为更大进步和长久繁荣创造空间。

有些国家走的是另一条道路，剥夺网上权利，竭力筑起永久的墙壁，把经济交流、政治讨论、宗教表达、社会互动等不同类别的活动隔离开来。这些国家力图按照自己的好恶来决定保留或压制网络活动。然而这并非易事。搜索引擎将商家与新顾客连接起来，还通过传递和组织新闻信息吸引用户。社交网络并不仅仅是朋友们分享图片的空间，人们借此交流政治观点，支持社会公益活动，或联络专业人员就新的商机进行合作。

至于那些分割互联网、封锁政治内容或从总体上禁止某些类别的意见表达的墙壁、或允许某些形式的和平集会但禁止其他形式的和平集会、或恐吓人民不让他们表达其想法的屏障，竖立起来很容易，但长期维持就没那么容易，不只是因为人类的智慧会找到绕过和穿越它们的方法，还因为互联网并没有分成经济上、社会上和政治上的互联网，互联网只有一个。要把企图改变这一现实的屏障维持下去需付出各种代价，包括道德、政治和经济代价。短期内一些国家也许能够承受这些代价，但我们相信长期维持下去是不可能的。试图在商业上开放而禁止自由表达是要在多方面付出机会代价的，包括一个国家的教育体系、政治稳定性、社会流动性和经济增长潜力。

当国家限制互联网的自由时，它们也限制了自己的经济前途。它们的年轻人不能充分了解世界上正在进行的对话和辩论，不能充分看到激励人们推陈出新的自由追求。禁止对官员进行批评使政府更容易腐败，从而带来有长期影响的经济扭曲。法治下的思想自由和公平竞争是激发经济创新的要素。

所以，不足为奇的是，由70多家企业组成的欧美商业理事会（European-American Business Council)上周发表了一项强有力的支持互联网自由的声明。如果你在大力推行政治审查和监视政策的国家投资，你的网站可能在没有警告的情况下被关闭，你的服务器可能被政府非法侵入，你的设计可能被盗窃，你的工作人员可能因为不遵守某项出于政治动机的命令面临被逮捕或驱逐出境的威胁。在未来某个时间，这种情况给你的利润和信誉带来的风险将大于潜在的回报，特别是在其他地方的市场出现机会的时候。

就此而言，有些人会指出一些国家——尤其是中国——似乎是一种例外，在那里，互联网受到严厉审查，经济增长却依然强劲。显然，有许多企业愿意接受严格的互联网政策而进入这些市场。而在短期内——甚至也许在中期——这些国家的政府可能成功地维持一个被分割的互联网。但是，这些限制将带来长远的代价，最终成为一个抑制增长和发展的绞索。

政治上也会有代价。让我们看一下突尼斯，该国的网络经济活动是与欧洲国家关系的重要组成部分，而其网络审查与中国和伊朗不相上下。突尼斯一度把互联网分为经济互联网和“包罗所有其他内容”的互联网，最终无法持续。老百姓，尤其是年轻人，以各种方式使用连接技术，组织起来，讨论他们感到不满意的事情；正如我们所知，其结果是激发了一场导致革命性变革的运动。叙利亚政府也在试图解决一个无法解决的矛盾。就在上周，政府三年来首次取消了对脸谱网（Facebook)和优兔网(Youtube）的禁令。但昨天，一位十几岁的女孩仅仅因为在博客上表达了她的政治观点被裁定犯有间谍罪，并被判处五年徒刑。

这也是难以为继的。如果使用平台就会锒铛入狱，那么想得到表达平台的要求就不能满足。我们认为，为互联网自由设置了障碍的政府——不管是技术过滤、审查制度、或是对那些在网上行使言论和集会自由权利的人进行攻击——最终会发现自己是作茧自缚。 他们将面临一个独裁者的两难境地，要么让墙壁坍塌，要么为继续维持而付出代价，后者意味着更多地使用镇压手段，这犹如在失利的一手牌上加倍下注，另一方面，思想封锁和人才损失也导致日益失去更多机会。

我呼吁世界各国和我们一道接受一个信念，即一个开放的互联网会促使国家更强大、更繁荣。从根本上说，它源于美国200多年来一直抱有的另一个信念，即开放社会能带来最持久的进步，法治是公正与和平最坚定的基础，蓬勃的创新来自对各种不同思想的表达和探索。这并不是寄希望于电脑或手机，而是寄希望于人民。我们相信，与世界各地有同样的寄托，即希望遵循开放社会赖以生存的普世权利的政府和人民结成合作伙伴，我们就能保持互联网作为人人共享的开放空间。这将长期惠及我们共同的进步和繁荣。美国将继续倡导发展这样一个互联网，使人民的权利得到保护，对创新打开大门，在全世界各地共同操作，获得足以获得人民信任的安全保障，达到能支持他们工作的可靠程度。

在过去的一年，我们迎来了一个全球联盟的出现，这个联盟由国家、企业、公民社会和数字活动人士组成，力争推动实现这些目标。我们得到了全球各地一些政府的大力合作，并因全球网络倡议（Global Network Initiative）而深受鼓舞，该倡议汇聚起公司、学术机构和非政府组织的力量，共同应对我们所面临的挑战，诸如如何应对政府的审查规定，如何决定是否出售可用于侵权的技术，以及如何在云端运算的环境下处理隐私问题。在大家齐心协力推动这项共同事业的时候，我们需要已对互联网自由做出有原则、有意义的承诺的强大企业伙伴。

我们认识到，网络自由要具备真正意义就必须应用到现实世界的积极行动之中。这就是为什么我们正在通过我们的公民社会2.0倡议（Civil Society 2.0 Initiative）积极努力，联络非政府组织和倡导人士，提供将扩大他们的影响的技术和培训。我们还承诺继续与世界各地的人民进行对话。你们可能已经听说，上周，我们在原有的法语和西班牙语之外，又推出了阿拉伯语和波斯语的推特简讯(Twitter feed)。我们还将推出类似的中文、俄语和印地语推特。这使我们能够随时通过尚未被有关政府封锁的联网渠道与人民进行实时、双向的对话。

我们对互联网自由的承诺是对人民权利的承诺，我们也会相应地采取行动。关注和应对互联网自由受到的威胁已经成为我国外交人员和发展专家日常工作的一部分。他们正在我国驻世界各地的使馆和使团从事促进互联网自由的实地工作。美国会继续为处于互联网受压制的环境中的人们提供帮助，使他们避开过滤机制，让这些人的能力比审查者、骇客以及那些因他们的网上言论而殴打和关押他们的恶棍更胜一筹。

尽管我们力求保护和支持的各项权利清晰明确，但侵犯这些权利的各种手段却越来越错综复杂。我知道有些人批评我们没有对任何一项技术注资，但我们认为对抗互联网上的压制行为没有什么制胜的法宝。没有所谓的“app” （应用软件）。（笑声）你们大家现在就开始做吧。（笑声）因此，我们采取全面和创新的方法——外交与技术相结合，维护各种工具的分配网络，对第一线人员提供直接的支持。

近3年来，我们已通过一项公开程序发放了超过2,000万美元的竞争性赠款，该程序包括由技术和政策专家进行的跨机构评估，以支持正在利用尖端手段对抗互联网压制行为的新涌现的技术人员和活动人士群体。今年，我们还将追加提供2,500万美元赠款。我们正在采用风险资本方式，支持综合开发技术、工具和培训，并随着更多的人转而使用移动装置而不断进行适应性调整。我们倾听当地的呼声，了解数字维权人士在哪些方面需要帮助，我们的多样性做法意味着我们能够为应对他们所面临的一系列威胁进行适应性调整。我们支持多种工具，以便在压制性政府找到办法钳制其中一种工具的时候能让其他工具发挥作用。我们投资开发尖端技术，因为我们知道压制性政府不停地翻新钳制手段，而我们必须走在他们前面。

此外，我们正在率先努力，以增进网络安全和网上创新，建设发展中国家的能力，提倡开放和共同操作标准，并加强应对网络威胁的国际合作。国防部副部长林恩就在昨天围绕这个问题发表了讲话。所有这些努力都在继续推进10年来为维护一个开放、安全、可靠的互联网开展的工作。在今后一年中，本届政府将完成一项网络空间国际战略，为今后继续开展这项工作制定路线。

这是我国对外政策的一项重点内容，其重要性今后几年只会日益增加。为此，我设立了网络事务协调员办公室（Office of the Coordinator for Cyber Issues），以促进我们在网络安全和其他事务上的工作，并为国务院内部及与其他政府机构的合作提供便利。我已提名由克里斯托弗·佩恩特（Christopher Painter）领导这个新设立的办公室，他曾担任国家安全事务委员会（National Security Council）网络安全资深主任，20年来一直在这个领域从事领导工作。

近10年来互联网用户迅猛增加，凡目睹者无不赞叹。但这仅仅是一个开端。今后20年，还将有近50亿人加入上网行列。而未来将由这些人来决定。

因此，我们正着眼于长期的工作。与网上发生的很多事情不同，在这条战线上取得进展需要多年的努力，不可能几秒钟即产生效果。我们今天阐述的行动方针将决定与我们志同道合的人是否将得到机会享有一个开放的互联网带来的自由、安全与繁荣。

展望未来，让我们牢记，互联网自由所涉及的并不是某一种特定的网上活动，而是关系到确保互联网继续是一个可以从事各种活动的空间——从宏大、划时代、历史性的运动直至微小、普通的人类日常活动。

我们要求保持互联网的开放，为了埃及抗议者可以通过社会媒体组织游行；为了身处异地的留学生通过电子邮件向家人发送她本学期拍摄的照片；为了越南律师写博文揭露腐败现象；为了美国少年受到欺侮后从网上获得支持的言论；为了肯尼亚小企业主利用移动银行管理盈利；为了中国哲学家撰写论文从网上查找学术期刊；为了巴西科学家实时与海外同行分享数据；为了人们每天在通过互联网与亲人联系，查看新闻，从事自己的工作并参与决定自己命运的讨论之时进行的无以计数的互动。

互联网自由涉及保护进行所有这些活动的空间，以便这一空间不仅为今天在场的学生所用，而且为你们之后的学生和所有的后来者所用。这是我们这个时代面临的重大挑战之一。我们正在作出积极的努力，抵制我们一贯反对的那些人，那些想采取扼杀和压制手段、想宣扬他们自己对现实的看法而不接受任何其他看法的人。我们要求你们为这场斗争贡献力量。这是一场捍卫人权、保护人类自由与人类尊严的斗争。

非常感谢大家。（掌声）

Remarks
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State
George Washington University
Washington, DC
February 15, 2011

Thank you all very much and good afternoon. It is a pleasure, once again, to be back on the campus of the George Washington University, a place that I have spent quite a bit of time in all different settings over the last now nearly 20 years. I’d like especially to thank President Knapp and Provost Lerman, because this is a great opportunity for me to address such a significant issue, and one which deserves the attention of citizens, governments, and I know is drawing that attention. And perhaps today in my remarks, we can begin a much more vigorous debate that will respond to the needs that we have been watching in real time on our television sets.

A few minutes after midnight on January 28th, the internet went dark across Egypt. During the previous four days, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians had marched to demand a new government. And the world, on TVs, laptops, cell phones, and smart phones, had followed every single step. Pictures and videos from Egypt flooded the web. On Facebook and Twitter, journalists posted on-the-spot reports. Protestors coordinated their next moves. And citizens of all stripes shared their hopes and fears about this pivotal moment in the history of their country.

Millions worldwide answered in real time, “You are not alone and we are with you.” Then the government pulled the plug. Cell phone service was cut off, TV satellite signals were jammed, and internet access was blocked for nearly the entire population. The government did not want the people to communicate with each other and it did not want the press to communicate with the public. It certainly did not want the world to watch.

The events in Egypt recalled another protest movement 18 months earlier in Iran, when thousands marched after disputed elections. Their protestors also used websites to organize. A video taken by cell phone showed a young woman named Neda killed by a member of the paramilitary forces, and within hours, that video was being watched by people everywhere.

The Iranian authorities used technology as well. The Revolutionary Guard stalked members of the Green Movement by tracking their online profiles. And like Egypt, for a time, the government shut down the internet and mobile networks altogether. After the authorities raided homes, attacked university dorms, made mass arrests, tortured and fired shots into crowds, the protests ended.

In Egypt, however, the story ended differently. The protests continued despite the internet shutdown. People organized marches through flyers and word of mouth and used dial-up modems and fax machines to communicate with the world. After five days, the government relented and Egypt came back online. The authorities then sought to use the internet to control the protests by ordering mobile companies to send out pro-government text messages, and by arresting bloggers and those who organized the protests online. But 18 days after the protests began, the government failed and the president resigned.

What happened in Egypt and what happened in Iran, which this week is once again using violence against protestors seeking basic freedoms, was about a great deal more than the internet. In each case, people protested because of deep frustrations with the political and economic conditions of their lives. They stood and marched and chanted and the authorities tracked and blocked and arrested them. The internet did not do any of those things; people did. In both of these countries, the ways that citizens and the authorities used the internet reflected the power of connection technologies on the one hand as an accelerant of political, social, and economic change, and on the other hand as a means to stifle or extinguish that change.

There is a debate currently underway in some circles about whether the internet is a force for liberation or repression. But I think that debate is largely beside the point. Egypt isn’t inspiring people because they communicated using Twitter. It is inspiring because people came together and persisted in demanding a better future. Iran isn’t awful because the authorities used Facebook to shadow and capture members of the opposition. Iran is awful because it is a government that routinely violates the rights of its people.

So it is our values that cause these actions to inspire or outrage us, our sense of human dignity, the rights that flow from it, and the principles that ground it. And it is these values that ought to drive us to think about the road ahead. Two billion people are now online, nearly a third of humankind. We hail from every corner of the world, live under every form of government, and subscribe to every system of beliefs. And increasingly, we are turning to the internet to conduct important aspects of our lives.

The internet has become the public space of the 21st century – the world’s town square, classroom, marketplace, coffeehouse, and nightclub. We all shape and are shaped by what happens there, all 2 billion of us and counting. And that presents a challenge. To maintain an internet that delivers the greatest possible benefits to the world, we need to have a serious conversation about the principles that will guide us, what rules exist and should not exist and why, what behaviors should be encouraged or discouraged and how.

The goal is not to tell people how to use the internet any more than we ought to tell people how to use any public square, whether it’s Tahrir Square or Times Square. The value of these spaces derives from the variety of activities people can pursue in them, from holding a rally to selling their vegetables, to having a private conversation. These spaces provide an open platform, and so does the internet. It does not serve any particular agenda, and it never should. But if people around the world are going come together every day online and have a safe and productive experience, we need a shared vision to guide us.

One year ago, I offered a starting point for that vision by calling for a global commitment to internet freedom, to protect human rights online as we do offline. The rights of individuals to express their views freely, petition their leaders, worship according to their beliefs – these rights are universal, whether they are exercised in a public square or on an individual blog. The freedoms to assemble and associate also apply in cyberspace. In our time, people are as likely to come together to pursue common interests online as in a church or a labor hall.

Together, the freedoms of expression, assembly, and association online comprise what I’ve called the freedom to connect. The United States supports this freedom for people everywhere, and we have called on other nations to do the same. Because we want people to have the chance to exercise this freedom. We also support expanding the number of people who have access to the internet. And because the internet must work evenly and reliably for it to have value, we support the multi-stakeholder system that governs the internet today, which has consistently kept it up and running through all manner of interruptions across networks, borders, and regions.

In the year since my speech, people worldwide have continued to use the internet to solve shared problems and expose public corruption, from the people in Russia who tracked wildfires online and organized a volunteer firefighting squad, to the children in Syria who used Facebook to reveal abuse by their teachers, to the internet campaign in China that helps parents find their missing children.

At the same time, the internet continues to be restrained in a myriad of ways. In China, the government censors content and redirects search requests to error pages. In Burma, independent news sites have been taken down with distributed denial of service attacks. In Cuba, the government is trying to create a national intranet, while not allowing their citizens to access the global internet. In Vietnam, bloggers who criticize the government are arrested and abused. In Iran, the authorities block opposition and media websites, target social media, and steal identifying information about their own people in order to hunt them down.

These actions reflect a landscape that is complex and combustible, and sure to become more so in the coming years as billions of more people connect to the internet. The choices we make today will determine what the internet looks like in the future. Businesses have to choose whether and how to enter markets where internet freedom is limited. People have to choose how to act online, what information to share and with whom, which ideas to voice and how to voice them. Governments have to choose to live up to their commitments to protect free expression, assembly, and association.

For the United States, the choice is clear. On the spectrum of internet freedom, we place ourselves on the side of openness. Now, we recognize that an open internet comes with challenges. It calls for ground rules to protect against wrongdoing and harm. And internet freedom raises tensions, like all freedoms do. But we believe the benefits far exceed the costs.

And today, I’d like to discuss several of the challenges we must confront as we seek to protect and defend a free and open internet. Now, I’m the first to say that neither I nor the United States Government has all the answers. We’re not sure we have all the questions. But we are committed to asking the questions, to helping lead a conversation, and to defending not just universal principles but the interests of our people and our partners.

The first challenge is achieving both liberty and security. Liberty and security are often presented as equal and opposite; the more you have of one, the less you have of the other. In fact, I believe they make it each other possible. Without security, liberty is fragile. Without liberty, security is oppressive. The challenge is finding the proper measure: enough security to enable our freedoms, but not so much or so little as to endanger them.

Finding this proper measure for the internet is critical because the qualities that make the internet a force for unprecedented progress – its openness, its leveling effect, its reach and speed – also enable wrongdoing on an unprecedented scale. Terrorists and extremist groups use the internet to recruit members, and plot and carry out attacks. Human traffickers use the internet to find and lure new victims into modern-day slavery. Child pornographers use the internet to exploit children. Hackers break into financial institutions, cell phone networks, and personal email accounts.

So we need successful strategies for combating these threats and more without constricting the openness that is the internet’s greatest attribute. The United States is aggressively tracking and deterring criminals and terrorists online. We are investing in our nation’s cyber-security, both to prevent cyber-incidents and to lessen their impact. We are cooperating with other countries to fight transnational crime in cyber-space. The United States Government invests in helping other nations build their own law enforcement capacity. We have also ratified the Budapest Cybercrime Convention, which sets out the steps countries must take to ensure that the internet is not misused by criminals and terrorists while still protecting the liberties of our own citizens.

In our vigorous effort to prevent attacks or apprehend criminals, we retain a commitment to human rights and fundamental freedoms. The United States is determined to stop terrorism and criminal activity online and offline, and in both spheres we are committed to pursuing these goals in accordance with our laws and values.

Now, others have taken a different approach. Security is often invoked as a justification for harsh crackdowns on freedom. Now, this tactic is not new to the digital age, but it has new resonance as the internet has given governments new capacities for tracking and punishing human rights advocates and political dissidents. Governments that arrest bloggers, pry into the peaceful activities of their citizens, and limit their access to the internet may claim to be seeking security. In fact, they may even mean it as they define it. But they are taking the wrong path. Those who clamp down on internet freedom may be able to hold back the full expression of their people’s yearnings for a while, but not forever.

The second challenge is protecting both transparency and confidentiality. The internet’s strong culture of transparency derives from its power to make information of all kinds available instantly. But in addition to being a public space, the internet is also a channel for private communications. And for that to continue, there must be protection for confidential communication online. Think of all the ways in which people and organizations rely on confidential communications to do their jobs. Businesses hold confidential conversations when they’re developing new products to stay ahead of their competitors. Journalists keep the details of some sources confidential to protect them from exposure or retribution. And governments also rely on confidential communication online as well as offline. The existence of connection technologies may make it harder to maintain confidentiality, but it does not alter the need for it.

Now, I know that government confidentiality has been a topic of debate during the past few months because of WikiLeaks, but it’s been a false debate in many ways. Fundamentally, the WikiLeaks incident began with an act of theft. Government documents were stolen, just the same as if they had been smuggled out in a briefcase. Some have suggested that this theft was justified because governments have a responsibility to conduct all of our work out in the open in the full view of our citizens. I respectfully disagree. The United States could neither provide for our citizens’ security nor promote the cause of human rights and democracy around the world if we had to make public every step of our efforts. Confidential communication gives our government the opportunity to do work that could not be done otherwise.

Consider our work with former Soviet states to secure loose nuclear material. By keeping the details confidential, we make it less likely that terrorists or criminals will find the nuclear material and steal it for their own purposes. Or consider the content of the documents that WikiLeaks made public. Without commenting on the authenticity of any particular documents, we can observe that many of the cables released by WikiLeaks relate to human rights work carried on around the world. Our diplomats closely collaborate with activists, journalists, and citizens to challenge the misdeeds of oppressive governments. It is dangerous work. By publishing diplomatic cables, WikiLeaks exposed people to even greater risk.

For operations like these, confidentiality is essential, especially in the internet age when dangerous information can be sent around the world with the click of a keystroke. But of course, governments also have a duty to be transparent. We govern with the consent of the people, and that consent must be informed to be meaningful. So we must be judicious about when we close off our work to the public, and we must review our standards frequently to make sure they are rigorous. In the United States, we have laws designed to ensure that the government makes its work open to the people, and the Obama Administration has also launched an unprecedented initiative to put government data online, to encourage citizen participation, and to generally increase the openness of government.

The U.S. Government’s ability to protect America, to secure the liberties of our people, and to support the rights and freedoms of others around the world depends on maintaining a balance between what’s public and what should and must remain out of the public domain. The scale should and will always be tipped in favor of openness, but tipping the scale over completely serves no one’s interests. Let me be clear. I said that the WikiLeaks incident began with a theft, just as if it had been executed by smuggling papers in a briefcase. The fact that WikiLeaks used the internet is not the reason we criticized its actions. WikiLeaks does not challenge our commitment to internet freedom.

And one final word on this matter: There were reports in the days following these leaks that the United States Government intervened to coerce private companies to deny service to WikiLeaks. That is not the case. Now, some politicians and pundits publicly called for companies to disassociate from WikiLeaks, while others criticized them for doing so. Public officials are part of our country’s public debates, but there is a line between expressing views and coercing conduct. Business decisions that private companies may have taken to enforce their own values or policies regarding WikiLeaks were not at the direction of the Obama Administration.

A third challenge is protecting free expression while fostering tolerance and civility. I don’t need to tell this audience that the internet is home to every kind of speech – false, offensive, incendiary, innovative, truthful, and beautiful.

The multitude of opinions and ideas that crowd the internet is both a result of its openness and a reflection of our human diversity. Online, everyone has a voice. And the Universal Declaration of Human Rights protects the freedom of expression for all. But what we say has consequences. Hateful or defamatory words can inflame hostilities, deepen divisions, and provoke violence. On the internet, this power is heightened. Intolerant speech is often amplified and impossible to retract. Of course, the internet also provides a unique space for people to bridge their differences and build trust and understanding.

Some take the view that, to encourage tolerance, some hateful ideas must be silenced by governments. We believe that efforts to curb the content of speech rarely succeed and often become an excuse to violate freedom of expression. Instead, as it has historically been proven time and time again, the better answer to offensive speech is more speech. People can and should speak out against intolerance and hatred. By exposing ideas to debate, those with merit tend to be strengthened, while weak and false ideas tend to fade away; perhaps not instantly, but eventually.

Now, this approach does not immediately discredit every hateful idea or convince every bigot to reverse his thinking. But we have determined as a society that it is far more effective than any other alternative approach. Deleting writing, blocking content, arresting speakers – these actions suppress words, but they do not touch the underlying ideas. They simply drive people with those ideas to the fringes, where their convictions can deepen, unchallenged.

Last summer, Hannah Rosenthal, the U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, made a trip to Dachau and Auschwitz with a delegation of American imams and Muslim leaders. Many of them had previously denied the Holocaust, and none of them had ever denounced Holocaust denial. But by visiting the concentration camps, they displayed a willingness to consider a different view. And the trip had a real impact. They prayed together, and they signed messages of peace, and many of those messages in the visitors books were written in Arabic. At the end of the trip, they read a statement that they wrote and signed together condemning without reservation Holocaust denial and all other forms of anti-Semitism.

The marketplace of ideas worked. Now, these leaders had not been arrested for their previous stance or ordered to remain silent. Their mosques were not shut down. The state did not compel them with force. Others appealed to them with facts. And their speech was dealt with through the speech of others.

The United States does restrict certain kinds of speech in accordance with the rule of law and our international obligations. We have rules about libel and slander, defamation, and speech that incites imminent violence. But we enforce these rules transparently, and citizens have the right to appeal how they are applied. And we don’t restrict speech even if the majority of people find it offensive. History, after all, is full of examples of ideas that were banned for reasons that we now see as wrong. People were punished for denying the divine right of kings, or suggesting that people should be treated equally regardless of race, gender, or religion. These restrictions might have reflected the dominant view at the time, and variations on these restrictions are still in force in places around the world.

But when it comes to online speech, the United States has chosen not to depart from our time-tested principles. We urge our people to speak with civility, to recognize the power and reach that their words can have online. We’ve seen in our own country tragic examples of how online bullying can have terrible consequences. Those of us in government should lead by example, in the tone we set and the ideas we champion. But leadership also means empowering people to make their own choices, rather than intervening and taking those choices away. We protect free speech with the force of law, and we appeal to the force of reason to win out over hate.

Now, these three large principles are not always easy to advance at once. They raise tensions, and they pose challenges. But we do not have to choose among them. Liberty and security, transparency and confidentiality, freedom of expression and tolerance – these all make up the foundation of a free, open, and secure society as well as a free, open, and secure internet where universal human rights are respected, and which provides a space for greater progress and prosperity over the long run.

Now, some countries are trying a different approach, abridging rights online and working to erect permanent walls between different activities – economic exchanges, political discussions, religious expressions, and social interactions. They want to keep what they like and suppress what they don’t. But this is no easy task. Search engines connect businesses to new customers, and they also attract users because they deliver and organize news and information. Social networking sites aren’t only places where friends share photos; they also share political views and build support for social causes or reach out to professional contacts to collaborate on new business opportunities.

Walls that divide the internet, that block political content, or ban broad categories of expression, or allow certain forms of peaceful assembly but prohibit others, or intimidate people from expressing their ideas are far easier to erect than to maintain. Not just because people using human ingenuity find ways around them and through them but because there isn’t an economic internet and a social internet and a political internet; there’s just the internet. And maintaining barriers that attempt to change this reality entails a variety of costs – moral, political, and economic. Countries may be able to absorb these costs for a time, but we believe they are unsustainable in the long run. There are opportunity costs for trying to be open for business but closed for free expression – costs to a nation’s education system, its political stability, its social mobility, and its economic potential.

When countries curtail internet freedom, they place limits on their economic future. Their young people don’t have full access to the conversations and debates happening in the world or exposure to the kind of free inquiry that spurs people to question old ways of doing and invent new ones. And barring criticism of officials makes governments more susceptible to corruption, which create economic distortions with long-term effects. Freedom of thought and the level playing field made possible by the rule of law are part of what fuels innovation economies.

So it’s not surprising that the European-American Business Council, a group of more than 70 companies, made a strong public support statement last week for internet freedom. If you invest in countries with aggressive censorship and surveillance policies, your website could be shut down without warning, your servers hacked by the government, your designs stolen, or your staff threatened with arrest or expulsion for failing to comply with a politically motivated order. The risks to your bottom line and to your integrity will at some point outweigh the potential rewards, especially if there are market opportunities elsewhere.

Now, some have pointed to a few countries, particularly China, that appears to stand out as an exception, a place where internet censorship is high and economic growth is strong. Clearly, many businesses are willing to endure restrictive internet policies to gain access to those markets, and in the short term, even perhaps in the medium term, those governments may succeed in maintaining a segmented internet. But those restrictions will have long-term costs that threaten one day to become a noose that restrains growth and development.

There are political costs as well. Consider Tunisia, where online economic activity was an important part of the country’s ties with Europe while online censorship was on par with China and Iran, the effort to divide the economic internet from the “everything else” internet in Tunisia could not be sustained. People, especially young people, found ways to use connection technologies to organize and share grievances, which, as we know, helped fuel a movement that led to revolutionary change. In Syria, too, the government is trying to negotiate a non-negotiable contradiction. Just last week, it lifted a ban on Facebook and YouTube for the first time in three years, and yesterday they convicted a teenage girl of espionage and sentenced her to five years in prison for the political opinions she expressed on her blog.

This, too, is unsustainable. The demand for access to platforms of expression cannot be satisfied when using them lands you in prison. We believe that governments who have erected barriers to internet freedom, whether they’re technical filters or censorship regimes or attacks on those who exercise their rights to expression and assembly online, will eventually find themselves boxed in. They will face a dictator’s dilemma and will have to choose between letting the walls fall or paying the price to keep them standing, which means both doubling down on a losing hand by resorting to greater oppression and enduring the escalating opportunity cost of missing out on the ideas that have been blocked and people who have been disappeared.

I urge countries everywhere instead to join us in the bet we have made, a bet that an open internet will lead to stronger, more prosperous countries. At its core, it’s an extension of the bet that the United States has been making for more than 200 years, that open societies give rise to the most lasting progress, that the rule of law is the firmest foundation for justice and peace, and that innovation thrives where ideas of all kinds are aired and explored. This is not a bet on computers or mobile phones. It’s a bet on people. We’re confident that together with those partners in government and people around the world who are making the same bet by hewing to universal rights that underpin open societies, we’ll preserve the internet as an open space for all. And that will pay long-term gains for our shared progress and prosperity. The United States will continue to promote an internet where people’s rights are protected and that it is open to innovation, interoperable all over the world, secure enough to hold people’s trust, and reliable enough to support their work.

In the past year, we have welcomed the emergence of a global coalition of countries, businesses, civil society groups, and digital activists seeking to advance these goals. We have found strong partners in several governments worldwide, and we’ve been encouraged by the work of the Global Network Initiative, which brings together companies, academics, and NGOs to work together to solve the challenges we are facing, like how to handle government requests for censorship or how to decide whether to sell technologies that could be used to violate rights or how to handle privacy issues in the context of cloud computing. We need strong corporate partners that have made principled, meaningful commitments to internet freedom as we work together to advance this common cause.

We realize that in order to be meaningful, online freedoms must carry over into real-world activism. That’s why we are working through our Civil Society 2.0 initiative to connect NGOs and advocates with technology and training that will magnify their impact. We are also committed to continuing our conversation with people everywhere around the world. Last week, you may have heard, we launched Twitter feeds in Arabic and Farsi, adding to the ones we already have in French and Spanish. We’ll start similar ones in Chinese, Russian, and Hindi. This is enabling us to have real-time, two-way conversations with people wherever there is a connection that governments do not block.

Our commitment to internet freedom is a commitment to the rights of people, and we are matching that with our actions. Monitoring and responding to threats to internet freedom has become part of the daily work of our diplomats and development experts. They are working to advance internet freedom on the ground at our embassies and missions around the world. The United States continues to help people in oppressive internet environments get around filters, stay one step ahead of the censors, the hackers, and the thugs who beat them up or imprison them for what they say online.

While the rights we seek to protect and support are clear, the various ways that these rights are violated are increasingly complex. I know some have criticized us for not pouring funding into a single technology, but we believe there is no silver bullet in the struggle against internet repression. There’s no app for that. (Laughter.) Start working, those of you out there. (Laughter.) And accordingly, we are taking a comprehensive and innovative approach, one that matches our diplomacy with technology, secure distribution networks for tools, and direct support for those on the front lines.

In the last three years, we have awarded more than $20 million in competitive grants through an open process, including interagency evaluation by technical and policy experts to support a burgeoning group of technologists and activists working at the cutting edge of the fight against internet repression. This year, we will award more than $25 million in additional funding. We are taking a venture capital-style approach, supporting a portfolio of technologies, tools, and training, and adapting as more users shift to mobile devices. We have our ear to the ground, talking to digital activists about where they need help, and our diversified approach means we’re able to adapt the range of threats that they face. We support multiple tools, so if repressive governments figure out how to target one, others are available. And we invest in the cutting edge because we know that repressive governments are constantly innovating their methods of oppression and we intend to stay ahead of them.

Likewise, we are leading the push to strengthen cyber security and online innovation, building capacity in developing countries, championing open and interoperable standards and enhancing international cooperation to respond to cyber threats. Deputy Secretary of Defense Lynn gave a speech on this issue just yesterday. All these efforts build on a decade of work to sustain an internet that is open, secure, and reliable. And in the coming year, the Administration will complete an international strategy for cyberspace, charting the course to continue this work into the future.

This is a foreign policy priority for us, one that will only increase in importance in the coming years. That’s why I’ve created the Office of the Coordinator for Cyber Issues, to enhance our work on cyber security and other issues and facilitate cooperation across the State Department and with other government agencies. I’ve named Christopher Painter, formerly senior director for cyber security at the National Security Council and a leader in the field for 20 years, to head this new office.

The dramatic increase in internet users during the past 10 years has been remarkable to witness. But that was just the opening act. In the next 20 years, nearly 5 billion people will join the network. It is those users who will decide the future.

So we are playing for the long game. Unlike much of what happens online, progress on this front will be measured in years, not seconds. The course we chart today will determine whether those who follow us will get the chance to experience the freedom, security, and prosperity of an open internet.

As we look ahead, let us remember that internet freedom isn’t about any one particular activity online. It’s about ensuring that the internet remains a space where activities of all kinds can take place, from grand, ground-breaking, historic campaigns to the small, ordinary acts that people engage in every day.

We want to keep the internet open for the protestor using social media to organize a march in Egypt; the college student emailing her family photos of her semester abroad; the lawyer in Vietnam blogging to expose corruption; the teenager in the United States who is bullied and finds words of support online; for the small business owner in Kenya using mobile banking to manage her profits; the philosopher in China reading academic journals for her dissertation; the scientist in Brazil sharing data in real time with colleagues overseas; and the billions and billions of interactions with the internet every single day as people communicate with loved ones, follow the news, do their jobs, and participate in the debates shaping their world.

Internet freedom is about defending the space in which all these things occur so that it remains not just for the students here today, but your successors and all who come after you. This is one of the grand challenges of our time. We are engaged in a vigorous effort against those who we have always stood against, who wish to stifle and repress, to come forward with their version of reality and to accept none other. We enlist your help on behalf of this struggle. It’s a struggle for human rights, it’s a struggle for human freedom, and it’s a struggle for human dignity.

Thank you all very much. (Applause.)