Kudos to Hillary Clinton, who on Thursday launched a U.S. State Department campaign to preserve and expand Internet freedom around the world—and hit out at regimes that continue to tighten Web censorship.
"Countries or individuals that engage in cyberattacks should face consequences and international condemnation," she said, following attempts by Chinese hackers to read the emails of human-rights activists by attacking Google's servers. "In an interconnected world, an attack on one nation's networks can be an attack on all."
Her note that Beijing should "conduct a thorough investigation of the cyber intrusions" does invite the fox to take the keys to the henhouse. But overall, the new Clinton Doctrine is welcome. Her department's work to fund technology development that would help activists thwart their censors, and to fight off attempts in the U.N. to restrict access to information on the Internet, could deliver an important blow against autocrats beyond the Middle Kingdom.
See for instance the Twitter-powered "Green Revolution" in Iran, which has used social-networking technology to do more for regime change in the Islamic Republic than years of sanctions, threats and Geneva-based haggling put together. Social-networking may be a fad, but then so were the fax machines and bootlegged Frank Zappa albums smuggled behind the Iron Curtain a generation ago. Being popular with the kids doesn't usually hurt the cause of liberty.
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