IT firms, groups craft report on guarding online speech

A broad coalition of companies and human rights watchdogs is finishing up a set of guidelines for corporations that deal with foreign governments that repress online speech, sources close to the group told CongressDaily today.

Comment on this article in The Forum.The authors of the report, which is expected in several weeks, include Internet companies, human rights organizations and policy experts. Their work comes as U.S. high-tech firms are getting greater congressional scrutiny for their business dealings with China and other countries that censor and monitor citizens' Web activity.

At a hearing Tuesday, Senate Judiciary Human Rights Subcommittee Chairman Richard Durbin, D-Ill., asked Google and Yahoo executives why the 18-month-old collaboration had not yet yielded results, adding he hoped to see an announcement within 48 hours. That request is being addressed, according to a source. "The principles are done, the implementing guidelines are done, and the commitment to fund an entity to support all this is done," the source said, adding that disagreements remain over how to define accountability.

Some participants in the coalition want aggressive oversight of companies' conduct abroad, while corporate interests have pushed for a lighter touch, the source said. That disconnect was articulated at the hearing by Human Rights Watch's Arvind Ganesan, who said the concept of independent monitoring has not been embraced by all the stakeholders. Firms are quick to support for human rights, but they "also ask the public to basically trust them to do the right thing," he said, pointing to Google as an example.

Colin Maclay of Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society said today that the group has "come a long way" in terms of building trust among stakeholders but key questions remain about how to address the uncertainty of the process, including how to hold companies accountable when governments are "the root causes of the problem and beyond our control."

Durbin said he and Judiciary Committee colleagues are drafting a bill that could serve as a companion to one sponsored by Rep. Christopher Smith, R-N.J. The House version would ban U.S. tech firms from disclosing to restrictive governments materials that identify an Internet user, except in legitimate law enforcement cases. It would also establish a State Department office to combat state-sponsored Internet jamming by repressive regimes, a proposal that Cisco, Google and Yahoo support.

Yahoo's deputy general counsel, Michael Samway, told the subcommittee Tuesday that his firm is ready to move forward with the guidelines, including independent monitoring procedures. A Yahoo spokeswoman said Tuesday that her company believes legislation "can help level the playing" field among firms that operate in global markets, as long as it does not deter American businesses from operating overseas.

A Cisco official took a similar line Tuesday, saying that "the U.S. government is in the best position to focus interagency efforts to protect and promote freedom of electronic information abroad."

The Justice Department wrote to House Foreign Relations Chairman Howard Berman earlier this week opposing Smith's bill. In the letter, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski said the measure could compromise the agency's ability to cooperate with foreign law enforcement, and said certain provisions raise constitutional questions regarding the president's ability to conduct international diplomacy and U.S. firms' rights.