Rebecca MacKinnon
Rebecca MacKinnon
Rebecca MacKinnonis an author, researcher, Internet freedom advocate, and co-founder of the citizen media network Global Voices Online. She is notable as a former CNN journalist who headed the CNN bureaus in Beijing and later in Tokyo. She is on the Board of Directors of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a founding board member of the Global Network Initiative and is currently director of the Ranking Digital Rights project at the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth16 September 1969
CountryUnited States of America
Rebecca MacKinnon quotes about
Congress may not get the Internet, but the Internet doesn't get Congress, either.
It's harder and harder for journalists to get out in the field and interview Iraqis. The Web can get these voices out easily and cheaply.
The trend in China is toward tighter and tighter control. They are basically improving their censorship mechanisms.
There's a lot of politics over who gets the next allocation of Congressional funding.
Nobody is one asking Western companies to go and lobby the Chinese government to change its behavior. That's not possible. But what we are asking companies to do is change the way in which they respond to Chinese government behavior and the way in which they interact with it, and that they can control.
Many of the Kuomintang elite in Taiwan have relatives among the ruling elite here on mainland China.
Without global human rights, labor and environmental movements, companies would still be hiring 12-year-olds as a matter of course and poisoning our groundwater without batting an eyelid.
There is a broad movement that has been holding companies accountable on human rights for a long time.
There has been a rising tide of criticism about China's treatment of foreign companies.
WikiLeaks published the Afghan War Logs and U.S. diplomatic cables stolen from a classified network by an Army private.
We must all rise to the challenge to demonstrate that security and prosperity in the Internet age are not only compatible with liberty, they ultimately depend on it.
What role did the Internet play in the Egyptian Revolution? People will be arguing about the answer to that question for decades if not centuries.
While sanctions against Iran and Syria are intended to constrain those countries' governments, they have had the unfortunate side effect of constraining activists' access to free online software and services used widely across the Middle East, including browsers, online chat applications, and online storage services.
The potential for the abuse of power through digital networks - upon which we the people now depend for nearly everything, including our politics - is one of the most insidious threats to democracy in the Internet age.