[IP] Technology Promotes Democracy, Lawmakers Say]
for the time being
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Subject: For IP: Technology Promotes Democracy, Lawmakers Say
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2006 22:56:10 -0500 (EST)
From: AMBOLLC@xxxxxxx
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Technology Promotes Democracy, Lawmakers Say
(Mobile phones, phone text-messaging allow users to avoid censorship)
(1040)
By Carol Walker
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- Technology has the power to bring about a faster pace of
democratization in repressive regimes, especially during and between
elections and in managing health services, according to members of
Congress and technology experts at a conference on March 1.
The conference, “Expanding and Strengthening Democracy: The Role of
Technology,” was sponsored by Democracy Data and Communications, the
International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic
Institute (NDI) and was held at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Technology and innovation have been catalysts for revolutionary change,
according to Representative Anna G. Eshoo, a Democrat from California.
“What the printing press made possible in centuries past, the Internet has
amplified exponentially,” Eshoo said.
Repressive regimes control information to protect a strong autocracy and
promote a weak civil society, said Tian Chua of the Labour Resource Centre
and vice president of the Keadilan Party in Malaysia. Once citizens are
able to find ways to learn about government corruption and scandal, they
can begin to build a stronger civil society.
“We’re using technology to win the battle,” Chua said.
Just as fax machines helped disseminate information and mobilize
activists in Malaysia in recent decades, Chua now sees the Internet, SMS
(short message system) messaging and cell phones being used to spread, and
even broadcast, information and news people cannot get anyplace else.
Radio, television and print media in Malaysia are fully censored, Chua
said.
More than 103 million people are online in China, and according to a
2005 Internet-use survey, most Chinese use the Internet for entertainment
or to obtain information about entertainment and to communicate online
with each other.
The average Chinese Internet user stays online for 2.7 hours per day but
more than 75 percent never have made an online purchase, according to Guo
Liang of the Research Center for Social Development at the Academy of
Social Sciences in Beijing at an Internet meeting at the Brookings
Institution in Washington in November 2005. Chinese Internet users prefer
instant messaging to e-mail, Gao said, and they rely on the Internet for
making contact with colleagues and with people who share their personal
and political interests.
The use of blogs to maintain dialogue during and between elections has
been key in developing democracies and repressive countries, said Ethan
Zuckerman, head of Global Voices Online, a nonprofit project of the
Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, at the
technology and democracy conference. Global Voices Online is a worldwide
community of bloggers, or bridge bloggers, who find, collect and track
information and ideas appearing in blogs, podcasts, photo sharing sites,
and videoblogs.
“The period between elections is the most critical stage in democratic
transitions as political parties and newly elected officials build the
institutions required to sustain democratic gains and maintain public
trust in the political process,” said Representative Jim Kolbe, a
Republican from Arizona, at the March 1 conference.
Kolbe said the use of cell phones and text messages for coordinating
demonstrations, telling people how and where to vote during elections, and
the use of the Internet have been vital tools in promoting democracy and
development.
Although SMS was relied on heavily in getting people out to vote in
Iraq’s December 2005 elections, television is still the most vital way to
reach people in Iraq, said Alan Silverleib, director of the Political
Parties Program at IRI. Silverleib, along with Rahman Al Jebouri, deputy
country director at NDI, participated in the panel discussion from
Baghdad, Iraq, via video teleconference.
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) helping to get people out to vote
in the 2004 Afghanistan elections used SMS technology to let citizens know
about polling times and conditions.
“Cellular phones and Internet connectivity are being used by activist
citizens in innovative ways to organize and communicate,” Kolbe said.
“Tools such as cell phone text-messaging and Web logs [blogs] have been
utilized as ways to circumvent the traditional mechanisms of state control
over media and information.”
MANAGAING HEALTH CARE
Internet and cell-phone technologies also have become important tools
to manage health services, particularly in countries with large rural
populations. In Rwanda, where 4 percent of adults living in rural areas
and 13 percent in Kigali are living with HIV/AIDS, health-care workers are
using cell-phone technology to streamline and expedite data sharing. SMS
technology interfaces with the Internet, said panelist Julia Cohen,
technical leader for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief Supply
Chain Management System.
Health workers and patients in Rwanda can monitor test results and
patient progress within seconds rather than days or weeks by logging onto
the Internet, if possible, or receive SMS messages. Cohen, who works for
the company Voxiva, Inc., which developed the cell-phone service in
Rwanda, said the technology also is being used in newly emerging
democracies to get around Internet censorship.
INTERNET FREEDOM
At a February congressional hearing on Chinese censorship on the
Internet, Representative Christopher Smith, a Republican from New Jersey,
criticized Google, Yahoo, Cisco and Microsoft, leading U.S. companies that
provide China with the technology necessary to filter Internet content. At
the same time, Smith noted the efforts of these and other companies to
develop anti-censorship technology that would enable Chinese citizens to
access the entire Internet filter-free and detect monitoring by Chinese
officials. (See related article
(http://usinfo.state.gov/dhr/Archive/2006/Feb/16-161025.html).)
Internet users have grown worldwide from 16 million to 900 million over
the last decade, according to Michael Gallagher, U.S. assistant secretary
of commerce for communications and information at the U.N. General
Assembly-sanctioned International Summit on the Information Society in
Tunis, Tunisia, in November 2005. (See related article
(http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2005&m
m=November&x=20051115172431cmretrop0.931576&t=xarchives/xarchitem.html).)
“The forces of private sector innovation, freedom of expression,
democracy and markets are moving all of the world forward on the digital
path,” Gallagher.
The Global Internet Freedom Task Force, including State Department
officials in international communications policy, human rights, democracy,
business advocacy and corporate responsibility, is working with U.S.
businesses, NGOs, the European Union and other governments to address
Internet freedom issues.
The task force will make recommendations to Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice on policy and diplomatic initiatives. (See related
article
(http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2006&m
m=February&x=20060214161400bcreklaw3.503054e-02&t=xarchives/xarchitem.html)
).)
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