Top 207 Quotes & Sayings by Rebecca MacKinnon - Page 4

We like to think of the Internet as a border-busting technology.

As a citizen of a community, if you never vote or engage, don't be surprised when the outcome doesn't serve your interests; you've never done anything to push things in the right direction.

Human rights in cyberspace are really no different from rights in the physical world.

Despite the Obama administration's proclaimed commitment to global Internet freedom, the executive branch is not transparent about the types and capabilities of surveillance technologies it is sourcing and purchasing - or about what other governments are purchasing the same technology.

One-way monologues through the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia don't have much street cred with China's Internet generation, to be honest.

Companies should have a due diligence process to determine the likelihood that their technologies will be used to carry out human rights abuses before doing business with a particular country or distributor.

Facebook has conquered much of the world.

As it turns out, American-made technology had helped Mubarak and his security state collect, compile, and parse vast amounts of data about everyday citizens.

In the United States, whatever you may think of Julian Assange, even people who are not necessarily big fans of his are very concerned about the way in which the United States government and some companies have handled Wikileaks.

In a pre-Internet world, sovereignty over our physical freedoms, or lack thereof, was controlled almost entirely by nation-states.

A moral argument about whether censorship is good or bad deteriorates quickly into accusations about who is more or less patriotic, moral, pious, and so on.

In China, Vietnam, Russia and several former Soviet states, the dominant social networks are run by local companies whose relationship with the government actually constrains the empowering potential of social networks.

Normalization of U.S.-China relations in 1979, combined with economic reforms and opening, transformed the Chinese people's lives.

Trade shows such as the wire tappers' ball are highly secretive and ban journalists from attending. None of the U.S. agencies that attended the wire tappers' ball - including the FBI, the Secret Service, and every branch of the military - were willing to comment when a reporter queried them about their attendance.

If China someday gains a more fair, just, and accountable system of government, it will be due to the hard work and efforts of the Chinese people, not due to the inexorable workings of any particular technology.

Google transformed the way most of us get our information with a search engine that enables us to find citizen-created media content alongside the work of professionals.

In Russia, they do not generally block the Internet and directly censor websites.

Amazon webhosting dropped Wikileaks as a customer after receiving a complaint from U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, despite the fact that Wikileaks had not been charged, let alone convicted, of any crime.

As in Pakistan, Tunisian and Egyptian human rights activists are concerned that any censorship mechanisms, once put in place, will inevitably be abused for political purposes no matter what censorship proponents claim to the contrary.

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.

Microsoft runs the world's biggest blogging platform, MSN Spaces.

Each and every one of us has a vital part to play in building the kind of world in which government and technology serve the world's people and not the other way around.

Microsoft, Yahoo and others are helping to institutionalize and legitimize the integration of censorship into the global IT business model.

In modern politics, even the leader of the free world needs help from the sultan of Facebookistan.

The only legitimate purpose of government is to serve citizens, and ... the only legitimate purpose of technology is to improve our lives, not to manipulate or enslave us.

We have to start thinking of ourselves as citizens of the Internet, not just passive users. I don’t see how we can bring about change in our digital lives if we don’t take responsibility.

We’re at a point in history that whether the Internet is going to evolve in a way that’s compatible with democracy and human rights is really kind of up in the air.