Freedom of information under attack: U.S. House bill would protect global access

Bipartisan legislation introduced in the U.S. House last Thursday would create greater authority for the United States to protect global access to uncensored information.

U.S. Reps. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, Bill Keating of Massachusetts and Chris Stewart of Utah introduced the legislation in response to efforts by authoritarian and repressive government restrictions of Internet access.

Regimes in countries including Russia, China, Cuba, Burma and Iran restrict access to the Internet for residents in order to suppress information sharing and world-wide communications.

Spanberger is leading the U.S. House companion bill to the Internet Freedom and Operations (INFO) Act led in the U.S. Senate by U.S. Senators Bob Menendez of New Jersey and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, the press release stated.

“Millions of people living under repressive regimes lack access to fact-based, reliable, and unbiased news and information sources,” Spanberger said in the press release. “Right now, we are watching the Iranian regime blatantly disregard human rights and attempt to stifle peaceful protests, online speech, and the free flow of information. Authoritarian regimes are strengthened when their citizens are cut off from an unfiltered view of the outside world — posing a serious national security threat to the United States. To further our national security priorities, we must protect Internet freedom for all dissidents, human rights defenders, and people around the world. And as a beacon of freedom and democracy, the United States must reaffirm our commitment to defending basic rights and supporting democratic movements globally.”

The press release stated that more than 3 billion in the world use the Internet every day to access information and communicate freely, but in Russia, China, Cuba, Burma and Iran the freedom of information is under threat.

“As Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Europe, one of my top priorities has been to counter disinformation and provide tools to independent media suffering under authoritarian regimes,” Keating said in the press release. “All people deserve access to uncensored information. As communities around the world from Belarus to Afghanistan to Cuba continue to face attacks on the free press and have their internet restricted, this bill underscores that it is the policy of the United States to support all those in search of the truth by funding alternative transmission routes and internet circumvention routes.”

The INFO Act would:

• Reaffirm U.S. policy to preserve and expand the Internet as an open, global space for freedom of expression and association,
• Authorize $75 million for various Internet Freedom programs through the U.S. Department of State and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID),
• Authorize $50 million for Internet Freedom and circumvention technologies through the U.S. Agency for Global Media and its affiliates,
• Authorize expedited funds to be used in case of a crisis situation like the protests in Cuba last summer or in Russia right now; and
• Call for two reports about the work State, USAID and the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM) are doing on internet freedom.