Letter to Hillary Clinton on China\'s internet freedom

1. February 18, 2010
The Honorable Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary
Department of State
2201 C Street Northwest
Washington, DC 20520-0099
Dear Madam Secretary,
We welcome your policy speech of January 21st on Internet freedom in which you
correctly assessed Internet censorship as “a leading cause of interstate conflict.” We therefore
applaud the State Department’s commitment to supporting the free flow of information on the
Internet.
It is our hope that, as you pursue this objective through the allocation of grants, you do so
based on a transparent system of evaluation with clear objectives and selection criteria. In short,
we hope that the State Department will award grants based on merit and demonstrated successes
as outlined in the FY2010 Appropriations Act and reiterated in the letter to you by Senators
Brownback, Casey, Kaufman, and Kyl, dated January 20, 2010.
It is our view that the Global Internet Freedom Consortium (GIF) are among the most
deserving of merit-based grants. GIF protocols and technologies have become the most widely
used anticensorship systems in the world, accounting for an estimated 90 percent of global
censorship-circumvention traffic from China, Iran, Burma, and other closed societies.
As field proven and fully scaleable systems, GIF protocols easily meet the Appropriations
Act criteria for facilitating access to an uncensored Internet by pro-democracy advocates. With a
modest injection of funding GIF could immediately increase its capacity to support 50 million
more Internet users in closed societies and, in the process, virtually tear down the censorship
firewalls.
Given the Department’s past failure to fund GIF systems, despite their success, we are
concerned that the grant allocation process is tainted by a lack of transparency and the prevalence
of prejudicial biases. Specifically, we note: 1) The Washington Post January 13 article quoting a
"senior U.S. official" as linking the denial of support to GIF to the concern that "the Chinese
would go ballistic" if the U.S. did so; 2) The uncontested statement made by a participant in a
panel that immediately followed your speech of January 21 and chaired by the Director of the
Department’s Office of Policy Planning, Dr. Anne-Marie Slaughter, that GIF systems had not
been funded by the Department because of the religious persuasion of its software developers,
who practice Falun Gong; 3) Deliberate mistruths now being spread by some in your Department
alleging that GIF’s developers are willing to sell their user information to the highest bidders—an
allegation that we find has no basis in fact.
We hardly need note that these unwarranted prejudices will directly undermine your
stated commitment to Internet freedom. We urge you to take immediate steps to ensure that your
goals are supported with merit based decisions that produce measurable results.
In this regard, we express our concern about the statements of Assistant Secretary
Michael Posner at the official briefing that followed your speech. At the briefing, Mr. Posner
evaded a direct question about the Department’s failure to support the GIF systems with the
vague response that “there isn’t a silver bullet” to defeat today’s firewall systems. This statement

2. was made even though GIF systems have a proven track record, are fully scaleable and, with the
purchase of additional servers with funds now available to the Department, can rapidly expand
their reach from 1.5 million to 50 million closed society users per day. Such an expansion will
shatter the firewalls of many closed societies and gravely compromise the effectiveness of the
remaining ones.
We thus ask that GIF receive support from the U.S. government sufficient to achieve
these goals. Failing that, we ask for the publication of the merit based criteria used to select
potential grantees, and for a full and transparent accounting of why, in your opinion, GIF systems
fail to meet those criteria.
We believe that your January 21st speech laid the groundwork for information freedom
around the world. We further believe that, by taking the right steps, the United States can make
an historic contribution to its own security and to the advancement of democracy by rapidly
tearing down the information firewalls of the world’s closed societies.
We remain available to meet with you or members of your staff, at their convenience.
Respectfully,
Humanitarian China
Beijing Spring
Federation for a Democratic China
Alliance for a Democratic China
China Democratic Party
China Rights Network
Chinese Alliance for Democracy
Yang Kuanxing, Co-Author
Charter 08
Editor-in-Chief, Yibao E-Magazine
Chai Ling
Former Student Leader, 1989 Tiananmen Square Democracy Movement
President, Janzabar, Inc
Wang, Youcai
Co-Founder
China Democratic Party
Feng, Congde.
Student Leader
1989 Tiananment Democracy Movement
Wuer, Kaixi
1989 Tiananment Democracy Movement
Xiong, Yan
1989 Tiananment Democracy Movement
Zhou, Fengsuo
Student Leader
1989 Tiananment Democracy Movement

3. Chinese Democracy Education Foundation
Fang, Zheng
Student
1989 Tiananment Democracy Movement
Zhang, Qianjin.
Student Leader
1989 Tiananment Democracy Movement
Bob Fu, President
China Aid
Yang Jianli, President
Initiatives for China
Signatory, Charter 08
Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School of Government
Student Leader, 1989 Tiananmen Democracy Movement
Rebiya Kadeer, President
World Uyghur Congress
Omer Kanat, General Secretary
Uyghur Human Rights and Democracy Foundation
Dr. Binh Nguyen, President, President
International federation for the protection of prisoners of Conscience (Vietnamese and East Asia)
Suzanne Scholte, President
Defense Forum Foundation
North Korea Freedom Coalition
Tran Giap, Regional Director,
Federation Khmer Krom
Sue Yoon-Logan, Senior Administrator
North Korea Freedom Coalition
Aung Kyaw Oo, Director
Free Burma Federation
Ammar Abdulhamid,
Executive Director and Founder
Tharwa Project (Syria)
Tran Giap, Regional Director,
Federation Khmer Krom
Dr. Richard Land, President
The Southern Baptist Convention:
The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission
Ann Bualda, Executive Director

4. The Jubilee Campaign
Reggie Littlejohn, President
Women’s Rights Without Frontiers
Nancy Purcell
North Korea Freedom Coalition
Peter Kang, Vice President
Korean Freedom and Democracy League
Jeremy Shul, Advocacy Director
International Christian Concern
Joseph K. Grieboski, Chairman
Institute on Religious and Public Policy
Betsy A. Kawamura
Advocacy on Human Rights and Gender (UK)
Dr. Richard Saisomorn, President
Laotian New Generation Democracy Movement
Kyung Bok Lee, President
The Council for Human Right in North Korea (Canada)
Julia Evans, Research and Advocacy Officer
Christian Solidarity Worldwide
Tom McClusky, Senior Vice President
Family Research Council Action
Caylan Ford
Friends of the Falun Gong