Internet Freedom

Secretary Clinton gave a speech today on internet freedom and announced a fascinating new policy for D&G technophiles:

…let’s say I want to create a mobile phone application that would allow people to rate government ministries on their responsiveness, efficiency, and level of corruption. The hardware required to make this idea work is already in the hands of billions of potential users. And the software involved would be relatively inexpensive to develop and deploy. If people took advantage of this tool, it would help us target foreign assistance spending, improve lives, and encourage foreign investment in countries with responsible governments – all good things. However, right now, mobile application developers have no financial incentive to pursue that project on their own and the State Department lacks a mechanism to make it happen. This initiative should help resolve that problem, and provide long-term dividends from modest investments in innovation. We’re going to work with experts to find the best structure for this venture, and we’ll need the talent and resources of technology companies and non-profit organizations in order to get the best results.

I agree, this would be very easy to design. I hope they follow through with this. Given how cheap and easy it would be to set up, even a small non-profit could afford to do it.

In the speech she also mentioned by name one of the delegates from the set of conferences we sponsored last fall in the Middle East who is visiting us this week:

…last Friday in Egypt, 30 bloggers and activists were detained. One member of this group, Bassem Samir – who is thankfully no longer in prison – is with us today.

Bassem and the other delegates met with Secretary Clinton for about 10 minutes yesterday. She invited Bassem on the spot. I guess you can say Clinton she is on my good side now.