Freedom of Expression As a Security Issue

My first panel [workshop] discussion has now concluded. I can't say that the discussion went anywhere in particular, but they did at least lay out some of the thematic landscape, weaving together security, privacy, freedom of expression, censorship, and despotic regimes.

Not surprisingly, the bulk of the attention was directed at Google [the most popular kid on the block], represented by Robert Boorstin. Having sat through about five or six presentations by Google policy personnel in the last year, I have to say that Mr. Boorstin was an interesting change of pace. I'm used to being addressed by members of the Google legal team. Mr. Boorstin, however, is pure politics and is located not in Mountain View California, but in Washington, DC as part of Google's political action committee.

During his prepared timeslot, Mr. Boorstin acknowledged that his answers would be necessarily unsatisfying. He went on to present Google's three-tier policy on freedom of expression:

1. Maximize freedom of expression. This utilitarian approach concedes that on an individual basis not all expression will be supported but that these isolated exceptions are necessary in totality. Google necessarily has a bias towards freedom of expression. Their product is information, the more information put out into the world, the more that Google can sort and sell accordingly. As they see it, more information equals more choice and more power to individuals.
2. Protect users while satisfying interests. Mr. Boorstin acknowledged that freedom of expression is not without limits. Google is an American corporation through and through and this notion is grounded in US constitutional law. Therefore, Google must walk a fine line in exercising its discretion over inappropriate content. Because of this discretion, the process is necessarily imperfect [Hence the unsatisfying answers].
3. Finally, to be responsible to local and cultural conditions. Mr. Boorstin listed two examples: YouTube videos of the King of Thailand and Google's foray into censorship in China. In the Thailand scenario, Google forced to deal with cultural sensitivities. Whether or not the person who posted the videos of the right to express his brand of particularly offensive content, Mr. Boorstin merely offered that "we deal with reality." Removing some controversial content is a necessary condition to doing business abroad. The same rhetoric was used in China but he added that they had instituted a few measures particular to China. Firstly, a domain that is censored by the government will return a page identifying the government's censorship rather than simply an inaccessible page. Secondly, Google has decided not to offer their Gmail and Blogger services in order to preemptively avoid censorship. Finally, they do their best to hide the IP addresses of users.

My view is that the second two points are really just exceptions to the first. For example, maximizing freedom of expression would suggest that they provide services until censored ( Gmail and Blogger). But then again, Google lives in the real world and the unfortunate side effect would be that Google would have to disclaim quite visibly that all their services are directly supervised by the Chinese government.

Early into questions, Mr. Boorstin was attacked with several questions challenging Google's righteousness. As I mentioned above, my previous dealings with the Google legal team would have had them smile, nod, and then answer a question that was closer to their liking. Mr. Boorstin, however, was not going to have any of it. Calls for Google to make their search algorithm more transparent were certainly falling on deaf ears. He retorted that somebody had to be the gatekeeper, and who better than Google? Not exactly the answer people were looking for.

Upon further questioning, he even went so far as to break out the classic private sector remark that : "If you don't like it you can always go somewhere else." After all, "another search engine is only a click away." Feisty n'est-ce pas? Despite being confrontational, he clearly had a good grasp of the policy issues. He offered an anecdote that may summarize the entire topic when he described how the US government had removed maps detailing chemical facilities across the US after September 11, 2001. The maps were removed for security reasons. Unfortunately, they also happened to indicate escape routes for residents just in case anything went wrong. In that case, "safety" presented two angles, but the government failed to recognize both. The corollary is that expression is engaged in both sides of the security debate.

I've focused on the Google perspective only because it provided more quotable quotes. There were several European perspectives represented on the panel addressing the Council of Europe's efforts in the FOE sphere. For more on this panel, see my colleague Daniel Albahary's Blog.