Report: U.S. Eyes Sanctions On Tech vs. Rebels

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama on Monday will announce a plan to impose sanctions against foreign entities that help authoritarian regimes use technology to crack down on dissidents, an administration official said.

Obama signed an executive order authorizing the new category of sanctions on Sunday. The tougher penalties are aimed in particular at those who facilitate human rights abuses in Syria and Iran, said the official, who requested anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the order publicly.

Obama was to announce the new sanctions during a speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

While rebellions in countries like Libya and Egypt have been fueled by cellphones and social media, some regimes have used technology to track dissidents or block Internet access.

Iran has provided the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad with technology to jam cellphones and block or monitor the social networking sites rebels would use to organize demonstrations.

Obama has also asked the U.S. intelligence community to include assessments of the likelihood of mass killings in its National Intelligence Estimates.

Obama will announce a set of "challenge" grants for companies that help create new technologies to help warn citizens in countries where mass killings may occur.

The new White House policy was first reported by The Washington Post.

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Comments

[gmb007]

04:04 PM on 04/23/2012

Will this E.O. also protect US dissidents?

[dzieczko]

12:34 PM on 04/23/2012

What happened to the other HP article about this same topic - foreign nationalists abusing the human rights of USA citizens while they are in the USA doing *business* as coprs ...?

getting weirder and weirder on HP...

[jimtodd]

12:19 PM on 04/23/2012

If there was ever an example of do as I say and not as I do, this is it.

[CeePeeDee]

10:52 AM on 04/23/2012

Wouldn't we be better off if Obama began this program by examining civil liberty offenses in his own country, and in his own government?

[jsarets]

09:52 AM on 04/23/2012

What a pity we're only targeting foreign entities helping authoritarian regimes to suppress electronic communications, because a lot of the technical assistance is coming from U.S. corporations.

[fencerman]

09:38 AM on 04/23/2012

Does this mean that the US will impose sactions on itself?

[Desolati0n]

10:20 AM on 04/23/2012

I guess so. :|