This week I went over to the American Enterprise Institute to talk torture. Specifically, I was there to debate whether torture had led the United States to Osama bin Laden and if, therefore, it should once again become the policy of the United States.

Two of the other panelists --...

Today Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gives a well-timed speech on Internet freedom. Surely she will—and should—cite the overthrow of authoritarian rulers in Tunisia and Egypt to argue that the Internet can facilitate sweeping social change. But she should also recommit the United States to a policy of supporting Internet...

This is how it happens.

An organization publishes information on the Internet that's embarrassing and arguably harmful to the government. Citing an alleged threat to national security, the government pressures companies to deny access to the information and to choke off the organization's funding. The companies acquiesce.
This how...

This weekend's New York Times article was a wake up call to Microsoft and the entire information and communications technology industry about the dangers of complying with government actions aimed at limiting freedom of expression and stifling dissent.

To date, the most publicized repression has been censoring web...

What do Australia, Brazil, India, the United States and Britain have in common? This week, Google named each of these nations among the list of countries that most often contact it with requests for content removal and user data. Google's disclosure is a bold step towards quantifying this trend. Whether...

A student at an American university Googles "Tiananmen Square" from her dorm room. Among the hundreds of hits that will surface are photographs and reports stemming from the 1989 protest that followed the death of Chinese pro-democracy official Hu Yaobang. Scrolling down, she will learn that...

This week marks the 30th anniversary of the Refugee Act of 1980, a landmark piece of legislation that changed the U.S. approach to refugee protection by creating the legal status of asylum and a formal process for resettling refugees from around the world. It affirmed the U.S. commitment to providing...

Human Rights activists from more than 25 countries gathered in Washington last week for a meeting designed to mobilize greater support for those struggling to advance respect for basic freedoms in fragile new democracies and repressive authoritarian states. They had a packed agenda, including a meeting with President Obama and...

Secretary Clinton, in a live address this morning at the Newseum, marked a major turning point for promoting freedom of expression, and made clear the Obama Administration's intent to put into practice its previously stated commitment to Internet freedom - a welcome announcement.

New technology demands new thinking about...

Tomorrow, in her planned speech at the Newseum, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has the opportunity to explain what the Administration's previously stated commitments to Internet freedom mean in practice. Here are three immediate actions she could announce that would make clear that protecting freedom of expression on the Internet...

I, all of us at Human Rights First, and the broader international human rights community mourn the passing of our cherished friend Senator Ted Kennedy, and extend our deepest condolences to his family, his colleagues, and his many friends. Senator Kennedy spent nearly 50 years championing the cause of...

While cable news outlets are billing Wednesday as a day of "dueling speeches," in reality there was no contest between the vision of a strong, safe, and principled America delivered by President Obama and the brooding retrospective defense of torture put forth by Vice President Cheney in his remarks that...