Rebecca MacKinnon Quotes
Citizens continue to demand government help in fighting cybercrime, defending children from stalkers and bullies, and protecting consumers.
MacKinnon, Rebecca. Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom. Basic Books, 2012.
The law enforcement and the intelligence agencies have been claiming for a number of years that etrong encryption (encryption which no one can crack with existing technology) if used by the general public would really hinder law enforcement and espionage efforts. The Federal government actually obtained a court order prohibiting the inventor of the stong encryption frm sharing the equations and techniques with anyone--as blatant an infringement to the right of free speech as there was been. The order was ignored and although the government tried to intimidate the developer by threatening him with prison. He refused to comply and the government finally dropeed the case, as the courts would almost certainly find such a jailing unconstitutional. However, although they tell the courts that there is a clear and present danger if terrorists use encryption, no one had, up to that time, found a single case where being able to decypher the encryption would have prevented an attack.
Rebecca MacKinnon is an author, researcher, Internet freedom advocate, and co-founder of the citizen media network Global Voices. She is notable as a former CNN journalist who headed the CNN bureaus in Beijing and later in Tokyo. She is on the Board of Directors of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a founding board member of the Global Network Initiative and is currently director of the Ranking Digital Rights project at the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute.
