Rebecca MacKinnon Quotes

We must all rise to the challenge to demonstrate that security and prosperity in the Internet age are not only compatible with liberty, they ultimately depend on it.

China rightly identified consumer Internet as important and moved to protect it, and we need to do the same in India.

A number of countries, including Russia and China, have put forward proposals to regulate aspects of the Internet like 'crime' and 'security' that are currently unregulated at the global level due to lack of international consensus over what those terms actually mean or over how to balance enforcement with the protection of citizens' rights.

The only way the Internet will continue to remain the thriving medium it has become today is to keep it under the control of the United States.

I don't think the Internet should be immune to the standing laws of countries.

A utopian future for the Internet could be secured if the heavy-duty influencers - and the grassroots influencers tweeting along - can create a new global organization peopled with defenders of Internet freedom.

Much of the civil rights work of this century will entail championing digital rights.

We are having Internet Governance discussions and meetings and a very large number of people are discussing the future of the Internet who have no clue as to what the Internet is except that it is important and that they have to be involved.

Well, take the evolution of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It began as hackers' rights. Then it became general civil liberties of everybody - government stay away.

The challenge is to manage the Web in an open way-not too much bureaucracy, not subject to political or commercial pressures. The U.S. should demonstrate that it is prepared to share control with the world.

Public participation helped create the Internet, and it helps protect it. That's worth celebrating and remembering.

What would the infrastructure of the Internet look like if mass surveillance wasn't its business model?

The idea of the Internet as sort of open and democratic and free and with no hierarchy, the libertarian beginnings as it were, with peer-to-peer networks... I'd sort of like for everyone to just admit that we're beyond that now.

The critical question is: How do we ensure that the Internet develops in a way that is compatible with democracy?

Twitter is growing up, expanding into other countries, and recognizing that the Internet is contrary to what people hoped; the government does reach into the Internet.

Today the Internet is run by private sector interests within the United States under the supervision of a nonprofit entity formed by the U.S. Department of Commerce.

I have been involved in Internet-related policy for approximately one decade, and I have been using the Internet myself for almost that period of time.

We need to codify our values and build consensus around what we want from a free society and a free Internet. We need to put into law protections for our privacy and our right to speak and assemble.

The Internet has the capacity to extend to us genuine choice, and that is not without risk. Real power does entail real responsibility.

Defending a free and open global Internet requires a broad-based global movement with the stamina to engage in endless - and often highly technical - national and international policy battles.

The Internet has fashioned a new and complicated environment for an age-old dilemma that pits the demands of security against the desire for freedom.

While many governments are committed to maintaining flexible regimes for fast-moving Internet technologies, some others have been quite explicit about their desire to put a single U.N. or other intergovernmental body in control of the Net.

Turning the Internet over to the U.N. or some other phony international organization would be a disaster, and I am not willing to stand by and let it happen.

If the U.N. were to be successful in its efforts to control the Internet, countries where human rights records range from questionable to criminal could be put in charge of determining what is and is not allowed to appear online.

Net neutrality is such an important principle for the Web and for the Internet. It's how the Internet's operated for all this time.