Vint Cerf Quotes

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

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.

For Americans, with the advent of the U.S. invention of the Internet, free speech is not just open dissemination of ideas and information. It includes limitless instant access to those ideas and the ability to choose and search from among virtually unlimited sources. It is also the backbone of free enterprise and a vibrant global economy.

I'm well aware that the Internet is global and can't be wholly affected by any one country. But the United States has outsized influence.

Information technology is a formidable enabler of freedoms. For example, it lowers barriers to freedom of expression and allows people to get a better grasp of their lives. It should not be used to reduce the freedom of people.

We’re at a point in history that whether the Internet is going to evolve in a way that’s compatible with democracy and human rights is really kind of up in the air.

We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, 'Oh, freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people.

So long as confusion reigns, there will be no successful global Internet agenda, only contradiction.

News and images move so easily across borders that attitudes and aspirations are no longer especially national. Cyber-weapons, no longer the exclusive province of national governments, can originate in a hacker's garage.

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.

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.

Countries that have the Internet already are not going to turn it off. And so the power of freedom, the power of ideas will spread, and it will change those societies in very dramatic ways.

The Internet's distinct configuration may have made cyberattacks easy to launch, but it has also kindled the flame of freedom.

The Internet is unpoliceable essentially.

Washington faces a simple choice: allow the Internet to remain as an engine of innovation, a platform for speech in even the harshest tyrannies, and a unified connection for people across the globe—or cede control of the Internet to service providers motivated by their parochial interests.

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

Where States impose unlawful censorship through filtering and other technologies, the use of encryption and anonymity may empower individuals to circumvent barriers and access information and ideas without the intrusion of authorities. Journalists, researchers, lawyers and civil society rely on encryption and anonymity to shield themselves (and their sources, clients and partners) from surveillance and harassment. The ability to search the web, develop ideas and communicate securely may be the only way in which many can explore basic aspects of identity, such as one’s gender, religion, ethnicity, national origin or sexuality.

Contemporary digital technologies offer Governments, corporations, criminals and pranksters unprecedented capacity to interfere with the rights to freedom of opinion and expression.

Essentially, it's not that technology or cyberspace is some parallel universe that operates tangentially from the world we know; it is simply a new front in the international system.

We have to take a long view on net neutrality.

The US government should be the champion for the internet, not a threat. They need to be much more transparent about what they're doing, or otherwise people will believe the worst.

I think it's both annoying and beneficial that there's so much freedom online.

I know that fundamentally, changes to the fabric of the internet, and sort of our methods of communication, can enforce our rights.

I do not want to give the state and the authorities the right to ban things on the Internet - no ifs.

To some, incredibly, Russia has become a human rights leader. Edward Snowden, the American whistleblower, has succeeded in his asylum application in Russia, and White House spokesman Jay Carney appears flummoxed and wrong-footed as the mantle of free speech and liberty appears to pass from West to East.