SEATTLE: Google Inc's legal chief called for pressure on governments that censor the Internet, such as China and Turkey, arguing that their blocking access to websites not only violates human rights but unfairly restrains U.S. trade. The remarks, by Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond, mark a new economic theme in the Web company's campaign for an unrestricted Internet, and may inflame a touchy relationship with China, after the company threatened to stop censoring online searches there earlier this year. "Internet censorship is really a trade barrier, and is operating that way for U.S. companies that are trying to do business abroad," Drummond said at a public meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and other corporate executives at Google's headquarters in California's Silicon Valley. "If this were happening with physical trade and manufacturing goods, we'd all be saying this violates trade agreements pretty fundamentally." Google's Drummond said a large and growing number of countries are now censoring the Internet in a variety of ways, for economic as well as political reasons. As an example, he said, Google's YouTube online video service was blocked in more than 20 countries and has been banned in Turkey for two years. "In our view at Google it's high time for us to start really sinking our teeth into this one," said Drummond. "We have great opportunities now with pending trade agreements to start putting some pressure on countries to recognize that Internet freedom not only is a core value -- that we should be holding them to account from a human rights standpoint -- but also that if you want to be part of the community of free trade, you are going to have to find a way to allow the Internet to be open."

IN recent weeks, freedom of speech has been on my mind a lot. It’s hard not to think about it, what with radio deejays and a newspaper editor getting suspended, and a rapper getting investigated over a YouTube video. Some of my formative years were spent in the US where freedom of speech is guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution. It is guaranteed to the point where neo-Nazis have the right to hold public rallies and demonstrators can burn the American flag without fear of being arrested. But of course there are limits. Freedom of speech doesn’t allow for child pornography, for example, because child pornography is illegal. Freedom of speech also doesn’t allow someone to falsely shout "fire" in a crowded cinema as it could cause a stampede. Lastly, it goes without saying that freedom of speech does not allow one to defame another. But freedom of speech in the US does include offensive speech. So, you can make fun of the president and even insult him if you want to. That’s pretty hard to imagine in Malaysia although technically we are supposed to have freedom of speech. It is protected under Article 10 of the Federal Constitution which also guarantees the right to peaceful assembly. So, we should be able to say whatever we want and hold gatherings whenever we want, right? Wrong. Unlike the First Amendment, Article 10 entitles citizens to such freedoms only insofar as they are not restricted by the government (as opposed to those freedoms being absolutely guaranteed as in the US). In Malaysia, we have the Sedition Act 1948 which curtails free speech and the Police Act 1967 which prohibits the gathering of three or more people in a public place without a permit. A common joke among editors is that in Malaysia there is freedom of speech but not necessarily freedom after speech. The reason often given by those who are against US-style freedom of speech is that we are a multiracial country and therefore have to be extra careful about what we say.

There’s uproar among the youth in Turkmenistan today after the government decided to ban the popular social networking site, agent.mail.ru. Currently, it’s inaccessible via both TM Cell and MTS (about whom I’ve reported before). The website had eventually experienced a small surge in Turkmen users, especially young men and women who used it to get to know each other. It’s an open secret that one of the main purposes of agent.mail.ru is dating. The site certainly facilitates meeting potential partners: just type in the city, gender, and age in the search engine, and within only a few seconds, voila! Lovely, smiling faces appear. You can even find young women in bikini shots or Odalisque poses — some as young as 16! Another big advantage is the availability of chat rooms, which are easy even for the less techno-savvy to use, and is cheaper in the long run than mobile phones.

At midnight on a brisk February evening, Imad al-Ash heard a knock at his door. He opened it to find what many Jordanians fear most — a force of nearly 40 agents from the country’s shadowy intelligence organization, known here as the mukhabarat. Falling on the wrong side of the mukhabarat — which performs both international and domestic intelligence — strikes terror into even the most hardened enemies of Jordan. But Al-Ash was far from the typical religious extremist or criminal that might draw the agency’s attention. A fifth year computer science student at the University of Jordan, he was not an activist and, although a devout Muslim, he steered clear of fundamentalist groups.