The U.S. should lead by example as it seeks to...

are looking toward the EU and to U.S. law” on how privacy rights can be protected, said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society. The U.S. must build a “broader coalition of governments” committed to human rights, and “it’s beginning to happen,” said Cynthia Wong, director of the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Project on Global Internet Freedom. When talking to other governments, the U.S. should “address the economic benefits of Internet freedom,” Mohamed El Dahshan, an Egyptian economist and journalist, told the conference on “Internet at Liberty.” There’s also need for interaction with the end user, he said. One concern with U.S. policy is “selective export of various parts of U.S. policy without exporting the full framework,” Wong said. An example is the “selective export of very strong copyright enforcement without exporting some of the safeguards that we have in the U.S. that may not exist in other countries,” she said. That could have some negative consequences for access to knowledge and free expression, she said. As for whether U.S. companies have a moral obligation to promote free expression online, Wong said multinational corporations have not only a “moral obligation, but a human rights responsibility to assess what human rights” implications result from their products and services such as surveillance and filtering technologies. They should work to “mitigate” any “harm” from such services, she said. Abraham wants U.S. companies to be “polite” and less “condescending” when making their case for Internet freedom in foreign countries. He cited the instance of a Google lawyer telling the judge of a New Delhi magistrate court that he didn’t “know or have a full appreciation of the freedom of expression” that people had in the U.S. “This type of condescension to the judiciary doesn’t really help your case,” Abraham said.