Congressmen Chris Smith (NJ-04) and Frank Wolf (VA-10) met with a group of leading human rights advocates Friday to discuss the importance of Internet freedom. The human rights advocates have endorsed Smith’s bill, the Global Online Freedom Act (GOFA), H.R. 2271, and discussed actions to promote the bill.

“The Global Online Freedom Act would give American IT companies the U.S.-Government back-up they need to negotiate with repressive governments,” Smith said. “If the Chinese or Iranian government tells them to filter a search term, they can point to  GOFA and say that U.S. law doesn’t permit it. If the government’s Internet police intercept a human rights activist’s e-mail, and demand the company turn over personally identifying information on the account, the company will notify the AG, who can then bring the weight of the U.S. government into the matter.

“GOFA is ready to go to the House floor. It has the distinction of being endorsed by internet giant Google as well as a long list of human rights groups—Freedom House, Reporters Without Borders, Amnesty International, Laogai Research Foundation, Human Rights Watch, Committee to Protect Journalists, International Campaign for Tibet, Wei Jingsheng Foundation, and others. In the last Congress it was passed by three committees and was ready to go to the floor—and I believe it would have easily won a floor vote. But it was kept off the floor by heavy lobbying and politics.”

Rep. Smith, a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, praised the human rights advocates for their role and input into the legislation. The group pledged to continue working to encourage leaders to bring the bill to the floor. Smith reminded them that in January Speaker Nancy Pelosi said: “The Chinese government operates one of the most sophisticated operations in the world to control the Internet. It is essential that technology companies not assist in efforts that violate human rights or prohibit free exchange of ideas.”

In its key provisions, GOFA would require U.S. IT companies to report to the State Department any requirement by a repressive government for filtering or censoring search terms—and the State Department would make the terms and parameters of filtering public knowledge, thus “naming and shaming” the repressive countries. U.S. IT companies would also have to store personally identifying information outside of Internet-restricting countries, so that the repressive governments wouldn’t be able to get their hands on it to track dissidents. U.S. IT companies would have to notify the Attorney General whenever they received a request for personally identifying information from a repressive country—and the Attorney General would have the authority to order the IT companies not to comply, if there was reason to believe the repressive government seeks the information for other than legitimate law-enforcement purposes.

Present at the meeting and endorsing the GOFA are: Daniel Calingaert, Deputy Director of Programs, Freedom House, which endorsed the GOFA; Clothilde Le Coz, Washington Director, Reporters Without Borders; Megan Fluker, Deputy Director, Laogai Research Foundation; Arvind Ganesan, Director, Business and Human Rights Program, Human Rights Watch; Ciping Huang, Director, the Wei Jingsheng Foundation; T. Kumar, Advocacy Director for Asia and the Pacific, Human Rights Watch; and Todd Stein, Director of Government Relations, International Campaign for Tibet.

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