Inefficiencies in the American Political System: A Threat to Freedom?
New Threats contributor Anne Applebaum certainly seems to think so. She charts in her recent Washington Post article how dramatic inefficiencies are hampering America's efforts to propagate "a single Internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas.” That line was from a 2010 speech by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wherein she was making the case for more online openness in places like China, Libya, Iran, and Egypt.
According to Applebaum's article, the State Department has somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 million dollars allocated to fighting Internet censorship. Unfortunately none of that has been spent for the past two years because the department lacked the technical knowledge to use it.
Here's the rub: there is a U.S. agency, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (which runs programs like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe) that has the technical wherewithal to provide free and unrestricted Internet to people who are currently living behind government firewalls. The BBG has the know-how, that is, but they lack the funds required to procure large enough servers to handle the task.
So as Applebaum astutely observes: "One part of the U.S. government has anti-censorship technology but no money to expand its use. Another part of the U.S. government has money for anti-censorship technology but hasn’t spent it. The American political system is too dysfunctional, in other words, to create 'a single Internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas.'"
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