Richard A. Clarke and Rob Knake
190 μ¢¤³£ ¬μμ¬
have come to rely—and on which its future growth as a center for legiti-
mate technological development depends. The Ukrainian government
would face a strong incentive to ¿nally get tough on the cyber-
underworld that has developed inside the country’s borders. Such
threats would not lend the U.S.-led coalition leverage over China and
Russia: after all, the Chinese Communist Party and the Kremlin have
already gone to some lengths to cut their citizens o from the global
Internet. The point o the Internet Freedom League, however, would be
not to change the behavior o such committed bad actors but to reduce
the harm they do and to encourage countries such as Ukraine—along
with Brazil, India, and other places with less-than-stellar records when
it comes to ¿ghting cybercrime—to do better or risk being left out.ENSHRINING INTERNET FREEDOM
A foundational principle o the league would be upholding freedom o
expression on the Internet. Members, however, would be allowed to
make exceptions on a case-by-case basis. For instance, although the
United States would not be forced to accept ¤ restrictions on free
speech, U.S. companies would need to make reasonable eorts not to
sell or display banned content to Internet users in Europe. This ap-
proach would, in many ways, enshrine the status quo. But it would also
commit Western countries more formally to the task o preventing
states such as China from pursuing an Orwellian vision o “informa-
tion security” by insisting that certain
forms o expression pose a national
security threat to them. Beijing, for
example, routinely submits requests to
other governments to take down con-
tent hosted on servers on their territory
that is critical o the Chinese regime or
that discusses groups that the regime
has banned in China, such as Falun
Gong. The United States denies such requests, but others might be
tempted to give in—especially since China has retaliated against
U.S. denials by launching brazen cyberattacks on the sources o the
oending material. An Internet Freedom League would give other
countries an incentive to deny such Chinese demands: doing so
would be against the rules, and the other member states would help
protect them from any retaliation.Countries such as Ukraine
would have an incentive to
nally get tough on the
cyber-underworlds inside
their borders.