Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a major speech on Internet freedom today. The text has been posted on the State Department web site, and Adam Thierer has a review of it up on the TechLiberationFront blog.
As a signal to other governments, it was a good speech. It placed the United States government on the side of freedom movements around the world and extolled how technology empowers them.
From a domestic perspective, it was nothing special. References to the liberating power of the Internet were carefully caveated with cautions about online dangers that could justify government intrusion on the Internet. Secretary Clinton was particularly equivocal about online anonymity.
The irony, of course, was provided by the breaking news of the day: the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, discussed by my colleagues here, here, and here, as well as in this podcast. The case dealt with speech critical of Secretary Clinton produced by a corporation during her candidacy for the presidency. It reversed precedents allowing a ban on corporate and union speech about political candidates.
The Court said in Citizens United:
Speech is an essential mechanism of democracy, for it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people. The right of citizens to inquire, to hear, to speak, and to use information to reach consensus is a precondition to enlightened self-government and a necessary means to protect it.
The fact that speech issues from people organized as corporations or unions makes no difference.
In her speech, Secretary Clinton echoed similar themes. “Countries that censor news and information must recognize that from an economic standpoint, there is no distinction between censoring political speech and commercial speech.” Perhaps she was trying to distinguish between economic consequences of speech and other consequences, but later she said:
[C]ensorship should not be in any way accepted by any company from anywhere. And in America, American companies need to make a principled stand. This needs to be part of our national brand. I’m confident that consumers worldwide will reward companies that follow those principles.
The Citizens United case is the product of a company taking such a stand, though not in the way Secretary Clinton meant it.
Later in the day, the White House issued the following statement about the Citizens United free speech case:
With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics. It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans. This ruling gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power in Washington–while undermining the influence of average Americans who make small contributions to support their preferred candidates. That’s why I am instructing my Administration to get to work immediately with Congress on this issue. We are going to talk with bipartisan Congressional leaders to develop a forceful response to this decision. The public interest requires nothing less.
So much for free speech.