The real challenge for Internet freedom? US hypocrisy. And there's no app for that.

When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered her first major speech on Internet freedom in January 2010 little did she know about WikiLeaks and the yet-to-come revolts in Tunisia and Egypt. Proclaiming Internet freedom to be a new priority for American foreign policy, Secretary Clinton provided scant details on how this new idealistic initiative would fit with its existing realpolitik foundations – the ones that have often prized stability over liberty.

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Clinton's follow-up speech, delivered on Feb. 15 at George Washington University, was an effort to capitalize on the universal excitement about the role of social media in the recent events in the Middle East, correct some of the rhetorical excesses of the 2010 address, and try to reconcile the inherent contradictions of aspiring to export Internet freedom abroad while limiting it at home, with the National Security Agency and Department of Homeland Security seeking more oversight over cyberspace.

Good news: No more naive cliches

First, the good news. Gone is the cold war-era view of the Internet as a faster and leaner network of fax machines on steroids. While Clinton's 2010 address was full of references to the “information curtain [that] is descending upon much of the world”, to the Berlin Wall that is being replaced by “virtual walls”, and to “viral videos and blog posts [that] are becoming the samizdat of our day”, her most recent speech has avoided such banal cliches and historically inappropriate metaphors altogether.

Equally sobering was Clinton's acknowledgment that “there is no app” for solving the problem of Internet control. While it's important to continue investing in tools to circumvent censorship schemes of authoritarian governments, Internet filtering is just one of the many tools in their arsenal. Finding a way to protect independent publishers from cyber-attacks and other forms of online intimidation is equally important.

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