Rebecca MacKinnon

QQ is not secure. You might as well be sharing your information with the Public Security Bureau.

It is not inevitable that the Internet will evolve in a manner compatible with democracy.

There are a lot of people that think the Internet is going to bring information and democracy and pluralism in China just by existing.

Facebook is not a physical country, but with 900 million users, its 'population' comes third after China and India. It may not be able to tax or jail its inhabitants, but its executives, programmers, and engineers do exercise a form of governance over people's online activities and identities.

Governance is a way of organizing, amplifying, and constraining power.

Intermediary liability' means that the intermediary, a service that acts as 'intermediate' conduit for the transmission or publication of information, is held liable or legally responsible for everything its users do.

Political activists in Hong Kong and Taiwan use Facebook as their primary tool to mobilize support for their causes and activities.

Yahoo! had a choice. It chose to provide an e-mail service hosted on servers based inside China, making itself subject to Chinese legal jurisdiction. It didn't have to do that. It could have provided a service hosted offshore only.

The better-informed we are, the more we can do to make sure what's happening is in our interests and is accountable to us.

Internet freedom is a bit of a Rorschach test: it means different things to different people.

Normalization of U.S.-China relations in 1979, combined with economic reforms and opening, transformed the Chinese people's lives.

The Patriot Act, passed overwhelmingly but hastily after 9/11, allows the FBI to obtain telecommunication, financial, and credit records without a court order.