The redcoats of internet censorship are coming but an American midnight rider is coming to save Europeans from their own governments, the Trump White House teases, stating: “Reclaim your human right to free expression. Get ready.”
A growing number of websites have chosen to simply block users rather than comply with arduous censorship demands in response to Europe’s Digital Services Act and the UK’s Online Safety Act, with many more hidden behind government-mandated age-verification making linking a real-life identity to internet use a prerequisite for access.
The U.S. government is launching a ‘Freedom.Gov’ website that will give British and European visitors the tools to access censorship-free parts of the internet they have been geofenced out of because of their own governments in the name of public safety.
Wires service Reuters states the new initiative is the work of the U.S. State Department and led by Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers, who has been a key figure in bringing President Trump’s message of freedom to Europeans in recent months. The report cites unnamed government insiders who say the Freedom.Gov portal may feature a Virtual Private Network (VPN) tool to allow European users to bypass domestic controls and, remarkably, claims its use won’t be tracked.
A State Department spokesman is quoted as saying: “Digital freedom is a priority for the State Department, however, and that includes the proliferation of privacy and censorship-circumvention technologies like VPNs.”
A placeholder website for the planned anti-censorship service is already active. Reuters state the Freedom.Gov site first became active in January and was blank apart from the text “fly, eagle, fly”. Today, an updated landing page proclaims “Freedom is coming. Information is power. Reclaim your human right to free expression. Get ready.”
In a crystal-clear message to the censorious British authorities cracking down on internet freedoms, the page also features an animated logo of Paul Revere on his famous 1775 midnight ride, warning the Minutemen of the approaching British troops.
The decision to launch the service will inevitably bring the U.S. into some sort of conflict with European capitals, given the pro-freedom move would force those governments to either defacto accept that their censorship laws will either be openly bypassed by their own citizens with the assistance of Washington, or to block Freedom.Gov, and prove to all their opposition to the dissemination of information.
Reuters in their report notes this, stating “put Washington in the unfamiliar position of appearing to encourage citizens to flout local laws”, without stopping to note this is, of course, not actually unfamiliar at all. The United States through the CIA and other agencies maintained a large network of censorship-busting initiatives through the Cold War using the latest technology of the time.
Among those efforts was Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Liberty, sending unfiltered news and other programming through high-powered broadcasts into the Soviet nations behind the Iron Curtain. This effort was something of a game of cat-and-mouse between the free West and the Communist East, with Soviet authorities attempting to block out the broadcasts with radio interference equipment of their own.
In those Soviet countries, when the Western radio broadcasts did get through, those who tuned into them faced arrest “or worse” at the hands of the authorities. Today, the British government has already started to react to the use of VPNs to circumvent its new internet controls — imposed, it says, for the sake of public “safety” — and is moving to defacto outlaw them.
Pro-Freedom and anti-surveillance campaign group Big Brother Watch responded to the government’s plan to crack down on VPNs, saying:
The Prime Minister’s announcement that the government intends to restrict access to VPNs for under-16s represents a draconian crackdown on the civil liberties of children and adults alike.
The only way such restrictions could be enforced effectively would be for VPN providers to require all users to undergo age-assurance measures. Having to provide ID or a biometric face scan to access a VPN utterly defeats the point of a technology designed to enhance privacy online.
The ability to receive and share information absent state snooping is a vital part of living in a free democracy. There is a reason authoritarian governments in countries such as China, North Korea, Iran, and Belarus ban or restrict VPNs. Anonymity and enhanced privacy allow journalists, whistleblowers, campaigners, and dissidents to communicate securely.
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