US trains activists to evade security forces
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States is training thousands of cell phone and Internet pro-democracy campaigners worldwide to evade security forces in what it calls a "cat-and-mouse game" with authoritarian governments.
The US government is sponsoring efforts to help activists in Arab and other countries gain access to technology that circumvents government firewalls, secures telephone text and voice messages, and prevents attacks on websites.
"This is sort of a cat-and-mouse game and governments are constantly developing new techniques to go after critics, to go after dissenters," said Michael Posner, the assistant US secretary of state for human rights and labor.
"We are trying to stay ahead of the curve and trying to basically provide both technology, training, and diplomatic support to allow people to freely express their views."
Posner told a small group of reporters that the theme of Internet freedom will be "peppered" throughout the State Department's annual report on human rights for 194 countries that is scheduled for release on Friday.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is campaigning hard for freedoms of expression, assembly and association online -- what she calls the world's town square or coffee house of the 21st century.
The chief US diplomat has said the protests in Egypt and Iran fueled by Facebook, Twitter and YouTube reflected "the power of connection technologies as an accelerant of political, social and economic change."
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