According to
the State Department, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and National
Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) head Lawrence
Strickling talked with officials from China about Internet
Freedom Tuesday. NTIA oversees the government's spectrum holdings.
They were
part of a U.S. delegation to the fourth U.S.-China Information and
Communications Technology Consultations. The meeting, which was held in
Washington with Vice Minister Xi Guohua of the Ministry
of Industry and Information Technology and other Chinese officials,
also dealt with the International Telecommunications Union and China's
telecom and Internet markets.
In a speech
earlier this year at the Newseum, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
staked out the freedom to connect to the Internet as a key foreignpolicy objective,
likening it to the freedom of assembly during a speech that mirrored the Four Freedoms speech of Franklin Roosevelt.
She spoke of
Internet freedom as a key to both foreign and domestic policy going
forward.
"An attack on one nation's network is an attack on all," Clinton said, adding that the message was for this country
as well as our neighbors.
