US tells Egypt to unblock Facebook, Twitter

Today Online, 05:55 AM Jan 28, 2011

WASHINGTON - As the Egyptian authorities struggled to quash anti-government protests on Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on the long-time United States ally to unblock social networking sites that have been used to organise protests, such as those operated by Facebook and Twitter.

By urging Egypt's government "not to prevent peaceful protests or block communications, including on social media", Mrs Clinton renewed her call for freedom of expression and assembly online and fuelled debate over how to promote those goals without undermining other US interests.

Mrs Clinton's defence of social networking is "a very delicate balancing act", because of the long-standing US relationship with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, said Mr Ethan Zuckerman, a senior researcher at Harvard University's Berkman Centre for Internet and Society.

"At the same time, we're starting to see evidence of an anti-authoritarian revolution in the region and she doesn't want to be on the wrong side of that either. The safe stance is to be pro-free speech," said Mr Zuckerman. Bloomberg

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