Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The greatest threat to repressive regimes is access by their subject populations to uncensored information, because independent information results in independent judgment, which leads directly to independent action.

For that reason, these regimes can never feel truly secure without complete control over all aspects of their people’s lives, none being more important than the flow of facts and exchange of opinion.

Yet, even with increasingly strenuous efforts to choke off uncontrolled connections to the wider world, new sources appear, autonomous networks spring into being, and electronic walls erected with great effort, begin to crumble.

Light still manages to seep in through the darkest of barriers.

Among the most threatening of these new sources is the Internet, and the ever-easier access to the rapidly growing universe of unfiltered data and unconstrained worldviews it makes possible.

The Internet’s potential to undermine these regimes’ control over information is why blocking of the internet has become a vital task for the maintenance of repression, from Cuba to China, from Syria to North Korea.

Regimented societies such as Cuba’s and North Korea’s have largely succeeded in their efforts to quarantine this deadly intrusion, by the simple means of denying any and all unsupervised access by their populations.

In my native homeland Cuba, a five-year prison sentence awaits those who somehow manage the near-impossible task of connecting to the Internet.

Yesterday, President Bush bestowed the Medal of Freedom in absentia to Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, a Cuban political prisoner, languishing in a filthy dark dungeon.

Dr. Biscet’s cellmates in Cuba, when he is not in solitary confinement, may very well be there for crimes regarding dissemination of freedom of information.

If they go so far as to actually post information, the sentence increases to 20 years imprisonment.

In 2000, an opposition activist, José Orlando González Bridón, secretary-general of the illegal Cuban Democratic Workers’ Confederation (CTDC), was sent to prison merely for publishing unauthorized information on the Internet.  Many others have since followed.

In Syria, Ali Sayed al-Shihabi an English-language teacher, was arrested in August 2006 for the “crime” of posting articles on an unauthorized website.

He was released after five months, but a steady stream of Syrians have been imprisoned for similar on-line activities that the authorities deemed subversive.

In rapidly developing societies such as China’s, some experts believe that extreme isolation of the citizenry is not possible. 

However, the Chinese regime has proven them wrong.

Its array of tools include an army of Orwell’s “thought police” who monitor users and block offending sites, backed up by the arrest and imprisonment of those who successfully evade the system of control.

Among the most harshly targeted are democracy activists of all types, as well as individuals in Tibet and other areas seeking greater freedom from control by Beijing. 

Even those who have defied the government’s efforts to prevent news of severe threats to public health from being circulated, such as the deadly outbreak of the SARS epidemic in 2003, have been imprisoned for publishing “state secrets.”

As the effectiveness of these regimes’ censorship declines, the prospects for freedom for their people will increase.

For this reason, the U.S. government must actively engage in overcoming Internet censorship by these regimes and ensure that their populations have access to unfiltered information beyond the straightjacket of propaganda.

But our efforts are still in their infancy.

For many years, I have introduced and supported legislation to strengthen the ability of the U.S. to overcome efforts by repressive regimes to censor the Internet and other media. 

I am confident that The Global Online Freedom Act of 2007, sponsored by my good friend Chris Smith, that was recently approved by this Committee will be an important enhancement of that effort.

But the U.S. government cannot accomplish this task alone.

Only with the assistance of the private sector can these regimes’ efforts to censor and control the Internet be overcome.

Private companies operate within significant constraints and must walk a fine line between cooperating with the authorities in these countries and respecting the fundamental rights of individuals there and elsewhere.

This is made more difficult by the arbitrary rules and actions of the various regimes, and by the absence of clear international standards to use as guidance.

Thus, a welcomed advance is the development by leading Internet-related companies of a code of conduct for operating in repressive countries such as China, a code that is being created in consultation with human rights and other organizations.

Congress has an important role to play in ensuring that U.S. companies maintain these standards by making clear what the law will and will not allow these companies to do in their operations overseas.

The power represented in the oft-quoted words “the truth shall set you free” was dramatically demonstrated by the collapse of the Soviet empire, when the grip of the regimes on their societies’ connections to the outside world was finally pried loose.

The United States was an indispensable element in that liberation, patiently working through the decades to ensure that light continued to pierce the walls.

We must continue that dedication of purpose for all those who remain imprisoned and provide them the tools by which they can liberate themselves.  And the most powerful of these is Truth.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.