Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your having this important hearing today. And I would like to thank our witnesses for testifying this morning.

As we have seen throughout history, technology has often been on the forefront of political change. Just in the past few years, we have witnessed Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and other forms of social media uncover the brutal dictatorships and oppressive regimes in Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and Burma.

As we have heard today, human rights and democracy activists in China have utilized gmail in order to forms groups and networks to exchange information on promoting freedom and democracy. Unfortunately, the oppressive communist regime in China has censored Google. This isn’t just a loss of business for Google. These actions by the Chinese government are a major threat to freedom throughout the world. In fact, other tyrannical regimes, led by thugocrats like Chavez in Venezuela and Ahmadinajad in Iran, are looking at what China has done and trying to use these weapons against their people.

And now that Hugo Chavez has virtually eliminated a free and independent press in Venezuela, he’s turning his sights on Twitter and the Internet in an effort to censor the only medium left for freedom-loving Venezuelans to communicate.

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your raising this issue today and I look forward to working with you and our colleagues on the committee to support freedom of speech and freedom of assembly that are such an integral part of the Internet. We must now allow the Internet—which has helped to bring freedom, free markets, democracy to many parts of the world—to become a tool for oppressors and dictators.

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