Us new thrust to break China Firewall Internet

WASHINGTON - plans for the United States to pump millions of dollars in new technology to break censorship of the Internet overseas in a crackdown on dissent in China, said officials.

Representatives of the State Department said that they would give $ 19 million to efforts to avoid the Internet in China, the Iran and other authoritarian controls that block online access to politically sensitive material.

Michael Posner, assistant Secretary of State in charge of human rights, said the funding would support a cutting-edge technology that acts as a "slingshot" - identifying equipment that countries are censorship and launching back on them.

"We will respond with new tools." It is a set of core. "We are trying to stay a step ahead of the cat," said Posner.

The announcement was made shortly after the United States and China wrapped in large annual discussions in which the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shows exasperation domestic repression intensifying criticism of Beijing.

China routinely blocks sites that present points of view on topics such as the head of Tibet in exile of the Dalai Lama, banned Falun Gong spiritual movement and the Suppression of Tiananmen Square in 1989 on the informal pro-democracy demonstrators.

More recently, the Chinese authorities blocked the search for "Hillary Clinton" after that she gave a freedom Internet Champion of speech and for "Jasmine", an allusion to the pro-democracy uprising sweeping the Arab world.

"Indeed, we will be forwarding back information that Governments were initially blocked," Posner said.

"This can be done by e-mail or posting on blogs or RSS feeds or Web sites that the Government did not understand how block,"he says."

The funding comes from $ 30 million, the US Congress allocated in the exercise of the freedom of the Internet.

The failure until now to spend the money leads legislators to accuse the State Department of bend to China. A recent report of the Senate Committee called for another Government to be put in charge of these funds.

Supporters of the Falun Gong developed the so-called Global Internet Freedom Consortium, a software to evade Chinese Internet firewalls which was so effective that Iranians sought it during 2009 protests against the regime.

Posner said that the State Department would not identify the recipients of funding due in part to "security reasons".

Another US official who requested anonymity said that the State Department has received requests for funding totalling $ 180 million and that he chose those who seemed to be more effective.

Funding grants still needs the green light from Congress, but the official expressed hope that it would increase rapidly.

Clothilde Le Coz, Washington Director of the media rights Reporters without frontiers group, welcomed the new and its timetable, saying that China is imprisoning 77 people for their activities on the Internet.

"It is good news to know that Internet users more will certainly appreciate to get their word out," she said.

But she said that the workarounds for Internet tools were a "symbolic" the broader issue was ensuring freedom of expression.

In a speech in February, Clinton called Internet "the 21st century public space" and is committed to ensure that it develops in a manner that allows freedom of expression and association.

However, she also criticized activist site WikiLeaks for publishing secret us cables. She accused WikiLeaks "theft" and said that the question did not contradict the commitment of U.S. open Internet.