Rebecca MacKinnon Quotes

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Rebecca MacKinnon

Profession : Journalist

Birth : September 16, 1969

We like to think of the Internet as a border-busting technology.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Facebook has conquered much of the world.

Rebecca MacKinnon

In China, Vietnam, Russia and several former Soviet states, the dominant social networks are run by local companies whose relationship with the government actually constrains the empowering potential of social networks.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Without global human rights, labor and environmental movements, companies would still be hiring 12-year-olds as a matter of course and poisoning our groundwater without batting an eyelid.

Rebecca MacKinnon

As it turns out, American-made technology had helped Mubarak and his security state collect, compile, and parse vast amounts of data about everyday citizens.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Despite the Obama administration's proclaimed commitment to global Internet freedom, the executive branch is not transparent about the types and capabilities of surveillance technologies it is sourcing and purchasing - or about what other governments are purchasing the same technology.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Trade shows such as the wire tappers' ball are highly secretive and ban journalists from attending. None of the U.S. agencies that attended the wire tappers' ball - including the FBI, the Secret Service, and every branch of the military - were willing to comment when a reporter queried them about their attendance.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Companies should have a due diligence process to determine the likelihood that their technologies will be used to carry out human rights abuses before doing business with a particular country or distributor.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Normalization of U.S.-China relations in 1979, combined with economic reforms and opening, transformed the Chinese people's lives.

Rebecca MacKinnon

One-way monologues through the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia don't have much street cred with China's Internet generation, to be honest.

Rebecca MacKinnon

The Internet is empowering everybody. It's empowering Democrats. It's empowering dictators. It's empowering criminals. It's empowering people who are doing really wonderful and creative things.

Rebecca MacKinnon

It takes a strong stomach and a thick skin to be a female activist fighting online censorship in Pakistan.

Rebecca MacKinnon

A moral argument about whether censorship is good or bad deteriorates quickly into accusations about who is more or less patriotic, moral, pious, and so on.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Negative views of Pakistan expressed by prominent members of the global business community are taken more seriously by government functionaries than are appeals by human rights groups.

Rebecca MacKinnon

As in Pakistan, Tunisian and Egyptian human rights activists are concerned that any censorship mechanisms, once put in place, will inevitably be abused for political purposes no matter what censorship proponents claim to the contrary.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Human rights in cyberspace are really no different from rights in the physical world.

Rebecca MacKinnon

As a citizen of a community, if you never vote or engage, don't be surprised when the outcome doesn't serve your interests; you've never done anything to push things in the right direction.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Microsoft runs the world's biggest blogging platform, MSN Spaces.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Google transformed the way most of us get our information with a search engine that enables us to find citizen-created media content alongside the work of professionals.

Rebecca MacKinnon