Quote

It has been claimed at times that our modern age of technology facilitates dictatorship.

It is true that authoritarian governments increasingly see the Internet as a threat in part because they see the U.S. government behind the Internet.

There was one issue on which there seemed to be almost unanimity: the Internet should not be managed by any government, national or multinational.

There is no country on Earth where Internet and telecommunications companies do not face at least some pressure from governments to do things that would potentially infringe on users' rights to free expression and privacy.

Democracy's a very fragile thing. You have to take care of democracy. As soon as you stop being responsible to it and allow it to turn into scare tactics, it's no longer democracy, is it? It's something else. It may be an inch away from totalitarianism.

The potential for the abuse of power through digital networks - upon which we the people now depend for nearly everything, including our politics - is one of the most insidious threats to democracy in the Internet age.

In our modern age - in the age of free information - I don't think there is any place for dictatorships.

The internet, Facebook and Twitter have created mass communications and social spaces that regimes cannot control.

A number of countries, including Russia and China, have put forward proposals to regulate aspects of the Internet like 'crime' and 'security' that are currently unregulated at the global level due to lack of international consensus over what those terms actually mean or over how to balance enforcement with the protection of citizens' rights.

If the expansion of a global legal regime for communication technologies gains traction, the effects to the global economy as well as our individual liberties will be severe.