Hillary Clinton for 2008? This should scare the tar out of all internet users

Its sounds like a bad joke, but what does Hillary Clinton and China have in common? No its not past fund raising with Clinton Fund-Raiser John Huang or Yah Lin “Charlie Trie. Different Clinton this time. Seems that Hillary Clinton and China may have similar outlooks on regulation when it pertains to the internet. Today, China set new regulations on internet news and “widening a campaign of controls it has imposed on other Web sites, such as discussion groups“.

The state bans the spreading of any news with content that is against national security and public interest,” the official Xinhua news agency said in announcing the new rules, which took effect immediately. The news agency did not detail the rules, but said Internet news sites must “be directed toward serving the people and socialism and insist on correct guidance of public opinion for maintaining national and public interests.” Established news media needed permission to run a news Web site, it said. New operators had to register themselves with government information offices.

So the Chinese government is going to ensure that the internet maintain national, public interests and not have anything that they deem against against national security? I know what everyone is saying, this is China, what do you expect? Not so fast my friends, as The Drudge Report reminds us it was only seven short years ago that Hillary Clinton said the following that she would like us all in the internet world to forget:

“we are all going to have to rethink how we deal with” the Internet because of the handling of White House sex scandal stories on Web sites.

“We are all going to have to rethink how we deal with this, because there are all these competing values … Without any kind of editing function or gatekeeping function, what does it mean to have the right to defend your reputation?” she said.

Does some one maybe think that Hillary Clinton may need to inform us just how she does think about today’s “freedom of speech” on the internet? She continues on to say in her 1998 interview:

“I don’t have any clue about what we’re going to do legally, regulatorily, technologically — I don’t have a clue. But I do think we always have to keep competing interests in balance. I’m a big pro-balance person. That’s why I love the founders — checks and balances; accountable power. Anytime an individual or an institution or an invention leaps so far out ahead of that balance and throws a system, whatever it might be — political, economic, technological –out of balance, you’ve got a problem, because then it can lead to the oppression people’s rights, it can lead to the manipulation of information … “

Accountable power? Oppression of people’s rights? Manipulation of information? What is she referring to government abuse of one’s freedom of speech by limiting or regulating the internet? No, she is referring to internet users. I think Hillary Clinton has a lot of answering to do to all that use the internet to see if she hasn’t got a clue over the last six years. This interview took place in 1998 during her husband’s sex scandal and she has the audacity to speak of manipulation of information? The internet and free speech must just be another right wing conspiracy. Wonder how the Daily Kos feels about that? Left or right, freedom of speech is just that. Hillary, keep your hands off out internet.

Hat Tip: Drudge Report