Tear down firewalls

Technology | An opportunity to end Chinese internet censorship | Marvin Olasky

Liu Jin/AFP/Getty Images

Even if you think artificial economic stimulation makes sense, observers right and left now see that the "Recovery Act" is a cornucopia of over-ripe lemons. Question: Can we find one healthy one and make lemonade?

Enter a proposal that Mark Palmer, former ambassador to Hungary and co-founder of the National Endowment for Democracy, sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Feb. 10. He wants $65 million of the nearly $800 billion to be used to create American jobs and purchase American technology to provide high-tech anti-censorship tools that would advance freedom of information in closed societies.

Background: Chinese, Iranian, and other regimes are maintaining and expanding internet firewalls to isolate and control their people. China's Golden Shield bureaucracy has perhaps 50,000 staffers and ample technology involved in monitoring and censoring internet use, prosecuting unauthorized internet users, and pressuring Google, Yahoo, and Wikipedia and other countries to conform their sites to Leninist lies.