US Department of State efforts to combat Internet censorship in China and other countries have fallen short and funding for the drive should be shifted to another US agency, a US Senate committee report says.
The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee report sharply criticizes the State Department for being slow in spending money allocated by the US Congress for Internet Censorship Circumvention Technology (ICCT).
The report, a copy of which was obtained by reporters, recommends that the funding be given instead to the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which oversees the Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and other US radio and TV networks.
The report is to be released tomorrow, the same day US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is scheduled to deliver remarks on Internet freedom at The George Washington University in Washington.
Clinton also delivered a major Internet freedom speech in January last year, but the Senate committee report said there had been “scant follow-up” in the next 12 months.
Congress has given the State Department US$50 million for Internet freedom programs since -fiscal 2008, the report said, but US$30 million remains unspent and little has gone to ICCT.
“Such technology should be given a much higher priority by the US government,” it said. “US government support for ICCT development is vital, given the weak private sector market interest in funding such technologies.”
The report suggested the delays in allocating funding were partly because some of the most sophisticated ICCT software — DIT and UltraReach — was developed by two US companies founded by members of the Falun Gong, which is banned in China, to allow followers to break through the “Great Firewall.”
The report said DIT and -UltraReach have been used to circumvent Internet censorship in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Myanmar and Vietnam — “countries which have looked to China for lessons in Internet control or to whom China has directly provided technologies to counter such products.”
It said the delays in allocating funding have “strengthened the hands of those governments, including China’s, who seek to restrict their citizens’ access to information.”
“The State Department is poorly placed to handle this issue due to its reliance on daily bilateral interaction with these very same governments, particularly China,” the report said.
It said BBG stations, which also include Radio Marti, which targets Cuba, and the Middle East Broadcasting Network “must all work on a daily basis to ensure their radio, Internet and television programs are being received by audiences in certain countries that try to block, jam or outlaw these efforts.”
“As such, the BBG, and not the State Department, would appear to be the logical lead agency in the federal government to focus current and future ICCT funding,” the report said.
The report also criticized what it called the “inept handling of an untested technology” — ICCT software called Haystack created by the San Francisco-based Censorship Research Center to assist Iranian democracy activists.
“The Haystack team had not sufficiently tested its software nor allowed it to be submitted for -independent cryptological analysis before it released a beta version to unsuspecting Iranians,” the report said.
“In September 2010, just after the beta version was released, an independent team was able to crack the code in six hours and also determined that the Iranian government would be able to manipulate the software to identify any users,” it said. “Once these weaknesses were made public, the Haystack project quickly collapsed.”
The report, which also called for the US government to increase its public diplomacy efforts to counter China’s “vigorous” moves on the outreach front, was prepared at the request of US Senator Richard Lugar, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Apple Inc has closed in on an agreement with OpenAI to use the start-up’s technology on the iPhone, part of a broader push to bring artificial intelligence (AI) features to its devices, people familiar with the matter said. The two sides have been finalizing terms for a pact to use ChatGPT features in Apple’s iOS 18, the next iPhone operating system, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the situation is private. Apple also has held talks with Alphabet Inc’s Google about licensing its Gemini chatbot. Those discussions have not led to an agreement, but are ongoing. An OpenAI
INSATIABLE: Almost all AI innovators are working with the chipmaker to address the rapidly growing AI-related demand for energy-efficient computing power, the CEO said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported about 60 percent annual growth in revenue for last month, benefiting from rapidly growing demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing applications. Revenue last month expanded to NT$236.02 billion (US$7.28 billion), compared with NT$147.9 billion in April last year, the second-highest level in company history, TSMC said in a statement. On a monthly basis, revenue surged 20.9 percent, from NT$195.21 billion in March. As AI-related applications continue to show strong growth, TSMC expects revenue to expand about 27.6 percent year-on-year during the current quarter to between US$19.6 billion and US$20.4 billion. That would
‘FULL SUPPORT’: Kumamoto Governor Takashi Kimura said he hopes more companies would settle in the prefecture to create an area similar to Taiwan’s Hsinchu Science Park The newly elected governor of Japan’s Kumamoto Prefecture said he is ready to ensure wide-ranging support to woo Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to build its third Japanese chip factory there. Concerns of groundwater shortages when TSMC’s two plants begin operations in the prefecture’s Kikuyo have spurred discussions about the possibility of tapping unused dam water, Kumamoto Governor Takashi Kimura said in an interview on Saturday. While Kimura said talks about a third plant have yet to occur, Bloomberg had reported TSMC is already considering its third Japanese fab — also in Kumamoto — which would make more advanced chips. “We are
ASML Holding NV’s new advanced chip machines have a daunting price tag, said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), one of the Dutch company’s biggest clients. “The cost is very high,” TSMC senior vice president Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, referring to ASML’s latest system known as high-NA extreme ultraviolet (EUV). “I like the high-NA EUV’s capability, but I don’t like the sticker price,” Zhang said. ASML’s new chip machine can imprint semiconductors with lines that are just 8 nanometers thick — 1.7 times smaller than the previous generation. The machines cost 350 million euros (US$378 million)