By Steve Hynd
Galrhan at the US Naval Institute blog is usually pretty astute but this misses the mark by a mile:
What do we make of an American corporation (Google was ranked #102 by Fortune in 2010) basically declaring war on the government policies of a strategic partner of the United States by inventing a new technology and offering free services to the political opposition of the Egyptian government? Whether one agrees or disagrees with what Google is doing � when you remove the morality element of Google�s action that can easily impact ones opinion � we are left with a few American corporations actively supporting a revolution as a free service against the current government of a strategic partner of the United States.
Think about that for a second�
Google is waging war leveraging bandwidth as a weapon.
...At some level, one might describe this as the Wikileaks issue in reverse. Wikileaks leverages bandwidth and cloud technology to insure continuous access to information in support of broadcasting government information to the entire world. Google and partners are leveraging cell phone technologies to insure continuous access to information in support of broadcasting anti-government information to the entire world. The United States government has not, in my opinion, handled Wikileaks very well. When one considers the geopolitical ramifications, not to mention the strategic ramifications, of American technology corporations like Google and Twitter waging a private war on the government of Egypt � one might begin to ask what this box looks like in 5 years that good ole� Pandora is opening?
I guess when what you mainly do is think and write about war, everything begins to look like warfare - but it most assuredly isn't. Google and its partners at Alive In Egypt aren't waging war - they are not broadcasting "anti-government information" any more than CNN is. They post pro- and anti-Mubarak messages, whatever the people of Egypt are reporting.
That's called journalism and it is explicitly protected by the US Constitution, the United Nations, and other relevant International Laws. Describing it as "war", and thus giving the Egyptian authorities and excuse to label it likewise, could in fact endanger journalists and citizens engaged in their voluntary expression of their opinions. Galrhan should hurredly revise his statements before he becomes a tool of totalitarianism.
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