Congressman Smith (R.-N.J.) stopped by bloggers row late this afternoon to speak with us about a bill he is working on to prohibit Google and other online search engines from enabling dictatorships to censor online content.
Smith explained that on Google.cn, ,China's version of Google, yields different search results than the Google United States citizens use. As an example he said when you enter "human rights in china" or "china torture" in "American" google you get over 500 images of torture victims. If you do the same in google.cn, you get resuslts that show George Bush and WWII Japanese torture victims.
"Google claims this is just an effort to enable people to get information, but what they are missing by a mile is that they are becoming a megaphone for torture."
When asked on a television show about this issue and if corporations have a responsibilty to promote democracy, Smith said it was near the end of the show and he didn't have time to give the answer he wanted. He said, "the right answer is that corporations have a responsibility not to promote dicatorships."
Smith said hearing are coming up on February 15th on this subject.
