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2010-03-10 12:31:14
By FRANK JORDANS, Associated Press Writer Frank Jordans, Associated Press
Writer . Tue Mar 9, 10:39 am ET
GENEVA . A senior Google executive welcomed on Tuesday a U.S. decision to relax
restrictions on exporting Internet communications services to Iran, Sudan and
Cuba.
Bob Boorstin, Google's director of policy communications, said the Web search
company would now be able to offer some of its other products in those
countries, such as the mapping satellite software Google Earth, photo
management program Picasa and Internet chat client Google Talk.
"This is a great accomplishment," Boorstin told a human rights meeting in
Geneva. "We are hopeful this will help people like yourselves in this room and
activists all over the world take a small step down what is certainly a long
road ahead."
The U.S. Treasury Department said the change to existing trade sanctions was
intended to help people "exercise their most basic rights" with the help of
instant messaging service and e-mail.
Google itself has come under fire recently in countries where it operates.
Last month, an Italian court held three Google executives criminally
responsible for violating the country's privacy laws for allowing a video of an
autistic teenager being bullied to be posted online.
In January, Google threatened to leave China over attempts to snoop on Chinese
dissidents' Gmail accounts from inside the country. China's government denies
any involvement.
Boorstin described the Italian court's decision as a form of "Internet
censorship" that would "encourage repressive regimes."
"From now on, you're criminally responsible for anything that appears on your
Web site," he said. "That's certainly going to have a chilling effect on what
people are willing to put up."
On China, Boorstin said Google was already offering a "a censored search
engine" through the Google.cn domain to avoid meeting Chinese requirements for
storing sensitive data about its users on servers in the country.
"If and when we pull out of China and turn off Google.cn, I'm afraid that we
will be taking away from the Chinese populace a tool that they have come to
value," he said.
Boorstin encouraged human rights activists also to rely on platforms other than
the Internet for transmitting information.