Reader's Response Draft 1

Inferring to ‘Who’s the true enemy of internet freedom-China, Russia, or the US?’- Evgeny Morozov (2015), the author states that China and Russia both violate internet freedom since China blocks a few foreign websites and Russian laws made surveillance data being stored inside the country. However, the United State despite being an advocate of internet freedom, had demanded to obtain internet data regardless of where it is stored as long as it is handled by US companies. He also mentioned that many US companies' interest are the same as the Washington's and their cooperation threatens other countries' technological sovereignty.

I agree with the author that China, Russia and the US all violate internet freedom but the US is much more aggressive than the other two countries. China and Russia's restrictions only effect their  own domestic users while the US is spying on everyone around the world as most data are processed by American companies. According to the US theory, they want access to all of them, regardless where or by whom the data was generated. This means almost every internet user is under surveillance, not by their own government but the US. The irony here is that Washington accuses almost every other countries on the planet of violating human right and lacking of freedom while it is actually the one whose violation is most severe and wide-spread. Such double standard makes people suspicious about American's agenda. 

Also, China and Russia have valid reasons to do so. China and Russia are seen as competitors or challengers of the US. They are trying to protect their own digital sovereignty. For example, China blocked Facebook and YouTube because some Ughur and Tibetan extremists used those two websites as platform to spread threats which led to explosion and riots in Tibet and Xinjiang. Facebook and YouTube refused to cooperate with Beijing in the investigation and claimed it was against customer privacy. However, there are evidences pointed out by Mozorov that those American companies are actually providing data to Washington. I am not saying that the government has right to access personal data. However, when it is the matter of national security and involves many more lives, we may give the government permit to do so. As for China, it can only try to reduce its citizens' use of American server since they are not cooperating. People may acuse China and Russia of being autocratic. However, the reality is even Brazil and Germany whose government has much better reputation tried to get rid of American companies due to security reasons. Theses examples can also be found in Mozorov's article. So, China and Russia may restrain people's freedom to some extend but the US is spying on everyone. Therefore, the US government is actually the largest and the true enemy of Internet freedom.