The Internet has begun to be used by dictators who want to control people, and Google does not ignore it.
"With what has happened in the last year, governments have realized that you will not turn off the Internet," said Google President Eric Schmidt.
According to the newspaper Guardian, this statement was made during the conference SXSW in Austin, Texas.
Ο Schmidt βέβαια, πήγε ένα βήμα παραπέρα και ανέφερε ότι το νέο μοντέλο ενός δικτάτορα είναι να διεισδύσει και να προσπαθεί να χειραγωγήσει το Internet, κάτι που ήταν προφανές μέχρι στιγμής σε countries such as China.
This statement is very important, especially considering the current international context, the demonstrations taking place in many countries and the conflicts that are at the center of attention.
Most of the time, the Internet has played an important role in uprisings such as those in Ukraine, Venezuela, Turkey and Egypt. In most of these cases, governments have tried to interfere with Internet freedom by blocking social media and other tools often used by protesters.
"We want to strengthen mobile phones and connectivity, especially for people who do not have them. In the book, we can say that revolutions will be easier to start, but harder to end, "said Schmidt, referring to a book he co-authored with Jared Cohen on how the new digital age will shape the future. .
It should also be noted that Google and Eric Schmidt have reacted strongly following the NSA scandal in recent months, calling for increased transparency on the part of the government and upgrading the security of their networks by using SSL by default for protection of users.
“The solution to this is to encrypt the data at multiple points at the source. We had already done that, but now we just accelerated our activities," said Schmidt. "We're pretty sure that right now it's the information that exist inside Google are safe from the prying eyes of any government, including the US government. We were attacked by the Chinese in 2010, we were attacked by the NSA in 2013. These are the facts,” the Google president said.
Schmidt has said in the past that encryption is the key to ending internet censorship that occurs in countries like China, where the Great Firewall μπλοκάρει αρκετές ιστοσελίδες, καθώς η κυβέρνηση προσπαθεί να εξαφανίσει το περιεχόμενο του Internet που είναι δυσμενές για αυτούς και να περιορίσει την πρόσβαση των πολιτών στην ενημέρωση.
