Several speakers have been invited to form a panel and offer insight regarding the issue. Internet entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox is slated to attend, as well as Morton Sklar, who last year filed suit against Yahoo to prevent it from disclosing identification information of government opposition to Chinese officials.
Amnesty recently began to catalog events of online censorship and repression, including the imprisonment of online bloggers in Egypt and Asia, and Google's most recent agreement with the Chinese government to censor its search results.
Diane Duke, executive director at the Free Speech Coalition, told XBIZ she's delighted to see Amnesty take charge.
"The Free Speech Coalition applauds any and all efforts that expose the oppressive nature of government censorship, especially when that censorship leads to imprisonment," she said. "These kinds of oppressive laws exist in countries all over the world — including the U.S."
Duke also said she hopes this is a wake-up call to corporations like Microsoft and Google to understand that their customers oppose, and will not support, companies that assist governments in online oppression and censorship.
A webcast of the event can be viewed at Amnesty.org.uk live at 10:30 a.m. PDT.
