Originally recorded September 30, 2020.
Event Description: For years the United States has been the champion of a borderless and largely unregulated Internet. China, by contrast, has promoted “Internet sovereignty,” which means governments should regulate Internet traffic much as they would physical traffic crossing their national borders. Rebecca MacKinnon, an Internet policy expert and advocate for governing the Internet according to international human rights standards, says the U.S. government’s recent moves to ban two leading Chinese-owned apps, TikTok and We Chat, and purge Chinese companies like Huawei from American networks are simply another version of “Internet sovereignty,” and will do little to protect the human rights of Internet users in the United States or around the world.