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takyon writes:

U.S. Bill Allocates $30 Million To Help Hong Kong Bypass China's Great Firewall Internet Restrictions

In a piece of legislation currently being considered by the United States Senate, the U.S. government will allocate $30 million to enable Hong Kong residents to bypass China's Great Firewall. While residents of one of the most densely populated and developed cities in the world are not directly surveilled by the firewall, a controversial National Security Law which was enforced last year bred fears that the region's internet regulation policies would come to mirror those in Mainland China, where the Great Firewall restricts access to internet platforms such as Google and Facebook.

[...] The bill, officially dubbed the United States Innovation and Competition Act of 2021 (USICA), allocates $30 million in funds starting from the next fiscal year. Its Section 3309 aims to aid in developing technologies and programs for an "open, interoperable, reliable and secure internet" for Hong Kong residents.

It then lists down the objectives that this funding will have to achieve. These objectives include diversifying the portfolio of technologies at the disposal of the U.S. government for combating internet censorship.

A full list of these objectives, according to the Act, is:

(i) to make the internet available in Hong Kong;

(ii) to increase the number of the tools in the technology portfolio;

(iii) to promote the availability of such technologies and tools in Hong Kong;

(iv) to encourage the adoption of such technologies and tools by the people of Hong Kong;

(v) to scale up the distribution of such technologies and tools throughout Hong Kong;

(vi) to prioritize the development of tools, components, code, and technologies that are fully open-source, to the extent practicable;

(vii) to conduct research on repressive tactics that undermine internet freedom in Hong Kong;

(viii) to ensure digital safety guidance and support is available to repressed individual citizens, human rights defenders, independent journalists, civil society organizations and marginalized populations in Hong Kong; and

(ix) to engage American private industry, including e-commerce firms and social networking companies, on the importance of preserving internet access in Hong Kong.

Original Submission