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US, 13 other countries vow to back online freedoms
TOBY STERLING
(The Associated Press)



05:41:36AM (ET) Sunday,December 11,2011.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Fourteen countries including the United States vowed Friday to work to promote online freedoms, with an emphasis on helping bloggers who operate under oppressive regimes.

The countries, which also included Britain, France and Canada, endorsed a statement at the end of a two-day conference in the Netherlands saying that their goals included preventing "the misappropriation of technologies for repressive ends, inappropriate requests for personal data for political purposes, and illegitimate blocking of content."

The conference was inspired in part by the bloggers and social network users who have played a key role in fomenting the revolutions of the "Arab Spring" — and took great risks along the way.

Other countries signing off on the statement came from Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America, but did not include any regimes from the Middle East or the Arab world.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton opened the Freedom Online conference Thursday with a direct call for companies not to sell surveillance tools to authoritarian regimes.

In an emotional speech Friday, Syrian blogger Amjad Baiazy said his country's surveillance system was built by Western companies. He said he was arrested and tortured in May for expressing his opinion online, and a friend was arrested as recently as this week for a Facebook posting.

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Online freedom should be restored.
The world would like to know what's really going on...

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