The Treasury Department says it wants companies such as Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. to resume instant messaging services in countries including Cuba and Iran that remain under U.S. trade sanctions.
Microsoft and Google cut off the use of instant messages by citizens of Iran, Syria, Cuba and Sudan, saying U.S. regulations prohibit the required downloads. Now the Treasury Department says online communications foster democracy and should be restored.
"Ensuring the flow and access to information available through the Internet and similar public sources is consistent with the policy interests of the United States," Adam Szubin, director of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, said in a letter last month to the Centre for Democracy in the Americas, a group that opposes sanctions on Cuba.
The company-imposed blackouts show how U.S. trade restrictions can conflict with diplomatic goals, said James Lewis, an analyst at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
"We want people to be able to communicate," Lewis, who administered U.S. export control rules in the 1990s, said in an interview. "But in the normal course of business this stuff is on autopilot. The sanctions system rolls on and generates an answer that is no."
The U.S. began an "interagency effort" to make sure electronic communication is available in nations facing sanctions "to the extent permitted by current U.S. law," Szubin said in the letter to Sarah Stephens, executive director of the Washington-based Centre for Democracy in the Americas.
Microsoft's Obligations
The conflict is over how to interpret laws that limit trade with countries whose policies the U.S. opposes. In addition to imposing general sanctions, the U.S. restricts exports of civilian technology that could have military applications.
Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, ended access to Windows Live Messenger, its instant-messaging application, last year, to meet its "obligations to not do business with markets on the U.S. sanctions list," spokeswoman Kate McGillem said in an e-mail.
The company lets citizens of those nations use its Hotmail e-mail and Live Spaces, a blogging service. Those don't require downloaded software.
Google, based in Mountain View, California, doesn't permit the download of Google Talk, its instant messaging and voice chat service, or of Google Earth, Google Desktop and other services. It has a "longstanding practice" of using a filtering system to block access to those services from portals in Iran and the other nations under sanctions, spokesman Scott Rubin said in an e-mail.
Online Services
The prohibitions on access in sanctioned nations remain in effect, according to the companies. Marti Adams, a Treasury spokesman, wouldn't comment, and declined to grant an interview with Szubin.
The Obama administration said in April that it was easing sanctions on Cuba, partly by letting companies such as AT&T Inc. get licenses to operate television, mobile-phone or satellite- radio services in the island nation.
"With that in mind, we are deeply concerned that instant messaging services for Cubans and persons living on other countries under sanctions by the U.S. have been discontinued," Stephens of the Center for Democracy wrote in a May 29 letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
Web sites, blogs and online services such as Twitter have been used by anti-government groups to promote their causes and organize protests. China and Iran sought to block Internet access during unrest this year.
Social Networking
After the disputed presidential election in Iran on June 12, opposition organizers used Twitter Inc.'s messaging to organize street protests. The State Department intervened to dissuade Twitter from shutting down for a planned upgrade, according to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
"We called and said, ‘Please don't shut down,' because this is a major communications loop for people on the streets," Clinton said in a forum at George Washington University in Washington on October 6.
Closely held Twitter is a social networking site that lets users send "tweets," messages of no more than 140 characters that are open to the public unless the writer limits readers to selected "followers." Jenna Sampson, a spokeswoman for San Francisco-based Twitter, didn't respond to e-mailed questions.
Instant messaging, e-mail and other private communications tools are more effective than Twitter alone for democratic activists in countries such as Iran, said Evgeny Morozov, a fellow at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in Washington.
"When you do have an event like in Iran, you want all the channels in place, so that people can communicate quickly," Morozov, who is writing a book about the impact of the Internet on global politics, said in an interview.
The risk to companies that they will run afoul of U.S. sanctions is real, said Morozov. Doing business in Iran or Syria "is loss-making, so why should they bother?" he said.
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