Ecuador: opinion piece Glenn Garvin: Ecuador lashes out at Internet critics

OPINION PIECE BY GLENN GARVIN FOR MIAMI HERALD: Ecuador, having bargained away virtually all its oil production to China in return for low-interest loans to finance President Rafael Correa’s spendthrift populism, is in dire need of a new export. And the president seems to have found one: tyrannical censorship of his critics.

Correa’s increasingly novel inventions for suppressing free speech in his own country are doubtless the subject of much envious chatter whenever Iran, North Korea and the rest of the fellows get together for meetings of Despots R Us. His latest wrinkle: a proposed law that would criminalize wisecracks on Facebook, enforced by placing video cameras in every cybercafe in Ecuador.

But now Correa has gone international. He’s using phony copyright claims to force American companies like YouTube and Google to remove videos and documents that criticize his government. Read Article