One activist even found a contract sent from a Western company to the Egyptian state security bureau for the sale of surveillance technology. Activists in Egypt assume that the transitional government still has such technologies at its disposal.  In Tunisia, censorship returned in May, not nearly as extensive as before, but still the transitional government decided that some Web pages could incite violence and therefore needed to be blocked.  Slim Amamou, a digital activist and member of the transitional government, resigned in protest over the renewed censorship. But other Tunisians who supported the revolution disagreed with him, arguing that speech involving slander, hatred and violence still needs to be controlled.  The question is: Who decides? And how do you prevent the deciders from abusing their power?  The fact of the matter is, the world's democracies do not have clear answers for the people of Egypt and Tunisia: In managing our digital networks, we are fighting our own battles over how to balance genuine economic and security concerns on the one hand with civil liberties and free speech on the other.  In the United States, even people with mixed feelings about WikiLeaks and its mercurial leader Julian Assange are troubled by the reactions of some members of the U.S. government and some businesses. In December, Amazon Web hosting dropped WikiLeaks as a customer soon after receiving a phone call from U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, despite the fact that WikiLeaks was neither charged, let alone convicted, of breaking any U.S. law.  Legally, Amazon has a right to do whatever it wants -- as a privately operated service it can choose to drop any customer who violates its terms of service.
Wael Ghonim, Google executive by day, secret Facebook activist by night, famously declared right after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down in February: "If you want to liberate a society