Targeting the repressive methods of what one senator called a "cruel regime," the U.S. Senate has authorized up to $50 million to help Iranians evade their government's attempts to censor the Internet and to pressure foreign corporations not to help Iran clamp down on communication. The Victim of Iranian Censorship, or VOICE, Act, was added to the Senate's defense-authorization bill Thursday evening as a response to mass protests following Iran's disputed June 12 presidential elections and amid concerns that Western companies have sold Iran technology used to monitor dissidents.

Two more Web sites dedicated to social networking went offline in China on Tuesday amid tightening controls that have blocked Facebook, Twitter and other popular sites that offered many Chinese a rare taste of free expression. China's crackdown on social networking sites began in March, when Chinese Web users found they could no longer visit YouTube shortly after video appeared on the site purporting to show Chinese security officials mistreating Tibetans. The blockages continued through the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations and the recent ethnic riots in Xinjiang, with homegrown and overseas micro-blogging and photo-sharing sites among those targeted.

This month, amid record profligacy on Capitol Hill, Sens. Sam Brownback (R., Kan.) and Arlen Specter (D., Pa.) pushed for spending that all Americans can celebrate: $30 million of the Senate’s State Department appropriations bill will go to support digital tools for undermining Internet censorship. If the initiative is properly implemented, the politically repressed from Havana to Rangoon will have cause for celebration. Authoritarian regimes spend fortunes censoring the Internet because they fear the subversive potential of digital communications. China and Iran are world leaders in this regard—models for other rogues such as Syria and Saudi Arabia. In countering the Green Revolution this summer, Iran unveiled a new high-tech apparatus for blocking some Internet communications outright, while monitoring others in order to intimidate dissenters. China uses more than 40,000 censors in a dozen government agencies to limit Web content via the so-called Great Firewall. As Chinese President Hu Jintao said in 2007: “Whether we can cope with the Internet is a matter that affects the development of socialist culture, the security of information and the stability of the state.”

Political protests overseas demonstrate the enormous power of the most mundane Internet technologies. Social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are being used to organize protests after Iran's contested election and have allowed Iranians to speak anonymously to one another and the world. In China, access to reports and photos on the Internet fueled protests in Urumqi after a violent confrontation ended with more than 150 dead. Yet even as modern technology helps protesters organize and publish, repressive governments use it to track, harass and undermine. Iranian authorities spied on protesters' cell phone calls using equipment purchased from Nokia-Siemens. The Chinese government's "Golden Shield" project monitors the unencrypted, unprotected online communications of dissidents.