The United States State Department is developing an online portal that will allow people in Europe and elsewhere to view content banned by their governments, including alleged hate speech and terrorist propaganda, in a move that Washington sees as a way to counter censorship, three sources familiar with the plan said.
The site will be hosted on "freedom.gov", the sources said. One source said officials had discussed the possibility of turning on a virtual private network (VPN) feature to make a user's traffic appear to originate from the US, adding that users' activities on the site would not be tracked.
The project, led by Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers, was scheduled to be presented at last week's Munich Security Conference but was postponed, the sources said.
Reuters could not determine why the launch did not take place, but some State Department officials, including lawyers, have expressed concerns about the plan, two sources said, without elaborating on those concerns.
The project could further strain relations between US President Donald Trump's administration and traditional US allies in Europe, already strained by trade disputes, Russia's war in Ukraine and Trump's efforts to establish control over Greenland, according to Reuters.
The portal could also put Washington in the unusual position of appearing to encourage citizens to violate local laws.
In a statement to Reuters, a State Department spokesman said the US government does not have a censorship circumvention program specific to Europe, but added: "Digital freedom is a priority for the State Department, and that includes the expansion of privacy and censorship circumvention technologies like VPNs."
The spokesman denied that any announcement had been delayed and said it was not true that State Department lawyers had expressed concerns.
The Trump administration has made free speech, especially what it sees as the suppression of conservative voices online, a focus of its foreign policy, including in Europe and in Brazil.
The European approach to free speech differs from the American one, where the Constitution protects virtually all forms of expression. Restrictions in the European Union (EU) stem from efforts to prevent any return of extremist propaganda that fueled Nazism, including its demonization of Jews, foreigners, and minorities.
US officials have condemned EU policies they say suppress right-wing politicians, including in Romania, Germany and France, and argued that regulations such as the EU's Digital Services Act and the UK's Cybersecurity Act restrict free speech.
The EU delegation in Washington, which functions like an embassy for the 27-nation bloc, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the US plan.
Through regulations that most affect social networks and large platforms like Meta's Facebook and X network, the EU restricts access to, and in some cases requires the rapid removal of, content classified as illegal hate speech, terrorist propaganda or harmful disinformation, based on a set of rules, laws and decisions adopted since 2008.
Friction with European regulators
The State Department's Rogers has emerged as a vocal advocate for the Trump administration's stance on EU content policies. Since taking office in October, she has visited several European countries and met with representatives of right-wing groups that the administration says are being oppressed. The department did not make Rogers available to Reuters for an interview.
In its National Security Strategy released in December, the Trump administration warned that Europe was facing "civilizational erasure" over its migration policies. It said the US would prioritize "fostering resistance to Europe's current trajectory within European nations."
EU regulators regularly require US-based sites to remove content and can impose bans as a last resort. Network X, owned by Trump ally Elon Musk, was hit with a €120 million fine in December for failing to comply with regulations.
Germany, for example, issued 482 removal orders in 2024 for material it deemed to support or incite terrorism and forced providers to remove 16.771 pieces of content.
Similarly, in 2024, Meta's supervisory board ordered the removal of posts by a Polish political party that used racial slurs and depicted immigrants as rapists, a category of content that EU law treats as illegal hate speech.
Calling the US plan a "direct blow" to European rules and laws, former State Department official Kenneth Propp, who worked on European digital regulations and is now at the Atlantic Council's European Center, said it would freedom.gov "was perceived in Europe as an American attempt to thwart the provisions of national laws."
Edward Koristin, a former member of Musk’s Office of Government Efficiency, which has been cutting jobs, is also involved in the U.S. portal effort, two sources said. Koristin works with the National Design Studio, which Trump founded to spruce up government websites. Reuters was unable to reach Koristin for comment.
It was not clear what benefits the US government portal would offer users that were not already available through commercial VPN services.
Web addresses freedom.gov was registered on January 12, according to the federal register get.govOn Wednesday, the site had no content, but displayed the National Design Studio logo, the words "fly, eagle, fly" and an application form, according to Reuters.
Before Trump's second term, the US government helped fund commercial VPN services and other tools as part of efforts to promote democracy globally and help users access free information in China, Iran, Russia, Belarus, Cuba, Myanmar and other countries.
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