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Alec Ross is U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's senior adviser for innovation -- a job that has him developing new and innovative ways to use technology to promote American diplomatic efforts in everything from ethnic conflicts to the promotion of human rights and free speech. On July 14, Ross sat down with RFE/RL correspondent Golnaz Esfandiari in Washington and explained just how he does that.

He also told her that, contrary to what Iranian leaders seem to think, U.S. efforts to safeguard Internet freedom are not aimed at promoting regime change in authoritarian countries like Iran.

RFE/RL: The United States has been pushing for Internet freedom around the world. Do these efforts include U.S. allies; namely Saudi Arabia, which is considered an enemy of the Internet by rights groups, or Bahrain, where recently a prominent blogger was sentenced to 15 years in prison?

Alec Ross: There are 195 countries on Planet Earth. The focus of the State Department is on 194 of them. Our Internet-freedom agenda is focused on 194 countries, so when we develop tools, when we develop policies, it's not narrow casted to one, two, three, 30 or 100 countries, it's developed globally. So we have one Internet-freedom policy and it applies globally.

RFE/RL: So it applies to Saudi Arabia and Bahrain? Does the U.S. raise these issues with the leaders of those countries?

Ross: It is p... >>>