The US State Department is developing an online portal that will allow users in Europe and other regions to view content banned by their governments. Three sources familiar with the plan told Reuters that Washington sees the initiative as a way to
counter censorship. The site will operate at freedom.gov, according to the sources. One of the sources said officials have discussed including a VPN (virtual private network) feature that would make user traffic appear to originate in the United
States. The same source added that user activity on the site will not be tracked. The project is being led by Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers. In a statement to Reuters, a State Department spokesman said the US government does not
have a specific censorship circumvention program for Europe, but stressed that digital freedom is a priority for the State Department, and this includes the proliferation of privacy and censorship circumvention technologies like VPNs. The Trump
administration has placed freedom of expression at the center of its foreign policy, especially in cases where it assesses that conservative voices are being restricted online, including in Europe and Brazil. EU censors regularly ask US-based
platforms to remove content and, as a last resort, can impose bans. Platform X, owned by Trump ally Elon Musk, was fined 120 million euros in December for failing to comply with the rules. In Germany, during 2024, authorities issued 482 removal orders
for material they deemed to support or incite terrorism and forced providers to delete 16,771 pieces of content. Similarly, Metas supervisory board in 2024 ordered the removal of posts by a Polish political party that used racial slurs and portrayed
immigrants as rapists, a category that EU law treats as illegal hate speech. | 
