At the annual meeting of the Community of Democracies last month in Lithuania, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton struck a characteristic note of cautious idealism in support of Internet users living under repressive governments: “Because technology both empowers and endangers your work, we are giving activists new tools to try to circumvent the many obstacles that governments are putting in your way.” In a February speech Clinton gave at George Washington University, she said roughly the same thing: “There is a debate currently underway in some circles about whether the Internet is a force for liberation or repression. … [We] support a burgeoning group of technologists and activists working at the cutting edge of the fight against Internet repression.” This is complicated, Clinton finds new ways to say with every speech, but we’re doing all the right things. Official U.S. policy unequivocally favors a “free and open Internet” and opposes repressive censorship regimes worldwide through the best available means.

But, in reality, this isn’t exactly true. An examination of the State Department’s record of its 18-month-old Internet freedom agenda reveals significant failures, both in overall funding efforts and in the omission of vital tools from its approach to helping activists crack through the layers of censorship imposed by repressive regimes. Before democracy advocates abroad can truly take heart in Clinton’s words, the department needs to admit to past mistakes and adopt a truly comprehensive approach to addressing the issue.

FRUSTRATION WITH THE State Department’s sluggishness in allocating funds to address Internet freedom issues has simmered for some time. As far back as January 2010, a bipartisan group of five senators wrote to Clinton demanding greater accountability for the department’s funding process, and, at a March 2010 press conference, Senator Sam Brownback threatened to place holds on State nominees if swifter action wasn’t taken. He declared, “The stakes are too high for bureaucracy and excuses.” That same month, Internet freedom activist and former ambassador to Hungary Mark Palmer testified before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, arguing that he had “never been more appalled at the State Department’s refusal to do what is so clearly in the national interest of the United States.”

Part of the problem is that the State Department has simply been slow to spend the money that certain zealous members of Congress have allocated to their pet cause. In the aftermath of Clinton’s February speech, critics in the press noted the department’s failure to distribute approximately $30 million in Internet freedom funds, despite receiving dozens of grant proposals for many times that amount. Indeed, in 2010, the department was allocated $30 million to promote Internet freedom, but the fact sheet accompanying Clinton’s February speech said the department issued just over $5 million in grants the previous year. This spring, State officials further annoyed their congressional overseers by reducing their requested Internet freedom funding from $10 million to zero for Fiscal Year 2012.

Another large point of contention is the State Department’s decisionmaking regarding which new technologies to fund—and which to exclude from funding. In June, The New York Times published a long story extolling the department’s efforts in funding the development of “mesh network” technology—sometimes also referred to as “the Internet in a suitcase”—designed to bypass the government-monitored Internet by creating alternative local networks that connect devices directly. The technology can be used to quickly create large local area networks within a city, but it doesn’t solve the problem of bypassing state-run firewalls to connect with the broader Internet from within a censored nation. Rather than extol this partial victory, however, many Internet freedom activists were furious, regarding the Times story as further confirmation that their preferred technology—“circumvention software” that allows users to get around the firewalls of oppressive regimes—was once against getting the cold shoulder from the department.