U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton opened the Freedom Online conference Thursday with a direct call for companies not to sell surveillance tools to authoritarian regimes.

Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal said the conference had created "a coalition that will share information online and offline on freedom of expression, a coalition that will support individuals particularly operating in oppressive environments in the exercise of human rights ... through the Internet."

Schaake also slammed the U.S. for the "Stop Online Piracy Act" proposed by Congress, which would require U.S. telecommunications companies to block access to foreign-based websites that infringe U.S. copyrights.

"YouTube would just go dark immediately. It couldn't function," he said. Google Inc. owns YouTube.