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Amnesty Calls Shenannigans on MS, Sun, Cisco
ZurichPrague writes "Amnesty International is claiming Microsoft, Sun, Nortel and Cisco, among others, have broken the law by selling filtering technology to China, helping that country implement its censorship. Is Amnesty right? Making the technology is fine, but if we know that it could be used for ill, aren't we bound to not sell to some countries and companies? C/Net has the story here."
The royal "we" might not be right in selling it, but corporations exist for one reason: to make money. For good or for ill, there are no moral obligations placed on them. They develop a product, someone wants to buy it, they sell it. End of story. Stop anthropomorphizing them.
Internet censorship is no better than a Nazi bookburning. Doesn't make a difference if they're blocking printed text or unicode.
So, except for MS, Sun, etc. are the search engines also breaking the law?
Seeing that all these companies are publicly traded entities answerable ultimately to the shareholders for their actions, perhaps the first place Amnesty International should put their reports in the hands of ones who invested in the companies to begin with.
Oh, the shareholders don't care? Carry on then. There's no news here.
As much as I like AI, I disagree with them on this. People are going to get items that can be used in questionable ways - technology, guns, drugs, whatever - from someone.
I guess it's idealistic, but I sometimes think that people can deal with the issue of why do people want to censor others, or take drugs, or etc, rather than getting offended that it happens. I know that's not the case though, and I also know companies exist to turn a profit, so I guess in the end I don't really care about China censoring its citizens since it doesn't involve me directly.*
*I know that's a terrible thing to say, but it's how people feel. *shrug*
,
faeryman
Maybe / maybe not but consider this
Industrial Leaders
It is easy to forget about prominant business men when focusing on figures like Eichmann or Hoss, but the industrialists who were eager to create factories at Auschwitz were perpetrators of the horror too.
Many prominent German corporations, among them Krupp, Siemens and Bayer, were interested in what might be negotiated. Auschwitz began developing a network of outlying subcamps, thirty-four in all. Soon, the prisoners worked at a cement plant, a coal-mine, a steel factory and a shoe factory.
The biggest of these Auschwitz subcamps was the I.G. Farben plant. The plant was known as Buna because its principal purpose was to produce synthetic rubber; its other main installation was a hydrogenation plant designed to convert coal into oil. The Auschwitz factories were the largest in the Farben empire. Conditions at Buna were much like those at Auschwitz. The dawn roll calls, the starvation rations, the labor gangs sent out for twelve hours at a time, forced to work at the gas chambers and furnaces, beaten by guards, harried by giant dogs. The prisoners who died of overwork (dozens of them every day) had to be hauled back to camp at nightfall so that they could be propped up and counted at the next morning's roll call.
Ultimately, around 25,000 people were killed during the construction of the I.G. Farben plant.
Help fight continental drift.
The technology is neither a state secret nor a type of munitions. No law was broken. What is a problem is that the technology was allegedly used to violate human rights. Whether this is right or wrong depends on your fundamental belief of what a corporation's primary goal is: maximizing profits, or benefitting the world.
The other angle is that the technology has legitimate uses (for example, in a corporate setting). If the technology is used for bad purposes, are the creators liable for it? Place the blame where it belongs, squarely on the shoulders of China.
Since I heard about China buying censoring technology from the US, it has bothered me that companies' ethics aren't better. IMO it's a major source of social decay in any country when companies are allowed to do whatever they want. What kind of example are they setting as corporate citizens of the community?
What if I wanted to write software for the mafia? I could just pretend the software wouldn't be used for illegal purposes. Would that be ethical of me? Could I be aiding and abetting (to assist or support in the achievement of a purpose) known criminals? Of course. How is this different than aiding known human rights violators?
Would AI get bent out of shape if China started using Free/Open Source software extensively in its filtering and blocking efforts? If so, why? By its nature free software is free for anyone to use, even totalitarian regimes who want to use the software to limit the freedom of those they rule.
This whole thing sounds a lot like the old "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Good or bad? Well, the communist regime is scared to death of letting the information flow freely inside of China. That would jeopardize their position. Personally, I want the information to be free. But it doesn't matter what you, me or Amnesty says... the communist regime does what they think is necessary to keep their country together under their control.
As for the US filtering technology they bought... it's just an interim solution. There's a love and hate relationship between the communist regime in Beijing and the US... they love getting the new technology, but they don't trust the US. Once the software shops inside of China are up to speed, they're going to build their own filtering software. All in the plan of being self-sufficient.
Isn't Yahoo REQUIRED to filter out pro Nazi content on their German site?
Isn't e-bay REQUIRED to prevent selling Nazi artifacts to visitors from Germany?
So limiting peoples freedoms in Germany is OK, but its taboo in China?
- Remember kids, dressing up like Hitler in school is not cool.
Careful not to miss the human side of this issue. I don't know what the people rotting away in prison said on the Internet, but Amnesty doesn't think they deserve to be locked up.
Note: the above link is not English. Non-Francophones may wish to give machine translation a shot.
I seriously do not think that obtaining the technology is a limiting factor in here. Even though, I have been an amnesty member for some years, I believe this shot goes to wrong direction. Maybe they could have pointed at only the Websense company, whose main purpose is producing filtering technology. Maybe they should not have pointed at any of those companies. When you know that currently you can get killed and tortured for using internet in china I think there is some more concrete issues to concentrate on. Like concentrating all power into freeing those (I heard there were tens of) people) who are in prison because they "used the internet" right now - maybe amnesty could instead make these companies look like saints and request help in this task for them.
I'm not sure if I'm missing something, or C|Net and I read different reports, but the Amnesty International press release is considerably grimmer than what C|Net selectively relates.
To give you a hint, the document is entitled "China: Internet users at risk of arbitrary detention, torture and even execution."
This is censorship with a big rock, not benign filtering, the occasional arrest and whoops a death or two in custody. "Benign" filtering software would probably be useful to track down suspects, a sinister dimension. Change anyone's minds?
This does remind me of the risk of trusting the press; even if the Amnesty report proves to be baloney, C|Net did not accurately describe it, or provide a link to it.
This has nothing to do with being in the US or not since the companies are not directly involved in the violations.
For example, the US constitution guarantees the right to life. However, that does not mean it is wrong or illegal to sell guns just because someone might use those to deprive someone of their right to live.
Technology is a tool. Technology is not evil in itself.
Mmmm.. Donuts
That's the old, "if we don't do it, someone else will, so why not?" argument. If we don't sell weapons to UNITA, someone else will, and dammit, we don't want the Belgians and Germans to make money when we could be! Why bother with an arms embargo on Serbia, when someone else will just sell them weapons?
The fallacy with this argument is that first, the technology being sold by Cisco, et. al. is not irreplaceable, but it's not exactly easy to simply duplicate in a commodity fashion. It would take a concerted effort to conduct this blocking using other equipment. Sure, it wouldn't stop them, but it would make it more difficult, thereby giving the information more of an opportunity to achieve freedom. Of course, the information doesn't just suddenly attain free status on its own, it takes people to make it free.
The other fallacy is that there's a moral equivalency between profiting from unethical or immoral behavior, and choosing *not* to profit from it. If someone does something wrong, and you assist them in that endeavor, you're doing something wrong, too.
I certainly don't expect big companies like M$ and Cisco to deny themselves the opportunity to do business with the Chinese government. I'm not naiive. However, even big multinationals are very sensitive to public opinion. Witness Nike and the sweatshops, the growth of Fair Trade Coffee, and so on. If we do nothing when companies engage in amoral profiteering, it's no wonder we expect it from them.
I don't share your belief that the Chinese system of control over information flow will somehow magically disappear on its own. Not only that, but the US supposedly represents freedom of expression. How are those millions of Chinese going to feel about American rhetoric about freedom when we've been profiting from the squelching of freedoms in their country?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I don't think Amnesty is attempting a legal argument. I also doubt there is a law on point, though one could be written. The only significant effort to restrict exports that I can think of was the gov't's efforts to contain cryptography. Also, export of many goods to certain restricted countries ("axis of evil") is very tightly regulated. China's not on that list.
As I point out in another post below, the Amnesty allegations go well beyond suppressing freedom of speech, to torture and execution.
Should it be a legal issue? (he asks rhetorically)
Internet censorship is no better than a Nazi bookburning. Doesn't make a difference if they're blocking printed text or unicode.
/. have been so eager to criticize?
These companies might be selling technology that could be repurposed to suppress freedom to an oppressive regime, but the Open Source community is willing to give it to them for free.
If Amnesty had published an article on the Chinese government using ipchains or squid in the Great Firewall, or using Perl to search proxy logs for who was looking at unapproved sites, would
To be technical, true morality is not "placed" on anyone, it is adopted and internalized.
Regardless, you're right that a corporation is an artificial person like Data -- the law does anthropomorphize them for many purposes, for example a corporation may sue or be sued, is taxed as an entity, and can be found guilty of a crime (if not jailed). It enjoys privileges and assume burdens, but is fundamentally amoral. But that doesn't mean that it can't choose to concern itself with corporate responsibility; nor that we can't lobby it to do so; nor that as a bare minimum of good business sense most public companies will at least attempt to comport their activities with public opinion, for fear of damaging share price or customer good will.
So we do place moral obligations on them. They don't have to worry about whether they're going to heaven or hell, but they do need to respond to the world around them, if for no other reason than good business. They don't live in a business school beaker.
The level of responsiveness varies widely. The pressure on companies not to do business in apartheid South Africa, and on univerities and trusts to divest themselves of stock in these companies, was particularly bitter.
However, that does not mean it is wrong or illegal to sell guns just because someone might use those to deprive someone of their right to live.
What if you know for sure the guy you sell a gun to is going to kill someone with it? Does this still apply then?
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
Yes, if they promise to be nice about it.
Evil is in the eye of the beholder, true. And hypocrisy is always a hazard. But these problems need not paralyze us -- you don't have to be a saint to smell something rotten.
"The First Amendment only applies to America."
I'm sorry, but this is a moral relativistic cop out. Free speech is a fundamental human right. End of story. If I were a stock holder in the above companies, I would sell that stock as soon as trading re-opened. It is fundamentally morally backwards to support in anyway the blocking of speech or access to other peoples speech.
If it is not illegal for US companies to help other countries to do things that violate the fundamental human rights of it's citizens, then it SHOULD BE. We shouldn't pass the buck on this stuff, it's how the US gets such a bad reputation.
Burn Hollywood Burn
On the other hand, consider the fact that while China does filter traffic, it set up a large government funded network for the benefits of its people. Analogy: most Corporations have internet access for their employees, and they filter content just the same.
I think it's great the Chinese government provides its people with internet access, and though I condemn filtering to some point I do understand what they are trying to achieve with this. Ultimately they will succumb to the users' creativity anyway although this might take a few years.
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
I saw an interview with the author of this book called IBM and the Holocaust. It strongly ties the capability of systematically killing the Jews to the abilities of the Hollerith machine (run on punch cards) which IBM specifically customized for the purpose of organizing and sorting people.
WWII, I feel, had a lot to do with the very fast development of production, and technology in general at the time. The author, Edwin Black, says the scale at which the holocaust took place would not have been possible without the help of IBM's machines, and their engineers.
This is really not much different, in my opinion. Cisco is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ, which is a US based stock market. The shareholders (mostly US citizens) should be ultimately responsible, not only for ensuring profits, but also be held responsible for any misdeeds the company commits...
As another poster puts it; its one thing if they are buying the equipment off the shelf and using it for censorship. It is quite another if the companies are tailoring their products to these requirements in anticipation or in response to demand...
The poor ranking of US was explained:
"There is a terrorist behind every bush"
That may change if Rights and Democracy's allegations of Nortel's involvement in surveillance technology in China are true. There is a growing trend towards holding multinational corporations accountable for any degree of complicity with repressive governments in human-rights abuses.
Carol Samdup, co-ordinator of Rights and Democracy's globalisation programme, said there has been increased discussion in recent years about the creation of international legislation and an international court to handle such cases.
The United Nations, meanwhile, is exploring ways to bring corporations under the same umbrella of human-rights laws that apply to states. And in a major development last month, a US federal appeals court in San Francisco upheld US legislation that enables victims of alleged human-rights abuse to sue US-based corporations in US courts.
The ruling came after Myanmar residents sued California-based energy conglomerate Unocal, charging the company in connection with alleged slavery, murder and rape carried out by the Myanmar military during the construction ofan oil pipeline there.
Ralph Steinhardt, a professor at the George Washington University Law School in Washington and an expert on multinational corporations and human-rights laws, says the ruling should have a significant impact on ''boardroom consciousness''.
''Multinationals would need to make sure they are not giving assistance to governments violating human rights,'' he said.
Even if the technology companies' actions in China do not legally amount to rights violations, their role in choking the free flow of information is less than admirable, said Mickey Spiegel, senior Asia researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch.
''You don't want information blocked,'' she said. ''You certainly don't want any group of people not to have access to information. You want citizens who are knowledgeable. That's the issue - that people should have information, that information should cross borders and be available.''
Source: David Lee is a China-based writer.
A business's only motivation is, and should be, to make a profit. [emphasis added]
This is utter bullshit.
The only reason we allow businesses and corporations to run is to better society as a whole. Even the Founders had some grave doubts about corporations, but they were seen as a neccessary evil in order to encourage a good economy and a better standard of living for all.
The key words there are "for all", not for the shareholders, not for the employees, not even for the customers, but for everybody.
When a corporation starts going against that, when it actually starts doing harm to some people, that corporation is not fulfilling the reasons it is allowed to exist for.
What is a shame is how few people remember this.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
Hate speech is abuse of free speech. And note that the laws are usually applied afterwards. This is not censorship, you just have to take responsibility of your actions. Think before you start suggesting someone should be shot. Otherwise some other hothead listens to you and actually shoots someone. And this happens in Europe. This is reality: It's ugly, and it stinks, but you have to live with it. Some idiots are abusing the freedom of speech to restrict other peoples right to life. The governments of EU then restrict the right to free speech and gives preference to the right to life. It is a compromise.
The US gives people the right to carry firearms. Some idiots abuse that right and shoot people. After this, they (at least some of them) are executed by the government. So, the US gives preference for the right to carrying firearms, and restricts the right to life. It is a compromise.
Living with idiots means you must make compromises. They can not be given the rights you would not abuse. Therefore, your rights are restricted.
I assume libel is illegal also in US. In Europe, this is also applied to groups and not only individuals. You get in trouble by shouting 'kill the bloody jews/arabs/commies/nazis', even when there are no jews/arabs/commies/nazis in sight, so that you are not insulting a particular individual. And we Europeans have our history. Hate speech proved politically extremely succesful in 1930:s, and was the basic cause of the holocaust and World War II in Europe (maybe not in Pacific, but you Americans would have beaten the Japanese much faster if you had not been so busy helping us.)
There are also several older examples of hate speech resulting in crimes against the humanity. The civil wars of Eastern Europe after the collapse of the four Empires (Hohenzollern, Habsburg, Romanov and Osman) in World War I ended often with mass executions of prisoners and other atrocities. Main cause: propaganda fed to the troops. The murders of the Armenians in Turkey, and countless pogromes in Ukraine and Russia during 19th century were caused by governments using hate speech. 'The only good Indian is a dead Indian' and what that caused in the early US. And so on and so forth, back to the time before the Pyramids.
Banning hate speech is still needed. Dozens of people get killed in Europe just beacuse their skin is not that pale. I know a Turkish man who owns a kebab place. The skinheads served Molotov cocktails there every month last year. Not to mention smashing the windows of his restaurant and car every week, burning his car two times and beating him quite badly once. Finally, they got caught. With no hate speech, we would have much less political violence.
The attempted murder of the French president this year and the murder of Pim Fortuyn (a prominent right-wing politician) in Netherlands are also examples of what hate speech causes.
Try telling that to the political prisoners around the world whose lives have been saved by Amnesty's activism.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
namely the involving attempts by various governing bodies to outlaw "hacking tools" because they can be used for nefarious purposes. now whenever this argument comes up on /. you get all the "what about the security industry?" arguments which i am firmly in favor of, but what is the difference between writing a tool that could be used for malicious purposes, ie exploit code, proof-of-concept code etc, and posting it public forums, ie bugtraq, where they are available to anyone, including those with malicious intent, and this situation. ok some differences obviously, actively selling and all that but still, principally the same yes?
this sig steers like a cow. and i can prove it
In a statement, Microsoft said that it is "focused on delivering the best technology to people throughout the world. However, Microsoft cannot control the way it may ultimately be used."
Wasn't this basic argument used by ISP's and whatnot do defend themselves from over zelous copyright holders? I guess the guy who made DeCSS should be able to hide under that same argument since he's in a different country like Microsoft isn't in China. So since MS says they arn't responsible then the DeCSS author(s) shouldn't be either. And neither should Dimetri Skarlov, academic researchers, etc.
Amazing how America fights so called evil on the one hand and on the other American businesses sell to the same said so called evil the tools to do it's dirty work.
I stopped at that point in the article cause I was so disgusted. I imagine Sun, Cisco, etc are all using the same arguments. I guess the only real devil in this world is the one we see each morning in the mirror when we take sides with whats in our minds the lesser of two evils and not choosing a third option.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Say, are you entirely free of any clue about Amnesty International? Why don't you provide yourself with a minimum information before you start blasting off? You can start with the Amnesty site, and especially its mandate.
As you are evidently unaware, Amnesty is restricted by its mandate to work on behalf of prisoners of conscience provided that they have not used or advocated violence. This is true even for prisoners who, in addition to their use or advocacy of violence, also advocate views that a government finds unpopular, and even if the violence advocated might be viewed as legitimate resistance against an oppressive regime.
For many years, Amnesty would not work on behalf of Nelson Mandela for precisely this reason, even though he was arguably the most celebrated political prisoner in the world. Mandela advocated "armed struggle" against the apartheid regime, and the ANC was partially organized for this purpose. So Amnesty never "sponsored" him while he was in prison, as they did with numerous other prisoners around the world. (IIRC, Mandela eventually renounced "armed struggle" after he had been released.)
MoThugz, or whatever your name is, slow down, take a deep breath, and avail yourself of a little bit of information. Presenting an argument from a position of ignorance is like trying to box with your hands tied. You'll get beat up badly and look foolish in the process.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
Clearly no one on this thread works for a manufacturer doing international business from the U.S. (or recalls the export restrictions on encryption a few years back--since relaxed). The U.S. government does quite a good job of imposing morality on business, through its export control classification number (ECCN) system, run by the Bureau of Industry and Security at the Department of Commerce.
This organization has its roots in the old Atomic Energy Commission rules on limiting the export of nuclear materials in the 1940s, but has been greatly expanded, starting in the 1980s, then explosively in the last few years. Every item exported, from software to plastic, must be classified prior to shipment, and there are quite lengthy and detailed descriptions involved. (The sections most relevant to the average /. reader are Category 3-electronics, Category 4-computers, Category 5 (Part 1)-telecommunications, Category 5 (Part 2)-information security, and Supplement No. 2, general technology and software notes, all in section 774.) The rules are in place ostensibly to keep the unwashed heathen overseas from access to U.S. technology that can be turned against the U.S., or technology that they can use to protect themselves against the U.S. Technologists should be aware that the rules were "clarified" a year or two back to include "technology" export, not just the export of physical objects, and that simply discussing a "controlled" technology with someone inside the U.S. that has citizenship from a "banned nation" list makes one subject to fines and/or imprisonment. (This policy works because, as everyone knows, the U.S. is the source of all useful technology ;).)
I bring this up to show that moral obligations (at least in the form of obligations that protect U.S. interests) are already placed on businesses, and that the mechanisms are already in place to control whatever export the federal government desires to control.
Amnesty is like you. They can say what
they think is right, and so can you. The notion
that only a gov't can say what's right - why
is that so, exactly?
Considered harmful.