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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."
There is definitely a moral issue here - should companies help suppress freedom in other countries?
But is there really a legal issue here? I'm not so sure.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
Although I know nothing about the laws governing censorship, including the export of products for censorship, I do think Amnesty is wrong in this case. Amnesty Internation needs to focus on the fact that China is censoring its citizens. If Microsoft, CISCO et al. don't provide solutions, someone else will.
Is it still civil disobedience if the law is in another country and in no way applies to you?
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
You've just stated there is no legal obligation. Probably true. Amnesty's modus operandi is basically to ask governments and corporations to consider the morality of what they do. Further, it can make it a business issue for the company if it doesn't care by making it lose sales elsewhere. Companies, like Apple, were pressured by boycotts to stop selling services to the murderous Burmese junta by that means.
In the short run, I don't think it makes any difference that some entrepeneurs are making money from the tyrants. In the long run, those who are oppressed by tyranny will eventually be freed by nothing but knowlege.
Sex - Find It
A little off-topic, but the US Government is guilty as all hell of something like this. The similarity being they've given away _weapons_ to all sorts of crackpots for purposes of causing 'ill'. So I don't think these companies should have any flack dished their way for supplying a technology to China. Who has their policy of filtering in place, and will continue to do so whether these companies sell them technology or not.
After the war, IG Farben's HQ in Frankfurt was taken over by the US Army and the company split up. The process of denazification could not be complete though because the plants were vital to the reconstruction of post-war Germany.
What is relevant is that this was the first "Corporate Death Penalty" of a major corporation for moral reasons.
When people are killed because they were caught reading something on the net using this technology, it is wrong. People every I've traveled say so (US, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China), as well as people I've met from a variety of other places (Europe, NZ, Australia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Russia, The Caribbean, Mexico, Africa and a few others)- and so it is not hard for Amnesty to say so as well.
I'm sure if you read a few papers from around the world you'll find a consensus, imprisoning, torturing and killing people because of what they have read is just plain wrong.
Just imagine if the police came round and arrested you because they knew you had been reading this very post.
Helping the Communists (I can't say Chinese, I know too many of them and so I know it is not a part of Chinese culture no matter what the communists may say) do these things is analogues to wealthy industrialist aid Hitler in the Holocaust.
Code is speech, right? Don't I have a first ammendment right to distribute it to whomever I want? I don't think it's wise for the government to make (more) laws on what kinds of software can and can not be exported.
On the other hand, I'd like to see some Congressmen condemning Microsoft's executives as treasonous scum, and a call on real Americans to use Open Source alternatives.
if amnesty international wanna make a difference why dont they go after weapons manufacturers? after all a gun is more likely to kill than a firewall or router.......unless the firewall is actually on fire hehe ;P
We played dungeons and dragons for 3 hours.....then i was slain by an elf
Evil is in the eye of the beholder. Where do you draw the line?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
You're right. Corporations have no other obligation than to protect their own interest. On the other hand, companies are often short sighted when it comes to decisions like this. Making a quick buck here may supress the buying power of a very large market, which would definitely not be in their long-term interests.
The same could be said for short-cutting environmental laws or taking advantage of the uneducated, but hey, the guys running companies now will be rich, and long gone before it hurts the company. Let's face it, people are making decisions for these companies. People generally make decisions with their own interests in mind. Who cares what the company does after they've moved on and have sold their stock?
Maybe some some responsibility should be placed these companies...it just seems that JK's kind of machiavellian attitude is exactly what is ruining our culture and our planet. Doing what is in the best iterests of everyone is in everyone's best interests.
Where did this soap box come from?
legal == legal && legal != right
corporations exist for one reason: to make money.
No, corporations exist for one reason: to better the lives of its employees.
If the corporation was making money, but wasn't improving the lives of its employees, it would cease to exist.
When people are killed because they were caught reading something on the net using this technology, it is wrong.
The technology isn't there to catch people who are reading "subversive" literature; it's there to prevent them from seeing it in the first place.
If I were living under an extremely repressive regime like the one in Red China (as opposed to a relatively less repressive regime like the one here in the USA), I'd rather have what I read censored than being put to death because I accidentally clicked on the wrong link.
The policies of the Red Chinese government are reprehensible, but the censoring[*] software may actually be saving lives.
[*] "censoring software" is, IMO, a more accurate term than "filtering software" in this case.
It's "filtering software" if it keeps you from receiving things that you don't want to receive; it's "censoring software" if it keeps you from receiving things that others don't want you to receive.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Now as I understand it, to have a free market transparency of information is needed, i.e. you cannot have a free market if access to market information is selectively denied to people. If the buggy whip makers can prevent the spread of information about Mr. Ford's new toy, that is not a free market. So the one law that must be enforced to protect market economies is the law of freedom of information, and it is this one that the Chinese are breaking.
Amnesty is peeved because the Chinese are preventing the rest of the world from learning that they have a scumbag government, scumbag bureaucracy, and scumbag rural life. A good capitalist might be equally peeved that the Chinese are trying to prevent the rest of the world learning things that might downgrade China's investment worthiness, putting on a face about supporting capitalism while in private allowing corrupt officials to steal from corporations. (You can see Chinese censorship as being equivalent to Enron's trying to keep secret the true nature of its operations and accounting.) One way of doing this is preventing the Chinese from learning about ways of disseminating that information.
To put it another way, the right of one corporation to make a profit by selling censorware has to be balanced against the greater interest of the market economy in not allowing people to use such censorship.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
I think we need to readjust our entire system towards human values, rather that monentary values.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
That's what the government is designed for. Corporations are there to make money. The government is there to make sure they don't overstep the bounds in order to make their money. Of course, when corpartions can buy legislations the system breaks down rather.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
The only mention of 'law' in CNN's article is a Chinese law prohibiting transmission of state secrets to overseas organizations via the Internet.
Anyway, the bag is already open and the cats have escaped - there are way too many different ways and means to block sites at the borders. NetBSD, FreeBSD, Linux (all distros), Solaris, etc are all capable of acting as routers, never mind the routers and switches that Cisco and other network providers push out. Any fraggin' box with two NICs can do it. Heck, even one NIC would be enough if you're careful.
About 7 years ago I put together a firewall for a small company's dialup. While I was poking around looking for software I came across Drawbridge, from tamu.edu. It's a packet filter that runs on a DOS-based PC, for crying out loud - give it a couple of NICs and a set of rules and it too could be part of the Great FireWall of China.
And another thing - there's what, 3 billion Chinese? Anyone stop to think that among all those folks there might be a few individuals smart enough to actually produce their own blocking software? How many Chinese attend Universities in the Western hemisphere? I know the Uni I was at had a sizeable population of Orientals, some of them even pursuing PHD's in computer studies of one kind or another.
I'm not saying that makes it right for China to stop their citizens from accessing certain sites on the Internet. I'm saying that if there is actually a law being broken (and that's doubtful) by letting China get blocking software, then it's being broken by a hell of a lot more people than MS, Sun and Cisco. Pretty much every computer OS from DOS up to mainframes supports TCP/IP and can therefore be used to create blocking software.
OK, this is bound to be modded down as Commie-loving flamebait, but I don't care. Moderators, do your worst! And as you do, remember that there are Commies on both sides of this argument - the communist government of China is suppressing the communist people of China, so whichever side you support, you're a Commie-lover!
Yes, that is correct: all the stories are about product in one form or another. Slashdot is a site for commodity fetishists like RMS, who invented the GPL because he wanted access to his printer's private parts.
And, no, Windows is not worse, because Windows costs money and, more importantly, is not an ideology. Ideology is evil, because life is subservient to ideology. Read some history, geek. Life is cheap, the GPL expensive.
Perhaps in twenty years or so, the gray and elderly executives of these companies will be hauled before a tribunal in the Hague and convicted of crimes against humanity. Because what they have done by selling this technology to an oppressive regime is nothing less.
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