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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.
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**
So, except for MS, Sun, etc. are the search engines also breaking the law?
At this point that's really too bad that someone is selling technology to China that blocks out websites, but does this really surprise anyone?
They're filtering the internet. It happens in libraries and schools in the U.S. all the time. In this case it's nation wide, but it's not as if the Chinese governemnt wouldn't have something to filter the internet in place if Sun, MS and Cisco weren't selling the stuff.
One could argue that China is better off with some filtering but access to the internet rather than no filtering and no 'net access. Sure, they block a lot of sites, but I'm willing to bet they don't get them all. Add on to that the fact that people are probably working just as hard coming up with ways to get around the filters.
This is a classic example of information wanting to be free, and it will be. Anything they have in place to block information will fall short. The filtering technology WILL fail, and then billions of people will have acess to the 'net. If the Chinese govt. wants to spend millions on technology from U.S. companies, that's fine by me.
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.
is suing those very same corporations for selling this techology to parents to filter out porn.
More info at Teen Magazine.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
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.
The First Amendment only applies to America. In fact, to be more specific, it only applies to public areas. The First Amendment does not apply on my property. And it doesn't apply on Chinese property either.
Besides, we're practically the only country that fights so vigorously for every form of free speech. The Europe Union has no problem banning hate speech it finds destructive, and other countries have their own free speech problems. I do agree with Amnesty is fighting for more free speech. But its absolutely wrong to call these actions illegal when American companies are providing solutions to allow other countries to enforce their own laws.
--
Old actors don't die, they just go to Old Navy
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.
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?
Oh dear, I'd better go get my shovel..
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
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
Nowhere in that C/Net story does anyone accuse those companies of breaking a law. And what law would they be breaking?
And if they cannot buy American products to do so, then they'll just develop their own.
;-)
Precisely why we should offer them Microsoft's full services.
Embrace, extend, extinguish -- China will be our by the end of the decade.
(Disclaimer -- OK, this does implicitly make fun of MS. If you like MS, substitute the name of your personal bete noir for MS. Like IBM or Dan Quayle or whatever.)
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.
Not "Shenannigans", but "Shenanigans"
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.
We're talking about secondary or tertiary effects here, at best. China happens to be using technology purchase from US manufacturers for something that's morally reprehensible. How or why should these manufacturers be held responsible for the way that it's used unless it was sold directly to them for that sole purpose? Unless Amnesty can show that these companies helped advise them on such censorship solutions, I don't think they have a case. If they want, Amnesty can basically point the finger at anybody who's involved in the chain, including Intel for supplying processors and Belkin for supplying ethernet cables. Probably as "guilty" are open source projects, which not only give them a product but the source to manufacture it at will!
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.
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
Now Amnesty thinks Windows is reliable and does what you want it to do.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Probably. These are corporations in the business of making money, particularly if they're selling the same products they sell to other areas.
The artical doesn't mention whether or not amnesty is refering to out of the box appliances, or custom solutions designed from the ground up to the customer's specs. Anyone care to shed some light?
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
Procmail developers were sued by Amnesty, because they helped in censorship and filtering.
Yes, I speculated about this, with reference to American figures, in our last go-round. Ford was a big player.
Bah. Ferdinand Porsche designed, built, and sold transportation (guess where Volkswagen got its start?) and armor (yes, there was a Porsche-designed tank) to the Nazi military machine. Does that mean Porsche the company is bad? Should you not want a Porsche? BMW provided engines for the Luftwaffe, and after the war were no longer allowed to make airplane engines, so they turned to cars. Should you not buy a BMW now because of that?
Pretty much any German, Italian, or Japanese company that's been around since WWII will have done something to support the war effort at the time. Is that a reason to boycott them now? I think not.
And as far as China and censorship goes, how are they any different than France (except in severity), who don't allow any searches, auctions, etc on Nazi memorabilia?
(And before anybody gets it in their head, let me just state outright that I'm not a Nazi sympathizer. I'm simply making a point.)
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
Trying to influence other countries by restricting technology is a losing proposition--it just forces them to become more independent. If we wanted to get the attention of the Chinese, restricting imports of their low-cost products would do much more. But we aren't principled enough for that--instead we give the Chinese MFN status.
The sword cuts both ways.
h tml
Check this list out.
http://code.law.harvard.edu/filtering/list.
ABC
BBC
CBS
All blocked. I especially like the http://sourceforge.net block.
Is this the price of freedom is knowing how powerless we are against power?
dgd
And this would bother a Libertarian because?
The amusing thing is that while Libertarians advocate that individuals take responsibility for their actions, this doesn't apply to businesses, whose sole responsibility is to make profit. For them, NOBODY has moral responsibility for the actions of a business.
So you get people willing to make excuses for Cisco, who very definitely was knowingly involved in building the Great Firewall of China. So if a business chooses to belch megatons of pollution into the atmosphere from its own property, this is OK. If Cisco wants to build products for customers who want to use them to target people for execution, this too is OK. I've seen complaints about pure food and drug laws from any number of Libertarians. The engineering consulting firm that designed the Auschwitz gas chambers is still in business.
One cornerstone of Communist doctrine is that "The capitalists will sell us the rope required to hang them." I am certain that Marx and Lenin had exactly the kind of capitalists discussed above in mind.
My point is that a real Libertarian would look at the above paragraphs and wonder why anyone would think this wasn't OK, mistake me for a socialist, maybe write a lame flame, and go on about his business.
The people here who support Cisco's right to do business in a way that targets people for state-sponsored murder, torture, and imprisonment aren't like the rest of us. It's a religious thing normal people just don't understand.
The good news is that this will keep the Libertarians from ever becoming a major political force in America.
Tech Public Policy stuff
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.
Evil is in the eye of the beholder. Where do you draw the line?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
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.
C/Net has the story here.
Slashdot also has a story here
Oh wait...
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 argument is similar. If cisco, MS had actually developed a software tailor made for censorship and human right violations, for example lets say it made a software and an eye reader which identifies the ethnicity of the subject and gave it rights according to that.. then it would be a violatio, however if they have an off the shelf tool I doubt that AI has a substantiative argument.
Prosecuting technology is not an option. This will set a bad precedent too. But I dont really expect much from amnesty international, they have a very weird sense of rights.My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
If China converts to Linux we're supposed to cheer?
/. makes me want to puke some days.
But when China uses technology from MS, Sun and Cisco we're supposed to be all outraged?
What if their proxy servers are really nothing more than a Linux box running a modified version of Squid? How do I cheer and be outraged at the same time?
Bleah...
...if you look at their track record, it's almost always about something bigger than the human-rights shit they pimp. They always have a hidden agenda. So what if a country chooses to filter certain sites from the net? What's so morally wrong with that?
And why is it that if non-western countries chooses to implement democracy in their own way, Amnesty will almost surely have to criticize them for not being more democratic.
What a crock of shit.
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
Can I invoke Godwin's Rule if the post is on topic and "+5 Insightful"?
Instead, the company was split and the head-office disbanded. The constituent companies continued (they had their own identities as they started as independent entities) and most people kept their jobs.
Yes, there is still a small office in Frankfurt administering the IG Farben mark, but the consitutent companies are now competitors. The IG Farben building has now passed to Frankfurt University after the US military draw down.
The poor ranking of US was explained:
"There is a terrorist behind every bush"
If China went to MS/Sun/Cisco and asked them to create a 'Great Firewall of China' that could catch people trying to go to 'illegal' sites, I'd say it would be more than fair to call those companies out for sharing in what many people consider to be the crimes of the Chinese government.
If, on the other hand, China is purchasing off-the-shelf or commercially available software and hardware and building their instrument of oppression themselves, I think it's unfair to blame those companies. The choice would be either to sell ANY generally-available software to China, or embargo them completely.
I'm really quite surprised to see Amnesty International tilting at windmills like this considering there are so many much obviously legit causes out there to fight against.
By the same token everyone providing open source is contributing to the problem by just having thier code available for anyone. Saying it's wrong is one thing. Saying it's wrong to make money off of it is another. However, you have to define what is wrong. So far I've seen "Providing the tools" as being the wrong doing. If that's the case then open source developers are just as guilty. They just aren't being compensated for thier role in this censorship.
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department." -- Wernher von Braun, re the V-2
Many engineers disagree with you. (My best friend is a "rocket scientist.")
Von Braun was careful to surrender to the Americans, and to offer him his rocketry skills. In light of the Cold War, America was eager for his help and so quickly sanitized his resume. There has been a fair amount written about the lesser-known aspects of his work for the Nazis, such as the use of slave labor to build the rockets. Said laborers were not allowed to survive their assignment, lest they carry away secrets. Much debate has centered on what von Braun knew, and whether he played a part in recruited the slave labor that was otherwise, like targeting of 3,000 V-2's, "not his problem."
In the nuclear program, scientists from Oppenheimer to Einstein took a very active role in urging political caution with nuclear weapons. They did not see their role as merely to create.
Perhaps we shouldn't be selling anything to China? Perhaps this whole strategy of constructive engagement is a bad idea?
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
It's interesting that the Open Source Definition says specifically you can't refuse to sell software to a country or government because you don't like their policies. Quoting from a chapter in a book by Bruce Perens:
I wonder how people's reactions might be different if Amnesty were trying to put pressure on RedHat, the Free Software Foundation, authors of kernel IP filtering tools, or authoring of Web filtering tools. All of these can be used for censorship; in fact, Web filtering tools are designed for this specifically!
My Web Page
legal == legal && legal != right
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
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.
Yeah, I realized re the von Braun quote after I hit submit. It's still a good "quote." It's a lot funnier than his early career.
There was a lot of history after 1945:
Oppenheimer wigged out after the bomb was dropped; Truman called him a "crybaby." He eventually was even denied his security clearance, for hazy reasons.
Einstein was VERY active in the peace effort after the war, warned of nuclear Armageddon, and advocated abolishing nuclear weapons. Here is a quickie story from Google. Einstein was even investigated by the FBI for his alleged subversive activities. This was no political wallflower.
I'm pretty sure I've read the Rhodes book -- "Making of the Atomic Bomb" or something?
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.
So when upper management behaves with no moral or ethical code other than to enhance their personal wealth, why should we expect the corporation they run to behave any differently? Most of them will get a simple slap on the wrist anyway, so why even care about laws or ethics?
Personally I think that laws need to be put in place which hold corporations and their upper management to higher standards. A corporate CEO should be required by law to follow an ethical code of conduct far stricter than the average citizen and he should be required by law to make damn sure his company follows the same code. Should he fail in his duties, he personally should be sent to jail to work on a chain gang for the rest of his natural life. That is the only way this shit will ever stop.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
They don't claim what the companies are doing is illegal. What they do point out is that, in their view, it is incumbent on all organisations to promote human rights and they are concerned that these foriegn companies are actively working with the Chinese government to deny their citizens human rights.
I don't know about you, but I find that concern entirely reasonable.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I've met a few other people who seem to think that the entire world needs to conform to their viewpoint, namely, everyone.
C|N>K
Strange that so many posts so far are talking about whether it's legal to sell the stuff to China, and whether it should be illegal.
Who cares about the law? Why don't we just hold these companies up to an ethical standard, and consider them accountable for their actions? Why don't we shine the harsh light of publicity on them for the things that they do? Why don't we let them know that, regardless of the law, they should choose not to do things that contribute to the repression that the Chinese people suffer from their government? And if they don't stop, why don't we tell them that we will continue to expose their behavior to the public, encourage boycotts of their products, and lobby governments not to buy their products & services with taxpayer money?
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
These blocks can be implemented on Linux, and China has access to both free software and coders of their own. Would that be better?
So don't go blame these american companies for the acts of the Chinese goverment. It is one thing to sell a nuclear sub with nuclear arms to a country, then there is no question what it should be used for. But selling general purpuse products should not be stopped, and the companies selling them should not be punished.
I wish that the censorship would go away, but it won't until the Chinese goverment starts to realise that they are part of the world, and that the Chinese people are realising it before them. So if Amnesty wants to improve the situation, go to China and help.
I may be having a Senior Moment, but wasn't the Bible also blocked? That would be state-mandated censorship of religion, and I'm thinking that's a big NO-NO in this country.
Not quite true.
Leaving aside a discussion as to the definition of evil, the broad lines of the "final solution" were well known from around 1941...
It was well known from before 1933 that anti-semitic groups were active in Germany, and were on the way to taking political control.
Read Address Unknown, first published in 1938, set in 1932 - 1934.
Perhaps many people did not grasp just how enormous the "implementation of the solution" was... Industrial-scale extermination of an entire ethnic group!
Getting back to the topic, why do you think governments legislate to limit which countries can buy certain technologies?
Yes, the The first admendement of the US Constitution only applies to the US.
However, almost every country has signed the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html).
Totalitarian regimes like China igore it (but they have signed it).
Freedom of Religion is covered in UDHR Article 18.
Freedom of Speech is covered in UDHR Article 19.
Freedom of Press is cobered through UDHR Article 19.
Freedom of Assembly is covered in UDHR Article 20.
Freedom of Petition is covered in UDHR Article 21.
So why have they chosen to buy software in then?
If it really were so easy and so much better for them to do the job themselves, why didn't they do that?
Indeed, it is still trading.
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
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! ~~
"I reach for the stars, but sometimes I hit London."
-- attributed to Wernher von Braun
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
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.
its my understanding that we've been dealing with this question for ages. Scientists have been trying forever to weigh the balance between the benefits of their discoveries and the harm. Same goes for everything. There are pluses and minuses everywhere.
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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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I write some code and think other people might like it so I put it up for download. Just how the hell am I supposed to stop the Party Congress from downloading a copy to complete their Baby Threshing machine? After all, they're serious about this one child thing. If I fix it so the the Party Congress can't have it then pretty much no one else can either. Open Source grinds to a halt and MS and Cisco continue laughing all the way to the bank.
What's being objected to here is profit from oppressing others. Now when Red Hat removed the Taiwanese flag at Beijing's behest, THAT was something appropriate to get on their case about.
There's a reason they don't put a non-military clause in the GPL. There is only one restriction on freedom in the GPL - you are not free to restrict this software any further. Anybody is free to do anything with the software. That's why they call it Free Software.
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
I wouldn't underestimate the influence of the scientists. They made the foreful point to the public that nuclear war really would suck, something politicians were eager to downplay. They also rallied public opinion while lobbying decionmakers. And politicians didn't use the bomb because they were afraid of what someone else might do to them, the public or another country. Anyway, the real issue here was whether the engineers and scientists have any real responsibility towards the real-world ramifications of their work. I think it's pretty obvious that they have at least the responsibility of any other citizen, and more influence than most. That doesn't mean they always get it right, or get it right more often than anyone else, but it does mean they're engaged and take responsibilities for their actions.
As an example, my rocket scientist friend (an aero/astro grad of MIT) interviewed at some aerospace company, I forget which, and he said the interviewer quizzed him about what sorts of miltary projects he might be willing to work on. For ABM's, he said OK; spy satellites, yes; and so on. Then the interviewer asked what he'd think of a space-based nuclear platform, and he replied uhhhhh. The guy smiled and said don't worry, I told them to leave me out of that one, too.
Seriously, look at the last 20 years or so of Einstein's life, as an exemplar. He didn't piss off the McCarthy crowd by being ineffectual and irrelevant. There are many others. Israel? Well, it's something to talk about...
Ouch.
Did you know the V-2's flew up essentially into space, then returned at supersonic speeds? You literally couldn't hear them coming. An impressive technical achievement, and they owed it all to slave labor...
Are you saying this only is true for American corporations? Ever hear of Krupp? Ever hear of DeBeers? Ever hear of Mitsubishi, creator of the Zero fighter?
While I admit that it is easy, fun, and bound to bring mighty cheers and backslaps from other slashkids, this assumption that America is the source of all venality is stupid.
Corporations the world over have done some very, very Bad Things. I imagine it might be worth looking at the psychological effect of being able to hide behind the Faceless Corporation and how that somehow makes it easier for an individual to suppress his own honor or morals.
(Sigh)... But no, it's way easier to say Americans suck and are ignorant, everyone else is lily-pure, ethically aware, and much, much more sophisticated. You will now be returned to your normal slashdot programming.
As an OSS developer, I'm genuinely concerned about the responsibility of releasing software without conditions on its use. But what do you (or anyone else) suggest I do? Use a non-open-source license which prohibits use for certain purposes? That's a very slippery slope. I think I could cut off my code from being used and improved and reused by a lot of people, and I don't like that idea at all.
Female Prison Rape in NY
Lets face it a corporation would sell anything to anyone. IBM sold to Nazi germany, Hell chevron would have sold them the needed gas for the ovens if they could have. A corporation has NO MORALS, it is up to the citizens and the government to ensure that they toe the line. To expect anything else from an entity whose sole purpose is to make money is foolish is the extreme. The downfall here in the US is that the corp's now own a good part of the government in the way of venal, short-sighted politicians.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
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.
Well, seeing as how the US courts have given corporations the same status as human beings ...
Corporations are not "human beings". Corporations are "persons".
Among the many distinctions: You can't be tried for murder for deliberately driving one out of existence. They don't get "unemployment insurance" (though a particular company or sector may get "corporate welfare" in the form of special treatment. They also can't vote (though, if for-profit, they CAN contribute to candidates and have free speech on political issues).
Treating them as "persons" is not entirely unreasonable because, like (the sometimes overlapping categories) religions, clubs, governments, political movements, bureaucracies, chain letters, and computer viruses, they ARE lifeforms.
They meet essentially all the (non-carbon-chemistry-chauvanist) definitions of life, and have a continuity and behavior distinct from (though to some extent emerging from) that of the humans that may be their creators, cells, or even hosts, food, or end products.
As "legal persons" the corporations are, again separately from their component individuals, subject to punishment if their "system" engages in lawbreaking or illegally-harmful behavior (even if the people who operate it don't knowingly or deliberately break a law or improperly harm a human or other "person"). This brings the law, as a proxy for the will of the general population of humans, into the corporations' incentive structures.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Pretty much any German, Italian, or Japanese company that's been around since WWII will have done something to support the war effort at the time. Is that a reason to boycott them now? I think not.
Microsoft and Cisco are supporting a murderous regime NOW. That's the point you seem to have missed.
Once Microsoft are in control of implementing technological homeland security operations, run the lists and control what information mysteriously 'disappears' from 'the Internet' it will be too late to bitch.
Or, more accurately: bitch all you want. It's not like anybody will notice!
Might as well turn up the heat while they're still working on pilot programs in China...
A license like this would not meet the Open Source Definition. See my earlier post on this same subject.
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The fines mechanism doesn't seem adequate when a company has been involved in major wrong-doing (i.e., causing deaths) as a matter of policy, rather than as individual action. At the same time, a major corporation likes to to wave the employment it provides in front of politicians to discourage actions against them. Here I'm thinking more about companies such as Union Carbide in Bhopal, India and the operator of the English channel ferry that sank because the policy was to leave the loading doors open until the ferry was underway.
IG Farben remains relevant and it would be a useful exercise to study what worked and what didn't. Some board members were imprisoned, all others in head office lost their jobs but the orinary workers could largely continue.
I don't regard IG Farben's 'punishment' as wildly successful either but it seems to be the best example that we have.
I see a lot of suspiciously high-minded moralizing on this topic, but I can't help but wonder if it's yet another attempt to paint Microsoft as the Enemy of All Mankind (I'm not a fan of MS, but sometimes the scent of anti-MS sentiment can really get a little overwhelming on Slashdot.) The only people I think are responsible for this situation are the Chinese (both the government and the citizens who let their government do this to them.)
It's hypothetical, but what would be your response (you being anyone posting here that MS and other coporations are liable) if China had used Linux and open source software to block Internet access to its citizenry? Would contributors to open source and Linux be morally responsible for how the Chinese government used this software? And don't hide behind discursive comments like "nobody intentionally gave them this to block access" or "Linux isn't a coporation" because that doesn't matter. The question is a moral one, not a matter of whether you make money off it or not. You made the tool that they use to do their "evil." Profit or not, you had a hand in it. Right?
So any of you OSS or Linux coders: would *you* accept blame?
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
AI doesn't care about the censorship. They care about the torture, imprisonment and death of people caught looking at things they aren't allowed to.
IHBT. IWHAND.
-aiabx
Just this guy, you know?
When you mention the blacks, I think you mean just plain racist.
I don't know much about the internment of Japanese in the USA during WWII, but I imagine it was similar to internment of Germans, Austrians and other "aliens" in the UK at the time. This was justified as being a precaution against fifth columnists.
However, I don't think there is much similarity in the conditions suffered by the Jews in Belsen, and the Germans in the UK.
Unfortunate episodes like the sinking of the SS Arandora Star, carrying 800 inernees, by a erman U-Boat, led to the government abandoning the idea of deporting such prisoners to British Empire dominions.
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