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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."
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?
Well, seeing as how the US courts have given corporations the same status as human beings, the morality question is a bit more clouded. Would we prosecute an individual who created and sold a product used to suppress the same principles held dear by his home country? Of course we would; we'd nail that seditious, un-patriotic bastard to a wall. But if you're Cisco, and you willingly (with your technology *and* consultants) erect the "Great Firewall of China", your stock goes up and you are hailed as a bastion of capitalism. Let's call a spade a spade.
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?
Nowhere in that C/Net story does anyone accuse those companies of breaking a law. And what law would they be breaking?
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.
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.
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.
corporations exist for one reason: to make money. For good or for ill, there are no moral obligations placed on them.
I must agree. A business's only motivation is, and should be, to make a profit. If people wish to impose morality on a business, it should be done the same way, through profit. Simple answer: If a business is engaging in behaviour that people disagree with, boycott them. If the business loses more money through boycott than it makes from the offending behaviour, then it will stop engaging in the behaviour.Unfortunately, this is probably another issue where people would rather bitch than take action.
Work is punishment for failing to procrastinate effectively.
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
Anthropomorphizing a group of people. Hmm. Yeh, that is pretty dumb.
[END SARCASM MODE]
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.
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.
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
Procmail developers were sued by Amnesty, because they helped in censorship and filtering.
Call me crazy, but Corporations are permitted much of the same legal protections as individuals (IIRC, at least in the US, YMMV). Shouldn't they be expected to behave with some sense of responsibility for their actions?
Yes, I know about "responsibility to shareholders" and all of that mess. Mod me down for naivete, I deserve it for the above statement. What I should have said was "Corporations are given MORE legal protections than individuals..."
So what? You've missed the point entirely. Corporations can't accomplish anything on their own - that's why people work for them. You're right in that a corporation (which is just an abstract legal construct) doesn't have moral obligations, but the people who make the decisions for it sure as hell do.
An executive at Sun, or Microsoft, or whoever else, can't just sit there and say "there was money to be made, who am I to judge?" They had the opportunity to do the right thing, and say no.
Shrugging your shoulders and saying "that's what corporations do" is incredibly callous. The Chinese government is not playing around: people who get busted by these filters aren't getting a warning, or a fine - they're going to jail. Read some of the articles on the issue, like this one. People are being thrown in jail for simply speaking their mind using the net, and some of them have already died in custody.
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.
"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
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...
corporations exist for one reason: to make money. For good or for ill, there are no moral obligations placed on them.
But companies are made up of humans. So if some people form a company they no longer have to follow any moral code? What kind of reasoning is that?
So companies that did business with the Nazis were ok because they weren't breaking the law?
So... if I start a company, and my company sells nukes to terrorists, there's nothing morally wrong with that, as long as we turn a profit?
You must be American.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
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.
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
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.
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
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
Apparently you didn't RTFA. They're defending (or actually, as their name implies, asking for leniency for) "33 people detained in recent years for downloading or distributing politically subversive information via the Internet, three of whom died in custody. Many of these detainees are associated with the Falun Gong spiritual movement and with pro-democracy activities."
You must be American.
I think you have hit on the crux of the matter. You only really hear these type of arguments ("profit is all that matters for corporations") from Americans. In the rest of the world, they sound frankly screwed up. But of course since most Americans haven't really experienced countries other than their own, they assume that these sad ideas are normal.
Bye bye Karma.
(Score -1, Unamerican.)
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.
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.
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.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
Precisely the point... Mandela was put in prison for advocating equality towards blacks. Can you blame him for advocating armed struggle against the apartheid regime? A regime who wouldn't bat an eyelid at someone who is not white regardless whether the protest is peaceful or otherwise.
Whether my position is of ignorance or otherwise is your opinion, and I respect it regardless of whether I think it is true or otherwise. Opinions are (sic) basic human rights, as also taking up struggle against opression regardless whether it is an armed struggle or a peaceful one.
As hard as it may seem to you, my opinions are based on actions they taken in my country has caused more harm than good. And that is my honest opinion.
It is not about getting beat up badly and looking foolish in the process, it is about my own observation on Amnesty's stand in issues that I am very familiar happening in my country and region. What basis did you form your opinions on? Eventhough I absolutely agree that you have valid points, you in turn must not just see what is programmed by parties in the mass media. Take a long hard look at what is going on behind the curtains, some things might suprise you a lot.
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
I think you have hit on the crux of the matter. You only really hear these type of arguments ("profit is all that matters for corporations") from Americans. In the rest of the world, they sound frankly screwed up.
WTF? So coporations in other countries are beacons of moral purity and selfless sacrifice? Not hardly. French corporations are implicated in political bribes. South African De Beers does all sorts of evil stuff to maintain their lucrative position. Those are just a couple examples off the top of my head.
There are probably a million similar "scandals" around the world every day, but because they involve less prominent countries or happen in places where corruption is a way of life no one considers them dramatic enough to report. Trying to brush off greed as a purely American failing may make you feel better, but it's just ridiculous.
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.