Slashdot Mirror
US-Made Censorware Used To Oppress Burma
An anonymous reader writes "The Christian Science Monitor is reporting that US-made censorware is being used to oppress the people in many countries, including Burma. That in itself may not be surprising, but a more interesting point is that according to lawyers interviewed by the CS Monitor it appears to be legal — in spite of all the economic sanctions against the country, and even though people know it will be used to hush up any mention of things like attacks on peaceful protesters."
Governments are allowed to censor and suppress their populations. The thing that isn't allowed, is for general populations to have free access to encryption, anonymising and other clandestine enabling technologies that prevent governments from suppressing populations.
I don't see what the legal or moral issue is here...
An excerpt from the source article: It's hard to know exactly what happened on a technical level, but politically, it seems pretty clear at this point. The monks and other activists began their protests. The military did not crack down right away, I believe because they feared the impact of citizen journalists posting images and videos of brutality to the Web. The military decided that they were going to take more-severe steps, so they cut access to the Internet through the ISPs, particularly in cities like Yangon and Mandalay. They also cut off access to cell service and otherwise.
This is what's going on in Burma http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2007/09/28/myanmar-internet-blocked/ Internet cafes were closed down. Both MPT ISP and Myanmar Teleport ISP cut down internet access in Yangon and Mandalay since this morning. The Junta try to prevent more videos, photographs and information about their violent crackdown getting out. I got a news from my friends that last night some militray guys searched office computers from Traders and Sakura Tower building. Most of the downtown movement photos were took from office rooms of those high buildings. GSM phone lines and some land lines were also cut out and very diffficult to contact even in local. GSM short message sending service is not working also. Burma is blacked out now!
How can any company with a shred of ethics or morality excuse the sale of their filtering product?
US, Russia and France, among other countries, export massive amount of munitions to rather flakey "allies" willing to pay good money. It's a certainly that some american guns made it to burmese military through secondary market. Shouldn't we clear this up first, before going after software that can not be used by people to kill people quite as directly as guns?
Our own phones are all tapped, and we the "free" people of the US can't do squat. Burmese are "oppressed?" Nevermind them, sort out our house before worrying about internet access of a people on the other end of the globe.
So what? Let me guess, we're supposed to get all hauty over this "criminal injustice" of a piece of software being used by an enemy state in a way we wouldn't like. Yet we'll cry "let the information/code/whatever be free" when it comes to encryption software, despite the fact that it is used by criminals, enemy states, and even terrorist groups. Hell, we'll tie ourselves in knots trying to make sure our criminal and military intelligence services can't overcome those encryption tools despite their use by the enemy. Actually, we tie our intelligence services hands behind their back even when they get lucky enough to find a criminal enterprise not using the encryption tools, too.
Let me guess, we're upset now because this software is inherently "evil" whereas encryption software is inherently "good", or at least benign. "Blocking software? Why that's used to stop the flow of information and it's used to oppress. Of course it shouldn't be making it's way from the US into our enemy's hands." Maybe we should throw on a good old, "Damned neocon's!" or "Corporations profiting by their export of legalized digital oppression! Same old story."
Give me break. If we're going to support free use and access for the one (PGP, for instance) aren't we logically bound to support the other, since the basis of the support was that programs are neither good nor bad and that information/code/software yearns to be free? Sure, lament their use for evil purpose, but lets not go all "this shouldn't be allowed to happen" or "there should be a law against it". At least not unless you're willing to split the moral/ethical hairs for all the "good" software too.
Actually, the company, Fortinet, is looking into the matter. As the article states, they don't sell directly to end users, all sales go through resellers. Their policy with their resellers states that all US export laws must be followed.
So the company apparently does care and it isn't yet clear how this software came to be in use in the embargoed nation. For all anyone knows it was pirated by a Burmese government sympathizer who worked for another company that attained it legally. Let's not pile on this company in undue haste.
How is this different from countries oppressing people using US-made and -funded guns?
Of course we shouldn't sell weapons to Burma. You're kidding, right? That's like selling bullets to a semi-Hitler.
It's not your fault if you're not aware of just how oppressive and violent the government is there (how could anyone keep up with all the monsters in the world?), but it's pretty bad there.
And no disrespect intended, but being a capitalist does not mean being a nihilist in business. There is absolutely no sense to that idea. Capitalism was invented by Karl Marx, by the way, as a way of describing the absence of an economic system. In other words, nature.
In favoring free markets, there is no reason not to disincentivize barbaric governments.
But I agree with you insofar as you make no distinction between this type of software and bullets.
This is like selling rat poison to Hitler. Sure, there could be a legit use if we bury our heads in the sand. Sell Burma medicine, food, heating oil, basic things like that. Don't sell them weapons or tools whose main purpose is to impose policy. Generally speaking, there is a broad category of things that are inherently about control. Weapons and this software are included.
Just to play Devil's Advocate for a moment, there is a moral difference. Encryption software can be used by the bad guys, but it can also be used by the oppressed to get their message out. Content filtering/blocking software can only be used to restrict access to information - there's no way to use it to spread information.
So, it's perfectly possible to preach that information "wants" to be free* and be for software that can help that in difficult situations, while still being against software that can only be used to restrict information.
(* Although dropping the advocacy for a moment, I've always hated that phrase)
At least not unless you're willing to split the moral/ethical hairs for all the "good" software too.
Again playing Devil's Advocate, we do that already with all sorts of objects and services; why should software be any different?
It's official. Most of you are morons.
It's not my business how someone uses a product I sell them. It's your business who I'm selling to, though. If you don't like who I do business with, then don't do business with me. People like Hitler have a habit of ending up dead, and if my only customer base is megalomaniacal homicidal dictators, I'll run out of customers pretty fast...
Weapons are just as much (if not more so) about breaking controls and defending freedoms than enforcing them and taking them away.Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Shouldn't we clear this up first, before going after software that can not be used by people to kill people quite as directly as guns?
No, the software is more important. You may recall the 1994 Rwandan Genocide where the primary weapon was machetes, an intentionally cruel method of murder. What's being demonstrated in Burma is that a non free network can be used to target and eliminate unarmed dissidents. The guns are secondary.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
But isn't filtering software the worst kind of weapon, a weapon against the people.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
They should release it under the GPL. Then it will be free, as in freedom.
FAQs are evil.
I have just read the current sanctions section of that link and notably absent is ANY restriction on the selling of arms to the goverment. It bans investment in the country but a simple sale of weaponary (even that which may be used to surpress the pro-democracy campaigners) where the profit all ends up in the hands of a US company seems to be fair play.
The fact is the the western governments (mine included, I am British) do not like banning the sale of arms to these sort of countries as it damages our economies and may cost us jobs. The only time we ban the sale of arms is when we fear they may be used against us, if they are just going to be used to surpress indiginous pupulations we generally don't mind.
If anyone wants to prove this to be incorrect then please be my guest. Post a quote from the document proving me wrong. Modding this post down as flamebait or troll does not contribute to this discussion in a positive way.
I dont read
One day, people will realise that this sentence belongs in the same league of:
Market is powered by greed. Greed may improve the economy, but if you think greed is going to do any good to democracy, well you're in for a surprise.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
1) China is one of the largest trading partners with Burma
2) Burma has lots of oil reserves, China does not.
Next time you see some proposed UN sanctions against Burma vetoed by China - you'll know why.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Trying to stop censorship by pointing fingers at the manufacturers of filtering software is pointless. You can put together an Internet censorship platform out of open source components: no sales, no "made in USA". And it would be really bad if you couldn't: an evolving, open Internet requires being able to manipulate traffic at the packet level.
If the US wants to stop censorship and human rights abuses in Burma, it needs to do it the traditional way: persuasion, politics, trade, and/or military.
I'm not saying the following happened, but I want to say why "US-made censorware used to oppress burma" sounds like a deliberately inflammatory statement of something that could be nothing.
Example: US group writes open-source "net-nanny" type flexible program. Burma government, like all of humanity, has access to this software and uses it to censor political speech.
Guess what: US-made censorware just got used to oppress Burma!
So, the fact that a US-made (or norweigan-made) software program was used for censorship (or military encryption, or...) should not itself be alarming. The title should be more like, "US firm sold censorship software to Burmese military".
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
While both Smith and Marx describe the same system, the point of view is very different. Smith considers the system beneficial, seeing it when everything is working well, while Marx sees it during a catastrophic failure situation caused by the Industrial Revolution and the resulting simultaneous high barriers of entry - the capital needed to build a whole factory required to be competitive - and large oversupply of labour and naturally draws the obvious conclusion that it is the root of all evil and must be destroyed for the sake of mankind.
Both views are, of course, incomplete. Unfortunately, people have a tendency to get enamored with extremes, so we have free-market fundamentalists on one side and communists on the other, both trying to both trying to push their economic religion rather than actually thinking what happens to be the best decision in any given situation. Meanwhile the scoundrels and petty thiefs are taking advantage of the fighting and filling their own pockets by abusing the legal system, patent, and copyright systems - the ones who aren't engaged in outright stock or accounting scams, selling weapons for dictators, or launching wars for profit, anyway.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The US laws limiting the sale of "weapons" aren't really designed to protect the the people of other countries they are to protect the US. If that wasn't the case it would be against the law to export fast food.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
Like most of our (US) foreign policy, it's a business decision. Freedom, democracy, and human rights are far down on the list of priorities, if they ever make it onto that list. If it comes down to spreading capitalism or democracy, capitalism comes first. If it comes to a decision between creating a free country, or a source of profits, profits come first, always.