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Siemens, Nokia Helped Provide Iran's Censoring Tech
An anonymous reader writes "The Wall Street Journal has an article about Nokia and Siemens selling the censoring technology to Iran's government. Do you believe that the public relations damage to these companies can persuade them from selling this kind of technology to other dictatorial regimes?" I don't believe there will *be* any PR Damage, and that makes me a little sad.
I'm sure first and second world dictatorships all over the world will be looking at buying that technology.
"If you want to know what happens to you when you die, go look at some dead stuff."
There won't be any PR damage, unless people make a huge stink out of it.
It's not like the world will wake up and think of them as "evil" unless they're told to think of them that way.
This is a good time for another couple companies to step in and blast away.
I'm sure that here in the UK the government is already enquiring on how they can do the same.
These are capitalist corporations. Their goal is to make money. People are willing to buy censorship technology (just look at any government office). Why do you act shocked that this is happening?
... Cisco... ... after finding out they collude with the Chinese government for censorship and spying.
Look how much that's slowing them down!
"It couldn't be determined whether the equipment from Nokia Siemens Networks is used specifically for deep packet inspection."
So in other words a European venture sold a bunch of equipment to Iran for network usage and (also FTFA)
If you sell networks, you also, intrinsically, sell the capability to intercept any communication that runs over them."
It sounds like a beat up to me. What would the story be if a US company had sold the equipment to Iran? (yeah I know .. trade embargo etc) This story smells of sour grapes.
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All they're doing is selling the Iranian government some mobile telecommunications infrastructure. What the government decide to do with said infrastructure is entirely their responsibility.
Sophistry, I hear you say? Only about to the same degree as that moron who was arguing with me here, that the author of the World of Warcraft Glider bot should not be sued by Blizzard; because he wasn't doing anything against the rules himself. All he was doing was creating a macro generation program; what other people did with it was entirely their own responsibility.
Sadly, we've come to accept most modern corporations as pretty much ammoral when it comes to stuff like this, and they're rarely ever held accountable in any meaningful way. The bulk of the population will no more hold this against Nokia/Seimens than they will hold Volkswagon responsible for its early Nazi roots (does it invoke Godwin's Law to mention that?), Yahoo/Google responsible for selling out dissidents in China, etc., etc.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It just occured to me that I Godwin'd this story already, but this is just like when IBM sold adding machines to the Nazis to help them tabulate Holocaust victims.
Way I see it, who cares? The corner store selling smokes isn't to blame for the lung cancer - ultimately the smoker is. Except it's even more generic than that.
- Siemens sold network technology to Iran - the same you'd use for all sorts of network admin - and they used it to censor. That's Iran's bad.
- IBM sold adding machines - they'll count anything - and the Nazis used them to count Jews (and others). That's the Nazi's bad.
In short, don't blame the maker for the use of the tool.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Iran, regardless of all the shortcomings and issues IS a democracy. Most of the other countries in gulf region(Like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) are under family dictatorships and worse tyrannies. And US/EU governments and corporations sell everything including weapons to them. I think this is far worse than selling technology to Iran.
http://www.nasirudheen.blogspot/
Why single out Iran? Are you saying Nokia shouldn't operate in Iran; they should break the law there; what?
I'm guessing a lot of people reading this have the former in mind: information technology companies in the industrialized world shouldn't operate in countries that place restrictions on political speech to the extent seen in the countries on which the United States already has sanctions. In the 1980s, near the end of South Africa's counterpart to the U.S. "Jim Crow" era, there was an effort to boycott companies that did business in South Africa: disinvestment was a result.
"...so, what do you do?"
"I sell net censoring software."
"Really? Who buys that stuff?"
"Oh, lots of people. We have ISP customers from around the world."
"What do they use it for?"
"You know, censoring kiddie porn sites, blocking mail spammers, and so on." ...
I think that's a pretty good description of what this is about. People are selling tools. The problem is how those tools are used. There are evil shit-heads all over the world. That does not mean the tools themselves are evil.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
Precisely - this is just a case of 'who do we like today' verses 'who do we dislike today'. The western world was all for selling Iran complex military machines (F-14s with AIM-54 Phoenix missiles among other things) when the country was under the Shah dictatorship, to the extent that there was a huge panic when the Shah was deposed. Infact there still is a huge panic about those weapons, take a look at the extent the US went to to ensure the Iranian air force did not benefit from blackmarket spares stolen from museums when the US Navy retired their F-14s from active service.
Iran, regardless of all the shortcomings and issues IS a democracy
Who are you kidding? One un-elected guy has godly powers. He can do anything he likes.
Every "election" that happens, candidates are screened for loyalty to that unelected guy and Islam, if found not loyal enough, they are barred. And democracy is not just about elections. What is democracy without freedom of speech? freedom to peacefully protest? etc.
I'm baffled by your idea of what constitutes a democracy. "It sucks less than Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, so it's a democracy!"
Iran used to be a quasi-democracy, after the recent "election" (read coup) Khamenei gave a big fuck you to people and said we're not even going to bother counting votes anymore.
well technically Iran is a democracy
with democratic elections
and president elected by people.
obviously there are problems
and problems with ballot counting,
however Florida also had ballots accounting problem...
I do not say Iran is a happy place to live
but it is more open than many think.
do you think manifestations would happen in North Corea ?
do you think people would be able to play WoW or use Twitter in many Burma ?
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
Not after seeing what a piss poor job it did at actually preventing information leakage.
So is there any evidence of election rigging yet?
"In 50 Iranian cities the number of votes cast in this month presidential election exceeded the number of eligible voters, the state's election watchdog admitted today. "
Take that as you will.
Iran is clearly no more a democracy than the Soviet Union. It requires more than holding an election to be considered a democracy, the outcome of the election has to actually reflect the way people voted. No one in any election anywhere wins every district across an ethnically (and otherwise) diverse population by the same margin, and yet that is what the Iranian government (which is actually the Supreme Leader and the Guardian Council) is claiming happened in this last Presidential election.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Correct, according to this article from the BBC:
"Western governments, including the UK, don't allow you to build networks without having this functionality."