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Falun Gong Sues Cisco
schwit1 submitted a story from CNet. From the article: "Cisco Systems designed a surveillance system to help the Chinese government track and ultimately suppress members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, according to a lawsuit the group filed against the network equipment maker. The lawsuit, which was filed Thursday in Federal District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose, alleges Cisco supplied and helped maintain a surveillance system known as the 'Golden Shield' that allowed the Chinese government to track and censor the group's Internet activities. As a result of Cisco's technology, Falun Gong members suffered false imprisonment, torture, and wrongful death, according the lawsuit, which was filed on behalf of the religious group by the Washington, D.C.-based Human Rights Law Foundation."
This isn't much different than families of murder victims suing gun manufactors. People want to place the blame somewhere and in this case they think they stand a better chance suing Cisco instead of their own government. It would be safe to assume that if they sued the Chinese government instead, there would be no trial just jail and death sentences for those doing the suing.
This is going to be one to watch: The US is supposed to be all against repression and lovey-dovey about religious freedom and stuff; but there is No Fucking Way that they would let the precedent be set that corporate quislings executing illegal state activities are in any way culpable(see also retroactive telco immunity...) because that would cut into their own ability to wiretap whatever they want with the full connivance of basically anybody who is anybody.
Awkward. Hopefully publicly so....
Exactly this. A gun can be used for many things, as can a router. But if you are supplying a known assassin with tech support about how best to pick off preschoolers, you have crossed the line from supplying a product into aiding and abetting a crime. Almost all guns are NOT used for crimes, ever. The same is true of routers- but NOT of routers sold to China to help setup their oppressive firewall.
That's the big difference here.
If a guy walks into a store and says "hey I need to cut my neighbors head off, which knife do you have that would be best for the job?" You then go, "yes sir, this one right here should work nice, the serrated edge should cut right through the neck without the blade turning on the bone!" Well then you might could sue the guy who sold him the knife. I think they are alleging that this is essentially what Cisco did.
With the advent of cities and societies following the end of the Ice Age there had to be moral codes, now how do you establish those? With stories of how and why the God(s) everyone believes in gave us these laws, or through dictatorship.
Explaining to Stone and Bronze Age man that he shouldn't kill his neighbor, steal the neighbor's wife and sell the neighbor's children into slavery for the good of the society isn't going to get much traction. Telling SaBA man that God forbids the killing of his neighbor, lusting after the neighbor's wife and selling the neighbor's children into slavery is more likely to get the guy not to do those things.
While I'm not and never have been religious, I understand why it was needed to create frameworks for society.
Jurisdiction comes from the Alien Tort Statute. There have been a number of recent cases of aliens suing corporations in the US because of violations of international law. Whether what Cisco did in China was legal under Chinese law does not matter; the ATS is all about whether norms of customary international law have been violated. Torture is the primary example. This is not some crazy lawsuit; it is a tried and true method of punishing corporations for their complicity in human rights violations.
Yes, but Cisco also provides these services to businesses.
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6712/index.html
The extent at which Cisco helped them is not publicly known. Cisco does not admit to anything other than selling hardware and software services.
"Cisco does not operate networks in China or elsewhere, nor does Cisco customize our products in any way that would facilitate censorship or repression," the representative said in a statement, adding that the company sells the same equipment in China that it sells in other nations in compliance with U.S. government regulations."
Hard to say... but either way private multi-national corporations only operate for one thing: profit.
Browse at 1. You'll thank me later.
The problem with this sort of thing is the fact that laws are actually different in different places.
See, Falun Gong is an illegal organization in China. The members are breaking the law by simply being members. After that, the punishment for being a member is perhaps severe, but nonetheless, it is punishment for being a member of an outlawed group.
Similarly, it is illegal in modern-day Germany to belong to the Nazi party. This group is outlawed and membership in it is illegal. While you might not rate much torture or death, such membership is going to be frowned upon severely by the German government. Up to and including imprisonment.
In the US it is difficult to point to an organization that is illegal to belong to, but I suspect openly disclosing that you are a member of Hamas or Hizbollah could rate you at least a swift deportation and might cause problems in gaining entry to the US if you went about it in the conventional manner. Currently in the US it is not illegal to belong to a group that is exclusively formed for the purposes of committing crimes, such as street gangs, motorcycle gangs, or the Mafia.
While it might be all noble and such to say that China should just let groups that violently disagree with their government exist in peace, it isn't happening. China seems to be highly motivated to make the lives of people that want to change (forcibly, if not violently) the government a living hell. Sort of discourages revolution when the potential leaders are imprisoned. While we may disagree with this policy, they are being nothing if not consistent in their treatment of members of illegal organizations. Cisco has very little to do with the policy and its implementation. Had they simply refused to be part of the implementation someone else would have stepped up. When we make individuals and companies liable for such downstream actions I am all for going after Cisco but first I think we better start thinking about architectural firms that design prisons. Then we can talk about cell phone manufacturers making driving-while-distracted possible.
Maybe in 50 years or so after we deal with all of the other problems, we can get around to Cisco.