Slashdot Mirror
Technology Colonialism
jrepin sends an editorial from Anjuan Simmons on how tech companies are behaving more and more in a manner that evokes colonialism. Quoting:
Technology companies are increasingly being treated like sovereign nations. A nation with sovereignty has a right to conduct its internal affairs without interference from other nations. ... When technology companies are feted by foreign ministers and also refuse an invitation from the leader of their own country of origin, they exhibit the characteristics of a group that wants to be treated as a peer to heads of state. Technology companies understand the power they wield in the global economy. ... If Silicon Valley is allowed to become the central repository of information about people around the world, then there is a danger of setting up a form of imperialism based on personal data. Just as the royal powers of old reached far into the lives of distant colonized people, technology companies gain immense control with every terabyte of personal data they store and analyze.
If people give up their data willingly, that is not colonialism. Colonialism dealt with the forcible removal of people's rights. When it's voluntary, no one has any business complaining. It's not hard to understand.
I'm guessing it's related to a report:
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China is asking some U.S. technology firms to directly pledge their commitment to contentious policies that could require them to turn user data and intellectual property over to the government, The New York Times reported.
Citing unidentified sources, the report said Beijing had distributed a document to some U.S. firms earlier this summer asking them to promise they would not harm China’s national security and would store Chinese user data within the country.
The NYT report, which comes just ahead of President Xi Jinping's first state visit to the United States, did not identify which companies had been asked to make the pledge.
The document also asked the companies that their products be "secure and controllable", a phrase that industry groups said could be used to force companies to build so-called back doors that would allow third-party access to systems, it said.
Officials at the Cyberspace Administration of China did not respond to a faxed request seeking comment.
Sources told Reuters last month that China had resumed work on a set of banking cyber security regulations it suspended earlier this year.
The previous regulations - containing provisions that required Chinese banks to buy more domestic IT equipment and Western tech vendors to disclose secret source code if they sell to lenders - drew strong protests from foreign business lobbies, the U.S. and European governments.
China regulators suspended the plan in April, saying they would consider feedback from domestic banks. The suspension was seen as a diplomatic victory for the Obama administration, coming shortly after visits to Beijing by Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker.
In July, China's legislature adopted a sweeping national security law that said all key network infrastructure and information systems must be "secure and controllable".
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Oh wow, this article reads like a pravda piece might have during the height of the cold war. Lets do a sanity check. We have two 'trigger' words in this summary: 'colonialism' and 'imperialism', in newspeak contexts. Lets click on the link and see... Ah, the slogan is "Technology, culture and diversity media." We have another newspeak term: 'diversity', as any individual daring to identify as an individual or, worse, act in his own interest, is obviously a racist, sexist 'imperialist' pig dead set on world domination. Care to guess the politics of the submitter and/or the source?
However, despite being invited, Zuckerberg, Marissa Mayer, and Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, perhaps feeling their own imperial bona fides, decided to skip the president’s speech.
Like, how DARE they skip out on Dear Leader??! They need to check their privilege!
I'm all for protecting personal identity, rights, and liberty from predatory people and organizations (private AND public!), but this source is just a tad biased, folks. Too biased for its analysis to be much use. This article spends too much time bitching about the corp-rats, and no time dealing with the big elephants in the room, the ones issuing mandatory surveillance law and gag orders to silence criticism and dissent from those who would rather opt out. If the political culture in western countries still respected individual rights over groupthink knee jerking, we wouldn't have half the privacy concerns we do.
Corporations and Individuals should not have to "answer" to the Head of State, only to the Law. Quite the opposite in fact- it is the Heads of State who should be held accountable to the Citizens, and the Laws should hold only as much power as the Population grants them.
I would agree with you if you didn't equate corporations with citizens. Perhaps corporations shouldn't have to answer to heads of state, but they bloody well ought to answer to government. The hierarchy should have citizens at the top, followed by the government in the middle, with corporations on the bottom. We've allowed that order to be reversed, and we're paying the price.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.