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U.S. Tech Co. Int'l Business Plan: 1) Ignore Human Rights 2) ??? 3) Profit!
Posted by Rob_Kendall on Thursday, February 23 @ 17:55:06 EST Free Expression
Last week the House Committee on International Relations held a hearing on the Internet and China. I watched much of it with a mixed reaction of loathing, cynicism and a small glimmer of hope. The hearing was called as part of an increasing level of media and governmental scrutiny directed at large tech companies doing business in repressive societies, and who have been complicit in identifying dissident bloggers, removing their postings, censoring web searches and controlling net access.

The testimony presented by the U.S. technology giants of Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google and Cisco was a lovely example of pleading in the alternative. Essentially: ‘We didn’t do anything wrong; and even if we did do something wrong, we didn’t have a choice; and even if we had a choice, we made the best choice; and even if it wasn’t the best choice, this will lead to better choices; and even if it doesn’t lead to better choices, it’s the government’s problem anyway.’

(Continued...)


More specifically, the companies begin with the premise that they are just doing business with China and that they simply must act as “required by applicable law.” Sometimes the price of doing business includes censoring content or turning over the personally identifying information of users to the authorities. Of course, search engine censorship will be done “in a way that impacts the results as narrowly as possible” and although facilitating the political imprisonment of bloggers is unfortunate, “in practice, when companies face law enforcement requests of this kind, there is little room to question the motivations or and (sic) second-guess the judgments made by officials in these cases.” Meanwhile, the companies reaffirm their heart felt intention to “actively explor[e] the potential for guidelines that would apply for all countries in which Internet content is subjected to governmental restrictions.” And even if the desire to make a Yuan or two trumps human rights in the short term, ultimately “the trend of history and the impact of technology will continue to come down on the side of greater openness and transparency.” Oh, and of course at the end of the day, it’s really up to the “U.S. government to take a leadership role on a government-to-government basis” in order to affect change.

Spin as they might, the industry representatives (who I assume drew the short straws in rather unpleasant internal meetings) were not spared the venomous ire of Representatives Christopher Smith and Tom Lantos. In rhetoric that is usually reserved for condemning P2P file-sharers, Lantos asked how the corporate leadership could sleep at night while acting as willing accomplices to Chinese oppression. (Personally, I’m guessing that bags of money make better pillows than most people suspect.)

The cynic in me questions how a government that has conferred most favored nations status on China since 1980 can really be that righteous when tech companies go and do business under the laws of such a country. When the U.S. regularly condones trade with countries that allow children to manufacture luxury goods in sweatshops, or permit union activists to be dragged off in the dead of night, or export billions of dollars in oil while ignoring human rights, how does a little Internet censoring even compare? But maybe there is a difference.

Maybe the Internet is exceptional in that it is not just a tool of communication and culture, but a tool that transforms communication and culture. Perhaps instead of approaching this as an issue of business as usual in the marketplace of goods, this is an issue of the unusual business of the marketplace of ideas. In other words, Nike and Coke may take advantage of repressive societies, but Microsoft and Google are being used to perpetuate repressive societies. And that just really, really, really feels wrong at some deeper more disturbing level.

It appears though, that for tech companies the bottom line, is, well, the bottom line. So absent some monetary counter incentive to compliance with restrictive regimes there probably won’t be any real change in the way business is done abroad. Both Yahoo! and Google conclude their hearing statements with odd pleas for government intervention that almost seem to shout ‘save us from ourselves’. Google tells us that the “United States government has a role to play in contributing to the global expansion of free expression” with the subtext being that they can’t or won’t alter business practices themselves. After the hearings Representative Smith made available a draft of the “Global Online Freedom Act of 2006” (HR4780) that addresses those pleas. The bill contains practical measures like requiring servers that contain personal data to be hosted outside of restrictive countries; punitive measures that allow for civil and criminal liability for the release of data that results in political persecution; and perhaps most poignantly, licensing and export controls that may actually alter the bottom line on doing business abroad.

Whether or not this type of bill will ever pass or be effective is of course unknown. But it does force the point that tech companies are playing a game of ‘chicken’ with human rights interests that may result in more painful external regulation than would be necessary if they simply abided by their own corporate manifestos.
 
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"U.S. Tech Co. Int'l Business Plan: 1) Ignore Human Rights 2) ??? 3) Profit!" | Login/Create an Account | 1 comment | Search Discussion
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Re: U.S. Tech Co. Int'l Business Plan: 1) Ignore Human Rights 2) ??? 3) Profit! (Score: 1)
by feralchimp on Thursday, March 02 @ 10:21:35 EST
(User Info )
By now, many people online have pointed out this example:
http://www.computerbytesman.com/google/imagesearch.htm?tiananmen

And almost no one has pointed out this example:
http://www.computerbytesman.com/google/textsearch.htm?china%20human%20rights%20violations

Or this one:
http://www.computerbytesman.com/google/textsearch.htm?encryption

Asking the US Government to intervene isn't saying "save us from ourselves" so much as it's saying "put up or shut up."  And until the government (or we) can start making the case that Chinese citizenry (or dissidents in particular) would be safer or more effective without the presence of these tech "giants," how is that an immoral (or amoral) response?



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