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Human Rights Hearing Puts Tech Firms on Heated Defensive
 
Thursday, Feb. 16, 2006 Posted: 10:12:02AM EST, Christian Post

WASHINGTON – In the most extensive public review of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cisco Systems after widespread criticism broke out on their compliance to Chinese law, a House human rights hearing put the internet firms on the spot for doing business at the cost of human rights.
 
Vice President of Cisco Systems Inc. Mark Chandler, left to right, Vice President for Corporate Communications and Public Affairs of Google, Inc. Elliot Schrage, Managing Director of Federal Government Affairs and Associate General Counsel of Microsoft Corporation Jack Krumholtz and General Counsel of Yahoo! Inc. Michael Callahan, appear before a joint hearing of the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations and the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, on the 'Internet in China: A Tool for Freedom or Suppression?' on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2006, in Washington. (Photo: AP / Manuel Balce Ceneta)  
 
"The poor guys," said T. Kumar, advocacy director for Asia and Pacific Amnesty International USA, describing the corporate executives at the hearing. "They were really put on the spot."

The tech firms faced the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations and the subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific in the much-anticipated session that left no seat empty in the hearing room. In a nearly seven-hour session, the internet companies were grilled on their conformity with the censorship policies and requirements of the Chinese government.

"Your abhorrent activities in China are a disgrace," said Rep. Tom Lantos, a California Democrat, according to USA Today. "I simply don't understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night."

Despite human rights concerns, executives of the four companies defended their actions, all saying that they had to comply with local law and insisting on their beneficial presence in China. In what seemed like futile defenses, arguments lasted around 4-1/2 hours, according to Kumar.

"They didn't know what to do," he said.

At one heated moment, Lantos asked the companies if they were "ashamed or proud" of their records in China. Some of the subcommittee members remained unconvinced by the defensive responses.

Global human rights subcommittee Chairman Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), who convened the hearing, plans to introduce the Global Online Freedom Act today, according to Kumar, to restrict internet firms from censoring basic political or religious terms.

China's control over media has raised serious concerns among human rights and religious freedom groups for its repression of freedom of expression and its effects against minority faith groups. Google's latest censored version of its search engine in China, launched last month, added to the uproar that began over a year ago.

Lillian Kwon
lillian@christianpost.com

Source: http://www.christianpost.com/article/society/2263/section/human.rights.hearing.puts.tech.firms.on.heated.defensive/1.htm

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Bill would bar U.S. firms from putting servers in China

Those breaking law could face prison sentences under proposed legislation  
   
News Story by Grant Gross

FEBRUARY 16, 2006 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - A U.S. lawmaker today introduced a bill that would bar U.S. Internet companies from locating Web servers inside "Internet-restricting" countries such as China and Vietnam. Under the proposed legislation, company officials who don't comply could face prison sentences.

The bill, introduced by Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.), would also prohibit U.S. search engine companies from altering the results of searches in countries such as China and prohibit U.S. Internet companies from giving personally identifiable customer information to the governments of Internet-restricting countries. Exceptions would be granted for "legitimate" law enforcement requests that are reviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice.

The bill, called the Global Online Freedom Act, includes penalties of up to five years in prison and a $2 million fine for officers of companies that willfully violate the restrictions. Customers of Internet companies "aggrieved" by violations of the law could also sue the companies in civil court.

By requiring Internet companies to locate servers outside restrictive countries, the bill would make it harder for their governments to force the companies to turn over information about customers, Smith said Wednesday.

"Technology companies in the United States have succumbed to pressure by authoritarian foreign governments with information about Internet users that has led to imprisonment of cyber dissidents, in violation of the corporate responsibility of such companies to protect and uphold human rights," the bill says in its introduction.

Smith introduced the bill a day after he chaired a U.S. House of Representatives International Relations Committee hearing on Internet freedom in China. During the hearing, Smith and other committee members scolded Yahoo Inc., Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc., saying the companies have helped Chinese officials censor the Internet there.

Source: http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/policy/story/0,10801,108788,00.html

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Great firewall A shabby international compromise with a self-defeating Chinese policy The Times On Line (UK), February 17, 2006

The giants of the internet cut poor figures this week as they pleaded with irate (and egotistical) Congressmen to continue their collaboration with China’s official censors. Meanwhile, in China, the Communist Party was haggling over the fate of a feisty newspaper that had proven too outspoken for its taste. There are few indications that the four companies under scrutiny — Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Cisco Systems — put up much resistance to the demands made of them by the Chinese, or weighed with sufficient care the money that they hope to make in China’s fast-expanding information market against the priceless asset of reputation. Corporations whose business is the free flow of information should not lightly collude in measures designed to block the access of consumers to their product. And that is particularly so when Chinese officials themselves are debating the boundaries of information. Google argues that the Chinese are, on balance, better off with an efficient, albeit censored, China-registered Google portal than they are pitting their wits against the Chinese firewalls encircling international Google.com. Thankfully, China’s 111 million internet users are becoming daily more expert at outflanking the censors, so the restrictions placed on search will be limited in their impact. At the very least, the “health warnings” posted on Google’s China site do at least have the merit of transparency. Yahoo!, by contrast, struck furtive and shameful bargains with the Chinese authorities for which there is no defence. Faced with Chinese requests for e-mail evidence that was used to convict a journalist and, reportedly, one of China’s democracy campaigners, the company could have objected that this content was outside Chinese jurisdiction. It could simply have said that it could not trace the e-mails in question. It did neither and furnished Chinese authorities with the personal information that they demanded. China’s censorship methods have come under intense scrutiny abroad just when last month’s clumsy decision to suspend Freezing Point, a remarkably outspoken weekly offshoot of the official China Youth Daily, has provoked unusually open criticism within the Communist Party itself. The editor, Li Datong, enlisted senior party members to resist the decision — and circulated, on the internet, a denunciation of the propaganda department for unlawful abuse of power. The ban was lifted yesterday, but Mr Li and his deputy have been shunted ignominiously aside. The reissued paper is likely to be a timid shadow of its old self. Yet the battle now joined will not end, because it is part of a wider Chinese debate about the role of free expression, as political safety valve and as the handmaid of innovation, personal and economic. The leadership is torn between intolerance of dissent and the need to nurture open minds. Unless this argument is resolved in favour of freedom, China risks losing out to societies that, being more open, are better able to grasp the opportunities of the information age. Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,542-2044612,00.html