Internet Intervention
- Posted by: RebeccaMacKinnon , JoshCochran
- on May 31, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Last year, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google were called to the carpet in Congress for colluding with state censorship and surveillance in China and other less-than-free countries. In response, the three companies recently made a public commitment to develop industry principles that will help them to protect their users’ rights to privacy and freedom of expression.
They’re not off the hook just yet, but it’s a positive step forward—and it’s a sign that the private-public partnerships pioneered by the labor and environmental movements might also work to protect freedom of expression.
In places where lucrative markets are ruled by authoritarian governments that don’t even pretend to believe in free speech—governments that include political activities, like advocating that the ruling party should be voted out of office, in their definition of “crime”—internet and telecom companies have been finding it hard to do the right thing, or even to figure out what the right thing is.
Yahoo has handed over user information from its China-based email service to Chinese authorities, helping to put at least four Chinese dissidents in jail. It also heavily censors searches for political keywords on its Chinese search engine. Microsoft created an outcry in early 2006 when it deleted a popular Chinese blogger’s site on MSN Spaces in response to political pressure. It, too, has a censored Chinese search engine. And last year, Google launched a Chinese version of its search engine—also censored—raising concerns that the company had strayed from its promise to “do no evil.” All three companies argue that Chinese internet users are still much better off thanks to China’s digital revolution—censored and spied on though they may be.
Whether China’s internet users are better off with a censored Google than with no Google at all is hard to say. What is clear, though, is that internet and telecom companies face a problem—not just in authoritarian countries, but in Europe and North America as well. Companies everywhere are frequently forced to choose between user rights and interests on the one hand, and government demands to turn over user information or censor content on the other. Unless we give companies strong reasons to err on the side of protecting our rights (and show that there will be consequences for their business if they do not), they will be inclined to err on the side of complying with government demands to limit our access to information or content. The issue may be in most stark relief in China due to the nature of that country’s government and the importance of its market. But it’s not just a China thing. It’s a global thing. It’s a war-on-terror thing. Some friends of mine who work in Silicon Valley shake their heads when I talk about this issue. “You have to understand,” they say. “These companies have to maximize profits and shareholder value. They’ve got to do what they’ve got do.”
| Quote: |
| Google didn’t promise to “do no evil” for the sake of altruism. |
Sure. Hiring 8-year-olds for a couple of cents a day would no doubt enrich the shareholders of athletic-shoe companies. Dumping untreated sewage into local rivers and lakes would no doubt help their balance sheets, too. All of these things used to be standard practice in much of the world, but slowly that has changed, thanks to labor rights and environmental groups. The fight may never truly end, but at least there are standards to which companies can be held. Companies and their investors have come to recognize that they need to be good global citizens if their brands are going to be respected and if they are going to be successful over the long term. Google didn’t promise to “do no evil” for the sake of altruism.
As internet and telecom companies become the repositories of our identities—we depend on them to communicate, to work, to create art, to express ourselves, and to understand our world—their business models have come to depend on our trust.
Until a couple of years ago, socially responsible investment funds considered internet companies to be a “clean play” because they lacked the labor and environmental problems of so many other industries. Now they are starting to ask some tough questions. Representatives of several funds will be present at upcoming stake-holder meetings with human-rights groups, free-speech activists, academics, and the four companies. Let’s hope their presence will encourage more companies to join the process. Unless the information industry commits itself to respecting the rights of all users around the globe, how can we trust it not to sell us out?
DISCUSSION: 8 Comments
Are you serious?? This is one of the most juvenile and ill-informed articles I think I’ve ever read. I can appreciate the sentiment to be sure. But, the US doesn’t dictate policy to other countries. Nor can US companies dictate policy to foreign governments (imagine if it were the reverse: a Chinese Search engine dictating how we receive information according to their government beliefs). US companies can’t tell the Chinese government what to do, anymore than China can control how the US government manages our country.
We, as Americans, can tell them all we want about how to improve their lifestyle, and certainly freedom of speech is at the core of our belief system (and that’s why we choose to live here…and not China!).
Do you think the Chinese government is swayed one bit by what American companies/citizens think they should do? Have you ever been to China? Do you know anything about the culture or government? Do you study their economy or their political landscape? Your article reads from someone naiively-American (the kind the rest of the world continually ridicules for ignorance). Before suggesting that the US, or a US company, should tell another country what they should do (”..unless we tell companies what we want them to do” — in China??) — you should probably educate yourself…alot.
Do you think if you organized a boycott of Google, then Google would be forced, and therefore able to convince China to change their political policy? And the entire country would change their censorship/communication laws because your organized a boycott of Google?
Seriously…if you’re going to write articles, try to have an ounce of knowledge about what you’re writing. I can’t believe I wasted my time writing this, but I was so aghast to see something so ridiculous “published”
A mean post. But also a lazy one.
Google the author’s name and many of the questions you raise in the third paragraph (”Have you ever been to China? Do you know anything about the culture or government? Do you study their economy or their political landscape?”) will be answered (yes, yes and yes).
Google doesn’t have any obligation to serve China and MacKinnon’s point is simply that these internet companies are at a crossroads and shouldn’t trade integrity for customers.
What she is suggesting isn’t that the US Government “dictate policy” but rather that those US citizens who think rights abuses are BAD (count me in) hold US companies to high standards when it comes to privacy and freedom of speech.
If “customers” and shareholders and investment operations put pressure on Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to avoid complicity in human rights infringements and Google turns its back on China, then China looks worse in the world’s eye and falls behind. MacKinnon’s very article is pressure in the form of bad PR.
And I don’t know why you’re so hung up on education (I think credentials are often overvalued) but as long you are, my dad has a PhD in Chinese history from Harvard and won’t use Google for this very reason. Does Google notice? Probably not. But he tells his students his rationale and he still thinks its the right thing to do, which matters.
Be well.
A mean post. But also a lazy one.
Google the author’s name and many of the questions you raise in the third paragraph (”Have you ever been to China? Do you know anything about the culture or government? Do you study their economy or their political landscape?”) will be answered (yes, yes and yes).
Google doesn’t have any obligation to serve China and MacKinnon’s point is simply that these internet companies are at a crossroads and shouldn’t trade integrity for customers.
What she is suggesting isn’t that the US Government “dictate policy” but rather that those US citizens who think rights abuses are BAD (count me in) hold US companies to high standards when it comes to privacy and freedom of speech.
If “customers” and shareholders and investment operations put pressure on Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to avoid complicity in human rights infringements and Google turns its back on China, then China looks worse in the world’s eye and falls behind. MacKinnon’s very article is pressure in the form of bad PR.
And I don’t know why you’re so hung up on education (I think credentials are often overvalued) but as long you are, my dad has a PhD in Chinese history from Harvard and won’t use Google for this very reason. Does Google notice? Probably not. But he tells his students his rationale and he still thinks its the right thing to do, which matters.
Be well.
The first commenter wouldn’t even need to search for MacKinnon on the web. Her bio already establishes her credentials. It is, to be sure, pretty arrogant and sometimes stupid to try to tell other countries what to do, but a bit of pressure here and there is sometimes useful. It may work better if it’s international. In this connection, the commenter might look for the June 9 AP report on an international group based in London that slammed Google and other web tools for invasion of privacy. Privacy is important to a lot of us. Staying out of jail might be even more important, and if Yahoo helps send Chinese to jail to make a profit I want to put pressure on Yahoo. For the same reason, I applaud Amnesty International. And if Chinese citizens, NGOs and government sciticize the hypocrisy of US energy policy or the current administration’s attitude to international treaties and obligations (e.g. Geneva Conventions), then I welcome it.
Ad hominem attacks on the author aside …
One group has already filed suit against Yahoo for its complicity with the Chinese government. The following article describes the suit, and cross-links to several other sources of information: http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2007/04/the_yahoo_lawsu.html.
Yahoo shareholders attempted to modify corporate policy by seeking the creation of a human rights committee and creating a code of conduct (so to speak) regarding internet censorship. Unfortunately, the resolutions failed. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6747095.stm for more.
I think you’ve done a great service to the world, and to the people of China in particular, by exposing the collusion between the totalitarian regime there and three companies which have engaged in no little self-congratulation about their services to democracy. It’s high time that Google, Yahoo and Microsoft were better known for their moonlighting job as narks for the People’s Republic of China.
Eastandwest’s criticism of Ms McKinnon’s article was ill-founded.
Nowhere does McKinnon presume to lecture the Chinese government on their abuse of their citizens’ human rights, except by her well-taken criticism of Microsoft, Google and Yahoo for taking part in these human rights abuses.
It’s appalling that censorship and imprisonment of people for their political speech has found such rabid and thoughtless defense. By eastandwest’s logic, we were right to blind ourselves to the murders committed by Hitler and Stalin during their heyday, to say nothing of the mountain of corpses piled up by Mao. After all, none of those dictators were “swayed one bit by what American companies/citizens” thought they should do (i.e., stop persecuting and murdering their own people for political dissent).
And anticipating the inevitable retort, one doesn’t have to defend the stupidities and outright tortures committed by a handful of poorly-supervised troops in Iraq to recognize and detest even worse and much more systematic human rights abuses which are being abetted by American firms. Abu Ghraib was an aberration; the suppression of domestic dissent and jailing of dissidents is characteristic of Beijing.
A timely and well written article regarding an important issue that hopefully will be pressed to the surface in the future. It would be nice if Google did hold true to their motto. After all, citizens of represed countries rely on the integrity of a company such as Google to protect them. How can we expect others to even believe in monumental cornerstones of America such as Freedom of Speech, and the Pursuit of Happiness, when Yahoo is turning over names and Google is doing the same? Hopefully, monetary gain will not hinder morals and eventually a real world standard will be set, one that upholds the laws of humanity, regardless of culture, far reaching, and encompassing the most freedom deprived. It is their voice we need to listen to the most; and how are they to get that voice to the world when we send them to jail just for crying out?