[FYI] (Fwd) FC: Amnesty Int'l fingers MS, Sun, Cisco as Chinese censors

["Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>]

------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent:      	Wed, 27 Nov 2002 13:00:54 -0500
To:             	politech@politechbot.com
From:           	Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject:        	FC: Amnesty Int'l fingers MS, Sun, Cisco as Chinese censors
Send reply to:  	declan@well.com

[Somehow, I don't recall Amnesty International slamming Microsoft,
Sun, Nortel, and so forth for selling software to the Feds that can be
used for Carnivore deployment. And did Amnesty complain about all
those businesses selling legal pads, calculators, and maps to the FBI
that were used in the brutal killing of innocents at Waco? Of course
not. In those cases, at least, Amnesty appears to have realized that
blame for wrongdoing should rest on the shoulders of the government.

I don't mean to say that corporations are never complicit (certainly
there have been allegations raised about IBM in World War II), but it
seems that that should be a pretty high threshold to meet, and that
doesn't seem to be the case here. Amnesty offers no proof beyond
hand-waving allegations likely born of an anti-corporate bias. If
China orders a few thousand copies of Windows, how is Microsoft to
know where they'll be used? It can't, of course, and to suggest
otherwise is silly. Amnesty should know better, and focus its
otherwise good work on the real culprits: The Chinese government.
--Declan]

---

http://www.web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/recent/asa170072002

[...]

Foreign companies, including Websense and Sun Microsystems, Cisco
Systems, Nortel Networks, Microsoft,(27) have reportedly provided
important technology which helps the Chinese authorities censor the
Internet. Nortel Networks(28) along with some other international
firms are reported to be providing China with the technology which
will help it shift from filtering content at the international gateway
level to filtering content of individual computers, in homes, Internet
cafes, universities and businesses.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights calls on "every individual
and every organ of society" to play its part in securing human rights
for all. Amnesty International believes that multinational companies
operating in China have a responsibility to contribute to the
promotion and protection of fundamental human rights.

[...]




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