It’s Not Just Cartoons Any More, US Congress Lashes Out At Google, Yahoo, Cisco, and MSN Over Their Lack of “Social Responsibility” in Surrendering To the Great Firewall of China

Philip M. Stone February 16, 2006

The scene was a US Congressional hearing room. Trying to explain their business practices in penetrating the huge Internet business opportunities in China, but gaining very little sympathy, were American web giants Google, Yahoo, Cisco and Microsoft. Lashing out at them was Representative Tom Lantos of California. “Your abhorrent actions in China are a disgrace. I don’t understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night.”

For a Congressional hearing that’s very down-to-earth language that doesn’t take a lawyer to figure out what it means.  He accused them of becoming very wealthy with great influence, but in doing so showing “very little social responsibility.”

The Republican chairman of the House International Relations Committee, Representative Christopher Smith, indicating that both political parties are coming from pretty much the same direction on this one, told the company representatives, “Cooperation with tyranny should not be embraced for the sake of profits.”

Usually the last thing American companies want Congress to do is pass legislation that restricts how they can conduct business, yet these American titans of the Internet were practically begging the committee to come up with guidelines on how they should react when countries ask them to participate in their censorship laws, for if they do not comply then they are not welcome to participate in that country.  

And the focus is on China, which, after the US, has the world’s second largest Internet population with 110 million users, with about 20,000 a day being added and expected to reach 130 million by the end of the year, according to Liu Zhijang of the China Internet Network Information Center.

Yahoo, Google, Cisco and Microsoft all are involved in China, wanting a growing  part of that huge business but the price of entrée is that they must agree to comply with Chinese censorship laws.

Yahoo in particular has received a rotten press recently because it has been accused of having twice in recent months given evidence to Chinese authorities that has put two Chinese users behind bars for long terms on political charges.  Yahoo has servers inside China and thus under the censorship rules had to give up that information. If the servers were outside China it would not have had to comply. Google is accused for blocking within its Chinese search engine topics relating to such subjects as Tibet and Taiwan.

Reporters Without Borders has often damned Cisco for selling the Chinese the equipment that lets them do much of that automatic filtering.  Company officials say they sold the same equipment to China as they sold elsewhere, but they don’t say whether they recognized beforehand how the Chinese might use that technology.

The Chinese take umbrage that they are being seen to be doing anything different to what happens in other countries and they cite the New York Times web site as a prime example, Liu Zhengrong, deputy chief of the Internet Affairs Bureau of the State Council Information Office, told China Daily that the NYT web site carries the following warning on its Forum section: “We reserve the right to delete, move or edit messages that we deem abusive, defamatory, obscene, in violation of copyright or trademark laws, or otherwise unacceptable. We reserve the right to remove the posting privileges of users who violate these standards of Forum behavior at any time.”

The difference, of course, between China and The Times is in the definition of what is deemed to be abusive, defamatory or otherwise unacceptable. For example, if an American posted a web page with the word “democracy” it would appear just fine, but if a Chinese tries to post the word democracy to a web site it just plain disappears.

Liu said that penalties imposed on websites carrying illegal or harmful information has been lenient. He said no web site has been closed down for providing just a few pieces of such information. “No one in China has been arrested simply because he or she said something on the Internet.” he said.

But Amnesty International (AI) sees it in a different light. “The high-tech sector is still dominated worldwide by US companies,” said Mila Rosenthal, director of the AI USA Business and Human Rights Program. “Those companies should be spreading US values around the world, like free speech, and the right to peaceful political expression, instead of helping the Chinese government silence and squash its internal critics.”

Back at the Congressional hearing the US companies took more on the chin from Lantos, the ranking Democrat on the committee. “He said they had “caved into Beijing’s outrageous but predictable demands for the sake of profits.”

Smith, who wants the companies to draw up guidelines on how they should operate within restrictive regimes, said he will introduce legislation, The Global Online Freedom Act of 2006.

The US State Department has also weighed in. Josette Shiner, a State Department trade expert, told a news conference the department has formed a task force that will consider whether to permit US technology to be used to restrict access to political content. It’s rather like the prohibition on US military technology that cannot be sold to certain countries.

And Under Secretary of State Paula Dobriansky says a US team is in China to discuss privacy and data issues that came up in several recent Chinese cases.

A day before the hearing Bill Gates told the Financial Times in an interview he welcomed Us legislation governing how US companies should operate when doing business with regimes that that attempt to stifle information.

But he also said that at the end of the day the Chinese will simply fail at what they are trying to do:

“The Internet overwhelmingly makes information available. It is not possible to block information. It is just not. It’s so night and day versus when a newspaper publishers and TV owners were small chokepoints that controlled the distribution of information. I think people have to understand what an open tool the Internet is despite any firewall stuff, or any takedown orders that get given.”

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