Posted on 07/18/2005 5:13:46 PM PDT by F14 Pilot
WASHINGTON — Free speech advocates are frustrated with a host of American companies they say have been collaborating with oppressive regimes in countries like China, Iran and Saudi Arabia, to help them filter and monitor the Internet activity of their citizens.
Big technology names like Microsoft, Yahoo! and Cisco have been criticized roundly in recent years for providing foreign governments with the tools they need to crack down on Internet use, but critics say they have not been able to do much more than complain.
"These companies' lack of ethics is extremely worrisome," said Lucie Morillon, the Washington representative of Reporters Without Borders, an international advocacy group for journalists that monitors government repression of the Internet worldwide, documenting dissidents charged with breaking their country's Internet laws. For instance, the organization reports that an estimated 60 "cyber-dissidents" are in Chinese jails today.
"It's the role of watchdog organizations like ours — and any citizen who is willing —to let these companies know that this is a matter of human rights," Morillon said. "Write to these companies and make them feel bad."
Critics last month blasted Microsoft, the largest software company in the world, when it acknowledged that it was working with the Chinese government to censor its new Chinese-language Web portal and new free Web log tool, MSN Spaces.
In addition to the vigilant filtering of content transmitted through Web sites, e-mail, chat rooms and blogs, the Communist government in Beijing announced in June that everyone in China publishing a blog would have to register it with the government by the end of the month.
Already, anyone who opens a Web account in China must register it with police, according to the Open Net Initiative, a collaborative effort by the University of Toronto, Harvard University and the University of Cambridge.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Ping!
I dream of the days of Reagan when we actually supported freedom for ALL the world.
Seems like a great marketing opportunity for the competitors of these collaborators.
And who cares about milions of freedom loving people living in Syria, Iran, Cuba or China?
The irony: rather than our Western ways infiltrating into China and turning it safely democratic, China's new wealth is instead influencing our biggest companies to turn into callous censors for a vicious totalitarian state.
It all comes down to 1 thing.....$$$$$$$$$$
Nothing else matters more.
So how about the freedom stuff all statesmen repeat every day?
I see
Unfortunately the democrats are just as cozy with big business, they just have lot's of willing dupes who support them thinking the party cares about them.
Politicians are the same, no matter where they belong to!
Microsoft is fired on my PC
Linux & FreeBSD baby
That's because far too many in decision making capacities at corporations are all gaga about "whorled peas." They think they are doing really good work - "stitching together the global village." They think that by doing this, at some point, they'll be able to coerce unfree societies into becoming little quip spewing Thomas L. Friedman clones. They are a covey of Chamberlains, uttering the mantra "peace in our time."
Germany, Sweden, France and the USA are providing censorship tech to Iranian Mullahs!
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