Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and freedom of speech and expression

Opinion: Internet technology giants agree upon a set of principles to guide their business in nations such as China that restrict free speech. Is that enough?

The Global Network Initiative follows criticism that companies were assisting governments in countries like China to censor the Internet.

The initiative states that privacy is ”a human right and guarantor of human dignity,” and the agreement commits the companies to try to resist overly broad demands for restrictions on freedom of speech and expression and the privacy of users. They will also assess the human rights climate in a country before concluding business deals and make sure their employees and partners follow suit.

”This is an important first step,” Mike Posner of Human Rights First told the BBC. ”What this is is a recognition by all these tech companies, the human rights groups and social investors that there has to be a collective response to this growing problem.”

As Geoffrey A. Fowler of the Wall Street Journal writes, the devil is in details of how the framework gets implemented.

”For the most part, however, members decided not to include specific rules on issues such as where to host servers – outside servers can keep data out of problematic territories – because they felt that fast-changing technology might make them quickly irrelevant.”

This is one of the reasons that Reporters Without Borders is not endorsing the initiative.

”Under these principles, another Shi Tao case is still possible,” stated the press freedom organization referring to the jailed Chinese reporter whose verdict revealed that Yahoo gave some personal identifying information to the Chinese authorities.

Reporters Without Borders believe that the best option to prevent IT companies from being forced to collaborate with the Web-censors in repressive countries remains to provide a legal framework like the Global Online Freedom Act.

Introduced by US Representative Chris Smith, the act would have made it a crime for U.S. companies to turn over personal information to governments in ”Internet-restricting countries.”

More information about this complex issue

• Read Wired’s 2003 article: Google vs. Evil.
• Read New York Times’ 2006 article: Google’s China Problem (and China’s Google Problem).
• Look at examples gathered by the PBS showing how Google censors the web for Chinese users.
• Here is my favourite example: search results for ”Tiananmen” in both Chinese and the US versions of Google. Please spot the differences:

(You can do these searches for yourself: here is the one filtered for Chinese and here — another one for the rest of the world.)

Idea: ”Do some good” instead of just ”Don’t be evil”

(”Don’t be evil” is the corporate motto for Google and is said to be a central pillar of their identity.)

Internet technology giants seem to spend a lot of money on lawyers, lobbyists and PR people to avoid ethical lapses in countries like China, as well as lawsuits and inconvenient legal acts in the US.

Maybe it is naive, but I would strongly suggest to put the consumers first.

Maybe the giants could spend some money on developing a free software like Tor that helps Internet users to stay anonymous. Tor prevents anybody watching others’ Internet connection from learning what sites they visit, and prevents the sites they visit from learning their physical location. (By the way: Tor has just announced that they are looking for new sponsors and funding.)

Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are the leading technology companies, aren’t they? Maybe they could just assign some engineers to break down the Great Firewall of China?

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