Will Dell & Hewlett-Packard Help China Censor His Holiness the Dalai Lama?
by Danny Fisher
This from CREDO Action:
- Will U.S. companies like Dell and Hewlett-Packard help China to censor its citizens access to the internet?
There are over 300 million internet users in China, and the government is already active in restricting their access to sites that mention the Dalai Lama or the brutal attacks in Tiananmen Square.
Now, as the twentieth anniversary of Tiananmen approaches, the Chinese government has announced – completely without warning – that after July 1, all PCs sold in China will have to include “Green Dam” software that will allow the government to prevent users from accessing any sites the government deems “unclean,” including everything from political dissidence to pornography.
China has also sought to ban internet services like Twitter and Flickr with its so-called “Great Firewall.” So far, these efforts have largely failed, but internet safety experts fear that the “Green Dam” software could serve as a Trojan Horse to give the Chinese government far greater power to censor the internet.
So who will carry out the thwarting of the Chinese people’s right to information? American manufacturers like Dell and HP. According to the
New York Times, the companies are hesitant to work against free speech, but even more afraid of losing their business in China.But American business giants have the power to fight back. All they have to do is use it.
Sign this petition today to tell Dell CEO Michael Dell and HP CEO Mark Hurd to negotiate with the Chinese government to get rid of this insidious rule. All people deserve the right to access information, whether or not it’s government approved.
Sign the petition here.
With all respect, I saw this and I thought, "Geez this is so obtuse" despite the fact that it's somewhat of misuse of the word "obtuse."
Believe it or not, the main purpose of this is not to spy on Chinese, nor to keep information on the Dalai Lama from the Chinese (who probably know things about the Dalai Lama you don't), nor is it to repress the Tianmen Square massacre.
No, the likely cause of this has nothing to do with human rights at all. Not a bit. Really.
You want to know what's the real deal here?
Well, a few years ago, just as the IEEE was ready to roll out 802.11i (which was to become Wi-Fi's WPA – encryption and authentication services for wireless LAN) the Chinese government's ministry said that computers sold in China had to have the Chinese version of a WLAN standard for encryption and authentication.
Why?
Because it had special super-duper secret trapdoors?
Nope.
Because it was unburdened by non-Chinese intellectual property, and because you had to get pieces of this from a Chinese company.
Get it?
The Gren Dam thing is Chinese corporate welfare! In fact, it's designed so users can disable it. That's the telltale giveaway. The Chinese want to get a nibble from foreign computer makers in this down market.
Ok, that's today's lesson in economics and business in China.