Human Rights Reporting

Spring 2004 Student Work

Behind the Big Mamas

By Jennifer Esty

In an ironic condemnation of China's record on Internet human rights abuses, Reporters Without Borders, an international organization that advocates for press freedom, recently awarded China their top prize for online oppression. The group said China was an easy choice for the "Golden Palm" award "for its 60 cyber-dissidents in prison, hundreds of thousands of websites censored and strict censorship of e-mail." They also gave Chinese President Hu Jintao a best actor nod "for his regular statements about the country's progress in human rights."

Amnesty International targeted China's poor record on Internet rights abuses in a report released in January, citing a 60 percent increase in detention and sentencing for Internet-related offenses from 2002 to 2003, with over 50 people convicted of such crimes. Amnesty believes this figure represents a small percentage of the people actually detained.

Internet-related offenses in China include posting political opinions or religious information and discussing public health issues the government wants to downplay, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Charges can include "publishing subversive information on the Internet" and "incitement to subvert state power." Prison sentences for offenders range from two to 12 years, with many detainees claiming torture and abuse while in custody.

The Chinese government has a range of high tech tools at its disposal. It obtains evidence against suspects by surveillance of publicly available Internet sites, Internet cafes, and by monitoring e-mail and chatroom activity. The government can cut off access to websites, search for key words and filter e-mail messages. Some Internet cafes carry surveillance cameras and there is a push to require users to show ID cards before logging on.

"If technologies exists, we shouldn't be surprised that a country as large and as rich as China should use them," says Minky Worden, electronic media director for Human Rights Watch.

According to Reporters Without Borders, the Chinese government employs approximately 30,000 Internet censors, called Big Mamas, to carry out surveillance. Some estimates put the number closer to 40,000.

But where does China get the technology and who is responsible for its use?

The Amnesty report condemned several international companies that it says have contributed to the Chinese government's ability to monitor and control Internet usage. Those companies include Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems. These particular companies play an important role because they provide much of the backbone of the Chinese Internet infrastructure, including operating systems, routers, and network switches.

For the most part these companies do not use open source, meaning their products are built with proprietary technologies. Therefore any adaptations made, for example to provide additional surveillance technologies, would not be easily discovered. In contrast, if they were using open source technologies, such as Linux, "the chance of getting caught is higher," says Jagdish Parikh, online content coordinator for Human Rights Watch.

The UN Human Rights Norms for Business, adopted in August 2003 by a UN human rights sub-commission, states: "transnational corporations and other business enterprises shall refrain from any activity which supports, solicits, or encourages States or any other entities to abuse human rights. They shall further seek to ensure that the goods and services they provide will not be used to abuse human rights."

The charter is now under fire from both corporations, such as Shell Oil, and governments, including the United States, for going too far in its recommendations. Despite such objections, however, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has agreed to compile a report on corporate responsibility with regard to human rights, including evaluating the UN Norms for Business.

"Having provided it [technology], we think they assumed a responsibility to use those relations to reinforce their support for human rights," says Amnesty spokesman Alistair Hodgett.

Bobson Wong, an independent Internet researcher on issues related to access, censorship and governance, says the argument some companies make is: "by establishing ourselves and setting a dialogue, eventually we can be a force for change."

The "constructive engagement" argument is one often employed in government diplomatic policy. Wm. Theodore de Bary, the John Mitchell Mason Professor of the University Emeritus and Provost Emeritus at Columbia University, and an expert on Asia, says "Diplomacy is always engaged in constructive engagement." He adds that constructive engagement can work but "it depends on what you're trying to accomplish."

It is a non-trivial fact that corporations also make a profit from their engagement with large governments such as China, whatever the companies' human rights agenda. For example, although Cisco does not report sales figures for China, sales were believed to be 2 billion in 2003, or approximately 10 percent of Cisco's 2003 revenues, according to consultancy ChinaNex.

"I think that the shareholders and officers of any corporation ought to be very concerned about the possibility that their technology might be abused and that they should be attentive to that in selling it," says de Bary.

Nonprofit groups recognize the economic realities faced by these companies. Robert Guerra, managing director of Privaterra, an organization that provides technological consulting to NGOs, says "It's a Catch 22 for companies. Their point of view is: there's a contract worth ten billion dollars, if we don't get it, somebody else will."

Hodgett says Amnesty's goal "is not to harm companies conducting business" and that working to protect human rights is also in corporations' best interest: "we would argue it also makes good business sense."

Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, agrees: "I think that businesses who are trying to make money selling tools of repression are playing a short-term game."

Cohn also says that "coming up with basic shared parameters of a tool of repression" will be important in order to understand exactly what is being bought and sold. To date, there is no clear definition on what technologies are considered instruments for human rights violations and which are used for more beneficial purposes, such as development and education.

The provision of technology to countries with questionable human rights practices may not be as black and white as supplying arms to child soldiers or handcuffs to oppressive regimes. "Software has obvious beneficial effects as well," says Worden of Human Rights Watch.

Patrick Ball, director of Human Rights Programs at the nonprofit group Benetech, questions the developmental benefits of a technology such as Microsoft Windows and cites the availability of open source alternatives. He questions why the Chinese government would pay for Windows when there are free alternatives, saying: "One hypothesis that fits the data is that it advances non-development objectives, like security and privacy."

If the technologies are not open source and corporations do not have to disclose the nature of their contracts with countries such as China, "We just don't know what is going on," says Parikh.

"In general transparency is helpful because one of the first steps is to get these companies to be honest about who they're dealing with," Cohn says.

Companies vary in their responses.

Tina Warren, a spokeswoman for Nortel Networks says that Nortel has "a high ethical standard of corporate governance" (their CEO was fired following a recent SEC inquiry into their accounting practices) and publishes a list of countries, such as Syria, where they don't do business because they don't meet Nortel's standards. China apparently meets those requirements because Warrens says Nortel has been working there "for decades."

May Petry, a spokeswoman for Sun Microsystems, provided a statement in response to the Amnesty report: "As a socially responsible company, Sun is a supporter of human rights and is committed to compliance with all applicable local, state, federal and international laws and regulations." The statement goes on to say, "It is ultimately the end-user who is responsible for the proper use and development of technology."

Microsoft, in a written statement, responded to the question of what responsibility they have with regards to how their software is used by saying they "make reasonable efforts to reduce the risk that software may be used by others in ways that could be unethical or illegal."

In response to their January report, Amnesty quotes Cisco as saying, ""[I]f the government of China wants to monitor the Internet, that's their business. We are basically politically neutral."

Faced with this "neutrality," part of the challenge for human rights groups is to raise awareness, both within corporations and in the public. Wong points out that "'routers in China or Saudi Arabia' doesn't quite resonate with people. Who's being hurt? Yes, you can make the argument that freedom of expression is being harmed, but it's not as sexy of an issue."

Another problem is the fact that much of the technology that can be used for surveillance is already in the hands of governments that are inclined to use it. "A lot of the technology is already out there; it's not like Cisco can take back the routers they sold to the Chinese government a few years ago," says Wong.

That human rights abuses result from the technology appears indisputable. For human rights activists, such as Guerra, the crucial question is: ""do these companies have a conscience?"

Cohn believes many do, though at a grassroots level. She says "there are a lot of people in these companies that got involved with the technology revolution because they saw the possibilities for freedom." But now that freedom appears to be at risk, at least for some, "most of the people who work for these corporations are well meaning and they don't feel good about it," says Cohn.

While Benetech's Ball says he does not believe these technology corporations have acted as unethically as companies such as Enron, he says for a company like Cisco, "the alternative is [them] refusing to do something unethical."

Worden says that government intervention is unlikely; Wong believes that tactics like boycotting these companies' products is extreme; and Cohn admits, "I don't know that there is an easy solution, or one solution."

But Ball is not convinced that left alone corporations have sufficient incentive to pressure governments like China to improve their record on human rights: "Why should we trust that freedom should be protected by the market?"