While search giants Google, Yahoo! and others have come under fire for helping Chinese authorities with their censorship regimes, other U.S. tech suppliers are apparently aiding Chinese police by supplying them with the latest in information technology…which can be used to trap criminals or political dissidents. Business Week has this special report on how Cisco, Motorola, Oracle and other U.S. tech leaders are actively selling technology to Chinese police in a way that potentially violates American export controls put into place after the Tiananman Square massacres in 1989.
Those restrictions bar U.S. companies from exporting “any crime control or detection instruments or equipment” to China. And yet, American IT and technology companies are, apparently with the Commerce Department’s blessing, not only selling these instruments and equipment to China but actively promoting their use for the repression of political unrest.
Some American companies have gone out of their way to appeal to the Chinese government’s pronounced concern about avoiding unrest. In Chinese-language brochures distributed at a police-technology trade show in Shanghai in 2002, Cisco repeatedly referred to its gear with such phrases as “strengthening police control” and “increasing social stability.” Cisco, based in San Jose, Calif., says there’s nothing unusual about its marketing in China. “We sell to police organizations in many countries,” says Rick Justice, senior vice-president for worldwide operations. “We do business [in China] the way we do business anywhere.”
The Commerce Department defends itself by saying that the technology is used to catch “criminals” (but oddly enough, Commerce bars the shipment of such useless items as handcuffs to China.) Representative Tom Lantos (D-CA), who helped draft the law that bars the sale of crime control or detection equipment to China, is appalled.
But Lantos, the California congressman, says the sanctions have been undermined. “The Commerce Dept.’s decision to interpret the law narrowly is absolutely unconscionable,” he argues. “By allowing American companies to sell high-tech computer and communications devices to the Chinese police, our nation is directly aiding in the suppression of political dissent in China.”
Cynthia Brumfield at 8:58 AM|Comments(0)
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