
Cisco Must Be Held Accountable for Aiding China’s Human Rights Abuses - DiabloD3
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-court-cisco-must-be-held-accountable-aiding-chinas-human-rights-abuses
======
tim333
It seems clear Cisco knew their systems were going to be used against Falun
Gong. Leaked Cisco presentation:

"Cisco Confidential 57 © 2002, Cisco Systems

The Golden Shield Project:

Public Network Information Security Monitor System

• Stop the network-related crimes

• Guarantee the security and services of public network

• Combat “Falun Gong” evil religion and other hostiles

[Note: Statement of Government goals from speech government offical Li
Runsen]"

Then again it's going to be hard to show legally they were doing much more
than helping China enforce it's laws. Still at least the embarrassment factor
may put companies off from getting involved in this stuff.

I hope the EFF case makes them release documents related to it.

~~~
united893
Falun Gong is an evil litigious cult created in 1992 as a way to raise money
for the founders and cult leaders.

They're unscrupulous, including promising terminally ill cancer patients the
possibility of healing if they just redirect their remaining wealth toward the
cult.

They're the Chinese equivalent to Scientology, but even worse. Their teachings
are racing, homophobic, sexist and misogynistic. They preached that UFOs had
arrived on earth; aliens had taken over human bodies, and were trying to
annihilate humanity through the control of TV and radio.

See: [http://www.cultnews.com/2010/10/falun-gong-is-
good/](http://www.cultnews.com/2010/10/falun-gong-is-good/)

~~~
tim333
Wikipedia doesn't make them sound so bad - "three central tenets of the belief
are Truthfulness (真, Zhēn), Compassion (善, Shàn), and Forbearance"

The troubles seem to stem from "April 1999, when over 10,000 Falun Gong
practitioners gathered peacefully near the central government compound in
Beijing to request legal recognition and freedom from state interference."

I guess peaceful demonstrations against the state are going to get you
tiananmen squared over there.

~~~
im2w1l
I would not rely on wikipedia for politically controversial information.

~~~
celticninja
And I would not rely on the Chinese state to be a neutral source of
information on anything at all.

------
delinka
Governments of the world have to care about human rights abuses before someone
with teeth can prosecute. I sincerely doubt anyone in power (elected,
appointed, hired) in any government cares at all about random humans at
distance. Especially if caring would affect their own quality of life.

~~~
frozenport
Its how you sell it, we could claim that it Cisco Systems is selling
technology to a hostile government with the aim of subverting American
hegemony. Which FYI, is exactly what it did.

~~~
iofj
You forget they probably put in a few NSA chips and "bugs" before shipping it.
So ...

------
mtgx
Glad this is finally coming to light. Every time I would mention it here that
Cisco has built backdoors in its routers specifically to aid the Chinese
government and later other governments as well, I would get downvoted. Cisco
standardized the "lawful intercept" protocol for routers at the IETF, people!
What did you think that meant?!

The US government (hopefully after it elects a saner president) and other
supposedly democratic countries as well, need to come together and 1) make it
clear that you can't _sell_ tools which you _know_ are being used for mass
censorship and mass surveillance that then leads to torture or assassinations
and whatnot (I know, this definition will need to be cleaned up a bit), and 2)
punish the companies that still disobey those rules severely. It's time for
the democratic countries to act the way they say they are.

~~~
SixSigma
Obama is insane now ?

~~~
Qwertious
Well to be fair, the NSA is still doing its thing. This makes it hard to
criticise China for doing similar things.

~~~
SixSigma
That's not the same as "insane" though is it.

------
x5n1
Okay hold the US government for aiding in Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses.

I don't know whether to cheer for things like this, though I do support works
for improving human rights. For the most part they seem to be drops in the
ocean of human rights abuse. And I don't know if it's doing anything to stop
those abuses or just a control mechanism to make us feel like we are
accomplishing something... while the biggest abusers and their supporters
continue scot-free.

~~~
CurtMonash
Human rights theater is better than no attention paid to human rights at all.

In particular the Helsinki Accords, which seemed empty when signed, seemed to
wind up being influential a decade or so later. I've been sympathetic to human
rights theater ever since.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki_Accords](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki_Accords)

------
mc32
It's not the people who provide goods who should be prosecuted but the people
who carry out the actual bad who must be held to account. On the other hand,
China [or any country with baddies, perh including our own] is a sovereign
government and beside some economic pressure I don't know there is much more
we should be able to do. Unless Cisco violated some commercial embargo or
egregiously violated export law, etc.

~~~
kbart
That's how evil things happen. This phenomena is called diffusion of
responsibility[0] and lead to some of the most evil actions in human history.

0\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility)

~~~
mc32
Do you think the eff should make moral judgments on its donors and only accept
donations from morally acceptable people? Maybe it should be their
responsibility to ensure their income only comes from people with whom they
are morally compatible. And alternatively donors ensure that principals and
associates of the eff are also moral.

~~~
kbart
Sorry, I don't see how that's relevant. EFF does no evil (as far as I'm
concerned), but let's hypothetically say, if one day we found out that EFF
helps some foreign government to repress their people, sure everyone
supporting EFF now should feel morally obligated to stop their funding.

~~~
mc32
Your interpretation is off. I'm asking, what if some of their donations come
from people or governments who are misogynists, racists, tax cheats, etc.
Should the eff figure out the "dirtiness" of the moneys they receive as the
eff is asking Cisco to eval the morality of one of the sources of their
income.

~~~
RobertoG
This is not about Cisco receiving money but about Cisco helping to do 'bad
things'.

~~~
mc32
Is there material difference between actively helping and passively helping?
If the Cisco product is but one in the chain which enables them to carry out
morally disagreeable deeds, why choose Cisco out of the bunch? Do we go after
OSS devs, MS, Apple, etc? All these products are on the chain of enablement.

------
guelo
OK EFF, you convinced me, I'll donate.

------
faddat
I'm strongly in support of holding cisco accountable for this in any way,
shape or form possible.

....but if we do that, where will we get routers with backdoors for us.gov
from?

------
nefitty
who the fuck are you EFF, why are you stirring up so much trouble, and who
pays you?

~~~
georgeek
I donate to them, as do many people who believe that they are doing good work
overall.

~~~
icebraining
Reference:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10861391](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10861391)

------
pjmlp
It is in cases like this that I remember all those stupid code of conduct
trainings that companies like Cisco make their employees go through.

------
schuke
Bernard Williams in his criticism of Utilitarianism imagined a scenario where
a scientist is torn between feeding his family by helping develop an evil
weapon, and refusing the offer knowing full well that the place will be filled
by someone else anyway.

Even if Cisco walked away from such deals, there would Chinese companies
willing to fill their place. The Party developed hydrogen bombs and spaceships
to stay in power. There seems to be little reason why they wouldn't do this
themselves, if Cisco didn't play along.

Actually, I would rather a company like Cisco that's partially under US
jurisdiction and media scrutiny to do all the nasty work for the Party than an
anonymous Chinese company doing the same thing.

------
Nutmog
While I do think human rights are a good idea, the focus seems to be carefully
selected to as to make "bad" countries look bad and western countries look
good. For the US, it's OK to kill people as long as you do it a bit randomly
in a war instead of being too targeted, or as long as you do it to foreigners
not your own citizens and you try to kill them quickly instead of using
deliberate torture. If you do use torture, it should be psychological
(solitary confinement) rather than physical. It's also OK to kill people by
leaving them in an unsafe environment surrounded by killers (poor
neighborhoods) without providing enough security or enough income to buy their
way out. It's also OK to kill them in the name of economic progress by
allowing cars to drive at speeds which regularly cause death. Somehow we
accept these things as tolerable or even necessary but we don't realize that
classic "bad country tortures dissidents" human rights abuses are equally
necessary - they do the same thing wars do - secure the positions of
governments against people who want to take them over. Even the name
"dissident" is misleading - If we called Falun Gong members "traitors", that
might make them sound like bad people and engender less public sympathy.

Cartoon about our patriotic biases:
[http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/03/glorious-leader-
wicke...](http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/03/glorious-leader-wicked-
despot.html)

That said, it doesn't stop human rights abuses being wrong too.

~~~
mikerichards
_It 's also OK to kill them in the name of economic progress by allowing cars
to drive at speeds which regularly cause death._

That's a very bizarre statement, but very telling of why you would defend
authoritarian regimes.

~~~
DiabloD3
It also completely ignores the fact that local and state governments in the US
regularly try to reduce speed limits which often leads to higher accident and
fatality rates.

~~~
maffydub
I'm not disputing your comment, but can you provide a citation for this? I did
a quick google but the only reference I could find was a report (editorial?)
in the Wall Street Journal called "Highways are safe at any speed".

~~~
DiabloD3
Not off hand, but there's been articles that hit the front page of HN about
it.

------
EGreg
I can't believe this is happening today. I know that ideologies use humans to
build organizations and do battle with each other, but I thought we were past
the Stalinist purges and atheist totalitarianism. This makes anything the US
does to Muslims pale in comparison. How does China grant freedom of religion
to five religions only?

------
k_sze
I'm Chinese and I have no idea what "douzhung" means. (It doesn't even seem to
be valid pinyin.) Can somebody enlighten me and tell what the Chinese
characters are?

------
ommunist
Don't blame the sword, blame the holder.

~~~
hyperdunc
Swords cannot think. Cisco executives can.

~~~
chris_wot
That point could be argued.

------
StLCylone
So should you since that device you are reading this on was most likely
sourced there. Likely sourced by underpaid workers in virtual enslavement to
Foxconn or some other component manufacturer. Not to mention living in a toxic
environment so we can all have our electronic toys.

~~~
Nutmog
Do you have a reference for "virtual enslavement" to Foxconn? Last I heard,
people were lining up to get jobs there and with enough working hours, the pay
was higher than what a university graduate makes. If you call paying people so
much they don't want to leave "enslavement" then perhaps that's right, but it
also means it's not really bad.

~~~
StLCylone
[http://www.cnet.com/news/riots-suicides-and-other-issues-
in-...](http://www.cnet.com/news/riots-suicides-and-other-issues-in-foxconns-
iphone-factories/)

~~~
argonaut
Foxconn employs nearly a million people. You are going to get quite a few
suicides no matter what you do. Their suicide rate is below the China
population average.

~~~
icebraining
Not just the Chinese average: during its worst year (2010), the rate was lower
than in all 50 US states.

