Tech Firms to Defend China Censorship Compliance
Three of the largest internet companies will face questions at a hearing today on Capitol Hill for their compliance with China's censorship policies which caused an uproar in human rights concerns.
WASHINGTON – Three of the largest internet companies will face questions at a hearing today on Capitol Hill for their compliance with China's censorship policies which caused an uproar in human rights concerns.
Yahoo Inc., Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. will make arguments before the House subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations and the subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific to defend their decisions in adhering to Chinese law, which human rights advocates have loudly condemned.
While the three companies plan to use similar arguments, saying that the Internet does good for closed societies even when censored, according to The Washington Post, opponents of the technological companies' decisions plan to testify that they are renouncing their ethical responsibilities.
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Most recently, Google launched a censored version of its search engine in China late January, with phrases such as "human rights" and "religious persecution" filtered out. The search for "Jesus Christ" in the Google.cn version drew up 10 hits, according to a blogs4god entry by Sharon Hughes, a radio talk show host in San Francisco, while the U.S. Google engine got 168,000. Last year, Yahoo had turned over to the Chinese government e-mail information on a journalist, leading to his ten-year prison sentence.
Freedom House, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., released a new report last week detailing the means by which the Chinese government successfully limits freedom of speech. The report - "Speak No Evil: Mass Media Control in Contemporary China" - presented tools of governmental control of the media and the use of "propaganda circulars," which contain specific instructions for the media nationwide.
"What is particularly insidious about this model of control is its adaptability and its recognition of the modern market," said Christopher Walker, Director of Studies at Freedom House, in a released statement. "The old system of control relied primarily on repression and direct censorship. The new Beijing model relies on carrots and sticks and increasingly on self-censorship."
Earlier, global human rights subcommittee Chairman Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), longtime advocate of civil rights in China, said to the San Francisco Chronicle, "It is astounding that Google, whose corporate philosophy is 'don't be evil,' would enable evil by cooperating with China's censorship policies just to make a buck."
"Google has turned its back on freedom of information in favor of profits," Joseph K. Grieboski, president of the Institute on Religion and Public Policy, told the Baptist Press. "With a censored Google website, only propaganda speaking against minority groups will circulate, expurgating any unbiased information from the Chinese public and further forcing underground faiths to smuggle information out of the country."
Cisco Systems will also be pressed at the hearing today. In the meantime, Sen. Smith plans to introduce legislation called the Global Online Freedom Act later this week that would restrict an Internet company's ability to censor basic political or religious terms.
