Cisco’s Attempt to Dodge Responsibility for Facilitating Human Rights Abuses

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/ciscos-latest-attempt-dodge-responsibility-facilitating-human-rights-abuses-export

by DiabloD3 • 10 years ago

178 120 10 years ago

eff.org

solotronics• 10 years ago

Has anyone heard of similar abuses by Juniper Networks?

abpavel7• 10 years ago

I'd focus more towards the merchant silicon of Marvell/Broadcom/Fulcrum

walrus013• 10 years ago

if somebody wants to sue a layer 2 ethernet fabric chip maker they're insane. any asshole can use a switch to do any sort of terrible thing with their nation's internet infrastructure.

it's like suing intel because they made the 1GbE NIC in a server seized for kiddie porn.

cloudjacker6• 10 years ago

Cisco’s attempt to try to leverage the Wassenaar discussions into legal immunity for itself is unfounded and should fail.

More like attempts to get a civil penalty in the United States for business in another country should fail

toomuchtodo• 10 years ago

As a US citizen, you can be held responsible for violating certain US laws outside the United States. Why would this be different?

ProAm• 10 years ago

Really depends on who your employer is.

PhasmaFelis2• 10 years ago

I'm really tired of "business" being used as an excuse for oppression and torture.

rayiner• 10 years ago

The US is entitled to use its leverage to effect cultural change abroad. One way we do that is combat foreign corruption by holding American companies accountable when they engage in fraud abroad. We also hold Americans who participate in sex with minors in foreign countries accountable. This is in the same vein.

burkaman4• 10 years ago

Why not? Seems like there is lots of precedent for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Tort_Statute

Also, do you think it matters that one of the plaintiffs is a US citizen?

cloudjacker6• 10 years ago

Yes.

devin_lane2• 10 years ago

Indeed. This is just a business selling a product someone wanted. Cisco is a multinational company; it makes no more sense to hold them to US law for products sold in China then to hold a Chinese company to US law for products sold in China.

tptacek19• 10 years ago

You can say the exact same thing about bribing overseas officials, and yet we have the FCPA.

burkaman4• 10 years ago

Why doesn't it make sense? Cisco is an American multinational company. If you don't want to abide by American laws, don't base your company in America. I don't think laws should apply to actions abroad by default, but we have laws specifically written for these scenarios.

US citizens can be prosecuted for some serious crimes committed abroad. It doesn't make sense to treat companies differently.

Zigurd6• 10 years ago

We have laws against bribing foreigners, no matter if that can be made to look legal-ish in a foreign country because that practice can lead to corruption of a US company.

Unfortunately, the government is a hypocrite in this case, by treating its own mass surveillance as legal.

mtgx2• 10 years ago

Those people who helped increase the quarterly earnings at the time by selling this tech to the Chinese government must've felt pretty proud of themselves.

exolymph2• 10 years ago

It's disturbing that I didn't even know Cisco was involved until now.

maxerickson• 10 years ago

What's your intended meaning?

exolymph2• 10 years ago

A combination of feeling guilty that I haven't been paying more attention to unethical things that US companies do abroad and being disappointed that this wasn't bigger news.

ultramancool6• 10 years ago

Yeah guys, sue the firewall vendor for your unencrypted internet traffic getting you fucked.

Are we supposed to forbid companies from complying with customer requests, even if they're unaware or just don't really care how those will be ultimately used? I know I'd implement similar things if it were requested of me.

I doubt this will be a popular opinion on HN, but I don't think Cisco was in the wrong here. Once traffic crosses your network boundary, it's fair game.

teraflop• 10 years ago

Are we supposed to forbid companies from complying with customer requests, even if they're unaware or just don't really care how those will be ultimately used?

"Unaware" is a red herring because Cisco knew exactly what they were doing. From the court filing:

174. In October 2002 and September of 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2010, Cisco shareholder resolutions identified concerns regarding potential human rights abuses arising from Cisco network technology solutions provided to foreign countries, including and especially China, and called for investigation into Defendant Cisco’s complicity in these abuses. These resolutions were presented to the Cisco Board of Directors, including Defendant Chambers, and in each instance, the Board of Directors issued a statement recommending that shareholders reject the proposal. Well after this point, Defendant Cisco continued to help the Party and Public Security officers to suppress Falun Gong through use of the Golden Shield.

175. Cisco’s Golden Shield files include several court and prosecutorial reports identifying the douzheng of Falun Gong and other “hostile elements” as one of the five tasks of the Strike Hard campaign created to suppress Falun Gong with the Chinese for the term “element” designating targets of persecutory campaigns in the PRC.

176. Cisco’s marketing materials in China repeatedly boasted that Cisco’s technology solutions could guard against Falun Gong, block and track Falun Gong, monitor and profile Falun Gong, and in other ways persecute Falun Gong.

If someone "just doesn't really care" about actively helping a foreign government to capture its political enemies and torture them to death, I have no problem making a moral judgment about them.

ultramancool6• 10 years ago

Cisco’s marketing materials in China repeatedly boasted that Cisco’s technology solutions could guard against Falun Gong, block and track Falun Gong, monitor and profile Falun Gong, and in other ways persecute Falun Gong.

Note that none of the things you list include torture. You've shown nothing more than a tangential possibility of awareness. Without showing their direct knowledge of the torture and a direct link to requests from Cisco, you've proven nothing.

In fact, if anything you've shown they really went the extra mile to look into it. That's way more work than I would have done at least . the reality is that looking into something like this makes it more likely you'll get screwed over if it comes up legally later.

What do you think about manufacturers of end to end encryption tech? Certainly there's evidence that it can be used for bad things too. I worry that cases like this, if successful, could be used against Signal or similar next.

philfrasty• 10 years ago

"...firewall vendor..." you clearly did not read the whole thing.

PhasmaFelis2• 10 years ago

What is it with all the "yes of course you should help torture people if it's good for your business" in this thread? Hacker News is usually pretty laissez-faire, but this isn't the normal tone here.

jonathankoren7• 10 years ago

It's an election year. That always brings out the most extreme positions. Especially since shocking extreme positions seems to be par for the course this cycle.

jessaustin2• 10 years ago

Hacker News is usually pretty laissez-faire, but this isn't the normal tone here.

I think one can distinguish between laissez-faire that amounts to "leave human beings to live as they will" and another concept that is "everything is permitted to the powerful". Actually IMHO it is a corruption to consider the latter to even be related to laissez-faire. However, many people conflate the two propositions, and would like the rest of us to conflate them as well.

squidlogic• 10 years ago

Wow, I knew Cisco helped with the GFW, but didn't know they made a module specifically designed to find and capture Falun Gong participants[0].

Thats ... pretty messed up.

[0]https://www.eff.org/files/2016/01/12/113_second_amended_comp...

sneak4• 10 years ago

I think the term is "criminal".

tptacek19• 10 years ago

It's not criminal. It could and should be outlawed, but hasn't been.

rm_-rf_slash• 10 years ago

So it's wrong to abuse, humiliate, and torture someone in the United States but if you do it elsewhere it's ok?

Oh wait...

cloudjacker6• 10 years ago

this case is about selling an internet filter.

It would not be wrong, as in illegal or subject to any civil penalty, if Cisco sold that internet filter to the United States' agencies.

so that highlights the delicious irony in your retort

jonathankoren7• 10 years ago

First, they built special hardware to target a specific group that is internationally known to be a frequent target of oppression. So that's going beyond what they normally provide.

Second, if you're selling something to a known person, and you have a good reason to know what they're going to do with it. And let's be clear, Cisco totally knew what they were going to be used for in this case. Then you're an accessory.

dang• 10 years ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11529845 and marked it off-topic.

swombat2• 10 years ago

If they're doing this for China, what do you figure they've been doing for the US government?

tptacek19• 10 years ago

You mean apart from the fact that the US Government doesn't operate a "Great Firewall of the United States"?

sitkack• 10 years ago

Doesn't it? It is just transparent and the traffic shaping is self enforced.

bcook4• 10 years ago

No, we only have the NSA that can archive days (weeks?) worth of the United States internet traffic, seamlessly MITM 0days, or tons of other frightening things...

I guess a transparent firewall is not a firewall?

jonathankoren7• 10 years ago

No, but what if there is some sort of NSA backdoor? I have no evidence of one, but if they're willing to build special hardware for another country's secret police, why not?

swombat2• 10 years ago

Walls are so passé. Panopticons have been the modern way to keep people in check since sometime back in the 18th/19th Century in Europe. After all, when you have nothing to hide, you are nothing to fear...

alanwatts5• 10 years ago

Of course, there are many much more subtle and effective ways to stifle free speech and human rights than a big firewall which can easily be circumvented with a VPN. MITM attacks, botnet troll armies, astroturfing, etc. etc. Good luck finding proof of that though.

vacri2• 10 years ago

You mean apart from the fact that the US Government doesn't operate a "Great Firewall of the United States"?

So, basically you're saying that even though Cisco has shown a willingess to work with a corrupt government in China, that willingness to work with corruption does not translate to the US, simply because the US doesn't run a 'great firewall'?

mirimir• 10 years ago

The NSA would rather collect data ;)

But there is some blocking. It's mostly been DNS poisoning, against "piracy" and such. I don't recall specifics, but at times there have been sites that were reachable with IP addresses, but not using public DNS servers. There have been, for example, Firefox plug-ins with hard-coded lookups.

mtgx2• 10 years ago

Cisco created the "lawful intercept" protocol for routers, for starters...which of course can now be used by hackers as well.

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3924

https://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-dc-10/Cross_Tom/Bl...

signa11• 10 years ago

Cisco created the "lawful intercept" protocol...

That's not correct, csco _implemented_ lawful-intercept, the protocol is an integral part of 3gpp spec I.e. All companies playing in the epc/telecom market would most likely support this e.g Ericsson, Nokia (nsn), Alcatel-lucent etc etc

abpavel7• 10 years ago

Well boo hoo, Google is trafficking in human information, Facebook is trafficking in human information, FourSquare remnants are trafficking in human information, all realizing Orwell's sweaty nightmares. But a company that is affecting someone overseas, and not it's own citizens, is in the wrong?

allisthemoist• 10 years ago

Find me a specific incident perpetrated by GOOG/FB that has directly facilitated human rights abuses. This is not an accusation of a vague misuse of information. This is a direct action by the company that they knew would facilitate torture, etc.

abpavel7• 10 years ago

That's their business model - people are their product. That's how they make money. That's the only way they make money. They sell people to advertisers. What's not wrong with that?

krapp• 10 years ago

Google has an intimate relationship with the State Department and the Department of Defense. At one point they created a "tool" to track defections from Syria[0][1], and encourage civil war, meaning they are at least in part responsible for the violence there.

They also censored Benghazi related video on Youtube at the request of the State Department, which, while not really an "abuse of human rights," and only a temporary block, still amounts to propaganda and censorship.

[0]https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/12166#efmAMoAbj

[1]http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/22/leaked-clinton-emai...

abpavel7• 10 years ago

Don't forget that China has a "50-cent army": http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/propaganda-03122014184... And the "Citizen Score": https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/chinas-nightmarish-cit...

Which is aking of FB/GOOG collecting metadata of your activities and having "paid likes", but being used in a more specific and direct way.

abpavel7• 10 years ago

Cisco provides Internet Protocol services, not what is being done with them. If Electricity from France is exported through Russia to China, can they be held responsible too? And what about the oxygen produced by the US flowers? Are US farmers responsible for providing oxygen supplying the evil Communist regime with oxygen? That electricity was as crucial to conducting the dreadful things just like IP, and just like oxygen. This logic has no bounds.

ng12• 10 years ago

Did you even read the article? Cisco (allegedly) built custom software to persecute a religion.

abpavel7• 10 years ago

Yes, the article, yes, but I've also been a part of too many projects like this, when a technological marvel is being developed for a number of years, creating new capabilities, technology innovations, and driving efficiencies. Thousands of American man-hours were spent in creating this marvel, only for someone to summarily judge on a whim of what was that effort was about. It wasn't about what EFF said. That just simply wasn't in the RFP/RFC/RFWhatever.

Cisco’s Attempt to Dodge Responsibility for Facilitating Human Rights Abuses

Related Stories