Cisco Sued By Chinese Political Prisoners Over 'Golden Shield'

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/fighting-chinas-golden-shield-cisco-sued-over-jailing-and-torture-of--dissidents-20110816-1ivkv.html

by dools • 15 years ago

57 31 15 years ago

smh.com.au

Hyena• 15 years ago

How do these suits work? Presumably, Cisco has done nothing wrong in China and therefore isn't liable.

keane2• 15 years ago

ATCA - https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Alien_Tort_St...

ars2• 15 years ago

Flagged for utterly inaccurate title!

They are being sued for creating free-speech blocking, and people tracking, technology.

Jailing and torture may have been done by the Chinese, but it has nothing to do with CISCO - not even indirectly.

Submitter did you even read your own article? Not even the people filing the suit are claiming that.

And I quote:

"They aren't just selling routers to a corrupt regime. They are selling the technology, training and software specifically designed to monitor, censor and suppress the Chinese people," said Mr Ward.

"And they are doing so knowing full well how the CCP treats dissenters."

dools3• 15 years ago

The title of the article is "Fighting China's Golden Shield: Cisco sued over jailing and torture of dissidents".

The HN submit tool wants < 80 characters, I figured that "Cisco sued over jailing and torture of dissidents" is more informative than "Fighting China's Golden Shield".

I've been warned before by pg about "editorialising in the title" so I reused the title of the article verbatim. If you have a problem with that, take it up with pg

ars2• 15 years ago

The title is:

Cisco Sued By Chinese Political Prisoners Over 'Golden Shield'

It seems to have a second title though, but the first one is much more accurate.

jgamman• 15 years ago

i believe the intent is to make the title as informative as possible for the audience - not just to C&P the one given ie, the guidelines state something like "don't post 'top-10 ways to do foo', better to change title to something like "10 ways to do foo (2 of which are smart)" or similar.

<personal>C&P'ing some-else's linkbait is just as unethical and disrespectful to the community as writing your own...

dpatru• 15 years ago

If a person asks you to help them rob a bank, and you provide them with transportation to the bank, you're going to be found guilty as an accessory and you'll be punished the same as the bank robber.[1]

Here Cisco knew why China wanted its help, in fact, in at least one sales presentation Cisco has the bullet point: "Combat 'Falun Gong' evil religion and other hostiles." It's well known since "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich"[2] how Communists treat religious and political dissidents.

So Cisco is being sued for the torture of political prisoners. They provided the technology used to capture these people knowing that they would be tortured after.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessory_(legal_term)#England_...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Day_in_the_Life_of_Ivan_Den...

alanh• 15 years ago

Complicit = guilty

suprgeek• 15 years ago

Kinda paints a rather troubling picture of one of the biggest tech companies in USA.

Also, Cisco intimidation tactics: http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/cisco-resorting-i...

A pound of flesh: how Cisco's "unmitigated gall" derailed one man's life:http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/07/a-pound-of-f...

sixtofour• 15 years ago

Every billion dollar company is capable of this and more. A billion dollars changes people. You can watch it play out year after year over a lifetime.

Joakal• 15 years ago

Warren Buffett too, despite the positive reception to his altruistic political suggestions by others on HN?

Shenglong4• 15 years ago

Every time I read one of these anti-China articles, I secretly chuckle at how I've never once met a Chinese citizen who has felt oppressed, in China. The chuckling goes a step further when someone inevitably responds, "they just don't know they're being oppressed!" Yeah, there are a few cases that are less-than-acceptable by our standards, but what do these people expect, when they try to cause a Cultural Revolution 2.0?

Anyway, back on topic:

I can't imagine Cisco losing this case. They're competing in a market, and not trying to torture people, or enable it. If they win, essentially any company providing supplies to China could be considered aiding in torture. Ridiculous.

dools3• 15 years ago

"I secretly chuckle at how I've never once met a Chinese citizen who has felt oppressed, in China"

When John Howard was re-elected in 2004 I spoke to everyone I could and didn't find one person who voted Liberal (probably because I lived in the Inner West of Sydney).

The point being you can't necessarily take your personal experience as being representative of any sizable population.

jseliger• 15 years ago

If you're interested in the most sophisticated discussion I've seen about the paradoxical nature China's political repression / freedom, take a look at James Fallows' book Postcards from Tomorrow Square: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0307456242?ie=UTF8... . Most of the people with your perspective and most of the people writing "anti-China" articles are half right.

naner• 15 years ago

I've never once met a Chinese citizen who has felt oppressed

Same could be said about NK.

wisty• 15 years ago

That was probably true a decade ago, as North Koreans were effectively brainwashed. That's been changing, due to obsolete Chinese media devices getting smuggled across the border, which North Koreans buy on the blackmarket (along with other illegal stuff like, um, food). They share South Korean TV shows, and start to ask questions.

Chinese generally know what is going on in their country. They are often pretty blunt about not liking the government. But they don't generally feel oppressed, as the government only cracks down on stuff that's an existential threat to them. Try to overthrow them, and you will get oppressed. But otherwise, the government tends to be quite liberal.

OK, the government does hold huge amounts of land, which is an invisible kind of tax. They also have high taxes, on the people who pay tax. And low interest rates, and controls on banks lets them create other invisible taxes. There's also a big difference between the rules, and what is regularly enforced, so people think they are very hands off, when they can be officious pricks at times. And criminals - drug dealers, thieves, etc. are punished very severely. But really, look at a street in China, and a street in the USA. See which one looks "freer".

alexmunroe• 15 years ago

One of my ethics lecturers at University was a Chinese national and she was clearly quite uncomfortable, nervous almost, of discussing human rights and oppression in China.

bluedanieru• 15 years ago

I've met quite a few who don't have much respect for the central government and, while they do generally downplay any 'oppression' as you suggest, it's more that they view it as necessary rather than nonexistent, from what I gather.

mike_h• 15 years ago

I've also noticed generational differences. The baby-boomer-age folks who managed to emigrate after spending their youth in re-education camps tend not to be very quiet in their contempt for the regime. But Gen-X'ers that I've met swing in the other direction. These kids were raised by people who didn't want to see their children beaten and jailed, so they were raised to support the party line.

guelo2• 15 years ago

You must have not talked to Uighurs or Tibetans or Falung Jong members. It's nice being a middle class member of the ethnic majority isn't it? If you're in China you'll be happily oblivious to this list of protests and riots that have occurred in China just this year http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Chinese_protests

Shenglong4• 15 years ago

Are you actually citing Falung Gong - the cult that gets people to burn themselves?

Are you actually citing the Tibetans, who ended up murdering an Olympic torch runner in protest of the Olympics, and have been bombing Chinese buildings for years?

There's a little more here than meets the eye.

TeMPOraL• 15 years ago

Little off-topic, but there's a thing that comes to my mind every time that I see articles and discussions about things going very bad for people somewhere in China, or things going very good for people somewhere else in China:

We're talking about country that has two times more people than the whole Europe combined. In such a big population, pretty much everything will happen. There will be places with riots, and at the same time there will be thriving cities and happy citizens somewhere else. I think that on this scale, it's much more easier to have a selection bias (and our wonderful, always-telling-the-truth traditional media aren't exactly helping).

While I'm not defending Cisco here (I don't like them anyway ;)) and not denying that there is lots of human rights abuse going on in China, I think it's worth bearing in mind that China might not be a everything-is-bad-everywhere-for-everyone country.

codeglomeration• 15 years ago

"I secretly chuckle at how I've never once met a Chinese citizen who has felt oppressed, in China."

A lot of people fail to realize during these "I've been there and asked around" situations is that there is a fear or reprisal, especially in regimes that prosecute dissident views, and especially in those persons you ask don't know/trust you.

How do the people know who you are and whether you have ties to the government to confide in you? They know they and their families can be sent to jail and persecuted just for stating an opinion. What's the benefit of telling you about their beliefs? The downside is quite obvious.

Don't take for granted these "I've asked them and they said it's fine" encounters.

Put yourself in your shoes, living in that regime. Would you confide in someone looking like a traveller/stranger in such a regime?

wynand• 15 years ago

As a counterpoint, I have heard complaints about the Chinese political regime from a number of Chinese students here in the Netherlands.

Yes, I have also run into those who see no problem with (or even approve of) the censorship.

But there are more than enough dissidents.

EDIT: changed "oppression" to "Chinese political regime" as it more truthfully reflects my experience with Chinese students.

Shenglong4• 15 years ago

How many of these people who have complaints, actually have solutions? People are quick to criticize, but slow to offer solutions.

est• 15 years ago

In a previous GFW internal disclosure, most of GFW devices are actually from Huawei and ZTE. GFW is a national defence project from the start, there was a Taiwanese spy intel leak that was successfully intercepted by GFW few years ago, which leads to decline of ISBase and rise of VenusTech. VenusTech is currently de facto operative company of GFW.

People of Fa1un Gong has tried to sue Cisco for years over Golden Shield project, which what they meant to sue is GFW. The funny thing is, GFW project has totally nothing to do with Golden Shield project. They are totally different projects run by different government divisions.

spartyfan10• 15 years ago

While this is definitely pretty crappy of Cisco to do, it also doesn't seem illegal. Working with the Chinese to block peoples' freedom isn't something the US legal system has any jurisdiction over. Cisco was simply turning profit on a very un-American project.

keane2• 15 years ago

That's actually not true. See ATCA.

Cisco Sued By Chinese Political Prisoners Over 'Golden Shield'

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