EFF: US corporations are selling surveillance tools to China

Pinga · Feb 3, 2010

Drawing from published news articles, EFF has compiled a list of seven corporations that are reportedly selling surveillance technology to the Chinese government and related entities.

1. Cisco: Cisco's deep involvement in the building of China's Golden Shield Project has been admitted by the company. Cisco's involvement has even already been raised before Congress, including the fact that Cisco engineers gave a presentation acknowledging the repressive uses for their technology that quoted their Chinese government buyers as saying that Cisco's products could be used to "combat 'Falun Gong' evil religion and other hostiles." The UK's Guardian reports that Cisco provides over 60% of all routers, switches, and network gear to China and estimates that Cisco makes $500 million annually from China.

2. Nortel: Rolling Stone and The Guardian report that Nortel has sold hardware to aid the Golden Shield Project for surveillance and censorship purposes, including working with Tsinghua University to develop speech recognition software to monitor telephone conversations.

3. Oracle: Business Week reports that Oracle has sold software to the Chinese Ministry of Public Security for criminal and ideological investigations. Oracle admits that one-third of its business in China is with the government.

4. Motorola: Business Week also reports that Motorola sold the Chinese authorities handheld devices for street cops to tap into "sophisticated data repositories" on Chinese citizens.

5. EMC: Business Week also reports that EMC sold "sophisticated data repositories" to the Chinese public security authorities. The top EMC executive in Beijing is quoted as saying, "We can expect big revenue from public security agencies" in China.

6. Sybase: Business Week also reports that Sybase sells database programs to the Shanghai police.

7. L-1 Identity Solutions: Rolling Stone reports that this Connecticut-based biometrics company sold software to Chinese companies that aids government officials in identifying individuals for purposes of criminal investigations.
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http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/selling-china-surveillance

Dogbiscuit · Feb 4, 2010

The question, then, for Western companies, as much as for Western governments, is to decide whose side they are on: the Chinese officials who like to define their culture in a paternalistic, authoritarian way, or the large number of Chinese who have their own ideas about freedom. Google has made its choice. It strikes me as the right choice, for not only will it encourage a healthy debate on freedom of information inside China, but it could serve as a model of behavior for companies operating in authoritarian countries. Even for enterprises aimed at maximizing profits, it might sometimes pay to burnish their image by being on the side of the angels.

- Ian Buruma
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Source

Bensec · Feb 4, 2010

+8. a second-level CA from EnTrust.net and CNNIC trusted as root

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