When can companies resort to "compliance with local law" justifications for despicable acts that censor, imprison, or otherwise impede the human rights of foreign citizens, and when should we hold them to higher standards? The latest: Yahoo and China. John Paczkowski reports at Good Morning Silicon Valley that
Reporters Without Borders this week accused the Internet giant of helping Chinese state security officials catch and prosecute a journalist who "leaked state secrets," Beijing's shorthand for criticizing the government. According to the media watchdog group, Yahoo willingly handed over information that enabled officials to link the IP address of the journalist's computer to a state secret he'd forwarded to foreign media via e-mail. In this case, the "state secret" was a message warning Chinese journalists of the dangers of social destabilization and risks resulting from the return of certain dissidents on the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Take a look at the Public Pledge of Self-Regulation and Professional Ethics for China Internet Industry. Is this the baseline for good corporate behavior that companies like Microsoft, Google, Cisco, and now Yahoo should be relying on?
Don't the leaders at these companies feel any sense of obligation? Or is the purchasing power of China's population too big a draw to care about corporate responsibility? Does the fact "that everyone's doing it" make it ok? This argument is obviously not limited to Internet companies. The debate over whether trade with countries will improve human rights conditions is not new. I bet there is some scholarship I have not read that explains why what worked in Africa is not a good model for China, but I've got a bad feeling it has more to do with potential markets than with the likelihood of success of altering human rights norms.
Admittedly, I'm not certain that our pro-trade policy is the right vehicle to spark a human rights revolution in China, certainly not without accompanying recriminations and serious repercussions for human rights violations. But the technologies and services Yahoo and its competitors market are special in that their original design and intended use empowers people to break through communications barriers that governments' erect to prevent dissident voices. They don’t act by reforming controversial policies but effect the process of government by empowering citizens to participate in civic debate. When companies redesign their products and services to instead perform surveillance, they can no longer resort to benign rationales that trade will lead to human rights.
At minimum, there should be certain lines that are never crossed, and assisting the Chinese government in tracking down a citizen trying to give information to the media about events related to the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre should be one of them.