From CBS News (link):
The Republican chairman of the House subcommittee on human rights calls it a “sickening collaboration.” A leading Democrat says it’s a “disgrace,” and asks how the companies’ chief executives can sleep at night.
They’re talking about American internet companies who are helping the Chinese government suppress free speech in China: Cisco Systems selling networking equipment to the Chinese police to maintain censorship controls; Microsoft, taking down blogs the Chinese government doesn’t like; Google, filtering out web sites the government wants blocked, with words in them like “democracy” and “human rights”; and worst of all, Yahoo turning over data leading to the arrest and imprisonment of Chinese dissidents who thought they were using anonymous Yahoo email accounts.
Should we fault these companies? Of course. We can blame them all we want. But so what? They’re still going to do whatever the Chinese government demands of them because the stakes are too high and the money is too good.
