Court Lets Cisco Systems Off the Hook for Helping China Detain, Torture Religious Minorities. Chinese citizens who suffered forced detention, torture, and a panoply of brutal human rights abuses at the hands of the Chinese government have been engaged in a high profile court case against Silicon Valley mainstay Cisco Systems for many years.
Those Chinese citizens suffered yet another indignity in a California court a couple of weeks ago: a district judge dismissed the case against Cisco without even giving them the chance to gather evidence on the key point where the court found them wanting. Are Google and Facebook Just Pretending They Want Limits on NSA Surveillance? Photo via Flickr user Ludovic Toinel Revelations about the National Security Agency's most controversial surveillance program, which centers on the bulk collection of hundreds of billions of records of Americans' phone conversations, were quickly greeted with calls for reform by major internet powerhouses like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo last year.
But all four companies, along with dozens of other major tech firms, are actively opposing an initiative to prevent NSA spying known as the Fourth Amendment Protection Act, leaning on secretive industry lobbying groups while they profess outrage in official statements. Don’t Listen to Google and Facebook: The Public-Private Surveillance Partnership Is Still Going Strong - Bruce Schneier. And real corporate security is still impossible.
A surveillance camera outside Google's China headquarters in 2010 (Jason Lee / Reuters) If you’ve been reading the news recently, you might think that corporate America is doing its best to thwart NSA surveillance. Google just announced that it is encrypting Gmail when you access it from your computer or phone, and between data centers. Last week, Mark Zuckerberg personally called President Obama to complain about the NSA using Facebook as a means to hack computers, and Facebook's Chief Security Officer explained to reporters that the attack technique has not worked since last summer.
Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, and others are now regularly publishing "transparency reports," listing approximately how many government data requests the companies have received and complied with. Tyrants and Technology: How Western Mercantilism Leads to Censorship and Disappearances. Cisco’s cloud vision: Mandatory, monetized, and killed at their discretion. Last week, a number of Cisco customers began reporting problems with three specific Linksys-branded routers.
Trade Fair... For Trojans. Most of the technology used in such intrusions are not developed by the governments themselves.
They are made by private companies which are specializing in providing exploits, infection proxies and backdoors to governments. For more background, see our blog posts: Report: Cisco Joins China In Developing Massive Surveillance Network : The Two-Way. Enlarge Guang Niu / Getty Images Chinese laborers adjust a surveillance camera at Tiananmen Square in 2007 in Beijing, China. Guang Niu / Getty Images In a piece today, the reports that Cisco Systems Inc. will help China build a massive surveillance network in the city of Chongqing.
Cisco Sued By Chinese Political Prisoners Over 'Golden Shield' The three Chinese dissidents accusing Cisco of aiding and abetting their imprisonment and torture.
Cisco, one of the world's largest technology companies, is being sued by Chinese political prisoners for allegedly providing the technology and expertise used by the Chinese Communist Party to monitor, censor and suppress the Chinese people. Daniel Ward, of US law firm Ward & Ward, has brought the case on behalf of Du Daobin, Zhou Yuanzhi, Liu Xianbin and 10 unnamed others.
He compared Cisco's actions to "IBM's behaviour in Nazi Germany". They aren't just selling routers to a corrupt regime. Group Says It Has New Evidence of Cisco’s Misdeeds in China. Insight: Cisco suits on China rights abuses to test legal reach. All the Companies Supporting SOPA, the Awful Internet Censorship Law—and How to Contact Them.
Carrier IQ Admits Holding ‘Treasure Trove’ of Consumer Data, But No Keystrokes. MOUNTAIN VIEW, California — An embattled phone-monitoring software maker said Friday that its wares, secretly installed on some 150 million phones, have the capacity to log web usage, and to chronicle where and when and to what numbers calls and text messages were sent and received.
Amazon's treatment of its warehouse workers. Sacom. Apple’s iPad and the Human Costs for Workers in China. Ored to Death - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - 05/12. Coca Cola Parches Agricultural Lands in India - Global Policy Forum - Globalization. CorpWatch IndiaMay 28, 2002 On 22 April, 2002, more than 2,000 irate protestors, consisting mostly of indigenous people and dalits (oppressed castes), gathered at the gates of the Hindustan Coca Cola factory in Plachimada, Palghat district, Kerala.
Residents from the villages surrounding Coke's greenfield soft-drink bottling factory here say that Coke's indiscriminate mining of groundwater has dried up many wells, and contaminated the remainder. At least 50 villagers have maintained a picket outside the factory gate every day since the strike began. According to local sources, the villagers are angry enough to destroy the factory failing government action to shut down the water-intensive unit. Till date, the Government has taken no action to check groundwater depletion by Coke in the region. Alexander Cockburn: How Coke Gave Back to Plachimada. America is currently plagued by people making bad personal choices.
Press Room- India Resource Center- Second Massive Protest Against Coca-Cola in India in New Year. Monsanto Shifts ALL Liability to Farmers. By Cassandra AndersonFebruary 21, 2011.
Dangers In The Dust: Inside the Global Asbestos Trade. Exposed: Apple’s Terrible Sin in China (TCTV) - techcrunch.com. Editor’s Note: In March 2012, the national radio show “This American Life”, which ran a long excerpt from Mike Daisey’s play “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs”, retracted its story saying it contains significant fabrications. Daisey responded saying the play “uses a combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license to tell its story.” Why Journalists Aren’t Reporting the Real Story about Apple and Foxconn (TCTV) - techcrunch.com. Editor’s Note: In March 2012, the national radio show “This American Life”, which ran a long excerpt from Mike Daisey’s play “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs”, retracted its story saying it contains significant fabrications.
Daisey responded saying the play “uses a combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license to tell its story.” What Everyone Is Too Polite to Say About Steve Jobs. [www.youtube.com] Just a note on this subject. Jobs obsessed on US manufacturing when the Macintosh and later the NeXT Computers were first announced. He did everything the company could do to make state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities in the US. However the competition from the rest of the industry and demand for low-cost devices pushed the company to China where Apple Computer could compete with the rest of the industry. As for Foxconn, they do not exclusively produce for Apple Computer, those facilities produce products for the following companies: Acer, Amazon(Kindle), Asus, Intel, Cisco, HP, Dell, Nintendo, Nokia, Microsoft, MSI, Motorola(Google), Sony Ericsson and Vizo.
Apple Computer increased pressure on their production line partners to improve their conditions and systematically weeded out the ones that failed to improve. Eve Ensler Calls for Rape-Free Cell Phones (Video) Wiwa v. Shell.