Idealist Action Politics and the New Media

I found it interesting that China's Internet Filtering System, as reported in the report "Internet Filtering in China," has no central control point - that is, no one way for someone to beat the system.

Unlike the filtering systems in many other countries, China’s filtering regime appears to be carried out at various control points and also to be dynamic, changing along a variety of axes over time.

Like the insurgency of the Viet Congg in Vietnam and like independent-cell terrorism today, there is no one way to cut off the legs of the censorship system.

Do American companies have a responsibility to make sure that their technology is used responsibly? In World War II, IBM provided the punch-card technology that the Nazi's used to track Jews, concentration camp prisoners, and otherundesirables. Now, Microsoft shrug their shoulders at China's abuses of citizen rights.

Companies such as Microsoft and Cisco respond to these charges by suggesting that they simply sell the technology to China; thus, they cannot and should not control how their customers use what they have bought.

Companies such as Microsoft and Cisco respond to these charges by suggesting that they simply sell the technology to China; thus, they cannot and should not control how their customers use what they have bought.

I think if companies receive any kind of government money, particularly subsidies, but potentially also contracts, they should be prohibited from dealing with a country that the US has said has gross violations of human rights.