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I actually applaud Poulson for leaving Google in protest of Google's Chinese business practices. Having mentioned that, I think I have to part ways with him wh

I actually applaud Poulson for leaving Google in protest of Google's Chinese business practices. Having mentioned that, I think I have to part ways with him when he implies that the correct way to "fix" this is to have the government come in and make these sorts of business decisions for the company. I don't believe in the government obliging businesses to do things. Especially when it looks like this whole thing is Google specific. That's unfair to Google. What about all the other American companies doing business in China? Do they get to keep doing business because they are politically popular companies but Google is not? Or would this be a government mandate of a broad based American pull out? Or just forcing Google to let its employees have a say in how it's run? (But again, you gonna force every company? Or just Google?) Etc etc etc. Once government gets involved and starts playing favorites, everything gets messed up.

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gunnihinn 8y ago
> Once government gets involved and starts playing favorites, everything gets messed up. OK. Is it more or less messed up than that a private corporation can and is willing to perform surveillance on foreign citizens on behalf of those citizens' government that would be unacceptable anywhere else?
- tensor 8y ago
  A company complying with the laws of the country it does business in seems fairly uncontroversial to me, even if you may not agree with those laws. Do you want your companies to be extensions of US foreign policy?
  - bogomipz 8y ago
    >"Do you want your companies to be extensions of US foreign policy?" No but it would be nice if they at least upheld the same values of the country that they themselves are a product of. Or are values just things you can draw arbitrary borders around when it's convenient?
    - beaner 8y ago
      Not many disagree with that. The question is whether it should be enforced by politics or if people/companies can be allowed to make the decisions themselves.
      - PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
        It depends upon what the decisions made are. At a certain point it will reach the level that voters will want it to be controlled by politics, and likely the control will be tighter than if they hadn't crossed whatever line motivated voters to push for control. The US already enforced some laws on its citizens as they travel regardless if the behavior is legal overseas. These tend to be done to actions that are deemed the worst of the worst. Minor crimes are not enforced globally. At what point is supporting and working with China going to cross that line, given many of their current actions against unpopular groups?
    - TheCraiggers 8y ago
      What are laws besides a culture's values written down in the form of rules? I'm only being mildly pedantic here. Obviously, there are some silly laws that don't work here; I'm talking about the large obvious ones that everyone knows about.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - bogomipz 8y ago
        >"What are laws besides a culture's values written down in the form of rules?" Do you really believe that's true when a country has had only a single political party since 1949?
    - ska 8y ago
      it would be nice if they at least upheld the same values of the country that they themselves are a product of. One could say the same of the government :)
  - awakeasleep 8y ago
    You're looking at the question from a really nihilistic-libertarian perspective. IBM was following the law when it sold the nazis tools for tracking 'undesirable' people. Google's search engine will be used to track the Uyghur, and the Uyghurs are being sent to reeducation camps at this very moment. We're talking about an apples to apples comparison here. It's controversial _as hell_ to sell tools used to do genocide! In a democracy the government should be able to restrain businesses that perform abhorrent practices.
    - beaner 8y ago
      If that's true, it says to me that governments should put a blanket block on doing certain types of business with that specific country. Such a block should apply to all companies equally. It doesn't require them to be more involved in decisions from within the companies.
      - toss1 8y ago
        Absolutely, it should be written to block all companies equally. But in must be written
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - akiselev 8y ago
        Why though? We draw lines about what is legally acceptable or not all the time, often with little more guidance than subjective morality filtered through elected representation. There is a vast difference between Hugo Boss making Nazi uniforms and IBM selling them high tech machines designed to increase the efficiency of their extermination.
        beaner 8y ago
        I'm not sure what you mean. I agree that there is a difference. So there should be a law blocking the 2nd type of activity. The lack of a law is implicit moral approval of the American people.
  - andrepd 8y ago
    Ah right, "following the laws", because discussions of morality can be reduced to whether it "follows the law" or not? No, that's absurd. Google is objectively abetting an authoritarian regime and providing it with extremely useful tools to maintain and strengthen totalitarian control over 1.4 billion people, and this is wrong.
    - Aunche 8y ago
      Objectively, Google is extending its services to a billion people while maintaining the status quo of censorship. Stopping Google from expanding to China is basically another form of censorship, which is wrong.
      - 2bitmachine 8y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence
      - kodablah 8y ago
        These are also common arguments against country-level sanctions as well. People have differing opinions on the subject, but that something helps both the people and the regime doesn't always mean taking the good with the bad is worth it. I agree that both Google cooperating w/ China is wrong and that government interference to prevent it is wrong.
      - jonathankoren 8y ago
        It’s not obviously wrong, nor is it objectively the same product since the censorship and surveillance makes it very different. It makes it a tool of control. Governments routinely regulate exports as matter of policy. Lockheed would very much like to sell Taiwan (or really anyone and everyone) F-35s, but as a matter of government policy, it’s not allowed to, as it runs counter to the policies of the American government. This maybe censorship in a broad sense, but it certainly doesn’t make it prima facie wrong.
      - cryoshon 8y ago
        taking initiative to participate in maintaining a malicious status quo is being malicious. google isn't being coerced here, they're volunteering to help with oppression. put differently: what do you call an accountant who sings up to perpetuate the status quo of a criminal enterprise by updating their books? guilty. but they were "just extending the services of accounting to a new organization while maintaining the status quo of criminality".
  - eli_gottlieb 8y ago
    >Do you want your companies to be extensions of US foreign policy? I'd rather have companies be extensions of US policy, than make US policy themselves.
  - PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
    >A company complying with the laws of the country it does business in seems fairly uncontroversial to me, even if you may not agree with those laws. Depends on what those laws are. Imagine if Google was deliberately helping out with some genocide to make a dollar? And given some stories coming from China, that isn't exactly a what-if situation. >Do you want your companies to be extensions of US foreign policy? They have to be extensions of US morals to the extent voters don't push for them to be punished for not being so. That's a byproduct of using democracy.
    - 2bitmachine 8y ago
      >Imagine if Google was deliberately helping out with some genocide to make a dollar? Funny that you mention that, since their surveillance and censorship will undoubtedly be targeted at Uighurs: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/ethnic-cleansing-makes-a-comeback--in-china/2018/08/02/55f73fa2-9691-11e8-810c-5fa705927d54_story.html?noredirect=on https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/ethn...
  - unethical_ban 8y ago
    It is one thing to apply broad sanctions and tariffs on a company, forcing them to be an extension of national policy. It is another to expect (and perhaps enforce) that a product/company whose service is the exploration of knowledge stays consistent with a fundamental principle of Western human rights, which is the freedom of thought and speech. There is a line somewhere. Where it is, is debatable.
  - stale2002 8y ago
    Lots of governments do terrible things, and people condemn those governments all the time for it. And people have been condemning companies for working for those governments as well. If you want to look at some history, I will unfortunately have to invoke godwins law, by using the example of IBM, which everyone condemns now for working with the Nazis. So to answer your question, I am happy to have companies be an extension of US foriegn policy, in cases where the US foreign policy is correct, and the other country is wrong.
    - 394549 8y ago
      > If you want to look at some history, I will unfortunately have to invoke godwins law, by using the example of IBM, which everyone condemns now for working with the Nazis. Godwin's law has been repealed: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/06/19/27874178/godwins-law-suspended-by-godwin https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/06/19/27874178/godwins...
  - jedbrown 8y ago
    Solid defense of Watson Business Machines you're making there.
  - toss1 8y ago
    Actually, YES, to the extent that the foreign policy is supporting & maintaining institutions & policies necessary for continued open democratic societies. By virtue of the US' historically strong support for open democracies (albeit often flawed or failed), and historical accident, it essentially now falls to the US to attempt to maintain it around the world. To the extent that we have failed to maintain and support democratic institutions and traditions around the world, they are lost. To the extent that these free, open, democratic governments, institutions, and traditions are lost around the world, those remaining in free societies will find ourselves under threat of losing those societies. So, yes, if a company wants to enjoy the fruits of being able to grow and prosper in the greatest open society and largest economy on the planet at this time, it is not too much to ask it to avoid supporting adversaries who would undermine our society and economy at the first opportunity (and are actively doing so right now). [recommend reading Garry Kasparov's "Winter is Coming" & other titles -- Fmr World Chess Champion, Russian Presidential candidate, author -- he's been there, done that, and buried his friends doing so]
    - coffeeonrollt 8y ago
      With the amount of Chinese products being used in US and US support of countries who have violated human rights, your statement sounds hypocritical. US has interests and behaves to protect it, there is no morality in those decisions.
      - toss1 8y ago
        It would be if I supported it, but I am extremely against it (& yes, I did ack that US has been inconsistent/failed and was referring to supporting some anti-rights regimes). The extensive use of Chinese products by the US will likely turn out to be a great geostrategic blunder of historic magnitude. While the US companies and govt thinks they're exploiting cheap Chinese labor, China is strategically exploiting our myopic weakness for short-term profits to steal IP and gain global economic & military power.
    - mulmen 8y ago
      I'm all for the US government supporting open democracy through foreign policy. The US electorate influences this policy. I don't want Google making decisions based on anything other than how to make money legally.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    Do you want your companies to be extensions of US foreign policy? Do you want your search engine company to be an extension of Chinese policy?
  - xapata 8y ago
    The USA has historically treated its corporations as extensions of its foreign policy [0]. [0] United Fruit.
  - rndgermandude 8y ago
    So if Google wanted to be in big in Saudi-Arabia, and would have to comply with a law that mandates it must enable the Saudi law enforcement to look through their data for instances of "homosexuality and related activity" so that the perpetrators can be prosecuted and tortured and/or put to death, that's OK too, right? Because Google would be complying with the laws of the country, after all. Make no mistake, with all the stuff going on in China (political imprisonment, "Social Credits"), it is almost certain that if Google was to share data with the Chinese government it will lead to human rights abuses, ruined lives, imprisonment and maybe even death penalties, not because somebody is a hardened criminal, but merely because they (unknowingly) googled the wrong things.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    "A company complying with the laws of the country it does business in seems fairly uncontroversial to me, even if you may not agree with those laws." See, that's where you and I differ; you're just referring to them as "that country's laws", and not considering what those laws actually are. I, on the other hand, prefer to take into account the context of the situation, which includes considering what those laws are.
  - 394549 8y ago
    > A company complying with the laws of the country it does business in seems fairly uncontroversial to me, even if you may not agree with those laws. Stopping your analysis at legality/illegality is morally bankrupt. Local laws can be explicit tools of oppression and malice, and I would say its very controversial for western companies to follow such laws in authoritarian countries like China. For an utterly obvious example of why this is true: look at Nazi Germany. Everything it did was in compliance with its local laws, but now many of its actions are universally considered crimes against humanity. Foreign companies and individuals that collaborated with it on those crimes are not excused by those laws. > Do you want your companies to be extensions of US foreign policy? I want them to be extensions of some basic liberal values, not agents of profit uber alles. For instance, I applaud European pharmaceutical companies for refusing to sell the anesthetics used for lethal injection to the US states that use them for executions.
  - eecc 8y ago
    Careful, you’re dangerously close to a legitimate Godwin: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
  - colordrops 8y ago
    What if the law was that you had to execute employees found to be subverting the state? There has to be a limit right? It's not just about complying with the law.
  - HappyDreamer 8y ago
    I this case it's controversial, unless one is pro dictatorship, or maybe just clueless. Because the laws are controversial: They entail people get sent to prison, for speaking up against sexism or toxic air, or because they want some privacy, or because they criticize the government (well, dictatorship). That is controversial. Unless one is fine with, or is clueless about, toxic air, sexual harassment, others going to prison because they disagree with the government (dictators).
- ProAm 8y ago
  Less
- grandmczeb 8y ago
  I don’t think it’s more messed up for companies to follow the law of the country they’re operating in. Do you think it’s messed up that foreign companies comply with US laws?
  - mrep 8y ago
    Or that US tech companies have to comply with EU laws like GDPR?
  - int_19h 8y ago
    The only one who can answer that question is a citizen of the country to which those foreign companies belong, because only they can judge it within their own cultural framework. And they're welcome to do so. And here, we're going to judge our companies by the standards of our society.
    - grandmczeb 8y ago
      Shouldn't anyone be able to judge anything? I have no problem judging non-American companies, just as non-Americans seem to have no problem judging American ones.
- tomlagier 8y ago
  If that's your stance, shouldn't it apply to every company[1][2][3] that is already engaging in this? What makes Google a target for litigation here? edit: Not saying that because other companies do something similar that Google should get carte-blanche, just trying to see what the differentiation is. 1: https://qz.com/990662/microsoft-released-a-new-version-of-windows-thats-tailor-made-for-the-chinese-government/ https://qz.com/990662/microsoft-released-a-new-version-of-wi... 2: https://www.engadget.com/2018/07/18/apple-icloud-data-china-stored-state-run-telco/ https://www.engadget.com/2018/07/18/apple-icloud-data-china-... 3: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-privacy-congress/facebook-confirms-data-sharing-with-chinese-companies-idUSKCN1J11TY https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-privacy-congress...
  - PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
    >What makes Google a target for litigation here? Under laws that are selectively enforced, either drawing the ire of the ones in charge of enforcement or drawing the ire of the general public enough they pressure the ones in charge of enforcement to act. In either case, what draws ire could be actions largely unrelated to the laws themselves and may be based on actions that people generally would not support making illegal. This is a flaw with selective enforcement, and why I support ending selective enforcement.
  - rory096 8y ago
    More directly: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2018/09/21/why-are-u-s-companies-working-for-a-chinese-firm-thats-implicated-in-ethnic-cleansing/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2018/0... (note that "tens of thousands of cameras throughout Xinjiang" is an error — that's tens of thousands in one county alone https://twitter.com/BenjaminDooley/status/1044201485939036160 https://twitter.com/BenjaminDooley/status/104420148593903616...)
  - int_19h 8y ago
    Yes. We're long overdue for some house cleaning in that regard. You should not be able to run your company in US - enjoying the fruits of a free democratic society with rule of law, due process etc - and use those fruits to enable the opposite elsewhere in the world. If Google, Facebook etc don't like it, they're welcome to move their headquarters and main campus to China. Then it will be an internal matter of China. So long as they're here, they should not be allowed to do things that our culture considers deeply inappropriate.
- at-fates-hands 8y ago
  > Is it more or less messed up than that a private corporation can and is willing to perform surveillance on foreign citizens on behalf of those citizens' government that would be unacceptable anywhere else? It actually happens a lot more places than just China. The only reason its getting headlines now is because its Google. There are a TON of information security companies who deal with sketchy foreign governments to develop tools to spy on their own citizens. - Israeli company NSO helping the UAE spy on pro-democracy activist Ahmed Mansoor - BAE Systems actively shopping surveillance tools to countries like Algeria, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE during the Arab Spring. - Procera Networks who sold deep packet inspection tools to Turkey to spy on its citizens - Hacking Team's surveillance software was sold to the Ethiopian government (among others) to spy on journalists and other activists in their country. You also have Mitnick who threw his hat in the ring and said he has a team of hackers uncovering zero-day exploits that he hopes to sell to the highest bidder - even if the bidder is a repressive regime.
- jackconnor 8y ago
  This is what Palantir does in the united states, the only difference is the specific laws and the government in question. There's a big gray area here.
- r00fus 8y ago
  Great! I say we go after vendors like Cisco first, right? I mean - they worked in detail with China to design the initial GReat Firewall didn't they? Should we break them up or just fine them into nonexistence?
- marricks 8y ago
  I agree so much. Business use this sort of hand wavy excuse all the time “government shouldn’t be involved.” Truth is they don’t want the American people to have any say in the operation. Sure, you could say we vote with out dollars but they keep as much info secret as humanly possible. They need regulation for basic things like “users own their information” and “don’t corporate with foreign governments to censor or monitor citizens”. How the US public bought this corporate lie so hard is beyond me, people are actively rooting for companies to get more and more power.
- dfee 8y ago
  Honest question: what if we removed the notion of “foreign” from your question? And, what if we extended this across the board to all corporations, not just Google? I feel uneasy when thinking about the society China is trying to build overtly, and the society that Washington is building covertly. It’s sad that 15 years after the Patriot Act, we’ve just accepted domestic surveillance as a requisite function of governance.
- lewisinc 8y ago
  I think one thing that's important here is that China has a lot of pull on these companies. It's possible for China to look at Google, Apple, or whatever and just say "oh, too bad you don't want to do X. I guess we're going to have to do Y to your business model." It really should be the role of the government in this sort of instance to step in remove the incentive for China to enact punitive measure against that company by just making it impossible legally for that company to even be immoral in that specific way. How difficult is it to codify a law that says "it is illegal for a company based in the US to perform surveillance operations on behalf of a foreign government agency against its own people"?
- snappyTertle 8y ago
  I'm in the camp of the fewer regulations the better, but one thing I think needs more regulation is how the private sector and public sector interact. There is just way too much conflict of interest when they mix.
- fixermark 8y ago
  Taken to the extreme, this question becomes "Do you want Snow Crash or 1984?" But there's a whole sliding scale of space between the two, and the question of which tool to use when is the day-to-day meat of a livable and happy society.
- hueving 8y ago
  It's par for the course. Cisco helped China build the GFW. If you want to prevent business in China related to censorship, then pass a law that does that. Don't senselessly target Google just because it's popular with consumers.
- hazz99 8y ago
  Does Google not perform surveillance on American citizens through the NSA Prism program? [0] I'm against all forms of surveillance, but it seems hypocritical to criticize Google for complying with immoral foreign laws when they also comply with immoral domestic laws. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants... Edit: Ah, apparently conforming with Chinese laws doesn't just extend to surveillance, but aiding in the genocide of the Uyghur people. That's a lot worse.
Pica_soO 8y ago
Eh, yes, but the chinese government allready came in, played favourites, everything is already messed up?
aqme28 8y ago
So what would you propose?
- oh-kumudo 8y ago
  Well, ironically, the proposed approach is to have government has censor police within Google, to ensure the opinion is, you know, balanced, left and right.
  - int_19h 8y ago
    Google can have whatever opinions it wants. When it starts acting out of them, that's another matter.
forapurpose 8y ago
> I don't believe in the government obliging businesses to do things. Should government oblige Boeing to make safe airplanes? Google and others not to violate user privacy? All businesses not to sell dangerous munitions to terrorist and enemy states? > it looks like this whole thing is Google specific Nothing has been done or even proposed yet; what is that based on? In the U.S. at least, generally the government can't make laws for individual companies or businesses; Congress couldn't pass a law that bilbo0s can't sell laptops in China, for example. They would have to make a law about every business doing things in China. However, I don't know the specifics of that legal principle and how it is applied here. > Once government gets involved and starts playing favorites, everything gets messed up. Things already seem messed up. I don't see private enterprise as more reliable than the voters and their representatives, and the latter seems like a more fair way to resolve public affairs. I guess I have faith and confidence in democracy. It is flawed, of course, just like every other human institution from Google to religious institutions to everyone here on HN.
jiveturkey 8y ago
Your point is valid for most, but Google has the power to shape opinion and deserves special scrutiny. The government is not just "coming in" on this issue, Google is under a consent decree due to their prior demonstrated bad practices. On this issue, nothing will be done (I hope) because it's irrelevant to US citizens. But it is a good thing to publicly call them to task for violating their own internal guidelines and mandated policies. It's not acceptable.
chiefalchemist 8y ago
While I'm not a fan, this is the crux of the Charles Koch book "Good Profit." In short, government oversight / over-reach quickly becomes a game of favoritism and distorted markets. Like it or not, it's hard to argue with that theory.
- josho 8y ago
  > quickly becomes a game of favoritism Then remove money/favoritism from politics so that we get policies for the people, not some businesses. Yes, removing money from political influence is hard, but the US has swung so extreme in the wrong direction that it puts the entire democracy at risk.
- hobs 8y ago
  Not really: "When companies become too large it quickly becomes a game of anti-competitive actions and distorted markets" Companies dont have our interests in mind any more than the government, but we can vote the government out.
  - PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
    >Companies dont have our interests in mind any more than the government, but we can vote the government out. Companies are easier to not do business with. Governments only get voted out if enough people agreed to vote with you. Also, only one of these groups generally has the ability to use violence against you, and if the other group has that ability, it is only because the first allowed it to be delegated.
    - toss1 8y ago
      No, they are not easier to not do business with, and it is also harder to find out when we should attempt to not do business with them. Try telling people who have only Comcast to not get off the Internet, or people with only one nearby grocery store to boycott it. Both require strenuous oversight, and without a govt capable and willing to constrain that oversight, you wind up wint an economy like the 1890s robber barons, which needed to be broken up by Teddy Roosevelt
ForHackernews 8y ago
It basically has to be the government forcing them, because otherwise companies (and their lawyers) will just fall back on "Well, we're following the local laws and not doing anything illegal in our home jurisdiction." You already see that kind of weasily justification here all the time[0]: "Companies are soulless machines that exist only to make money, they should do whatever they're legally allowed to do." The only response to this kind of moral nihilism is legislation. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18079027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18079027
blub 8y ago
Saying "I don't believe in the government obliging businesses to do things." seems to me akin to not believing in gravity. The government - including the US government - is obliging all companies operating on its territory to do certain things. That's one of the roles of government.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Saying "I don't believe in the government obliging businesses to do things." seems to me akin to not believing in gravity. Believing in gravity doesn't mean that you then need to gain as much weight as possible. In fact, taking into account science like that, you might want to lose a certain amount of weight for your health. "The government obliging businesses to do things," is necessary, like carbohydrates are necessary. That said, you don't want too much of something.
  - blub 8y ago
    The USG is doing too little of something. Namely of protecting citizens from predatory businesses.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      The banking reform laws that were billed as curbing the big banks turned out to have been gamed by those banks to give them a huge advantage in home mortgages, driving out the community banks. Given what lobbying and regulatory capture is like, more government seems as likely to increase the predatory nature of businesses.
  - y4mi 8y ago
    > carbohydrates Are you doing that on purpose? I don't know if the keto diet is healthy, but making a statement like that is.. pretty much guranteed to step on somebody's toes.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      I don't know if the keto diet is healthy, but making a statement like that is.. pretty much guranteed to step on somebody's toes. Even if you don't consume any carbohydrates, your body will produce some to continue its processes. So it will step on someone's toes only if they're science ignorant. EDIT: Carbohydrates are used throughout your body. One example: as receptors on your cell membranes. The guff about "ketones are not carbs" below is a great example of how, "it will step on someone's toes only if they're science ignorant."
modzu 8y ago
its not really google specific other than in the sense google is breaking the law; if some other company breaks the law then yes, the law should come after them too...
math_and_stuff 8y ago
The letter [0] actually argued that "Dragonfly is part of a broad pattern of unaccountable decision making across the tech industry". The article seems to have recently been modified to link to it. [0] https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/328-jack-poulson-dragonfly/87933ffa89dfa78d9007/optimized/full.pdf#page=1 https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/328-jack-poulson-dra...
akira2501 8y ago
> I don't believe in the government obliging businesses to do things. Yea, but I'm a big fan of regulated food, clean water and pollution standards. Upholding your obligations is a requirement to receiving the protection of the government as you conduct your business. It's a two-way street. > Especially when it looks like this whole thing is Google specific. The better question is whether Google is acting as a monopoly in the regulated domain or not, if they are -- then this isn't a relevant factor. > What about all the other American companies doing business in China? We'll get to them eventually.. but why shouldn't we go after the biggest business first? Wouldn't that provide the greatest reduction in harm? > Or would this be a government mandate of a broad based American pull out? There are already plenty of laws which make transacting business in China more difficult for US based companies. It's not as if it's laissez faire except for Alphabet Inc. > Once government gets involved and starts playing favorites I don't disagree, but you haven't made a sufficient case that "favorites" are being played or that other factors aren't more prevalent.
- tziki 8y ago
  >We'll get to them eventually.. but why shouldn't we go after the biggest business first? Wouldn't that provide the greatest reduction in harm? You do realize that Google doesn't do search business in China, right?
- derf_ 8y ago
  > > What about all the other American companies doing business in China? > We'll get to them eventually.. but why shouldn't we go after the biggest business first? Wouldn't that provide the greatest reduction in harm? There's actually a name for laws that target one individual while ignoring others guilty of the same behavior, and that's a "bill of attainder" [0]. They're banned by the US Constitution and also every state constitution, which might give you some idea that there are pretty good reasons "why not" (namely, that they're ripe for abuse, they violate someone's right to due process, and can be used by the legislature to take on judicial or executive functions, violating the separation of powers). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder
  - 8y ago
Rapzid 8y ago
I find it a little disturbing how we can have laws that stipulate how companies have to treat their workers and conduct their business but as soon as we start talking about ensuring what we consider "rights" are being taken care of overseas it's too far. Not quite as disgusting as how we ended up with torture, including waterboarding, indefinite detainment, and a whole slew of fun activities in the early aughts that made great recruitment ammo. All under the sentiment of "Oh, well if they aren't Americans they don't have rights." Or "If they aren't on American soil they don't have rights". There is a case to be made that the Bill of Rights is an extension of the "unalienable rights" mentioned in the deceleration of independence. That you can't take those away or give those to people. That the Bill of Rights simply enshrined and protected them, not provided them. Maybe we should rename the Bill of Rights to "Bill of Perks for being in America" and retcon our founding principals. It's interesting seeing people who would probably consider themselves "libertarians" arguing against legal action protecting peoples liberties..
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  I can appreciate the sentiment here, but I'm reluctant to accept it on a purely practical basis. Which is to say: how do we make that happen? What does it look like? The idea of inalienable rights is theoretical at best, because a large fraction of the world is alienated from any right one cares to name. As an assertion that humans deserve these things, that they should be demanded without compromise or compensation? Sure. As an assertion that they are in any consequential sense distinguishable from alienable rights? I don't see how. Virtually every country in the world operates under laws that contravene the US Bill of Rights in one manner or another. The speech laws of nations like Germany and Britain, whatever their merits, unambiguously violate the First Amendment. The Sixth Amendment is unsupported in virtually any nation without an adversarial justice system. The Seventh Amendment is unsupported in most nations, where jury trials are either not practiced or not guaranteed. Even without touching the Second Amendment, the vast majority of liberal democracies allied with America do not uphold the Bill of Rights. As is, this is easy to sort out: the Bill of Rights restricts the actions of the US Government and no one else. Issues like waterboarding and indefinite detainment operate at the edge of this principle, but I'm content to observe that the Bill of Rights does not discuss citizenship or soil; it simply places restrictions on the action of the US Government towards 'persons'. Rendition and torture are fundamentally different from any question of Google's activity, and were clearly illegal. Similarly, the government is restricted from infringements, not just direct action; the use of proxies like contractors to violate rights is clearly illegal. In the international case, though, I genuinely don't understand what you're proposing. Google did not violate the rights of persons, citizen or otherwise, US soil or otherwise, on behalf of the US government. (In fact, it's not even clear that it would have violated such rights by running Dragonfly in the United States on the orders of the US government. I desperately want Constitutional privacy guarantees, but the idea is still uncomfortably penumbral.) So: are corporations obligated to uphold constitutional rights with regard to their own actions, independent of the state? Are they obligated to uphold those rights abroad? Does that exclusively apply to companies incorporated in the US, or those resident for tax purposes, or is a permanent establishment sufficient? If the answer isn't 'incorporated', what are they to do when multiple nations assert conflicting rights, as with Google's Canadian legal mess between 1A guarantees and the right to be forgotten? If it is 'incorporated', what happens when US-dominated companies begin incorporating under international flags of convenience? I could go on at much greater length, but leave it there. My objection is not that US citizens are special or deserve better than other people, but that attempts to enforce Constitutional guarantees beyond the action of the US government have promptly become both legally ambiguous and frighteningly imperialistic. And so far, I haven't seen any proposal for avoiding that outcome.
azernik 8y ago
What exactly do you think he's advocating? In the letter his specific ask is for fact-finding, probably using the Senate's subpoena power ("I humbly ask that The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation call on Google’s representative for the hearing, Mr. Keith Enright, to respond to the sincere and credible concerns of the coalition of 14 human rights organizations who drafted an August 28th Open Letter To Google. I also ask the committee to inquire about how Google is meeting its commitments to privacy under its own AI Principles and the Global Network Initiative, of which Google is a member.") His long-term goals seem to be industry-wide ("I would hope that The Committee would help protect the environment needed for future whistleblowers by taking steps to guarantee ethical transparency and oversight across Silicon Valley"). I think you're reading into this something you fear, but that is not even on the table.
tomphoolery 8y ago
they don't have the same level of influence as Google. Ford doesn't cause political upheaval. McDonald's never fanned the flames for a protest.
tcbawo 8y ago
I've gotten down voted for this opinion in the past, but US equity broker-dealers have created self-regulatory bodies like FINRA with sensible auditing, rules with teeth, and certification processes simply to avoid being micromanaged by the SEC. This has worked fairly well at limiting many client/insider abuses. The large internet companies would do well to put something like this together as a buffer instead of praying against government policy intervention or antitrust proceedings.
diggerNick6771 8y ago
LOL @ all you arrogant idiots having a faux "high-brow" debate about Chinese politics while 80% of your possessions are...made in China. Particularly your digital "devices", i.e plastic electronic pieces of shit that control your lives. Google is bad for "doing business with an authoritarian regime", but it's okay when YOU do it. Amirite?
- azernik 8y ago
  a) Buying things from China is different from implementing censorship systems for the Chinese government. b) See the "In Comments" section of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Specifically: "Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
  - diggerNick6771 8y ago
    A) Yeah that's different because our shareholders demand profits made by outsourcing cheap shitty products to China. Pardon me for even suggesting something come before the Almighty Shareholder. B) show me where I agreed to any of that
    - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
      B) You posted here.
meko 8y ago
I wonder when Americans lost the idea of 'government for the people, by the people'. They see the government as some spOoOoOKy entity when the reality is the government is the only thin barrier of protection people have against actors who want to prey on them. Businesses are beholden to profit, individuals beholden to themselves. Imagine what your life would be like without the bill of rights, or the constitution, laws or courts. The government is obligated to the interests of it's constituents. Lack of trust in the government is how we end up with egomaniacs in the office trying to run the country like a business.
- rapind 8y ago
  I agree that some level of government is absolutely essential, and you're right, bad actors would do even more damage than they already do. I don't think it's clear what that level is (Libertarian vs. Socialist), but I'm skeptical we can have a reasonable discussion about it until we reduce financial influence in politics. The lack of trust is due to the image of politicians shaking hands and benefiting from corporate spend (Citizens United etc.). Significantly reduce that influence and work towards earning the trust of the people back. The whole "Drain the Swamp" con got a lot of votes. On it's face, the situation is obviously ridiculous isn't it? 1. Politicians need large sums of money to win elections (problem #1). 2. Corporations and wealthy individuals are allowed to provide that money (problem #2). 3. We expect politicians to police their donors (obvious conflict). When there's riches (and power... but that's unavoidable) involved you end up with more opportunists than idealists.
- korantu 8y ago
  Government has tendency to grab all the power it can. Combined with monopoly on violence this is a combination that rightfully makes people wary of that. So people came up with Bill of rights, constitution, and other constructs to safeguard government behaviour.
0x8BADF00D 8y ago
> What about all the other American companies doing business in China? Do they get to keep doing business because they are politically popular companies but Google is not? Or would this be a government mandate of a broad based American pull out? Getting the US government involved period is a bad idea. Government interference in business is how big government starts. You need more and more agencies to police business behavior, and that eventually leads to large, inefficient, and inept bureaucratic agencies that do more harm than good. Example: EPA, FDA, etc
- cyberpunk0 8y ago
  And without them stepping in you instead trade one corrupt, cancerous monopoly for multiple, virtually lawless corrupt, cancerous monopolies. Lose/lose for everyone except those already in power
- sreya 8y ago
  I'm not sure the EPA and FDA are the best examples you could've picked...
barkingcat 8y ago
"I don't believe in the government obliging businesses to do things." Government can already block the sale of companies, and whether they can sell certain kinds of products to certain countries. I don't think Google should be given a "free ride" to make whatever decisions they want just because they are a popular tech company. Want to be an American company? Obey the US Government's laws and decrees. If not, they can relocate to the UK (and obey UK laws and decrees) or to the Bahamas (and obey Bahamian law and decrees) and become a non-US based entity.
mikemotherwell 8y ago
I think there are a lot of conditions and issues with trade and China, and I'm not sure how the US government deal with them all, but I agree one rule for Google is a TERRIBLE idea and precedent. Semi-related, how weird is this https://twitter.com/amlivemon/status/1002044167793594368 https://twitter.com/amlivemon/status/1002044167793594368 > As a condition of China joining the WTO in 2000, Visa and Mastercard would be allowed into China market. 18 years later, China has lost a WTO case on this subject and Visa/Mastercard are still not allowed into China. That's just for starters. Don't believe China on trade deals. China and trade is a real quagmire.
dasil003 8y ago
I agree that government regulation is not a silver bullet, but neither is the free market. Companies at the scale of Google are directly benefiting from the current government infrastructure and rule-of-law that allows them to be one of the most profitable companies on the planet. At that size, there definitely should be some accountability to broader society, and there is no mechanism for that other than government, imperfect though it may be. The current political climate is one where capitalist incentives are deemed inherently moral, and the fear of government intervention is disproportionately high while consolidation of wealth is accelerating. We're all still basking in the lowered-barriers-to-entry of the internet age, but if we don't restore some faith in government we may well be heading towards a world where FAANG control all meaningful tech innovation.
zhengwang 8y ago
Do you not see that Ford selling a car in China and Google actively censoring the internet at the Communists' behest are totally different?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

gunnihinn 8y ago

> Once government gets involved and starts playing favorites, everything gets messed up. OK. Is it more or less messed up than that a private corporation can and is willing to perform surveillance on foreign citizens on behalf of those citizens' government that would be unacceptable anywhere else?

tensor 8y ago
A company complying with the laws of the country it does business in seems fairly uncontroversial to me, even if you may not agree with those laws. Do you want your companies to be extensions of US foreign policy?
- bogomipz 8y ago
  >"Do you want your companies to be extensions of US foreign policy?" No but it would be nice if they at least upheld the same values of the country that they themselves are a product of. Or are values just things you can draw arbitrary borders around when it's convenient?
  - beaner 8y ago
    Not many disagree with that. The question is whether it should be enforced by politics or if people/companies can be allowed to make the decisions themselves.
    - PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
      It depends upon what the decisions made are. At a certain point it will reach the level that voters will want it to be controlled by politics, and likely the control will be tighter than if they hadn't crossed whatever line motivated voters to push for control. The US already enforced some laws on its citizens as they travel regardless if the behavior is legal overseas. These tend to be done to actions that are deemed the worst of the worst. Minor crimes are not enforced globally. At what point is supporting and working with China going to cross that line, given many of their current actions against unpopular groups?
  - TheCraiggers 8y ago
    What are laws besides a culture's values written down in the form of rules? I'm only being mildly pedantic here. Obviously, there are some silly laws that don't work here; I'm talking about the large obvious ones that everyone knows about.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - bogomipz 8y ago
      >"What are laws besides a culture's values written down in the form of rules?" Do you really believe that's true when a country has had only a single political party since 1949?
  - ska 8y ago
    it would be nice if they at least upheld the same values of the country that they themselves are a product of. One could say the same of the government :)
- awakeasleep 8y ago
  You're looking at the question from a really nihilistic-libertarian perspective. IBM was following the law when it sold the nazis tools for tracking 'undesirable' people. Google's search engine will be used to track the Uyghur, and the Uyghurs are being sent to reeducation camps at this very moment. We're talking about an apples to apples comparison here. It's controversial _as hell_ to sell tools used to do genocide! In a democracy the government should be able to restrain businesses that perform abhorrent practices.
  - beaner 8y ago
    If that's true, it says to me that governments should put a blanket block on doing certain types of business with that specific country. Such a block should apply to all companies equally. It doesn't require them to be more involved in decisions from within the companies.
    - toss1 8y ago
      Absolutely, it should be written to block all companies equally. But in must be written
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - akiselev 8y ago
      Why though? We draw lines about what is legally acceptable or not all the time, often with little more guidance than subjective morality filtered through elected representation. There is a vast difference between Hugo Boss making Nazi uniforms and IBM selling them high tech machines designed to increase the efficiency of their extermination.
      - beaner 8y ago
        I'm not sure what you mean. I agree that there is a difference. So there should be a law blocking the 2nd type of activity. The lack of a law is implicit moral approval of the American people.
- andrepd 8y ago
  Ah right, "following the laws", because discussions of morality can be reduced to whether it "follows the law" or not? No, that's absurd. Google is objectively abetting an authoritarian regime and providing it with extremely useful tools to maintain and strengthen totalitarian control over 1.4 billion people, and this is wrong.
  - Aunche 8y ago
    Objectively, Google is extending its services to a billion people while maintaining the status quo of censorship. Stopping Google from expanding to China is basically another form of censorship, which is wrong.
    - 2bitmachine 8y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence
    - kodablah 8y ago
      These are also common arguments against country-level sanctions as well. People have differing opinions on the subject, but that something helps both the people and the regime doesn't always mean taking the good with the bad is worth it. I agree that both Google cooperating w/ China is wrong and that government interference to prevent it is wrong.
    - jonathankoren 8y ago
      It’s not obviously wrong, nor is it objectively the same product since the censorship and surveillance makes it very different. It makes it a tool of control. Governments routinely regulate exports as matter of policy. Lockheed would very much like to sell Taiwan (or really anyone and everyone) F-35s, but as a matter of government policy, it’s not allowed to, as it runs counter to the policies of the American government. This maybe censorship in a broad sense, but it certainly doesn’t make it prima facie wrong.
    - cryoshon 8y ago
      taking initiative to participate in maintaining a malicious status quo is being malicious. google isn't being coerced here, they're volunteering to help with oppression. put differently: what do you call an accountant who sings up to perpetuate the status quo of a criminal enterprise by updating their books? guilty. but they were "just extending the services of accounting to a new organization while maintaining the status quo of criminality".
- eli_gottlieb 8y ago
  >Do you want your companies to be extensions of US foreign policy? I'd rather have companies be extensions of US policy, than make US policy themselves.
- PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
  >A company complying with the laws of the country it does business in seems fairly uncontroversial to me, even if you may not agree with those laws. Depends on what those laws are. Imagine if Google was deliberately helping out with some genocide to make a dollar? And given some stories coming from China, that isn't exactly a what-if situation. >Do you want your companies to be extensions of US foreign policy? They have to be extensions of US morals to the extent voters don't push for them to be punished for not being so. That's a byproduct of using democracy.
  - 2bitmachine 8y ago
    >Imagine if Google was deliberately helping out with some genocide to make a dollar? Funny that you mention that, since their surveillance and censorship will undoubtedly be targeted at Uighurs: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/ethnic-cleansing-makes-a-comeback--in-china/2018/08/02/55f73fa2-9691-11e8-810c-5fa705927d54_story.html?noredirect=on https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/ethn...
- unethical_ban 8y ago
  It is one thing to apply broad sanctions and tariffs on a company, forcing them to be an extension of national policy. It is another to expect (and perhaps enforce) that a product/company whose service is the exploration of knowledge stays consistent with a fundamental principle of Western human rights, which is the freedom of thought and speech. There is a line somewhere. Where it is, is debatable.
- stale2002 8y ago
  Lots of governments do terrible things, and people condemn those governments all the time for it. And people have been condemning companies for working for those governments as well. If you want to look at some history, I will unfortunately have to invoke godwins law, by using the example of IBM, which everyone condemns now for working with the Nazis. So to answer your question, I am happy to have companies be an extension of US foriegn policy, in cases where the US foreign policy is correct, and the other country is wrong.
  - 394549 8y ago
    > If you want to look at some history, I will unfortunately have to invoke godwins law, by using the example of IBM, which everyone condemns now for working with the Nazis. Godwin's law has been repealed: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/06/19/27874178/godwins-law-suspended-by-godwin https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/06/19/27874178/godwins...
- jedbrown 8y ago
  Solid defense of Watson Business Machines you're making there.
- toss1 8y ago
  Actually, YES, to the extent that the foreign policy is supporting & maintaining institutions & policies necessary for continued open democratic societies. By virtue of the US' historically strong support for open democracies (albeit often flawed or failed), and historical accident, it essentially now falls to the US to attempt to maintain it around the world. To the extent that we have failed to maintain and support democratic institutions and traditions around the world, they are lost. To the extent that these free, open, democratic governments, institutions, and traditions are lost around the world, those remaining in free societies will find ourselves under threat of losing those societies. So, yes, if a company wants to enjoy the fruits of being able to grow and prosper in the greatest open society and largest economy on the planet at this time, it is not too much to ask it to avoid supporting adversaries who would undermine our society and economy at the first opportunity (and are actively doing so right now). [recommend reading Garry Kasparov's "Winter is Coming" & other titles -- Fmr World Chess Champion, Russian Presidential candidate, author -- he's been there, done that, and buried his friends doing so]
  - coffeeonrollt 8y ago
    With the amount of Chinese products being used in US and US support of countries who have violated human rights, your statement sounds hypocritical. US has interests and behaves to protect it, there is no morality in those decisions.
    - toss1 8y ago
      It would be if I supported it, but I am extremely against it (& yes, I did ack that US has been inconsistent/failed and was referring to supporting some anti-rights regimes). The extensive use of Chinese products by the US will likely turn out to be a great geostrategic blunder of historic magnitude. While the US companies and govt thinks they're exploiting cheap Chinese labor, China is strategically exploiting our myopic weakness for short-term profits to steal IP and gain global economic & military power.
  - mulmen 8y ago
    I'm all for the US government supporting open democracy through foreign policy. The US electorate influences this policy. I don't want Google making decisions based on anything other than how to make money legally.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Do you want your companies to be extensions of US foreign policy? Do you want your search engine company to be an extension of Chinese policy?
- xapata 8y ago
  The USA has historically treated its corporations as extensions of its foreign policy [0]. [0] United Fruit.
- rndgermandude 8y ago
  So if Google wanted to be in big in Saudi-Arabia, and would have to comply with a law that mandates it must enable the Saudi law enforcement to look through their data for instances of "homosexuality and related activity" so that the perpetrators can be prosecuted and tortured and/or put to death, that's OK too, right? Because Google would be complying with the laws of the country, after all. Make no mistake, with all the stuff going on in China (political imprisonment, "Social Credits"), it is almost certain that if Google was to share data with the Chinese government it will lead to human rights abuses, ruined lives, imprisonment and maybe even death penalties, not because somebody is a hardened criminal, but merely because they (unknowingly) googled the wrong things.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  "A company complying with the laws of the country it does business in seems fairly uncontroversial to me, even if you may not agree with those laws." See, that's where you and I differ; you're just referring to them as "that country's laws", and not considering what those laws actually are. I, on the other hand, prefer to take into account the context of the situation, which includes considering what those laws are.
- 394549 8y ago
  > A company complying with the laws of the country it does business in seems fairly uncontroversial to me, even if you may not agree with those laws. Stopping your analysis at legality/illegality is morally bankrupt. Local laws can be explicit tools of oppression and malice, and I would say its very controversial for western companies to follow such laws in authoritarian countries like China. For an utterly obvious example of why this is true: look at Nazi Germany. Everything it did was in compliance with its local laws, but now many of its actions are universally considered crimes against humanity. Foreign companies and individuals that collaborated with it on those crimes are not excused by those laws. > Do you want your companies to be extensions of US foreign policy? I want them to be extensions of some basic liberal values, not agents of profit uber alles. For instance, I applaud European pharmaceutical companies for refusing to sell the anesthetics used for lethal injection to the US states that use them for executions.
- eecc 8y ago
  Careful, you’re dangerously close to a legitimate Godwin: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
- colordrops 8y ago
  What if the law was that you had to execute employees found to be subverting the state? There has to be a limit right? It's not just about complying with the law.
- HappyDreamer 8y ago
  I this case it's controversial, unless one is pro dictatorship, or maybe just clueless. Because the laws are controversial: They entail people get sent to prison, for speaking up against sexism or toxic air, or because they want some privacy, or because they criticize the government (well, dictatorship). That is controversial. Unless one is fine with, or is clueless about, toxic air, sexual harassment, others going to prison because they disagree with the government (dictators).
ProAm 8y ago
Less
grandmczeb 8y ago
I don’t think it’s more messed up for companies to follow the law of the country they’re operating in. Do you think it’s messed up that foreign companies comply with US laws?
- mrep 8y ago
  Or that US tech companies have to comply with EU laws like GDPR?
- int_19h 8y ago
  The only one who can answer that question is a citizen of the country to which those foreign companies belong, because only they can judge it within their own cultural framework. And they're welcome to do so. And here, we're going to judge our companies by the standards of our society.
  - grandmczeb 8y ago
    Shouldn't anyone be able to judge anything? I have no problem judging non-American companies, just as non-Americans seem to have no problem judging American ones.
tomlagier 8y ago
If that's your stance, shouldn't it apply to every company[1][2][3] that is already engaging in this? What makes Google a target for litigation here? edit: Not saying that because other companies do something similar that Google should get carte-blanche, just trying to see what the differentiation is. 1: https://qz.com/990662/microsoft-released-a-new-version-of-windows-thats-tailor-made-for-the-chinese-government/ https://qz.com/990662/microsoft-released-a-new-version-of-wi... 2: https://www.engadget.com/2018/07/18/apple-icloud-data-china-stored-state-run-telco/ https://www.engadget.com/2018/07/18/apple-icloud-data-china-... 3: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-privacy-congress/facebook-confirms-data-sharing-with-chinese-companies-idUSKCN1J11TY https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-privacy-congress...
- PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
  >What makes Google a target for litigation here? Under laws that are selectively enforced, either drawing the ire of the ones in charge of enforcement or drawing the ire of the general public enough they pressure the ones in charge of enforcement to act. In either case, what draws ire could be actions largely unrelated to the laws themselves and may be based on actions that people generally would not support making illegal. This is a flaw with selective enforcement, and why I support ending selective enforcement.
- rory096 8y ago
  More directly: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2018/09/21/why-are-u-s-companies-working-for-a-chinese-firm-thats-implicated-in-ethnic-cleansing/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2018/0... (note that "tens of thousands of cameras throughout Xinjiang" is an error — that's tens of thousands in one county alone https://twitter.com/BenjaminDooley/status/1044201485939036160 https://twitter.com/BenjaminDooley/status/104420148593903616...)
- int_19h 8y ago
  Yes. We're long overdue for some house cleaning in that regard. You should not be able to run your company in US - enjoying the fruits of a free democratic society with rule of law, due process etc - and use those fruits to enable the opposite elsewhere in the world. If Google, Facebook etc don't like it, they're welcome to move their headquarters and main campus to China. Then it will be an internal matter of China. So long as they're here, they should not be allowed to do things that our culture considers deeply inappropriate.
at-fates-hands 8y ago
> Is it more or less messed up than that a private corporation can and is willing to perform surveillance on foreign citizens on behalf of those citizens' government that would be unacceptable anywhere else? It actually happens a lot more places than just China. The only reason its getting headlines now is because its Google. There are a TON of information security companies who deal with sketchy foreign governments to develop tools to spy on their own citizens. - Israeli company NSO helping the UAE spy on pro-democracy activist Ahmed Mansoor - BAE Systems actively shopping surveillance tools to countries like Algeria, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE during the Arab Spring. - Procera Networks who sold deep packet inspection tools to Turkey to spy on its citizens - Hacking Team's surveillance software was sold to the Ethiopian government (among others) to spy on journalists and other activists in their country. You also have Mitnick who threw his hat in the ring and said he has a team of hackers uncovering zero-day exploits that he hopes to sell to the highest bidder - even if the bidder is a repressive regime.
jackconnor 8y ago
This is what Palantir does in the united states, the only difference is the specific laws and the government in question. There's a big gray area here.
r00fus 8y ago
Great! I say we go after vendors like Cisco first, right? I mean - they worked in detail with China to design the initial GReat Firewall didn't they? Should we break them up or just fine them into nonexistence?
marricks 8y ago
I agree so much. Business use this sort of hand wavy excuse all the time “government shouldn’t be involved.” Truth is they don’t want the American people to have any say in the operation. Sure, you could say we vote with out dollars but they keep as much info secret as humanly possible. They need regulation for basic things like “users own their information” and “don’t corporate with foreign governments to censor or monitor citizens”. How the US public bought this corporate lie so hard is beyond me, people are actively rooting for companies to get more and more power.
dfee 8y ago
Honest question: what if we removed the notion of “foreign” from your question? And, what if we extended this across the board to all corporations, not just Google? I feel uneasy when thinking about the society China is trying to build overtly, and the society that Washington is building covertly. It’s sad that 15 years after the Patriot Act, we’ve just accepted domestic surveillance as a requisite function of governance.
lewisinc 8y ago
I think one thing that's important here is that China has a lot of pull on these companies. It's possible for China to look at Google, Apple, or whatever and just say "oh, too bad you don't want to do X. I guess we're going to have to do Y to your business model." It really should be the role of the government in this sort of instance to step in remove the incentive for China to enact punitive measure against that company by just making it impossible legally for that company to even be immoral in that specific way. How difficult is it to codify a law that says "it is illegal for a company based in the US to perform surveillance operations on behalf of a foreign government agency against its own people"?
snappyTertle 8y ago
I'm in the camp of the fewer regulations the better, but one thing I think needs more regulation is how the private sector and public sector interact. There is just way too much conflict of interest when they mix.
fixermark 8y ago
Taken to the extreme, this question becomes "Do you want Snow Crash or 1984?" But there's a whole sliding scale of space between the two, and the question of which tool to use when is the day-to-day meat of a livable and happy society.
hueving 8y ago
It's par for the course. Cisco helped China build the GFW. If you want to prevent business in China related to censorship, then pass a law that does that. Don't senselessly target Google just because it's popular with consumers.
hazz99 8y ago
Does Google not perform surveillance on American citizens through the NSA Prism program? [0] I'm against all forms of surveillance, but it seems hypocritical to criticize Google for complying with immoral foreign laws when they also comply with immoral domestic laws. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants... Edit: Ah, apparently conforming with Chinese laws doesn't just extend to surveillance, but aiding in the genocide of the Uyghur people. That's a lot worse.

Pica_soO 8y ago

Eh, yes, but the chinese government allready came in, played favourites, everything is already messed up?

aqme28 8y ago

So what would you propose?

oh-kumudo 8y ago
Well, ironically, the proposed approach is to have government has censor police within Google, to ensure the opinion is, you know, balanced, left and right.
- int_19h 8y ago
  Google can have whatever opinions it wants. When it starts acting out of them, that's another matter.

forapurpose 8y ago

> I don't believe in the government obliging businesses to do things. Should government oblige Boeing to make safe airplanes? Google and others not to violate user privacy? All businesses not to sell dangerous munitions to terrorist and enemy states? > it looks like this whole thing is Google specific Nothing has been done or even proposed yet; what is that based on? In the U.S. at least, generally the government can't make laws for individual companies or businesses; Congress couldn't pass a law that bilbo0s can't sell laptops in China, for example. They would have to make a law about every business doing things in China. However, I don't know the specifics of that legal principle and how it is applied here. > Once government gets involved and starts playing favorites, everything gets messed up. Things already seem messed up. I don't see private enterprise as more reliable than the voters and their representatives, and the latter seems like a more fair way to resolve public affairs. I guess I have faith and confidence in democracy. It is flawed, of course, just like every other human institution from Google to religious institutions to everyone here on HN.

jiveturkey 8y ago

Your point is valid for most, but Google has the power to shape opinion and deserves special scrutiny. The government is not just "coming in" on this issue, Google is under a consent decree due to their prior demonstrated bad practices. On this issue, nothing will be done (I hope) because it's irrelevant to US citizens. But it is a good thing to publicly call them to task for violating their own internal guidelines and mandated policies. It's not acceptable.

chiefalchemist 8y ago

While I'm not a fan, this is the crux of the Charles Koch book "Good Profit." In short, government oversight / over-reach quickly becomes a game of favoritism and distorted markets. Like it or not, it's hard to argue with that theory.

josho 8y ago
> quickly becomes a game of favoritism Then remove money/favoritism from politics so that we get policies for the people, not some businesses. Yes, removing money from political influence is hard, but the US has swung so extreme in the wrong direction that it puts the entire democracy at risk.
hobs 8y ago
Not really: "When companies become too large it quickly becomes a game of anti-competitive actions and distorted markets" Companies dont have our interests in mind any more than the government, but we can vote the government out.
- PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
  >Companies dont have our interests in mind any more than the government, but we can vote the government out. Companies are easier to not do business with. Governments only get voted out if enough people agreed to vote with you. Also, only one of these groups generally has the ability to use violence against you, and if the other group has that ability, it is only because the first allowed it to be delegated.
  - toss1 8y ago
    No, they are not easier to not do business with, and it is also harder to find out when we should attempt to not do business with them. Try telling people who have only Comcast to not get off the Internet, or people with only one nearby grocery store to boycott it. Both require strenuous oversight, and without a govt capable and willing to constrain that oversight, you wind up wint an economy like the 1890s robber barons, which needed to be broken up by Teddy Roosevelt

ForHackernews 8y ago

It basically has to be the government forcing them, because otherwise companies (and their lawyers) will just fall back on "Well, we're following the local laws and not doing anything illegal in our home jurisdiction." You already see that kind of weasily justification here all the time[0]: "Companies are soulless machines that exist only to make money, they should do whatever they're legally allowed to do." The only response to this kind of moral nihilism is legislation. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18079027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18079027

blub 8y ago

Saying "I don't believe in the government obliging businesses to do things." seems to me akin to not believing in gravity. The government - including the US government - is obliging all companies operating on its territory to do certain things. That's one of the roles of government.

stcredzero 8y ago
Saying "I don't believe in the government obliging businesses to do things." seems to me akin to not believing in gravity. Believing in gravity doesn't mean that you then need to gain as much weight as possible. In fact, taking into account science like that, you might want to lose a certain amount of weight for your health. "The government obliging businesses to do things," is necessary, like carbohydrates are necessary. That said, you don't want too much of something.
- blub 8y ago
  The USG is doing too little of something. Namely of protecting citizens from predatory businesses.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    The banking reform laws that were billed as curbing the big banks turned out to have been gamed by those banks to give them a huge advantage in home mortgages, driving out the community banks. Given what lobbying and regulatory capture is like, more government seems as likely to increase the predatory nature of businesses.
- y4mi 8y ago
  > carbohydrates Are you doing that on purpose? I don't know if the keto diet is healthy, but making a statement like that is.. pretty much guranteed to step on somebody's toes.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    I don't know if the keto diet is healthy, but making a statement like that is.. pretty much guranteed to step on somebody's toes. Even if you don't consume any carbohydrates, your body will produce some to continue its processes. So it will step on someone's toes only if they're science ignorant. EDIT: Carbohydrates are used throughout your body. One example: as receptors on your cell membranes. The guff about "ketones are not carbs" below is a great example of how, "it will step on someone's toes only if they're science ignorant."

modzu 8y ago

its not really google specific other than in the sense google is breaking the law; if some other company breaks the law then yes, the law should come after them too...

math_and_stuff 8y ago

The letter [0] actually argued that "Dragonfly is part of a broad pattern of unaccountable decision making across the tech industry". The article seems to have recently been modified to link to it. [0] https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/328-jack-poulson-dragonfly/87933ffa89dfa78d9007/optimized/full.pdf#page=1 https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/328-jack-poulson-dra...

akira2501 8y ago

> I don't believe in the government obliging businesses to do things. Yea, but I'm a big fan of regulated food, clean water and pollution standards. Upholding your obligations is a requirement to receiving the protection of the government as you conduct your business. It's a two-way street. > Especially when it looks like this whole thing is Google specific. The better question is whether Google is acting as a monopoly in the regulated domain or not, if they are -- then this isn't a relevant factor. > What about all the other American companies doing business in China? We'll get to them eventually.. but why shouldn't we go after the biggest business first? Wouldn't that provide the greatest reduction in harm? > Or would this be a government mandate of a broad based American pull out? There are already plenty of laws which make transacting business in China more difficult for US based companies. It's not as if it's laissez faire except for Alphabet Inc. > Once government gets involved and starts playing favorites I don't disagree, but you haven't made a sufficient case that "favorites" are being played or that other factors aren't more prevalent.

tziki 8y ago
>We'll get to them eventually.. but why shouldn't we go after the biggest business first? Wouldn't that provide the greatest reduction in harm? You do realize that Google doesn't do search business in China, right?
derf_ 8y ago
> > What about all the other American companies doing business in China? > We'll get to them eventually.. but why shouldn't we go after the biggest business first? Wouldn't that provide the greatest reduction in harm? There's actually a name for laws that target one individual while ignoring others guilty of the same behavior, and that's a "bill of attainder" [0]. They're banned by the US Constitution and also every state constitution, which might give you some idea that there are pretty good reasons "why not" (namely, that they're ripe for abuse, they violate someone's right to due process, and can be used by the legislature to take on judicial or executive functions, violating the separation of powers). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder
- 8y ago

Rapzid 8y ago

I find it a little disturbing how we can have laws that stipulate how companies have to treat their workers and conduct their business but as soon as we start talking about ensuring what we consider "rights" are being taken care of overseas it's too far. Not quite as disgusting as how we ended up with torture, including waterboarding, indefinite detainment, and a whole slew of fun activities in the early aughts that made great recruitment ammo. All under the sentiment of "Oh, well if they aren't Americans they don't have rights." Or "If they aren't on American soil they don't have rights". There is a case to be made that the Bill of Rights is an extension of the "unalienable rights" mentioned in the deceleration of independence. That you can't take those away or give those to people. That the Bill of Rights simply enshrined and protected them, not provided them. Maybe we should rename the Bill of Rights to "Bill of Perks for being in America" and retcon our founding principals. It's interesting seeing people who would probably consider themselves "libertarians" arguing against legal action protecting peoples liberties..

Bartweiss 8y ago
I can appreciate the sentiment here, but I'm reluctant to accept it on a purely practical basis. Which is to say: how do we make that happen? What does it look like? The idea of inalienable rights is theoretical at best, because a large fraction of the world is alienated from any right one cares to name. As an assertion that humans deserve these things, that they should be demanded without compromise or compensation? Sure. As an assertion that they are in any consequential sense distinguishable from alienable rights? I don't see how. Virtually every country in the world operates under laws that contravene the US Bill of Rights in one manner or another. The speech laws of nations like Germany and Britain, whatever their merits, unambiguously violate the First Amendment. The Sixth Amendment is unsupported in virtually any nation without an adversarial justice system. The Seventh Amendment is unsupported in most nations, where jury trials are either not practiced or not guaranteed. Even without touching the Second Amendment, the vast majority of liberal democracies allied with America do not uphold the Bill of Rights. As is, this is easy to sort out: the Bill of Rights restricts the actions of the US Government and no one else. Issues like waterboarding and indefinite detainment operate at the edge of this principle, but I'm content to observe that the Bill of Rights does not discuss citizenship or soil; it simply places restrictions on the action of the US Government towards 'persons'. Rendition and torture are fundamentally different from any question of Google's activity, and were clearly illegal. Similarly, the government is restricted from infringements, not just direct action; the use of proxies like contractors to violate rights is clearly illegal. In the international case, though, I genuinely don't understand what you're proposing. Google did not violate the rights of persons, citizen or otherwise, US soil or otherwise, on behalf of the US government. (In fact, it's not even clear that it would have violated such rights by running Dragonfly in the United States on the orders of the US government. I desperately want Constitutional privacy guarantees, but the idea is still uncomfortably penumbral.) So: are corporations obligated to uphold constitutional rights with regard to their own actions, independent of the state? Are they obligated to uphold those rights abroad? Does that exclusively apply to companies incorporated in the US, or those resident for tax purposes, or is a permanent establishment sufficient? If the answer isn't 'incorporated', what are they to do when multiple nations assert conflicting rights, as with Google's Canadian legal mess between 1A guarantees and the right to be forgotten? If it is 'incorporated', what happens when US-dominated companies begin incorporating under international flags of convenience? I could go on at much greater length, but leave it there. My objection is not that US citizens are special or deserve better than other people, but that attempts to enforce Constitutional guarantees beyond the action of the US government have promptly become both legally ambiguous and frighteningly imperialistic. And so far, I haven't seen any proposal for avoiding that outcome.

azernik 8y ago

What exactly do you think he's advocating? In the letter his specific ask is for fact-finding, probably using the Senate's subpoena power ("I humbly ask that The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation call on Google’s representative for the hearing, Mr. Keith Enright, to respond to the sincere and credible concerns of the coalition of 14 human rights organizations who drafted an August 28th Open Letter To Google. I also ask the committee to inquire about how Google is meeting its commitments to privacy under its own AI Principles and the Global Network Initiative, of which Google is a member.") His long-term goals seem to be industry-wide ("I would hope that The Committee would help protect the environment needed for future whistleblowers by taking steps to guarantee ethical transparency and oversight across Silicon Valley"). I think you're reading into this something you fear, but that is not even on the table.

tomphoolery 8y ago

they don't have the same level of influence as Google. Ford doesn't cause political upheaval. McDonald's never fanned the flames for a protest.

tcbawo 8y ago

I've gotten down voted for this opinion in the past, but US equity broker-dealers have created self-regulatory bodies like FINRA with sensible auditing, rules with teeth, and certification processes simply to avoid being micromanaged by the SEC. This has worked fairly well at limiting many client/insider abuses. The large internet companies would do well to put something like this together as a buffer instead of praying against government policy intervention or antitrust proceedings.

diggerNick6771 8y ago

LOL @ all you arrogant idiots having a faux "high-brow" debate about Chinese politics while 80% of your possessions are...made in China. Particularly your digital "devices", i.e plastic electronic pieces of shit that control your lives. Google is bad for "doing business with an authoritarian regime", but it's okay when YOU do it. Amirite?

azernik 8y ago
a) Buying things from China is different from implementing censorship systems for the Chinese government. b) See the "In Comments" section of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Specifically: "Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
- diggerNick6771 8y ago
  A) Yeah that's different because our shareholders demand profits made by outsourcing cheap shitty products to China. Pardon me for even suggesting something come before the Almighty Shareholder. B) show me where I agreed to any of that
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    B) You posted here.

meko 8y ago

I wonder when Americans lost the idea of 'government for the people, by the people'. They see the government as some spOoOoOKy entity when the reality is the government is the only thin barrier of protection people have against actors who want to prey on them. Businesses are beholden to profit, individuals beholden to themselves. Imagine what your life would be like without the bill of rights, or the constitution, laws or courts. The government is obligated to the interests of it's constituents. Lack of trust in the government is how we end up with egomaniacs in the office trying to run the country like a business.

rapind 8y ago
I agree that some level of government is absolutely essential, and you're right, bad actors would do even more damage than they already do. I don't think it's clear what that level is (Libertarian vs. Socialist), but I'm skeptical we can have a reasonable discussion about it until we reduce financial influence in politics. The lack of trust is due to the image of politicians shaking hands and benefiting from corporate spend (Citizens United etc.). Significantly reduce that influence and work towards earning the trust of the people back. The whole "Drain the Swamp" con got a lot of votes. On it's face, the situation is obviously ridiculous isn't it? 1. Politicians need large sums of money to win elections (problem #1). 2. Corporations and wealthy individuals are allowed to provide that money (problem #2). 3. We expect politicians to police their donors (obvious conflict). When there's riches (and power... but that's unavoidable) involved you end up with more opportunists than idealists.
korantu 8y ago
Government has tendency to grab all the power it can. Combined with monopoly on violence this is a combination that rightfully makes people wary of that. So people came up with Bill of rights, constitution, and other constructs to safeguard government behaviour.

0x8BADF00D 8y ago

> What about all the other American companies doing business in China? Do they get to keep doing business because they are politically popular companies but Google is not? Or would this be a government mandate of a broad based American pull out? Getting the US government involved period is a bad idea. Government interference in business is how big government starts. You need more and more agencies to police business behavior, and that eventually leads to large, inefficient, and inept bureaucratic agencies that do more harm than good. Example: EPA, FDA, etc

cyberpunk0 8y ago
And without them stepping in you instead trade one corrupt, cancerous monopoly for multiple, virtually lawless corrupt, cancerous monopolies. Lose/lose for everyone except those already in power
sreya 8y ago
I'm not sure the EPA and FDA are the best examples you could've picked...

barkingcat 8y ago

"I don't believe in the government obliging businesses to do things." Government can already block the sale of companies, and whether they can sell certain kinds of products to certain countries. I don't think Google should be given a "free ride" to make whatever decisions they want just because they are a popular tech company. Want to be an American company? Obey the US Government's laws and decrees. If not, they can relocate to the UK (and obey UK laws and decrees) or to the Bahamas (and obey Bahamian law and decrees) and become a non-US based entity.

mikemotherwell 8y ago

I think there are a lot of conditions and issues with trade and China, and I'm not sure how the US government deal with them all, but I agree one rule for Google is a TERRIBLE idea and precedent. Semi-related, how weird is this https://twitter.com/amlivemon/status/1002044167793594368 https://twitter.com/amlivemon/status/1002044167793594368 > As a condition of China joining the WTO in 2000, Visa and Mastercard would be allowed into China market. 18 years later, China has lost a WTO case on this subject and Visa/Mastercard are still not allowed into China. That's just for starters. Don't believe China on trade deals. China and trade is a real quagmire.

dasil003 8y ago

I agree that government regulation is not a silver bullet, but neither is the free market. Companies at the scale of Google are directly benefiting from the current government infrastructure and rule-of-law that allows them to be one of the most profitable companies on the planet. At that size, there definitely should be some accountability to broader society, and there is no mechanism for that other than government, imperfect though it may be. The current political climate is one where capitalist incentives are deemed inherently moral, and the fear of government intervention is disproportionately high while consolidation of wealth is accelerating. We're all still basking in the lowered-barriers-to-entry of the internet age, but if we don't restore some faith in government we may well be heading towards a world where FAANG control all meaningful tech innovation.

zhengwang 8y ago

Do you not see that Ford selling a car in China and Google actively censoring the internet at the Communists' behest are totally different?