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> 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

> 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 :)
    - bogomipz 8y ago
      Heh, yes agreed.
  - travisoneill1 8y ago
    Would you like Chinese companies operating in the US to do the same?
- 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.

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 :)
  - bogomipz 8y ago
    Heh, yes agreed.
- travisoneill1 8y ago
  Would you like Chinese companies operating in the US to do the same?
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.