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Big Three Agree on Guidelines for Countries Who Restrict Human Rights

• mindslight 18y ago
  The right way to address this would be to not setup a physical presence in those countries, but instead offer their (localized) services from outside the borders. When an oppressive country was looking for information on a dissident, they would have to prove the target was a criminal under the host country's legal system. But that would require a real backbone instead of a cushy press release.
  • chollida1 18y ago
    > The right way to address this would be to not setup a physical presence in those countries, I thought this at first too, but in the end "those countries" include the USA, Canada, UK, etc. To follow your comment that would mean the company couldn't incorporate at all and would have to have no physical presence in any country what so ever.
    • mindslight 18y ago
      I originally thought about making a snarky comment asking if these policies applied to the US, but my pragmatic side won out. There's a bit of difference for a country with laws and traditions to explicitly punish dissenters. The local police in China can probably call up a tech company and merely ask for information on a suspected dissident. In the US, they'd at least have to go to court with a plausible reason. I'm sure the big tech companies are in bed with the "intelligence" community in the US, but nothing we say is going to make them ruffle feathers in their primary market. The ideal approach involves technical decentralization to put data out of the reach of any government. But if we're talking about preexisting companies looking to make money off of services that have already been designed, the only thing they might be willing to change is how they deploy.