Hearings on Internet Company Behavior Abroad Set for Feb.
Internet firms operating under harsh regimes might land in the Capitol Hill hot seat in Feb., as a House caucus and panel plan hearings on company-abetted censorship, filtering and monitoring in China and elsewhere. The Human Rights Subcommittee and Human Rights Caucus are making witness lists that tentatively include Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cisco.
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The State Dept. and Reporters Without Borders, which has often condemned company cooperation with foreign govts. (WID Nov 2 p3), have been invited to testify. The hearings are set for Feb. 1 in the caucus and Feb. 8 in the subcommittee. The Feb. 8 schedule might change if the State Dept. can’t make it, an International Relations Committee aide told us.
Hill sources emphasized the hearings would seek feedback from affected firms first and then talk legislation. “We really want to work with these companies, because we feel confident saying they really don’t want to be responsible… for helping to send somebody to jail for 10 years,” said a spokesman for Rep. Ryan (D-Ohio), a member of the Human Rights Caucus. He was referring to Yahoo’s acquiescence to the Chinese govt. in identifying a Hong Kong reporter and e-mail user alleged to have leaked Chinese state secrets. Microsoft recently pulled a blog by a Chinese user out of “considerations of unique elements” (WID Jan 9 p7). “I don’t think we have reached a consensus yet” on how to frame legislation, the International Relations aide said.
But patience with Internet companies may be growing thin. Google and Yahoo have said they must comply with local laws wherever they do business: “I don’t see that as an acceptable answer,” the aide said. China gets “the moral approbation of having well-established American firms operating there,” a reputation as a “first-world country that has a first-world business environment.” The staffer singled out Cisco for designing at the Chinese govt.’s request routers that would simplify filtering and censorship. Cisco has denied the criticism’s accuracy, while allowing that its routers can be used for network management including site-blocking. Company protestations that it would have to comply with FBI requests for information as well are weak, the U.S. staffer said: “I don’t think there’s a moral equivalence” between U.S. law enforcement and “the Chinese security services.”
Global Internet Freedom Bill May Be Included in New Effort
A bill introduced by former Rep. Chris Cox (R-Cal.), now SEC chmn., that would create an Office of Global Internet Freedom may be transformed in the new effort: “I've heard the Cox bill mentioned a couple times,” Ryan’s spokesman said. The Global Internet Freedom Act of 2005 would establish an office in the International Bcstg. Bureau “with the sole mission of countering Internet jamming by repressive regimes,” similar to antijamming technology used by Radio Free Asia. The appropriation for that office would be $100 million over fiscal years 2006 and 2007.
The bill was passed in modified forms in House foreign-aid authorization bills in 2003 and 2005 but died in the Senate because it was “tied up in [the] controversial politics” of other provisions, the International Relations staffer said: “The track record for passing authorization bills for foreign aid [in the Senate] is not good.” Breaking the bill out on its own is “frankly what we're looking at here,” the staffer said.
Templates for legislation include recommendations from Reporters Without Borders, which drew up a “code of conduct” for Internet firms abroad (WID Jan 12 p8), and those from the U.S.-China Economic & Security Review Commission in its 2005 report to Congress. “We're still thinking about what that should look like,” the staffer said, such as the Global Sullivan Principles of Corporate Social Responsibility used in S. Africa or the McBride Principles for employment treatment of minority Catholics in Ireland.
Congress has held back on the issue so far, partly out of concern the legislation would be too weak, the staffer said. A nonbinding resolution would easily pass in either chamber, but “the question is what impact does that achieve?” The subcommittee hasn’t decided between “the softest type of approach” and one with “greater force of law,” but the more immediate goal is to get companies thinking creatively: “I don’t think that the corporate community has really thought about these kind of things,” the staffer said.