Cisco on Wednesday released its seventh annual Corporate Social Responsibility Report (see Market Watch press release), detailing how the company “applies its expertise, technology and partnership strategies to address environmental, social and governance issues,” and laying out its 2012 objectives.
The report trumpets that “in 2011, Cisco was included on Ethisphere’s list of the World’s Most Ethical Companies for the fourth consecutive year,” but the Laogai Research Foundation questions the ethics of its self-enriching deals with the People’s Republic of China. Several articles from Cisco’s Chinese website clearly indicate the high degree of cooperation between the American tech giant and China’s Ministry of Public Security.
According to Vice-Chairman of China operations Zhang Sihua, Cisco directly cooperated with the Ministry on the construction of the Golden Shield Project, also known as the Great Firewall of China, which strengthened China’s vast censorship apparatus. Similarly, a 2004 Cisco publication on China’s second-generation ID cards announced that “the backbone of the Public Security system is predominately made up of Cisco networking equipment.”
According to Cisco, its Corporate Social Responsibility Report “includes an expanded discussion of human rights and the Internet, including specific steps the company has taken to address these concerns. The report reiterates Cisco’s commitment to selling products that are built to global standards and its opposition to government efforts to fragment the Internet or undermine freedom of expression.” Contrary to these claims, Cisco is actually providing the very means to insulate Chinese Internet users from the benefits of global online freedom.
The report goes on to proclaim the company’s committal “to protecting the health and well-being of its employees and using its collaborative technology to offer people the freedom to chose how, when and where they work.” This philosophy, guiding the management of Cisco factories and offices in China, is in stark contrast with the philosophy guiding the Laogai system that Cisco technology is aiding to fill up with prisoners. Thousands of Chinese political dissidents, human rights activists and religious practitioners, including members of Falun Gong, have been silenced, disappeared, jailed, or executed, thanks to Cisco-provided network surveillance equipment. Chinese Cisco employees enjoy the freedom to “chose how, when and where they work,” while innocent dissidents, the target of China’s implementation of Cisco technology, are imprisoned and relegated to camps alongside common criminals, who may be forced to labor every day.
Not only has Cisco been proven to have contributed to the Great Firewall of China, but also to the Peaceful Chongqing Project (exposed in a July 2011 Wall Street Journal article). Chongqing, one of China’s most populous cities, will soon be monitored by a citywide network of 500,000 cameras, the world’s most ambitious surveillance system, and Chinese security company Hikvision Digital Technology has commissioned Cisco to provide the technology. Cisco spokespersons have insisted that the company “hasn’t sold video cameras or video-surveillance solutions in any of our public infrastructure projects in China,” but it has not denied selling networking equipment and servers along with support for some large video-surveillance systems.
It is good that Chongqing police will be able to monitor and detain common criminals more easily, but they will also keeping their eye on citizens who wish to exercise their human rights of freedom of thought, speech and assembly. Cisco’s Corporate Social Responsibility Report is a front to mask its complicity in this Chinese version of Big Brother.
To curtail companies like Cisco from collaborating with foreign governments who suppress Internet freedom, Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey has introduced H.R. 1389, the Global Online Freedom Act. Currently in being debated in the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights, the bill aims to “restore public confidence in the integrity of United States businesses.” The Laogai Research Foundation applauds the act as a much-needed intervention on the part of the US government. The leadership of companies like Cisco must be dissuaded from turning a blind eye to the injustices that despotic regimes perpetrate through use of their products.
Cisco CEO John Chambers commented on the release of the report: “At Cisco, we know that an intelligent network is not only a powerful tool for doing business, but also for transforming lives, building communities, and protecting the environment. Through the network and strategic partnerships, we can increase the capacity for all of us to succeed.” The Laogai Research Foundation, however, has identified that Cisco’s “strategic partnership” with the People’s Republic of China has in fact resulted in an “intelligent network” of secret police to patrol the Web, and “increased the capacity” for the Communist Party to put a choke-hold on the Chinese population.