Corporation of Interests

I found this article that is titled, "Seven "Corporations of Interest" in Selling Surveillance Tools to China". This article was very interesting and as you can see from the title, it tells the viewers and readers why the corporations sell surveillance tools that can be used to abuse human rights. There may be no hard evidence against some of these companies that are about to be listed but what is known is that technology is being used to censor the citizens and infringe upon their human rights.

1. Cisco is a company that has admitted to their knowledge in terms of what their technology is being used for. They are involved in China's Golden Shield Project which is a censorship and surveillance project by the Chinese government.

2. Nortel is reported to have sold hardware to help this censorship and surveillance project along with working with a University in order to come up with a software to monitor telephone conversations.

3. Oracle is reported to have sold software to China and had admitted that one-third of their profit in China comes from their government.

4. Motorola is said to have sold hand held devices to "tap into "sophisticated data repositories" on Chinese citizens."

5. EMC is reported to have sold to the Chinese authorities a sophisticated data storage with security precautions.

6. Sybase is reported to sell database programs.

7. L-1 Identifying Solutions is said to have sold software to help the government identify individuals in criminal investigations.


As you can see from this long list, the only company that has actually come out and admitted is Cisco. Cisco also appeared in front of congress in their role of the Golden Shield Project. All the other six companies have just been reported by news articles and there is not much hard evidence yet. I think this is very interesting that companies/corporations do in fact believe that there is nothing that triumphs profit. I remember the previous line from "The Corporation" documentary that we just finished today in class.

Also, it should be noted that there are many other corporations out there besides these seven listed and also other technologies that can be configured for China's own use.

LINK TO ARTICLE

Introduction

Surveillance technology includes any kind of technology that is able to monitor the environment and behaviors of people for means such as protection and maintaining social control in terms of the government. When you think of surveillance, the technology that comes to mind are cameras. Cameras are a main part of surveillance technology but keep in mind that it can be anything that is an electronic equipment. The many types of surveillance includes computer, phone, surveillance cameras, etc.