Cisco implicated in Chinese human rights abuses as second Golden Shield lawsuit gathers pace

Cisco is being sued by another group of Chinese political prisoners for its part in the Golden Shield project helping to build the so-called Great Firewall of China and train Chinese officials in how to monitor citizens.

In a lawsuit similar to the one filed against Yahoo a few years back, legal representatives of the three men, Du Daobin, Zhou Yuanzhi, Liu Xianbin, have filed their case in a US district court.

The lawsuit was actually filed in June and is being funded by Laogai Research Foundation, a human rights organisation founded to raise public awareness of human rights violations in China.

Daniel Ward, of US law firm Ward & Ward, argued that Cisco did not just ship the routers and other tech equipment to build the Golden Shield, but sold technology and training services specifically designed to suppress the Chinese people.

The three dissidents are believed to have been beaten while in jail.

Ward told V3 that his firm is already having meetings with Congressmen on Capitol Hill, "with the expectation that the US Congress will hold hearings on this matter after the August recess".

This is not the first time Cisco has been sued for alleged collusion with the Chinese authorities.

The networking company was forced to deny claims in another lawsuit in May that its work on Golden Shield helped the Chinese government to hunt down members of the banned Falun Gong movement.

Cisco responded to both lawsuits with a blog post claiming that it "supports free expression and open communication on the internet".

"Cisco does not supply equipment to China that is customised in any way to facilitate blocking of access or surveillance of users," the company said.

"Equipment supplied to China is the same equipment we provide worldwide, which includes industry-standard network management capabilities which are the same as those used by public libraries in the US that allow them to block inappropriate content for children.

"It is the same equipment that service providers and businesses around the world must use to stop viruses or block attempts to disable infrastructure."

Cisco's case casts an interesting light on the quandary faced by all Western firms when considering selling into China - whether the financial reward is high enough to counter the hammering their corporate social responsibility and reputation will doubtless take.

Cisco seems to be washing its hands of the entire matter by claiming innocently that it abided by all international trade and other laws and made no enhancements to the equipment to deliberately suppress the Chinese people.

But while it may have obeyed the letter of the law, it remains to be seen whether investors will continue to remain faithful to the firm if the lawsuits keep piling up. Selling such equipment to a regime with a long track record of human rights abuses, and then looking the other way, is a morally dubious move, whichever way the PR cookie crumbles.

Given the only thing that seems to separate China from countries like Burma sometimes is its tech savvy and irresistibly huge economy, this is an area where other Western technology firms would be wise to tread carefully.

16 Aug 2011