Follow up: Are You Ashamed?

They have time to grill baseball players for a week and try to humiliate tech companies for their business decisions. Yet God forbid they take time to run inquiries into illegal wiretapping.

lets not mention the patriot act or anything related

remember Freedom isn't free

no you got it wrong... freedom ain't free

"And I'm proud to be an American..." *puts on cowboy hat*

oh yeah and to answer the question, yeah I'm ashamed... of those congressmen!

Lantos, to Microsoft: Is your company ashamed?

Microsoft: We comply with legally binding orders whether it's here in the U.S. or China.

Lantos: Well, IBM complied with legal orders when they cooperated with Nazi Germany. Those were legal orders under the Nazi German system...Do you think that IBM during that period had something to be ashamed of?

Microsoft: I can't speak to that. I'm not familiar in detail with IBM's activities in that period.

Lantos: You heard (Rep. Christopher Smith's) speech. Assuming that his words are accurate, is IBM to be ashamed of their action during that period?

Microsoft: Congressman, I don't think it's my position to say whether IBM should be ashamed.

I'll take that as a "no."

... he's saying that he doesn't know enough about IBM's past to comment intelligently.

I have more respect for that than for someone who lets himself/herself be bullied into agreeing with something just to suit someone else's grandstanding.

is one of those things which is interesting down the pub, in small doses or with people you know really well :)

just thought I'd mention that for all of us in the cheap seats :)

He had all the information he needed to answer the question "are you or your company ashamed." He neatly sidestepped it, just like everyone in Washington does when presented with a simple question.

Frankly I don't think he is ashamed or that he should be.

wtf kinda question is that in a inquiry?

Quite frankly if a company wants to operate in any country it should be bound by that countries laws. It's not the tech giants' responsiblity to police free speech in China. Nor, quite frankly, is it Congressman Lantos' responsibility.

I'm damn glad none of them answered his lame ass question.

Right on Oilman.

It's business as usual. Politics being played and points being scored just for the sake of politics, it has nothing to do with ethics, or dealing with the chinese. From Main St. to Wall St., the US does incredible amounts of business with communist china will condemning communist Cuba.

US foreign policy is far more about economics than ethics.

Far be it from the congressman to point fingers at IBM, he should be reminded that the US only joined that war after they were dragged in by direct attacks on them. The second world war had already been raging for years before that.

/end rant.

People in America are going to bed hungry, sick without insurance and homeless while you
worry about chinese censorship, ARE YOU FUCKING ASHAMED ASSHOLE?

I think I'd be pretty ashamed if I turned over someone's email address, which ended up in them going to prison...for doing nothing more than speaking out against scary government censorship. But then, I'm the child of a Holocaust survivor, so like Tom Lantos, it hits home a bit more for me. If my mom's family hadn't been hidden by non-Jews, her whole family would be dead, and I wouldn't be here to write this post.

Granted, I don't know what the solution is, if these companies want to make millions (billions?) of dollars in countries like these, but I know that I personally would have trouble sleeping at night if I'd personally given a foreign government someone's email address/name/location.

know that I personally would have trouble sleeping at night if I'd personally given a foreign government someone's email address/name/location.

Ethnic cleansing is shit and prettymuch almost nothing compares to that, but as far as the wrongful jailing part goes, people often go to jail without reason here in the US as well.

From the coverage I have seen, Y have only handed over email addresses etc in response to legal court orders, passed down by duly constituted authority in China. We in the West may be a bit uncomfortable about how the whole process works, and the political motivations behind the actions of the judiciary, but given the way that the US DoJ is currently fishing from Google, I don't belive that the US establishment has a great deal of room to throw stones here.

The Chinese legal system makes what these people did illegal. Law has nothing to do with morality, so no moral argument can or should be made. I have no doubt that the Chinese consider many aspects of the US system to be abhorrent.... are you ashamed about that, Congressman?

> I know that I personally would have trouble sleeping at night if I'd personally given a foreign government someone's email address/name/location.

A point to consider for you... how do you think the say, Saudi officials assigned to the War on Terror feel after handing over details of Saudi nationals to the US Government? Its mostly a matter of perspective

There is a lot of political grand standing in those hearings. However, Congressman Tom Lantos is not some Johnny-come-lately to opposing totalitarian regimes. He has been doing it very forthrightly throughout his political career and indeed long before most of us were born.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Lantos

Like for AAnnAArchy it's personal.

>people often go to jail without reason here in the US as well.

Two wrongs don't make a right. And just because we need to improve ourselves does not mean that we should feel cowed into not speaking out when we see some of our own corporations assisting in a wrong.

If the government in the US thinks that doing business in China is immoral, they can do the same as they did with Cuba and slap a huge fine on any company dealing there.

Somehow I don't think they will though considering the whole US economy (and Wallmart in particular) relies on cheap Chinese imports. Funny how principals become less important when it hurts your pocket....

I don't see Google dealing inside China has made censorship any stronger.