Cisco and Abuses of Human Rights in China: Part 1

This is the first in a two-part series explaining the background around the EFF call to action over Cisco assisting the Chinese government in abusing human rights. This article outlines the background of the issue and the first of our two demands to Cisco: intervening on behalf of dissident writer Du Daobin. Our next post will outline specifically how Cisco and other similar networking companies can pledge to uphold human rights.

If you have not done so, we urge you to sign our petition to Cisco. And if you’ve already signed, please continue to spread the word.

Understanding Du v. Cisco

What responsibility do corporations have to consider human rights when making business deals? Are companies that build and market equipment for the purpose of surveilling and censoring pro-democracy activists in authoritarian regimes culpable when those activists are imprisoned or tortured? Do companies bear a special responsibility if they customize products to improve the efficacy of tracking dissidents and choking free speech? What if the companies train government agents in using the technology to ferret out activists?

Two cases — one in the United States District Court of Maryland and another in the Northern District of California — are attempting to create legal precedent around these issues of corporate social responsibility. In Du v. Cisco, three named plaintiffs – Chinese citizens Du Daobin, Zhou Yuanzhi, and Liu Xianbin – are joining 10 unnamed "John Doe" plaintiffs in suing the American company Cisco Systems for their role in assisting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in violating human rights. The complaint against Cisco alleges that the plaintiffs in the case:

Have been and are being subjected to grave violations of some of the most universally recognized standards of international law, including prohibitions against torture, cruel, inhuman or other degrading treatment or punishment, arbitrary arrest and prolonged detention, and forced labor, for exercising their rights of freedom of speech, association, and assembly, at the hands of the Defendants through Chinese officials.

The complaint makes several accusations against Cisco Systems, including:

• That Cisco Systems "aggressively sought contracts to provide substantial assistance in helping the Chinese government implement the Golden Shield Project"
• That Cisco knew its services and products would be used by Chinese law enforcement, prisons, forced labor camps and also to police Internet usage
• That Cisco employees themselves customized or trained others to customize the equipment they sold to China to meet the unique goals of the Golden Shield Project, including targeting disfavored groups in China
• That Cisco knew the Golden Shield Project would be used to commit human rights violations

To understand these issues, one must first understand China’s Golden Shield Project, often referred to in the West as the Great Firewall of China. According to the complaint as well as published articles on the topic,1 the system employs a series of techniques to monitor and track the Internet usage of people in China and prevent them from accessing a wide swath of online content. The surveillance aspects are extensive; the government is often able to not only track what sites an individual visits, but may also be pinpointing who that individual is, what messages that person posts, and even the content of her communications.       More