This year, China’s Information Office of the State Council published a report titled “The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2010″ as a sort of response to American criticisms of its own practices.

The report indicates that the Chinese government believes the U.S. is not practicing what they preach.  China says that the U.S. has no business being the human rights cop of the world.  From the report:

United States has a dismal record on its own human rights and could not be justified to pose as the world’s “human rights justice”. However, it released the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices year after year to accuse and blame other countries for their human rights practices. The United States ignores its own serious human rights problems, but has been keen on advocating the so-called “human rights diplomacy”, to take human rights as a political instrument to defame other nations’ image and seek its own strategic interests.

The Chinese report pitches a wide net over many human rights issues, from poverty to the killing of civilians in Afghanistan.  After reading the lengthy report, much of it seems like a mishmash of Googled facts, thrown together out of context to prove a point.  In lashing out at the United States’ protection of childrens mental health, the report pulls from six different sources and includes some questionable statistics: up to 93% of American children are victims to traumatic experiences, such as sexual abuse and neglect and that 93,000 children are “incarcerated.”

This doesn’t mean that some things in the report aren’t absolutely true, such as the prevalence of gender discrimination and the persistence of unemployment and poverty – but much of the report feels like kitchen-sink accusations and thin-air statistics.

The accusation train interestingly makes a few stops at technological issues, such as unwarranted seizure of electronic devices, which ars technica points out is a real concern:

Citizen’ s privacy has been undermined. According to figures released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in September 2010, more than 6,600 travelers had been subject to electronic device searches between Oct 1, 2008 and June 2, 2010, nearly half of them American citizens. A report on The Wall Street Journal on Sept 7, 2010, said the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was sued over its policies that allegedly authorize the search and seizure of laptops, cellphones and other electronic devices without a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. The policies were claimed to leave no limit on how long the DHS can keep a traveler’ s devices or on the scope of private information that can be searched, copied or detained. There is no provision for judicial approval or supervision.

Next up is an attack on America’s internet freedom.  Although the Chinese report is trying to make a point about American hypocrisy, I would just refrain from even talking about internet freedom if I were them.  <Pot, meet Kettle>

While advocating Internet freedom, the US in fact imposes fairly strict restriction on cyberspace. On June 24, 2010, the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs approved the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, which will give the federal government “absolute power” to shut down the Internet under a declared national emergency. Handing government the power to control the Internet will only be the first step towards a greatly restricted Internet system, whereby individual IDs and government permission would be required to operate a website (Prison Planet.com, June 25, 2010). The United States applies double standards on Internet freedom by requesting unrestricted “Internet freedom” in other countries, which becomes an important diplomatic tool for the United States to impose pressure and seek hegemony, and imposing strict restriction within its territory. An article on BBC on Feb 16, 2011 noted the US government wants to boost Internet freedom to give voices to citizens living in societies regarded as “closed” and questions those governments’ control over information flow, although within its borders the US government tries to create a legal frame to fight the challenge posed by Wikileaks. The US government might be sensitive to the impact of the free flow of electronic information on its territory for which it advocates, but it wants to practice diplomacy by other means, including the Internet, particularly the social networks.

The piece is rather lengthy, but worth a read as it paints a picture of how others might view the United States, whether you believe most of it is BS or not.  I especially got a kick out of the “porn is bad” lecture at the end of the “on the rights of women and children” section.  Maybe China will move on to Russia next, if they do in fact ban Skype and Gmail.

Thanks to Guardian.

The WSJ is reporting that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have agreed to follow a common set of principles that will govern how they do business in countries that might restrict free speech.

Under the new principles, which were crafted over two years, the technology titans promise to protect the personal information of their users wherever they do business and to “narrowly interpret and implement government demands that compromise privacy,” according to the code. They also commit to scrutinizing a country’s track record of jeopardizing personal information and freedom of expression before launching new businesses in a country and to discussing the risks widely with their executives and board members.

The pact has the blessing of some groups–such as Human Rights First and Committee to Protect Journalists–but criticized for not going far enough by others–such as the World Organization for Human Rights USA.

So, which side are you on?

1. This is a great agreement and shows that these internet titans take our privacy and freedom of speech seriously. Or,

2. The wording is too loose and doesn’t actually prevent Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft from complying with the countries they operate in.

3. Something else on your mind?

Comments

 Yahoo Launches Business & Human Rights Program

On the Yodel Anecdotal blog, Michael Samway, Yahoo’s VP and Deputy General Counsel, stated, "[W]e hope to help define ourselves as an industry leader in this important field."  He then did a bit of buck-passing by continuing, "While the root causes of these [free expression and privacy] threats clearly lie with governments, we also know corporations have important obligations in the field of human rights."

Other parts of the announcement were equally unimpressive.  Yahoo deserves credit for establishing educational funds and the Yahoo Human Rights Fund in the past, but this new program looks to be little more than a thought exercise.

"We’ll constantly review the intersection points of our business with potential human rights issues and ensure risks are routed to the right teams," wrote Samway.  "We’re committed to exploring risks to freedom of expression and privacy in challenging markets, engaging with external stakeholders, and designing risk mitigation strategies. . . .  We also believe in designing an effective system to assess our own performance in meeting our overall goals and our operational steps relating to human rights issues."

Still, Samway briefly mentioned "practical steps," and at least this development proves Yahoo hasn’t forgotten about human rights issues.  The company should have more chances to demonstrate its commitment as the start of the Olympics nears.

By telling his followers one word, ARRESTED, James Karl Buck managed to set off a chain of interest and attention that led to his release from jail. The Twitter ‘tweet’ ended up being heard by several major news publications, rights organizations, and ultimately the US Embassy.

“On 10 April around 6pm I was photographing outside the Mahalla police 1st station,” Buck wrote. “Police surrounded me and despite the efforts of the crowd to get me free, police caught our taxi and told the driver I was from the CIA.”

Buck and a local translator, Mohammed Salah Ahmed Maree, were released but re-arrested a second time. Though police later let Buck go, Maree was not, and is apparently still in police custody.

Once news of Buck’s arrest began to circulate among his Twitter connections, they alerted UC-Berkeley and the US Embassy. The school arranged for a local attorney for Buck, the Mercury News said.

Now back in America, Buck and others plan to hold a demonstration outside the Egyptian consulate in San Francisco on Friday morning to call for Maree’s release. Reporters Without Borders also pointed out several other arrests of bloggers in Egypt, and called for their release as well.

Two stockholder proposals listed in Google’s proxy statement address the uncomfortable issue of the company’s presence in China and other countries with less than sparkling records in the human rights area. Google’s board recommended shareholders vote against each proposal.

“Technology companies in the United States such as Google, that operate in countries controlled by authoritarian governments have an obligation to comply with the principles of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights,” reads part of Proposal 4.

The Office of the Comptroller of New York City and St. Scholastica Monastery submitted that one. They want Google to not engage in pro-active censorship, as they do as a condition of operating in China.

Proposal 5 requests the establishment of a Board Committee on Human Rights. Harrington Investments thinks this Board “could be an effective mechanism for addressing the human rights implications of the company

Yahoo Protesting China Lawsuit

Being accused of abetting the prosecution and torture of journalists in China can’t be something that looks good on the annual report. Yahoo has been in a position to be accused of doing that, with Chinese reporters suffering the results.

The request noted by the Washington Post stated that although Yahoo did release personal information to Beijing investigators about Chinese writers, Yahoo had to do so as a matter of doing business in China.

The World Organization for Human Rights USA sued Yahoo in April over its role in the cases of Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning. It is believed that both men have experienced abuse and torture as a result of their pro-democratic writings.

A Yahoo spokesperson said in the report, “The U.S. court system is not the forum for addressing these political concerns.” She characterized the real problem as the “behavior and laws of the Chinese government.”

Yahoo representatives should have the opportunity to explain their position in depth when they visit Congress. Testimony by Yahoo’s Michael Callahan before the House Foreign Affairs Committee about what Yahoo knew of the investigations has been contradicted by other evidence that emerged this year.

No one’s suggesting that some Yahoo exec pulled out the needle-nosed pliers, though – instead, Yahoo has been accused of providing the Chinese government with information that led to a man’s arrest and torture.  And it’s actually the man’s wife, Yu Ling, who is behind the suit, as her husband, Wang Xiaoning, is currently serving a ten-year prison sentence in China.

As one might expect, emotions are running high.  “I feel very angry,” said Yu, as reported by The Age.  “Yahoo betrayed my husband for their business interests.  They literally destroyed my family.  All my husband did was express his political views.”

Yet the search engine company seems to have washed its hands of the whole situation.

According to an official statement, “[T]he concerns raised about the Chinese government compelling companies to follow Chinese law and disclose user information are not new.  Companies doing business in China must comply with Chinese law or its local employees could be faced with civil and criminal penalties.”

And so, however regrettable their situation may be – and despite the support of the World Organization for Human Rights USA and Reporters Without Borders – Yu and Wang aren’t expected to have much luck in the American court system.  Still, as Techdirt’s Mike Masnick pointed out, the lawsuit “could be much more effective just in shaming Yahoo into adjusting its practices in giving up the private info of Chinese users.”