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EDITORIAL: Helping China hurt itself

China's largest telecommunications company, China Mobile Communications Corp, dropped jaws in Davos, Switzerland, last week when its chief executive revealed the extent of its access to the personal details of its subscribers.

Wang Jianzhou (王建宙) delved into the subject of personal data while discussing tailoring ads to the consumer. Wang detailed the kind of information his company had on its users, then added that it handed this information to authorities upon request.

One delegate, US Representative Ed Markey, told Agence France-Presse after the session: "I have my eyebrows arched so high they're hitting the ceiling."

But there was very little newsworthy in Wang's statement to delegates at the World Economic Forum. Close surveillance of its population remains a staple of Beijing's style. With the advent of information technology, its ability to monitor dissidents has steadily improved over the last decade.

Nor should it come as a surprise that the country's largest telecoms operator, with more than 300 million users, would contribute to this surveillance. Observers have been warning for years about the complicity of the corporate world in Beijing's surveillance and the suppression of freedoms.

In fact, the only revelation at the forum session was Wang's statement stunning a room full of information technology (IT) and telecom experts and government representatives. What shocked them, however, was probably not the message so much as the nonchalance with which it was delivered.

Democratic countries have largely turned a blind eye as their IT firms profit from helping China develop the technology to monitor its population. Too little has been said, for example, about Canadian firm Nortel's operations in China. In a project funded by Beijing, the company has continued developing speech-recognition technology that it originally created for the FBI in the US, apparently to analyze tapped phone conversations.

US lawmakers in particular should be up to date on the abuse of IT since a series of congressional hearings were held last year at which Internet companies discussed their operations in China. At these hearings, it became clear that Yahoo, too, has helped Chinese police identify dissidents who use its Internet services.

But although it is clear that companies from democratic countries have helped censor Internet access in China, transferred surveillance technology to the authorities and helped track Beijing's critics, little has been done.

Western firms and governments are more interested in feigning shock and disapproval than recognizing their responsibilities. Attempts to flesh out the UN's Norms for Business -- which detail corporate responsibilities not to facilitate human rights abuses -- have stalled, largely because of US opposition.

Likewise, the US congressional hearings resulted in a lot of tongue-clicking, but little in the way of improving corporate accountability. Legislation such as the Global Online Freedom Bill, which would have barred US Internet firms from providing Chinese authorities with information to identify dissidents using the Web, failed to pass.

Meanwhile, many Western IT firms are still unwilling to disclose the details of their cooperation with Beijing or to take action to avoid future abuses. Observers have suggested relocating servers storing personal data of users outside China. But as the Chinese market expands, these firms are in no rush to make any move that could compromise their access to the market.

Until governments take steps to demand such measures, however, the democratic world will hardly have the credibility to bat an eyelid when a Chinese firm openly mentions its cooperation with police.
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