Technology sold by Microsoft to the Chinese government has been used by Beijing to censor the internet, and resulted in the jailing of its political opponents.
An Amnesty International report has cited Microsoft among a clutch of leading computer firms heavily criticized for helping to fuel "a dramatic rise in the number of people detained or sentenced for Internet-related offences."
The human-rights group has slated the company for an "inadequate response" to escalating abuses in China.
"We don't believe this is appropriate or responsible," said Mark Allison, an Amnesty International researcher who wrote the report.
"[Microsoft] should be more concerned about human rights abuses and should be using its influence to lift restrictions on freedom of expression and get people out of prison. It is worrying that they don't seem to have raised these issues."
Amnesty believes Microsoft is in violation of a new UN Human Rights code for multinationals which says businesses should "seek to ensure that the goods and services they provide will not be used to abuse human rights."
China is the world's most aggressive censor of the
Internet.
Microsoft said: "We are focused on delivering the best technology to people throughout the world. How-ever, how that technology is used is with the individual and ultimately not in the company's control."
Since China was admitted to the WTO two years ago a succession of big US technology firms have been supplying the government. Internet use in China is close to 80 million, though this is less than 10 percent of the adult population.
Nortel Networks said last September it plans to invest US$200 million in the next three years to strengthen its research and development capabilities in China.
Cisco Systems, which was also named in the Amnesty report, has in the past denied that it tailors products for the Chinese market and has said: "If the government of China wants to monitor the internet, that's their business. We are politically neutral."
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
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