Interesting to see that to achieve privacy of individuals, technology should not be provided to the government of Iran and facilitate the surveillance of their nation!
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A pressure group called United Against Nuclear Iran has called on Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. to immediately end its business in Iran because, according to the group, the vendor has been "been providing the Iranian regime with cellular and electronic technology that it has used to conduct surveillance on its citizens, and track down human rights activists and dissidents."
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However, if the converse is that, without Huawei's infrastructure / kit, there is a lessened communications capability in Iran, which is the lesser of two evils?
ReplyDeleteI was faced with a similar issue in terms of Vodafone and the "Arab spring," with an obligation to switch off communications services - Vodafone took a significant publicity hit over that.
I also note similar issues around Google / Yahoo! and censorship in some regimes; is it better for Google et al to provide services, but to co-operate with local law, or to provide no services, depriving the citizens of any of their capabilities at all. Should a company comply with the laws of territories in which it operates, or decline to operate in certain countries because of the legal regime?
I suppose as a sort of balance, its been reported this week that the US makes more requests for data from Google than any other country (http://mashable.com/2011/10/25/us-data-google/) Not surprising perhaps given that Google is based there, but a nice example that location may still be important.
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