[Infowarrior] - Cisco Leak: 'Great Firewall' of China was a Chance to Sell More Routers

[Richard Forno]

Cisco Leak: 'Great Firewall' of China was a Chance to Sell More Routers
By Sarah Lai Stirland EmailMay 20, 2008 | 7:50:52 PMCategories:  
Censorship, Tech Companies in China

An internal Cisco document (.pdf) leaked to reporters on the eve of a  
Senate human rights hearing reveals that Cisco engineers regarded the  
Chinese government's rigid internet censorship program as an  
opportunity to do more business with the repressive regime.

The 90-page document is an internal presentation that Cisco engineers  
and staffers in China mulled over in 2002 as the central government  
was upgrading its local, state and provincial public safety and  
security network infrastructure. Under the category "Cisco  
Opportunities," the document provides bullet point suggestions for how  
it might service China's censorship system called the "Golden Shield",  
and better known in the West as the Great Firewall of China.

The document is the first evidence that the networking giant has  
marketed its routers to China specifically as a tool of repression. It  
reinforces the  double-edged role that Americans' technological  
ingenuity plays in the rest of the world. Companies including Cisco,  
Yahoo, Microsoft and Google have faced criticism for cooperating to  
various degrees with the repressive Chinese regime, and the document  
leak on Monday came one day before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee  
hearing into U.S. technology companies participation in foreign  
government censorship programs.

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http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/05/leaked-cisco-do.html