Congressman calls out tech firms on China ethics
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(InfoWorld) - U.S. Congressman Chris Smith said that top American technology companies are failing to prevent censorship and other human rights abuses in China, writing Saturday in a letter to The Wall Street Journal. "There is enormous profit potential, but entering the Chinese market means challenging a repressive regime on basic human rights tenets. Sadly, some of America's largest tech firms are currently failing this new test of corporate responsibility," wrote Smith, a Republican from New Jersey and a member of the Foreign Services Committee. Smith said that representatives from Yahoo, Google, Cisco Systems, and Microsoft appeared at an April, 2006 Congressional hearing he convened and "they all acknowledged that their companies have enabled dictatorships to censor democracy and human rights promotion on the Internet." He also said that "Yahoo and Cisco have evenÂ helped the Chinese government incarcerate Internet usersÂ for pro-democracy activity." Court documents and evidence from human rights groups have shown that Yahoo's Hong Kong subsidiary, Yahoo Holdings (Hong Kong), cooperated with Chinese police in cases against journalist Shi Tao and political activist Li Zhi, and that material provided by the company may have led to their conviction. Shi was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment, Li to eight years. In January, Smith re-introduced "The Global Online Freedom Bill of 2007," would give individuals like Shi and Li the right to seek redress in U.S. courts, if they believe their freedom of expression was compromised by a U.S. company. Internet companies would be required to inform the Office of Global Internet Freedom -- to be created if the bill is signed into law -- of keywords and search parameters they are filtering. They must also notify the Office of any restrictions on Internet information access with which they must comply in order to do business in a foreign country. Companies can be fined up to $2 million for violation of these principles, with individuals liable for up to $100,000. The bill provides for $50 million to establish the Office of Global Internet Freedom. The bill cited nine countries, including China, Iran, and North Korea, for blocking, restricting, and monitoring the Internet and its citizens' use of it, according to a January 8 statement from Smith's office. Later in January, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, and Vodafone Group agreed to develop aÂ code of conductÂ with a coalition of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to promote freedom of expression and privacy rights. The parties involved said that they would develop a framework that would hold signatories accountable for their actions in the areas of freedom of expression and privacy rights. Eighteen NGOs are participating in the guidelines' development, including: Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School; Business for Social Responsibility; Electronic Frontier Foundation; Human Rights Watch; and Reporters Without Borders. One observer felt the tech firms were now between a rock and a hard place. "Technology companies now have the unenviable position of moving into the media realm, which is tightly controlled in China," said Danny Levinson, publisher of BDL Media's ChinaCSR.com and the China CSR monthly magazine. "When dealing with corporate social responsibility in China, foreign technology companies are easier targets than firms in other sectors because they are much more high profile than, say, the mining companies providing poor labor oversight and textile companies polluting the environment," Levinson said.
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A top Republican lawmaker raised concerns about the US Food and Drug Administration&#39;s ability to monitor drug safety following Merck &amp; Co.
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A Texas congressman who brought a successful ethics complaint against House Majority Leader Tom Delay was himself rebuked by the ethics panel for violating the rules in the way he brought the complaint.
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Two senior U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday  raised questions about the Securities and Exchange Commission's  handling of an insider trading investigation that involved  hedge fund Pequot Capital and John Mack, chief executive of  Wall Street giant Morgan Stanley .
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The chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security wants answers from the Department of Homeland Security about data mining programs that were shut down for privacy reasons after millions of dollars were spent on them.
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Data privacy is likely to be among the hottest technology issues to face Congress this year, in part due to interest from the new chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.
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(InfoWorld) - Legislation that would allow the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to seek civil penalties against businesses that obtain personal data under false pretenses may soon get a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives. The full House could vote on Prevention of Fraudulent Access to Phone Records Act as soon as late Friday or Saturday, Representative Joe Barton, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said Friday. Barton, a Texas Republican, asked the House leadership to move forward with the bill afterÂ lawmakers ripped into Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) officials ThursdayÂ for allowing the practice during an investigation into board leaks. HP President and Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd and former HP Chairwoman Patricia Dunn both testified Thursday that they did not know the details of how the leak investigation was conducted. The pretexting legislation has been stalled since the House Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously approved it in March. The bill would allow the FTC to seek civil penalties against so-called pretexters, those who masquerade as a customer to gain access to phone records or other personal information. Representatives of five mobile phone service carriers raised no objections to the bill during Friday's hearing. Lawmakers questioned if more businesses than HP have used pretexting or other questionable investigatory methods. "How do we, and how does corporate America, break this ethos that, if someone thinks that illegal or unethical activity ... is acceptable, everybody else in a corporation goes along with it?" said Representative Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat. DeGette will explore ways to add new requirements to the Sarbanes-Oxley financial reporting law, she said. Christopher Bryon, a columnist for the New York Post, told lawmakers Friday that he was a victim of pretexting four years ago, long before the HP investigation came to light. A facial recognition software company hired a pretexter to gain access to his sources after he wrote a column about the company, Bryon said. Pretexting appears to be a widespread practice among U.S. businesses, Bryon said. "This is not something I wanted my family to grow up with ... wondering if your mail is being read, if your phone is tapped, if there's a bug in your bedroom," he said. The FTC has filed five lawsuits against alleged pretexters, but the agency lacks the legal authority to seek civil damages, said Joel Winston, associate director of privacy and identity protection at the FTC. The FTC sought to recover pretexting-related profits in those cases, but additional civil penalties would give the agency an additional tool to use against identity thieves, he said. A second pretexting bill, the Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act, has passed the House, but the measure is hung up in the Senate over disagreements over the best approach. The House bill would make pretexting a crime, with a penalty of up to 10 years in prison. Congress is scheduled to adjourn by early next week until after the Nov. 7 general election. Congress may come back into session late in the year to address unfinished business.
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The House of Representatives urged  China on Wednesday to open its market to more U.S. banks,  insurance companies and other financial services, and demanded  the White House push Beijing harder on the issue.
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(InfoWorld) - A former Chinese national is facing U.S. federal charges of stealing trade secrets from a Silicon Valley company and selling them to foreign governments. The U.S. Attorney's Office in San Francisco Thursday filed a 36-count indictment in U.S. District Court for Northern California against Xiaodong Sheldon Meng accusing him of stealing military application trade secrets from Quantum3D, of San Jose, California, and using them to try to sell the technology to the People's Republic of China, the Malaysian Air Force, and the Thailand Air Force. Quantum3D designs high-end graphics computers that run visual simulation training software for military applications such as flight simulators. Meng, a one-time employee of Quantum3D, stole the trade secrets with the intent that they would be used to benefit those foreign governments, according to the U.S. Attorney Kevin V. Ryan. The technology is covered by the U.S. Economic Espionage Act of 1996, which prohibits its sale abroad without an export license. Quantum3D has cooperated fully in the government's investigation, the U.S. attorney said in a statement. Meng, 42, was released on a $500,000 bond and is scheduled to appear before a federal magistrate in San Jose on Monday. The indictment follows a two-year investigation of the case involving the U.S. Attorneyâs Office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security.
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Bolstered by a House Ethics Committee finding that parts of a complaint filed against him were exaggerated, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay lashed out Friday against
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Three House committee chairmen urged a secretive government panel Wednesday to investigate national security implications of IBM's proposed &#36;1.75 billion sale of its personal computer division to a China-based company.
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Google has responded to a U.S. congressman&#39;s series of questions about its privacy practices, with the company defending its use of consumer data.
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A top Republican lawmaker on Wednesday called on Merck &amp; Co. Inc. to answer questions about its withdrawn drug Vioxx at the first congressional hearing on Nov.
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Description: House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is criticized for conduct that apparently linked political donations to legislation. The rebuke from the House ethics committee is the second for the Texas Republican in just six days.
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(InfoWorld) - When the U.S. Congress adjourned in the early morning hours Saturday, it left a number of technology-related bills unfinished, including two bills addressingÂ fraudulent access to personal telephone records. Despite pressure from members of the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, the full House failed to act on the Prevention of Fraudulent Access to Phone Records Act. The law would have allowed the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to seek civil penalties against businesses that obtain personal data under false pretenses. The committee has been looking into privacy concerns related to so-called pretexting since early this year, but the issue came to a head last month, whenÂ Hewlett-Packard revealedÂ it had used questionable investigative techniques in the surveillance of board members, employees, and reporters. With pretexting, private investigators or identity thieves pretend to be customers of mobile phone carriers or other companies in order to gain access to personal records such as call logs. Congress still has more time to act on the pretexting legislation or six related bills this year, however. After a month-plus break allowing lawmakers to focus on the Nov. 7 election, Congress will return for a lame-duck session Nov. 9. Democrats last week complained that the House Republican leadership had held up the pretexting legislation, but Representative Joe Barton, a Texas Republican and Energy and Commerce chairman, said he'd continue to push for the legislation. Congress alsoÂ failed to pass a wide-ranging broadband billÂ that would replace local franchise rules with a national system for telecom providers launching Internet Protocol-based television services in competition with cable TV. And although U.S. President George Bush called on Congress to pass legislation authorizing a controversial National Security Agency (NSA)Â surveillance program, two bills making it easier for the government to conduct surveillance without court-ordered warrants also stalled. One piece of Internet-related legislation did pass early Saturday. The Senate passed a bill providing money for seaport security, and added to the bill was a provision prohibiting U.S. banks and credit-card companies from processing payments to online gambling sites. A group of professional poker players had asked Congress to reject the bill, but a group of House Republicans pushed for the legislation, saying offshore gambling sites were breaking U.S. gambling-control laws. Bush had called for legislation to authorize the NSA program, which has listened in on the electronic communications of U.S. residents without court-ordered warrants, as a way to head off multiple lawsuits targeting the program. He has argued the program is necessary to help keep U.S. residents safe from terrorism. The HouseÂ passed one surveillance bill, but the Senate failed to act. The House bill would allow federal law enforcement officials to spy on U.S. residents for up to 90 days without a court order in the period after a terrorist attack. The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a civil liberties and privacy advocacy group, said it was happy to see the surveillance and broadband bills stall. Republicans supporting the surveillance bill were pushing it as a way to show they were focused on national security during the last weeks of the congressional campaign, said Nancy Libin, a staff counsel at CDT. "Now that they've gone home, I'm not sure what kind of priority it will be when they come back," she said. Several civil liberties groups had opposed the broadband bill as it lacked protections for so-called net neutrality. Net neutrality advocates want a law that would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or slowing service to Web sites offering competing content, and they have successfully halted the Senate version of the broadband bill, despiteÂ heavy lobbying from large broadband providers.
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Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao appealed to foreign companies Thursday to bring more research and development his nation, promising to protect their intellectual property amid worries of rampant piracy.
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The arrests and seizures came at a time American politicians and executives are pressing China to take strong measures to curb software piracy.