Looking for Tankman
The always excellent PBS series Frontline has a feature in which they try to find the anonymous hero of Tianamen Square and how American companies like Google, Yahoo, and Cysco Systems are not only helping to erase him from China's history, but to keep tabs on the country's citizens through surveillance and voluntary censoring of their information.
What's most interesting is the fact that some of these companies may in fact be breaking US law. Passed after the 1989 Chinese student protests, the law specifically prohibits American companies from providing or selling to China equipment used in "crime detection."
The episode will be available online starting this Friday.
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Comments
Its an awful situation, with the companies voluntarrily censuring information.
Google makes less sense then yahoo though. All that fuss they threw up about the justice department looking for child pornographers online, and yet they give everything to china.
Posted by: Capt. Jack Sparrow | April 13, 2006 7:34 AM
Exactly. I guess this is what happens when the ONLY consideration is market share. Ugh.
Posted by: Derek Phillips | April 13, 2006 9:20 AM