Google/Multi-National Corporations, International Surveillance, and Human Rights

Abstract

The many news reports on cyber security, identity theft, Wikileaks, and NSA intelligence gathering programs over the past few years have shown the international community that the World Wide Web is anything but a safe place to store sensitive information, or any information for that matter. This study will examine how closely multi-national corporations in the information technology sector, such as Google, are involved with national governments on these issues. The study will analyze events in the U.S. and China and attempt to uncover whether or not these have directly infringed upon peoples' basic human rights.

Question

With emerging information regarding the NSA's PRISM program and China's "Golden Shield Project", has either country directly infringed on peoples' basic human rights?

Hypothesis

As more information is uncovered regarding the true nature of the aims of these internationally implemented programs, it has become increasingly clear that there have been multiple violations of peoples' human rights in both the United States and China with their respective monitoring programs.

The NSA and the PRISM Project

"Since September 11th, 2001, the United States government has dramatically increased the ability of its intelligence agencies to collect and investigate information on both foreign subjects and US citizens. Some of these surveillance programs, including a secret program called PRISM, capture the private data of citizens who are not suspected of any connection to terrorism or any wrongdoing."

(Sottek&Kopstein, 2013) Under the guise of a "war on terror", the United States government has consistently upped its efforts to gather as much information as possible regarding the activities of international and domestic citizens alike. Most U.S. citizens were wholly unaware that the government had been running a secret filtration program to determine threat levels of individual citizens both domestically and abroad. This PRISM project and its intentions have recently been leaked in the Edward Snowden fiasco that took the country and the media by storm.

"PRISM is a tool used by the US National Security Agency (NSA) to collect private electronic data belonging to users of major internet services like Gmail, Facebook, Outlook, and others. It's the latest evolution of the US government's post-9/11 electronic surveillance efforts, which began under President Bush with the Patriot Act, and expanded to include the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) enacted in 2006 and 2007." (Sottek&Kopstein, 2013) FISA, "...may be the most powerful court you have never heard of -- operating out of a bunker-like complex blocks from the Capitol and the White House -- sealed tightly to prevent eavesdropping.The FISA Court's larger mission is to decide whether to grant certain types of government requests-- wiretapping, data analysis, and other monitoring for "foreign intelligence purposes" of suspected terrorists and spies operating in the United States." (Abdullah &Meers, 2014) Essentially, the National Security Agency relies on the FISA courts to obtain the warrants in order to snoop around whomever they suspect to be a target, giving them virtually free reign to investigate anything they choose. "There were 1,856 applications in 2012 to the FISA Court for electronic surveillance and physical searches for "foreign intelligence purposes," the Justice Department said.None were denied, but 40 were modified to some extent. Only one such request was withdrawn by the FBI." (Abdullah &Meers, 2014) This is a startling statistic considering the fact that all but one request was accepted, allowing the NSA to proceed with investigations as they please. From a human rights standpoint, this could raise a few eyebrows. If the NSA can inspect at will, wouldn't you suspect there to be multiple human rights violations in this pursuit of information?

The situation becomes even more interesting when multinational corporations are involved. There seems to be a fine line between the autonomy of corporations and the extent to which the government can strong arm information out of them. "In June, a private contractor working for Booz Allen Hamilton (Edward Snowden) leaked classified presentation slides that detailed the existence and the operations of PRISM: a mechanism that allows the government to collect user data from companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Yahoo, and others." (Sottek&Kopstein, 2013)Although many of these companies claim to object government intervention, it is clear through recent reports that the government has undoubtedly seized a plethora of information from many of these multinational corporations in order to build leads and continue investigations. "...The basic idea is that it allows the NSA to request data on specific people from major technology companies like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and others. The US government insists that it is only allowed to collect data when given permission by the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. (Sottek&Kopstein, 2013) However, as previously stated, the process to obtain this information seems fairly lenient and allows for plenty of flexibility to maneuver around standard protocol, again raising suspicion as to what exactly the NSA obtains and how exactly they obtain it. Although the PRISM project has recently been leaked and more information is becoming available regarding their intentions, the agency and its programs continue to be shrouded in secrecy.

The extent and rate at which the government seizes or attempts to seize information and/or bars these companies from sharing pertinent information with the public remains a mystery as well. "Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and others have stepped up pressure on the government in the past month to declassify the process which compels them to hand over user data to the government. In an impassioned plea made by Microsoft on July 16th,

the company's general counsel Brad Smith said: "We believe the US constitution guarantees our freedom to share more information with the public, yet the government is stopping us." (Sottek&Kopstein, 2013) Clearly, the government understands what its doing is wrong, otherwise what would be the problem with letting citizens know exactly what is going on by allowing these multinational corporations to release information to the people? It couldn't be a matter of national security if a majority of the surveillance incidents are happening on U.S. soil toward U.S. citizens. It would become more an issue of domestic security, as people would undoubtedly be outraged if they knew the overall extent to which the U.S. government was spying on its own citizens. The Electronic Frontier Foundation states, ""this isn't a wiretap, it's a country-tap." (NSA Spying On)
As far as we know, "NSA programs collect two kinds of data: metadata and content. Metadata is the sensitive byproduct of communications, such as phone records that reveal the participants, times, and durations of calls; the communications collected by PRISM include the contents of emails, chats, VoIP calls, cloud-stored files, and more." (Sottek&Kopstein, 2013) The NSA runs a dragnet and especially targets calls made from abroad to the U.S. where foreigners are specifically targeted. "Leaked documents show that under the agency's targeting and "minimization" rules, NSA analysts can not specifically target someone "reasonably believed" to be a US person communicating on US soil.

According to The Washington Post, an analyst must have at least "51 percent" certainty their target is foreign. (Sottek&Kopstein, 2013) So, the stipulation is, if there is 51 percent certainty that a target is foreign, they can have their calls monitored and screened without the target giving any type of consent, even if they are technically U.S. citizens. It doesn't take long to figure out that there is something terribly wrong with this new system of information retrieval; one that directly challenges the ideas our forefathers presented for a just and free nation where all men are created equal with the same inalienable rights.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has been working diligently to fight the NSA and its PRISM project since 2008. "EFF is fighting these illegal activities in the courts. Currently, EFF is representing victims of the illegal surveillance program in Jewel v. NSA, a lawsuit filed in September 2008 seeking to stop the warrantless wiretapping and hold the government and government officials behind the program accountable. In July 2013, a federal judge ruled that the government could not rely on the controversial ‘state secrets' privilege to block our challenge to the constitutionality of the program." (NSA Spying On) Clearly, there are major violations of human rights going on in the U.S. with the NSA, the PRISM project, and others that are coming into focus as more information is revealed and more whistleblowers continue to speak out.

China and the "Golden Shield Project"

"The Golden Shield Project" (GSP), otherwise known as "The Great Firewall of China", has been a subject of great debate in the last decade or so because of the peculiar situation they seem to have created for themselves. The GSP is, "the Chinese government's internet censorship and surveillance project. Initiated, developed, and operated by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), the project is one of the most controversial subjects in the world." (Ping, 2011) On one hand, the Chinese benefit tremendously from the onset of the internet and the wave of business opportunities that followed.

With economic prosperity at the forefront and booming, President Jiang Zemin developed and "Open Door Policy" to "bring in Western knowledge and open the country to foreign trade and investment." (Ping, 2011) However, "After the Open Door policy was implemented, China has struggled to strike a balance between "opening up" to the Western world and keeping its people away from the Western ideology." (Ping, 2011) Considering the fact that the internet is essentially the dawn of the information age with the ability to share information in an instant, it is ironic that the Chinese both rely on the internet for economic purposes, yet reject the internet for the possibility of Western ideologies permeating society and compromising communist control in China. It's a real catch-22 for them.

The initial aims of the GSP are eerily similar to what is currently happening in the U.S. "The government initially envisioned the Golden Shield Project to be a comprehensive database-driven surveillance system that could access every citizen's record as well as link national, regional, and local security together." (Ping, 2011) Although China receives the highest scrutiny for their practices regarding censorship and human rights violations as a result, there are definite parallels between the NSA's PRISM program and China's GSP, however China just doesn't hide theirs as well. In a report issued by China regarding a U.S. report of Chinese human rights violations, Chinese officials stated, "The U.S. report is "full of overly critical remarks on human rights conditions in nearly 200 countries and regions, as well as distortions and accusations concerning human rights causes in China. However, the United States has turned a blind eye to its own woeful human rights situation and remained silent about it." (China Issues Report) It goes on to state, "...civil and political rights violations have been "severe" in the United States, adding that the country is "lying to itself" when proclaiming that Americans live in the "land of the free" and also states, "To support this argument, the report noted that the U.S. Patriot Act and Homeland Security Act both have clauses about monitoring the Internet, giving the government or law enforcement organizations power to monitor and block any Internet content "harmful to national security." (China Issues Report) In this case, the U.S. was pointing the finger at China and denounced their internet censorship tactics, however China fired right back with a retort that drew even more attention to the U.S. and their domestic censorship policies. Even though China gets the bad wrap, (although their policies are certainly a little more extreme) it is evident that the United States uses a very similar framework within its own country, and the international community is well aware.

Cases involving multinational corporations in China provide some interesting insight as to how closely these U.S. based corporations can be corralled into handing over sensitive information to the U.S. government. A few years ago, "Google cited a major instance of that abuse in announcing its policy change: "a highly sophisticated and targeted attack" on Google and more than 20 other large companies aimed at stealing software code. "A primary goal of the attackers," Google said, was breaking into the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists." China was targeting Chinese Human Rights Activists living in the United States by infiltrating Gmail in order to obtain information as opposed to trying to infiltrate the substantially more difficult FBI database to uncover these individuals. In response, Google had no choice but to surrender their databases to the U.S. government in order to have the situation resolved. With that, Google essentially gave the government full access to their servers with which they could access at any time. This caused a major stir between Google and China, as Google was already extending itself in order to provide China with the censored Google platform they desired.

Another major incident regarding multinational corporations and China involved tech giant Cisco. The EFF in the case Du v. Cisco made several accusations toward Cisco regarding a multitude of human rights violations and their role in customizing equipment for China's internet censorship goals. Some of the claims made include:

• That Cisco Systems "aggressively sought contracts to provide substantial assistance in helping the Chinese government implement the Golden Shield Project"

• That Cisco knew its services and products would be used by Chinese law enforcement, prisons, forced labor camps and also to police Internet usage

• That Cisco employees themselves customized or trained others to customize the equipment they sold to China to meet the unique goals of the Golden Shield Project, including targeting disfavored groups in China

• That Cisco knew the Golden Shield Project would be used to commit human rights violations (Reitman, 2011)

The case raised some serious questions regarding the responsibility and accountability of these multinational corporations and their involvement in human rights violations both domestically and abroad. "What responsibility do corporations have to consider human rights when making business deals? Are companies that build and market equipment for the purpose of surveilling and censoring pro-democracy activists in authoritarian regimes culpable when those activists are imprisoned or tortured? Do companies bear a special responsibility if they customize products to improve the efficacy of tracking dissidents and choking free speech? What if the companies train government agents in using the technology to ferret out activists?" (Reitman, 2011) It is difficult to answer any of these questions with one-hundred percent certainty, however the idea that these companies are knowingly producing products that lead to the capture, torture, and imprisonment of human rights activists undoubtedly gives precedence to the idea that these companies could be at fault and partially responsible for many of these violations as well.

Throughout this report, I have cited numerous instances in which both the United States through the NSA and their PRISM program and China with their "Golden Shield Project" have clearly violated peoples' rights to privacy and free speech. Under the guise of a "war on terror" in the U.S. and in an attempt to shelter people from Western ideals in China, both countries have taken advantage of their citizens and have exploited their trust in the government and their mission to do what is best for the country. As multinational corporations become involved in human rights violations, it is difficult to draw a definite line as to who is guiltier, the government for imposing or the corporations for succumbing? Regardless, there is substantial evidence against these countries and their internet censorship/monitoring programs that require a call to action to pursue a more transparent government that can share information freely with its people without tarnishing the trust of those that pledge their allegiance to a country that doesn't trust them back.