In recent years technology giants Microsoft, Yahoo and Google have been widely criticised for their business practices in repressive countries such as China. But yesterday the trio tackled their critics by joining a new scheme to help protect the freedoms of internet users around the world.

The Global Network Initiative, a new human rights coalition, says it is working to help companies stand up to authoritarian governments in countries such as China, Vietnam, Syria, Burma and Iran.

As well as the triumvirate of hi-tech companies, the group is also being backed by a wide range of campaigners and academic organisations, including Human Rights Watch and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The initiative aims to “protect and advance user rights to freedom of expression and privacy”…

Rebecca MacKinnon looks at how Skype gave up the ghost to China’s spooks:

While Skype claims to have fixed the problem, the fact that TOM-Skype was enabling surveillance and privacy breaches in such a shocking manner for a significant period of time demonstrates that eBay/Skype as a company has not placed enough emphasis on protecting users’ rights and interests. What else is going on - or has gone on - which users don’t know about and which Skype headquarters doesn’t know about either? This incident with TOM raises questions about how trustworthy Skype as a company really is. Even if top management did not intend for such a situation to happen, the fact that it did happen shows that management has not made user rights high enough of a priority company-wide, and have failed to communicate well with their local partners about what practices are acceptable and what practices are not. This situation could have been avoided if they had really been thinking through the potential challenges and pitfalls of working with a local partner in offering a localized internet communications product in the mainland Chinese market. …

What will come of meetings between Wikipedia and Chinese leaders? An interview with founder Jimmy Wales, and a news summary:

Last week, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales had a meeting with Cai Mingzhao, Vice Director of China’s State Council Information Office - the government body whose “Internet Management Division” is in charge of censoring online content. They discussed Jimmy’s concerns about censorship. No deals or agreements were made, but Jimmy tells me that the meeting has opened a channel of communication and dialogue between the Wikipedia community and the Chinese government.

Many Chinese wikipedians and bloggers first found out about the meeting from the State Council Information Office’s own website, which posted the picture above along with a brief text that said only: “On the afternoon of September 25th, the State Council Information Office Vice Director Cai Mingzhao received the founder of the American Wikipedia, Mr. Jimmy Wales. Liu Zhengrong of the Fifth Division and others also accompanied the meeting.” (The Fifth Division is in charge of the Internet. Liu famously told the world in 2006 that Chinese Internet censorship is no different than what goes on in the West and most other countries.) …

Skype complied with China’s spying more than necessary:

“HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) - Savvy Internet users in China began avoiding the version of Skype offered by its Chinese partner two years ago, but news it filtered and recorded text messages has sparked new worries about the global firm’s commitment to privacy.

The U.S.-owned Web communications firm faces a backlash at home and in China for apparently allowing core principles to be compromised in order to meet the demands of Chinese censors, analysts warned.

‘We may never know whether some of those people whose conversations were logged have gone to jail or have had their lives ruined in various ways as a result of this,’ said Rebecca MacKinnon, an Internet expert at Hong Kong University.”

Security expert Bruce Schneier on the NSA/China joint effort against Internet privacy:
“It’s hard to figure out what the endgame is; the U.N. doesn’t have the authority to impose Internet standards on anyone. In any case, this idea is counter to the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19: ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.’ In the U.S., it’s counter to the First Amendment, which has long permitted anonymous speech. On the other hand, basic human and constitutional rights have been jettisoned left and right in the years after 9/11; why should this be any different?
But when the Chinese government and the NSA get together to enhance their ability to spy on us all, you have to wonder what’s gone wrong with the world.”

The US and China may be cooperating to destroy Internet privacy once and for all:
“In a move that has been condemned by privacy and human rights interests the world over Washington has joined with Beijing to move forward the controversial draft issued by United Nations International Telecommunication Union working groups ‘Study Group 17’. The proposal, known as ‘Q6/17 TD 4068’ is a formal document that is currently in the draft stages which was put forward by the Chinese government. It’s purpose, to put in place a mechanism by which any communications over the Internet can be tracked back to its source. In effect, ending Internet privacy and anonymity. …
Together, these two proposals would render useless the anonymous proxies and onion routing technologies that many of China’s Internet dissidents use to protect their identities. Further more, this would not only effect those using proxy technologies to post to the Internet, but also those using them simply to read content that Beijing does not wish them to read. Additionally, the proposal would not only allow Beijing to track the source and destination of any Internet traffic originating or terminating in China, but also the source and destination of any traffic that merely passed through the Chinese Internet infrastructure on its way to/from another destination.”

A profile of the venerable blogger at ESWN:

“Meet Roland Soong.
His blog, EastSouthWestNorth, receives as many as 26 million hits a month and has been a key driver for stories like China’s paper tiger scandal and the exposé of false reporting during the Taishi Village elections in 2005. It’s a bit like the Drudge Report, but for greater China — a news aggregator with an attitude and an outsized influence.
The bulk of ESWN provides links to and English translations of stories in Chinese media. But it is far more than a translation site. ‘My goal in running the blog is neither fame nor fortune, but it is a personal attempt to bring about a social transformation,’ he wrote in 2006. I ask him whether that is still true. ‘I want people to think,’ he says. ‘I want for people to decide for themselves. If that is social transformation, you can say yes.’”

Internet specialist Rebecca MacKinnon from HKU talks about the uneasy relationship between international Internet companies and China’s government:

“I think you can engage in a smart manner. I think it’s really a matter of being honest and open and transparent with your users about what you’re doing with their data, what information they’re going to get and not going to get through your service, because this isn’t just an issue in China.
Frankly, globally, it’s very difficult to point to a single country where you don’t have governments on one side, users on the other, and companies in the middle being pushed by governments to do things that run counter, arguably, to the rights and interests of those users.
I mean, even in the United States recently we’ve had cases of telecom companies being pressured by the Bush Administration to reveal data without warrants, and so on and so on.
Now, I’m not saying that the United States is China, at all. But what I am saying is that we have a global problem that no country is immune to unless there is no Internet. So maybe North Korea doesn’t have this problem, but pretty much everybody else has this problem to some degree.
And what we need to do is make sure that we’re not having a race to the bottom. We need to make sure that the companies who are doing business in the most authoritarian countries are not setting the standards of business practice for Internet and telecommunications companies globally. And that is a danger with what’s going on in China.”