foarp
mattsteinglass
…we prefer to call it “advancing free expression through active engagement in over 100 countries, even as we comply with the laws in every country in which we operate.”
Google has done a lot over the past two weeks to earn my goodwill. Yesterday they did another thing to earn my goodwill.
We believe that malware is a general threat to the Internet, but it is especially harmful when it is used to suppress opinions of dissent…
This particular malware broadly targeted Vietnamese computer users around the world. The malware infected the computers of potentially tens of thousands of users who downloaded Vietnamese keyboard language software and possibly other legitimate software that was altered to infect users. While the malware itself was not especially sophisticated, it has nonetheless been used for damaging purposes. These infected machines have been used both to spy on their owners as well as participate in distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against blogs containing messages of political dissent. Specifically, these attacks have tried to squelch opposition to bauxite mining efforts in Vietnam, an important and emotionally charged issue in the country.
Here’s McAfee CTO George Kurtz with the details.
I think the New York Times phrased this “apology” exactly right.
Apology: In 1994, Philip Bowring, a contributor to the International Herald Tribune’s op-ed page, agreed as part of an undertaking with the leaders of the government of Singapore that he would not say or imply that Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong had attained his position through nepotism practiced by his father Lee Kuan Yew. In a February 15, 2010, article, Mr. Bowring nonetheless included these two men in a list of Asian political dynasties, which may have been understood by readers to infer that the younger Mr. Lee did not achieve his position through merit. We wish to state clearly that this inference was not intended. We apologize to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew and former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong for any distress or embarrassment caused by any breach of the undertaking and the article.
Personally, I’m quite sure that Lee Hsien Loong achieved his post entirely on the basis of merit, and that the fact that his father, Lee Kuan Yew, was the founding Prime Minister of Singapore, dominated its politics for 40 years, and still carries the title “Minister Mentor” has nothing to do with it. Further, I don’t think the above item in the NY Times has anything to do with the fact that in Singapore, organizations that publish unflattering things about people who happen to be related to the Prime Minister, and who often themselves happen to hold important offices in government, tend to get sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I think that to suggest that this system represents a privatized sophisticated commercial-law version of the types of oppression of free expression that exist in, say, Communist dictatorships would be completely inaccurate and quite probably libelous under Singapore law.
Filed under: Health, Human Rights | Tags: Advocacy Organizations, Amnesty International, Barack Obama, Congressional Budget Office, Health care, Human Rights, Human Rights and Liberties, United States
Amnesty International is a great organization. But I sometimes wonder whether its senior officers believe that politics is the art of taking ludicrously unrealistic moral stands, failing to accomplish anything, and preening. This evening I received an email from the director of Amnesty’s Demand Dignity Campaign, Sameer Dossani:
Our policy experts have been watching this legislation develop and the proposed outcome does not look good. Right now, the Senate is hotly debating its version of the bill, but they’re way off track. The Congressional Budget Office projects that around 24 million people will still be uninsured in 2019!1 That is unacceptable.
Because this month is a crucial window for media attention on the health care system, we’ve got to push the debate further to include human rights as a key focus. It’s up to human rights advocates to point out how the proposed reform falls short of true universality, equity and accountability.
I beg to differ: it’s up to human rights advocates to point out that if the Senate bill does not pass, the number of uninsured in America will likely rise past 50 million in the next few years, and tens of thousands of Americans per year will continue to die because they lack adequate insurance. The only thing this sort of holier-than-thou nonsense accomplishes is to help the for-profit insurance industry defeat health insurance reform. If it doesn’t get done now, it’s certainly not going to get done next year after Democrats have lost their 60-vote supermajority in the Senate, nor will it get done after Barack Obama is defeated in 2012 due to his failure to deliver on major legislative goals.
It’s crucial to have some relatively absolutist human-rights advocacy organizations that continue to push for first-best solutions on moral grounds and to oppose compromises. But it’s not crucial for them to intervene after it’s too late to make changes, when they can only contribute to cynical efforts to defeat reformist legislation. In fact, it’s crucial, at such moments, for them to keep quiet and store their powder for the next moment when they can actually make a positive difference. I mean, seriously. How pure is the ivory in Amnesty International’s tower?
