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Amnesty Slams Web Companies For Human Rights Violations

The international human-rights group Amnesty International has issued a critical report against Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, reports The San Francisco Chronicle, in which it accuses the Web companies of colluding with China against the rights of its citizens. By filtering information and cooperating with the Chinese government, the group says the businesses are failing to uphold their corporate principles and failing to follow international human-rights guidelines. How? Since Chinese citizens cannot express themselves freely or access free information in China, the three companies willfully abet the problem. Amnesty International has been working on this issue for some time with Google et al., but an Amnesty spokesperson says: "We're not seeing the companies move quickly enough or effectively enough." The Web companies maintain that it's not up to them to set policy in foreign countries, claiming that it's better be in China and provide as much information as they can versus nothing at all. Admittedly, they've done little to protest China's position--but Google, at least, lets its users know when search results have been filtered. Amnesty says Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft should do even more, but doesn't elaborate on what that could be.

Read the whole story at The San Francisco Chronicle »

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