• NY Times, Thursday, February 16, 2006 10 AM

American technology's Big Four, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Cisco Systems, were grilled by lawmakers at yesterday's human rights hearing, who cited the companies' "sickening collaboration" with a Chinese government that is "decapitating the voice of the dissidents" there. The chief concerns were the companies' willingness to alter their online tools and content to conform with Beijing's requirements, and their offering information leading to the imprisonment of Chinese citizens who spoke out against the government. Cisco, meanwhile, was singled out for selling Internet hardware the government in China uses for online surveillance. In response to the haranguing the Web companies received from House Representatives, executives of the four companies insisted their presence in China provided a net benefit. They also suggested the U.S. government could do more to promote human rights reform in places like China, instead of leaving it to private companies to determine foreign policy. Google said it had done enough by disclosing that it will be censoring content on behalf of the Chinese government. It chooses what to censor by studying and mimicking how it's done by the Chinese government. Iowa's Representative James A. Leach responded: "So if this Congress wanted to learn how to censor, we'd go to you--the company that should symbolize the greatest freedom of information in the history of man? This is a profound story that's being told." To which Google's rep replied that the censorship "was not something we did enthusiastically, or not something that we're proud of at all."

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