The Christian Science Monitor has, about one month late on this admittedly,  joined in on exposing US corporate involvement in internet censorship in China and elsewhere.:

When Chinese authorities crack down on Internet use by dissidents, or the Burmese government prevents its people from access to e-mail, they have something in common with more than 20 other nations: They rely on technology, usually from corporations in the United States, to help them police the Web.

Without products from Cisco Systems, Secure Computing, and other US firms, regimes from Uzbekistan to Saudi Arabia would apparently be unable to manage what their citizens find or write when they surf the Internet. Reports of that reality are now inspiring investors to push for corporate human rights policies that support an open Internet, even if that means saying no to demands from certain governments.

Twenty-seven institutions - mostly American-based mutual funds - with more than $21 billion in assets under management signed a statement last month urging Internet businesses to adopt codes to uphold freedom of expression and to make public what each is doing "to ensure that its products and services are not being used to commit human rights violations."

"The universal declaration of human rights laid down in 1948 the basic freedoms that all people should enjoy, including freedom of opinion [and] freedom of expression," says Dawn Wolfe, social research and advocacy analyst for Boston Common Asset Management, the money management firm that launched the Joint Investor Statement on Freedom of Expression and the Internet.

(Via CDT)

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