Filtering Facts

For years, Cisco has taken basically the same line publicly as other network security vendors take when it comes to selling network security tools to authoritarian regimes: “we just sell it – it’s up to them how they use it.”  But the Washington Post reports that an uncovered PowerPoint from Cisco may have crossed the line into actively aiding government repression:

Cisco Systems, seeking to penetrate the Chinese market, prepared an internal marketing presentation in which it appeared to be willing to assist the Chinese Ministry of Public Security in its goal of “combating Falun Gong evil cult and other hostile elements,” according to a translation of a document obtained by congressional investigators. The Cisco presentation will take center stage today at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Global Internet Freedom Act, which aims to defeat Internet censorship. The Washington Post obtained a copy of the presentation, the authenticity of which was confirmed by Cisco. 

I used to do the PR for Secure Computing, which sells web filtering to the government of Saudi Arabia and other places in the Middle East.  Our position was that we were selling the same filtering software we sold to the U.S. Army, General Electric, and United Airlines and lots of other places, and it’s the customer’s choice how to deploy.  Where I felt it would cross the line would be to actively aid a government in suppressing a particular social, political, or religious point of view.  Let’s say Secure Computing was actively creating a list of sites criticizing the Saudi government and supplying it to them – that would have crossed the line, and I was never aware of anything like this happening when I was at Secure Computing.  I haven’t seen Cisco’s PowerPoint, but it sounds like it may have crossed that line.