Ban IT Technogy Transfer to china

Until recently, most chinese police operated with rudimentary technology, which, for example, made it difficult for local branches to share information. American companies regard their sales to law enforcement agencies as addressing this need and as part of a broader wooing of chinese government customers. Oracle, provider of smart-card software to the ministry of public security, does one-third of its business in china with the government, says Derek Williams, head of the company's Asia-Pacific Div. Selling to the government "is just part of our regular strategy," he adds. "I don't think any of these projects would be too controversial."

This is how this golden shield will work: chinese citizens will be watched around the clock through networked CCTV cameras and remote monitoring of computers. They will be listened to on their phone calls, monitored by digital voice-recognition technologies. Their Internet access will be aggressively limited through the country's notorious system of online controls known as the "great firewall." Their movements will be tracked through national ID cards with scannable computer chips and photos that are instantly uploaded to police databases and linked to their holder's personal data. This is the most important element of all: linking all these tools together in a massive, searchable database of names, photos, residency information, work history and biometric data. When golden shield is finished, there will be a photo in those databases for every person in china: 1.3 billion faces.
The digitization of hukou, an enormous task that is part of the Golden Shield project, has involved American technology, including software provided by EMC, according to EMC executives. "Aside from the public security bureau's use of technology for criminal cases, the most important use is the tracking and suppression of Falun Gong followers," says Hao. The American companies emphasize that they don't determine how the chinese use their products.

While there has been relatively little objection to the tech sales overall, Cisco has encountered more scrutiny than other manufacturers, probably because it has long been active in china. Last year it faced a shareholder resolution demanding more openness about the company's dealings with the chinese. The resolution was overwhelmingly defeated.

Although some U.S. tech companies have done business with china's police since the 1990s, the true coming-out party for the relationship occurred in December, 2002, at a conference in Shanghai billed as the china Information Infrastructure Expo and sponsored in part by the ministry of public security. Companies from around the globe set up booths to promote their wares, according to documents prepared for the event. The chinese hosts shopped for digital tools for projects with names such as Golden Customs and Golden Tax.

The campaign to upgrade police technology, which continues today, is called Golden Shield. At the conference, Cisco's booth was surrounded by video screens showing California police officers using Cisco mobile handsets linked to databases of surveillance footage from stores and other public places, according to author Ethan Gutmann, who attended the event and wrote the 2004 book Losing the New china. Hopes that Western technology would spark political reform in china have been unfulfilled, he argues.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Shield_Project

On Dec. 5, 2002, company representatives took turns delivering 45-minute Golden Shield Solutions seminars. Promotional literature from the conference shows that among those making presentations were Cisco, EMC, Extreme Networks, IBM (IBM ), Nortel Networks, (NT ) and Sun Microsystems. (SUNW ) This is where Cisco distributed its pledge to support the goal of "increasing social stability." An IBM handout stated that it would "use its advanced technology to accommodate the country's conditions."

Defending the company's marketing, Cisco spokesman Terry Alberstein says: "The brochures in question were aimed specifically toward local police, outlining how Cisco products can improve access to police IT resources by networking computing devices and extending access to resources, for example making additional information available to police in patrol cars." IBM, Nortel, Sun, and Extreme Networks declined to comment.

Companies use a variety of methods to appeal to chinese authorities. Motorola and IBM take out ads in a chinese-language trade publication called Police Daily. Motorola strives to serve the chinese public's desire for capable law enforcement, says Balbir Singh, a senior company executive for Asia.

EMC has fostered key personal relationships, as when the maker of data-storage systems came to the aid of the ministry of public security last September, EMC's Zhou says. The ministry was relocating to new headquarters in Beijing, and its chief information officer, Xie Yipin, realized that his staff was overwhelmed by the task of transferring extensive databases and computer equipment. So Xie called Zhou. Would EMC send over a few engineers, gratis?

A native chinese who formerly worked for the government and considers Xie a friend, Zhou says he's eager to expand EMC's business with the ministry. "Because we have trust," he adds, "I could send the engineers first, and maybe we would get the money" later.

Just as he expected, EMC has since obtained several contracts with chinese police agencies, bringing to a half-dozen the number of security-related projects the company has landed over the past two years, Zhou says. EMC won't discuss the revenue involved. Xie declined to comment.

It's difficult to pin down illustrations of chinese police using American technology to squelch dissent. The ministry of public security would not comment. Company executives stress that they typically don't work directly with security officials to customize hardware or software. Instead, the government employs local chinese-owned "systems integrators" to do this fine-tuning. "We are just providing a database product," says Oracle's Williams. "A database is like a filing cabinet. Somebody has to provide solutions on top of that, and that's done by a chinese company."

American software can be traced to modernization efforts supporting at least one arm of the chinese ideological enforcement apparatus: the State Council Leadership Team for Preventing & Handling Cults. More commonly known as the 610 Office, a reference to the date in 1999 on which it was created, this body tracks followers of unauthorized religions, such as Falun Gong. Hao Fengjun worked in the 610 Office in the northern city of Tianjin until he fled China last year. From his new home in Australia, he has added his voice to Falun Gong's protests over being oppressed. Hao says the Tianjin branch has a database containing 30,000 practitioners of the banned sect as well as additional names of other unauthorized religious groups. Some of the data were drawn from china's elaborate hukou, the household registration system that helps the government monitor and control the population.