Cisco and Microsoft: Handmaidens of Government Surveillance?

Eighteen months after Google pulled its search engine out of China to avoid censorship, Microsoft's Bing still censors searches there. And now Cisco Systems and others are working on a government project in the city of Chongqing, for example, building what will be the biggest police surveillance system in the world. What is right, making concessions to do business in a fast-growing and lucrative market, or foregoing profits in the quest to "do no evil"?

I am in Singapore this week facilitating a leadership workshop with senior executives from across Asia, so it seems fitting to write this post about doing business in China. 

In July, Microsoft agreed to provide English-language search results for Baidu, China's top search engine, which is heavily censored.

It seems ancient history now, but Microsoft had a rocky start in China with Windows 95.

The company had the operating system translated into Chinese, but it made one cross-cultural mistake: it hired Taiwanese programmers who peppered the software with references like "Take back the mainland" and "Kill the communists."

The government was not pleased at the time; it backed Linux, the open-source operating system.

Now Microsoft seems bent on making up for its past mistakes and working with the Chinese government.

But there is a history of what the government may do with search results. After Yahoo handed over data about a Chinese journalist five years ago, the journalist was condemned to ten years in jail.  

In another controversial collaboration, Cisco Systems and other companies are poised to help the city of Chongqing keep an eye on its citizens. The project is to build a city-wide network of 500,000 cameras across an area 25% larger than New York City.



Both Cisco and the mayor of Chonqing assert that the  surveillance will be used to crack down on crime, not to hunt down dissidents. 

Hewlett-Packard is also bidding on the police surveillance project.

In July, the Wall Street Journal quoted Todd Bradley, an executive vice president who oversees Hewlett-Packard's China strategy, in an interview in China. "We take them at their word as to the usage," Bradley said.

He added, "It's not my job to really understand what they're going to use it for. Our job is to respond to the bid that they've made."

What do you think? Are Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, or Microsoft right to participate in the lucrative Chinese market, even if that means being the handmaiden of an authoritarian government that might use their work to violate human rights? I look forward to reading you on http://thomaszweifel.blogspot.com/.

P.S. To learn how to manage ethical dilemmas, read my book "The Rabbi and the CEO: The Ten Commandments for 21st Century Leaders."