Durbin bashes Yahoo, Google operations in China

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

Looks like Sen. Dick Durbin may be taking up the flag of the late Rep. Tom Lantos when it comes to bashing the operations of tech companies in China. Ars Technica‘s Nate Anderson reports on today’s hearing before Durbin’s Judiciary subcommittee:

Yahoo, Google, and Cisco all trekked over to the Senate today to sit for an hour under the grandfatherly, but strangely stern eye of Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL). The subject was ‘Internet freedom,’ but this turned out to be code for ‘censorship in China….’ Durbin [was not] convinced, though, that multinational corporations were truly doing as much as they legally could to avoid censoring information…. After Google’s Nicole Wong claimed that engagement with China was better than isolation, Durbin said that the answer reminded him of corporate arguments regarding apartheid in South Africa.

Durbin told tech executives to expect some legislation in the Senate similar to the Global Online Freedom Act, which would hold U.S. companies liable for helping foreign governments censor the Net. A recently unearthed PowerPoint presentation in which Cisco Systems executives appeared to be keen to help Chinese officials in censoring the Web (one phrase referred to “combating Falun Gong evil cult and other hostile elements”) could give the bill legs.