Live data from Hacker News

Cisco Must Be Held Accountable for Aiding China’s Human Rights Abuses

eff.org

71–80 of 126 posts

Re: Cisco Must Be Held Accountable for Aiding China’s Human Rights Abuses

#71
post #45

Glad this is finally coming to light. Every time I would mention it here that Cisco has built backdoors in its routers specifically to aid the Chinese government and later other governments as well, I would get downvoted. Cisco standardized the "lawful intercept" protocol for routers at the IETF, people! What did you think that meant?! The US government (hopefully after it elects a saner president) and other supposed…

Obama is insane now ?

Well to be fair, the NSA is still doing its thing. This makes it hard to criticise China for doing similar things.

Re: Cisco Must Be Held Accountable for Aiding China’s Human Rights Abuses

#72
post #25

It's not the people who provide goods who should be prosecuted but the people who carry out the actual bad who must be held to account. On the other hand, China [or any country with baddies, perh including our own] is a sovereign government and beside some economic pressure I don't know there is much more we should be able to do. Unless Cisco violated some commercial embargo or egregiously violated export law, etc.

So the U.S. should just let anyone export nuclear weapons manufacturing information and these trade restrictions lifted? http://www.state.gov/strategictrade/overview/

If the gov't were to lift restrictions, yes. What restrictions against export did Cisco violate?

As it is, countries with weapons manufacturers allow their firms to engage in sales to lots of regimes who ate known to engage in all sorts of rights violations. Only occasionally are embargoes or sanctions imposed. I dont see where Cisco violated any international embargo.

Re: Cisco Must Be Held Accountable for Aiding China’s Human Rights Abuses

#73
post #45

Glad this is finally coming to light. Every time I would mention it here that Cisco has built backdoors in its routers specifically to aid the Chinese government and later other governments as well, I would get downvoted. Cisco standardized the "lawful intercept" protocol for routers at the IETF, people! What did you think that meant?! The US government (hopefully after it elects a saner president) and other supposed…

Stop conflating backdoors and lawful intercept.

Lawful intercept is a specific method of viewing traffic passing through a network device.

It would be straightforward to build something, without it being a standard feature of vendor network devices, using a different standard feature of literally any enterprise level network device: port mirroring. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_mirroring

Port mirroring exists for many reasons and is widely available on switches for things like IDS, troubleshooting, and performance monitoring (e.g. generating netflow on an different device than the switch).

To use Cisco lawful intercept, you must already hold the highest admin privileges on the device.

Cisco almost certainly built this feature for the US agencies. The ones it has been supplying internet routers to since the commercialisation of routers, a short time after the creation of the internet by... US agencies.

Re: Cisco Must Be Held Accountable for Aiding China’s Human Rights Abuses

#74
post #18

It seems clear Cisco knew their systems were going to be used against Falun Gong. Leaked Cisco presentation: "Cisco Confidential 57 © 2002, Cisco Systems The Golden Shield Project: Public Network Information Security Monitor System • Stop the network-related crimes • Guarantee the security and services of public network • Combat “Falun Gong” evil religion and other hostiles [Note: Statement of Government goals from s…

Falun Gong is an evil litigious cult created in 1992 as a way to raise money for the founders and cult leaders. They're unscrupulous, including promising terminally ill cancer patients the possibility of healing if they just redirect their remaining wealth toward the cult. They're the Chinese equivalent to Scientology, but even worse. Their teachings are racing, homophobic, sexist and misogynistic. They preached that…

> Their teachings are racing, homophobic, sexist and misogynistic

I could think of several large sects of the big three montothiestic religions that preach most of the above. Apart from racing. Racism perhaps, but not racing.

Re: Cisco Must Be Held Accountable for Aiding China’s Human Rights Abuses

#75
post #63
post #25

It's not the people who provide goods who should be prosecuted but the people who carry out the actual bad who must be held to account. On the other hand, China [or any country with baddies, perh including our own] is a sovereign government and beside some economic pressure I don't know there is much more we should be able to do. Unless Cisco violated some commercial embargo or egregiously violated export law, etc.

That's how evil things happen. This phenomena is called diffusion of responsibility[0] and lead to some of the most evil actions in human history. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility

Do you think the eff should make moral judgments on its donors and only accept donations from morally acceptable people? Maybe it should be their responsibility to ensure their income only comes from people with whom they are morally compatible. And alternatively donors ensure that principals and associates of the eff are also moral.

Re: Cisco Must Be Held Accountable for Aiding China’s Human Rights Abuses

#76

Don't blame the sword, blame the holder.

If holding swords is illegal, shouldn't we prosecute sword makers ?

If the sword makers design a sword specifically to kill members of a persecuted minority, then yes..

Re: Cisco Must Be Held Accountable for Aiding China’s Human Rights Abuses

#77
post #75
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how evil things happen. This phenomena is called diffusion of responsibility[0] and lead to some of the most evil actions in human history. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility

Do you think the eff should make moral judgments on its donors and only accept donations from morally acceptable people? Maybe it should be their responsibility to ensure their income only comes from people with whom they are morally compatible. And alternatively donors ensure that principals and associates of the eff are also moral.

Sorry, I don't see how that's relevant. EFF does no evil (as far as I'm concerned), but let's hypothetically say, if one day we found out that EFF helps some foreign government to repress their people, sure everyone supporting EFF now should feel morally obligated to stop their funding.

Re: Cisco Must Be Held Accountable for Aiding China’s Human Rights Abuses

#78
post #50
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Falun was banned by mainland China simply because it's a Taiwan backed cult organization to gather intel & support coup in government seniors and military. The rest is media propaganda.

Yeah right. Until 1999 it received wide support from Chinese officials, but then decided it was too big and started a silly propaganda campaign feeding the gullible with lies like you just told at the same time when they started a violent persecution. At least they had learned something from the bloody Tienanmen massacre, and this time instead sending military to murder piles of unarmed civilians carried out the murd…

Does this remind anyone else of Order 66?

Re: Cisco Must Be Held Accountable for Aiding China’s Human Rights Abuses

#79
post #51
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah right. Until 1999 it received wide support from Chinese officials, but then decided it was too big and started a silly propaganda campaign feeding the gullible with lies like you just told at the same time when they started a violent persecution. At least they had learned something from the bloody Tienanmen massacre, and this time instead sending military to murder piles of unarmed civilians carried out the murd…

Quick quiz for you: exactly how many people died on that square you mentioned? If not, where are the killing happened? Which side draw first blood?

Just for fun, let's compare search engine results for the term "tiananmen square":

Google: https://www.google.com/search?q=tiananmen+square&safe=off&cl...

Baidu: http://image.baidu.com/search/index?tn=baiduimage&ps=1&ct=20...

Most estimates I see put the number of casualties in the 1000's, caused by the side that happened to have, y'know, tanks.

Re: Cisco Must Be Held Accountable for Aiding China’s Human Rights Abuses

#80
post #77
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the eff should make moral judgments on its donors and only accept donations from morally acceptable people? Maybe it should be their responsibility to ensure their income only comes from people with whom they are morally compatible. And alternatively donors ensure that principals and associates of the eff are also moral.

Sorry, I don't see how that's relevant. EFF does no evil (as far as I'm concerned), but let's hypothetically say, if one day we found out that EFF helps some foreign government to repress their people, sure everyone supporting EFF now should feel morally obligated to stop their funding.

Your interpretation is off. I'm asking, what if some of their donations come from people or governments who are misogynists, racists, tax cheats, etc. Should the eff figure out the "dirtiness" of the moneys they receive as the eff is asking Cisco to eval the morality of one of the sources of their income.
Post reply on HN