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A comment on Cisco’s Attempt to Dodge Responsibility for Facilitating Human Rights Abuses. Parent comment

Re:Cisco’s Attempt to Dodge Responsibility for Facilitating ... by tptacek on Tuesday April 19, 2016 @05:35PM (#11530654)
Words mean things. When you draw wild connections like these, you endorse the notion that society should be governed by the moral feelings of citizens and not by laws. That may feel good in the moment, but I guarantee you that in the long run, it's people like you and I who will suffer the most if that worldview prevails.

Conspiracy to assist the unethical law enforcement operations of another country is not, in fact, a crime in the US. I wish it were. But to be guilty of a crime, it has to be a crime when you commit it. It doesn't work retroactively --- that's one of the first safeguards against despotism the founders came up with.

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Re:Cisco’s Attempt to Dodge Responsibility for Facilitating ... by sneak on Tuesday April 19, 2016 @05:41PM (#11530697)
It's not a wild connection; conspiracy in the US to aid murder/torture abroad is currently a violation of US law.

Couching it in "unethical law enforcement operations" doesn't really change the fact of the matter, does it?

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Re:Cisco’s Attempt to Dodge Responsibility for Facilitating ... by tptacek on Tuesday April 19, 2016 @06:03PM (#11530846)
I'm assuming you're trying to convince the rest of the thread, and not me. I think what Cisco did here was repellant and that they richly deserve to lose the civil suit against them, but I also thinking trying to twist criminal law to specifically target the villain of the moment is a terrible idea that will backfire, badly.
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Re:Cisco’s Attempt to Dodge Responsibility for Facilitating ... by Zigurd on Tuesday April 19, 2016 @06:11PM (#11530899)
We have laws against paying bribes, even when they are lawyered into legal-ishness in a foreign country.

It is far from clear-cut that when US corporations assist regimes where the US officially has serious problems with their human rights record, that laws against torture and other human rights violations would not apply to those enabling and assisting those violations. Some law enforcement operations are not merely unethical, or "different" from those that are legal here.

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Re:Cisco’s Attempt to Dodge Responsibility for Facilitating ... by tptacek on Tuesday April 19, 2016 @06:14PM (#11530916)
What's your point? Selling surveillance equipment to China doesn't violate the FCPA.

Are you arguing that we should pass another act, like the FCPA, that criminalizes the knowing and deliberate sale of technologies that will be used to harm people in violation of the UDHR? I'm right there with you.

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Re:Cisco’s Attempt to Dodge Responsibility for Facilitating ... by Zigurd on Tuesday April 19, 2016 @09:27PM (#11531708)
You are that sure there are no ITAR bad guys using the GFW to find dissindents.
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Re:Cisco’s Attempt to Dodge Responsibility for Facilitating ... by tptacek on Tuesday April 19, 2016 @11:53PM (#11532153)
What's an "ITAR bad guy"?
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Re:Cisco’s Attempt to Dodge Responsibility for Facilitating ... by Zigurd on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @09:17AM (#11534112)
There is a list of individuals and organizations you can't sell to directly or indirectly.
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Re:Cisco’s Attempt to Dodge Responsibility for Facilitating ... by tptacek on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @11:29PM (#11539479)
Ah, that makes sense. But now we're talking about crimes that are more or less unrelated to what EFF is accusing them of.
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Re:Cisco’s Attempt to Dodge Responsibility for Facilitating ... by Zigurd on Thursday April 21, 2016 @10:24AM (#11542347)
The general accusation is that the GFW is part of China's security apparatus and that there are enough legal restrictions on selling the tools of oppression that Cisco should not have done it, even if they got away with it. Any cursory DD on who might use the GFW, and for what, would result in backing off selling it. They didn't want to look. It is very difficult to see Cisco being regulatorily and possibly criminally in the clear on building the GFW. It is directly analogous to selling the batons with which to beat protesters and being shocked, shocked! when it happens.
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