There have been a number of stories lately which really highlight the question of the responsibility of corporations to protect or even stand up for the rights of their users.
- A short video on C Net shows the pleas of a family member of a Chinese journalist who was arrested based on information provided by Yahoo.
- A recent Times article discusses AT&T’s role in giving government officials access to data traveling across their networks for “further analysis.”
- Finally, while Google resisted the US government’s efforts to gain access to their data, their relations with the Chinese government appear to be more friendly.
Our Constitution grants that “Congress [read as the government] shall make no law” abridging freedom of speech, but as private entities begin to have more power over our speech (and as they collect increasing amounts of personal data) the question of private speech abridgement is increasing in importance. Further, as these articles show, the problem may be exacerbated by our government acting together with companies (which aren’t bound by the Constitution to protect our speech) to effectively engage in speech-restrictive activity.
Is this problem legal or ethical? In cases where the impact may be indirect, is it really a problem at all? What makes the above cases so alarming is that the collaboration may actually result in people ending up in jail (or worse). Journalists have argued for a press privilege in part because there is a belief that they should not help law enforcement do their job (essentially, let police do their own investigating). While resisting government demands may put their business in jeopardy, perhaps fighting on behalf of their customers on similar grounds is a reasonable expectation. One would hope that American citizens would stand up for our Constitutional principles, and perhaps that our corporate citizens would do the same.