On 25/11/2014 20:50, Adam Porter wrote:
If such a thing happened with Google or
Yahoo in [the USA], despite abuses by the NSA, et al, a warrant
would still be required at some level, and the accused would still
receive a public trial, with a right to counsel, chances to appeal,
the right to plead the Fifth, etc.
What makes you believe this is the case? Plenty of people have been
detained without trial, warrants, council, or appeal to higher
authorities, in the US, the UK and various other "Western" countries by
the NSA, CIA, GCHQ, and various other agencies.
I also note that none of the items on that list are within the remit of
Google to change, apart from whether they would provide information
without a warrant. In some cases, FISA required them to do so anyway.
In other words, I don't see based on what case or evidence you claim
that American companies are any different in this respect from Chinese
ones: they are legally required to, um, follow the law. They also are
not themselves able to change whether their governments allow detainees
or suspects of whatever kind a right to public trial, counsel, appeal,
or any other kind of recourse.
And given the concerns about Baidu's being responsible for malware on
top of everything else, this development seems mind-boggling,
especially without an explanation by Mozilla as to why these concerns
are not justified.
As noted upthread, the partnering with Baidu is not new.
This leads me to wonder how much of it was motivated by money, and
that in and of itself concerns me. Has Mozilla become too large? Has
its focus been lost? Is the drive to complete projects like Firefox
OS and compete in new markets becoming so strong that deals like these
can't be turned down? Has Mozilla's need for money become a
liability? Or have I simply misinterpreted Mozilla from the
beginning--is it not as altruistic in its mission as it has claimed?
Does it really have my best interests at heart as an Internet user?
Speaking as someone who's been involved with Mozilla in one way or
another for 10 years now (the last 1.5 as an employee - never involved
with our commercial deals, though, as I'm an engineer, so take what I
say with appropriate amounts of salt!), I don't think there has been
change of the kind you suggest. Mozilla as an idea does not need money.
Mozilla as an organization that tries to influence the course of the
internet by creating products that push the web forward and have your
best interests at heart - in other words, one that pushes that idea,
that acts to make that idea a reality - needs money, in the same way
that you do if you would like to buy clothes, food and other life
essentials.
Considering that Baidu's deal is not new, and that really the main
reason there was news at all is that we swapped one business partner
(Google) for 2 others so far (Yahoo and Yandex), at least one of which
(Yandex - less sure about Yahoo) we have partnered with in the past... I
don't think anything has changed, no.
There we have a potentially useful discussion, rather than this odd
linking of the bad human rights records of various countries with the
companies which operate within them.
Given the ways in which those companies are subservient to their
countries, I don't think it's so odd. It's not unusual for nations to
enact trade sanctions with other nations based upon such abuses, and
it doesn't seem unreasonable for Mozilla to take similar stands.
Mozilla is not a nation. We should actively avoid taking political
stands where they are not explicitly related to our mission. Boycotting
China and/or all of its companies would only make sense if we thought
that furthered the Mozilla mission. At this point in time, that seems
highly unlikely.
Personally, I know too little about how strongly Baidu in particular is
linked with the enforcement of the internet freedom situation in China
to say much either way. If there is significant evidence that Baidu acts
strongly against our Manifesto, that should absolutely make us more
reluctant to do a deal with them - but that applies equally to US actors.
This is where it gets tricky, too. We are a mission-oriented
organization, but also hugely pragmatic. Most of the big search engines
are tied to an advertising business, and many of those don't 100% align
with all of the Manifesto's values. So in terms of the business deals we
do, I imagine that practically speaking, we can't require the perfect
partner *and* expect a deal of the magnitude that allows us to not start
firing lots of people, to stop improving our products, and ultimately
lose relevance and thereby our power to effect change.
So we make deals with imperfect partners. That's not always 100%
awesome, but on the other hand, business deals are not a one-way street.
So Yahoo, for instance, committed to honoring do not track for Firefox
users, after previously having abandoned it. (see
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/promoting-choice-and-innovation-on-the-web/
). In other words, partnering with these 'imperfect partners' also gives
us leverage and opportunity to push for change.
Does partnering with imperfect partners give the "appearance" of doing
their bidding? Given the above, I don't see how we can altogether avoid
that, in everyone's eyes. There will always be people cynical enough to
think that we're just a pawn in Google/Yahoo/Baidu/device
manufacturers/network operators/...'s game. Unless we stop doing
business deals altogether, that won't go away. Appearance alone isn't a
very good measure here.
Again, I'm not an expert where Baidu sits on the line between "100%
aligned" and "omg trying to destroy the internet/freedom". However, it
seems that when we decided to partner with them (again, this is
longer-standing than the Yahoo or Yandex deals), we decided they were
far enough away from "destroying the internet/freedom" side that we
thought it made sense to partner.
If there is evidence that we should re-evaluate that for Baidu, by all
means present it - but it should be directly related to Baidu, not to
the Chinese government. I have only seen that which was presented by
Irvin, but he didn't seem to be of the opinion that we shouldn't partner
with them (I think?). If people want to make such a case, it's probably
a good idea to start a new thread.
~ Gijs
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