by Sunny on 2nd July, 2009 at 2:54 PM
The American Muslim Congress has launched a boycott of Nokia, because:
Nokia recently provided the Iranian regime with a “monitoring center” that enables security forces to tap cell phones, scramble text-messages, and interrupt calls. Nokia’s new surveillance system has enhanced the regime’s ability to crack down on dissent during recent protests. The monitoring technology is being deployed on a massive scale, with hundreds arrested thanks to Nokia’s technology.
Over 5000 people have already signed their petition. Please spread the word.
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Does anyone know whether it’s Nokia alone that does this – are similar software/mobile phone technologies also used in other represssive contexts?
If so, they should be uncovered.
It is outrageous that Nokia are putting their money and their mouth behind what might actually prevent open communication – the anti-thesis of what their ‘brand’ is .
My understanding is this: Nokia Siemens Networks were contracted to provide a mobile phone network. All mobile phone networks have call tapping facilities – the UK and US governments make use of them.
Full disclosure: I am a Nokia employee, but not in the relevant department (NSN is administered separately), and my understanding comes from public statements and not internal comms, which I couldn’t tell you about anyway.
“Does anyone know whether it’s Nokia alone that does this – are similar software/mobile phone technologies also used in other represssive contexts?”
I once worked for a company that wanted to implement such software in China; we saw a product spec which included example of searching for words such as “democracy” and “Nepal”. The head honcho justified it by saying that the US was just as bad (no, he wasn’t a Socialist Unity contributer) and that, as a Catholic, he wouldn’t do anything evil, therefore , selling such software could not be evil. After much staff lobbying, the idea was shelved. I imagine other companies had no such scruples.
P.
Nokia also provides the cellphones used to videotape and broadcast the events in Iran — do you really want to boycott them?
There’s no actual evidence of election fraud in Iran. Such claims and counter-claims have been compiled at IranAffairs.com–go see for yourself
Mousavi was vetted and cleared to run for office because he’s a regime insider — and yet some people think he presented such a large threat to the regime that they had to resort to massive election fraud to keep him out office? Use your brains.
“After much staff lobbying, the idea was shelved. I imagine other companies had no such scruples”
Thanks Paul, Jono, interesting to know and interesting to hear your experiences. I hope the strength of consumer power, which by itself doesn’t address the root of the problem, does succeed in bringing some pressure on companies – the language of self-interest is universal.
I work out in China and have a few problems typing in certain words into my google search engine – and Youtube is still not active – and Wordpress equally is not accessible.
Won’t the Pro-Israel Lobby complain about this because they hate boycotts of countries
Umm, Nokia isn’t a country. Maybe you’re thinking of Nokiastan.
P.
as well as companies who supply countries
Paul – It was said tongue in cheek.
I don’t think Nokia should be helping Iran to tackle dissent.
We should support this petition and make Iran heed the call to respect the rights of the individuals who stood up to an oppressive regime.
Hass – You may find this gem helpful:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/203143
gesture politics from an organisation vying for attention
Why boycott Nokia? They are contractually obliged and legally obliged to provide that data to the Iranian government, the same way they are obliged to provide the same data to the British government and the American government and many other governments across the world.
Why was there no call to boycott Nokia or other pohone providers when the British government utlised the same technology to illegally hear the conversation between Muslim MP’s and their constituents who were in prison on terrorism charges?
Supporting your side in Iran is one thing, this is fringing on interference in Irans internal affairs.
If Islam wants to take over the world, I think it is only fair that normal people are tipped off – don’t you?
Fug – “gesture politics from an organisation vying for attention”
Yes of course Muslims doing anything is gesture politics and vying for attention.
There are a few bigger organizations on the in Washington who pay lip service to many things.
Sure, boycott Nokia.
And boycott Yahoo for grassing up dissidents to the Chinese government.
And Google for the Great Firewall of China.
The problem is boycotting multinationals from the level of the individual is going to have zero effect. Nada. That’s why we can skweam and skweam and skweam about the likes of Google, but it’s not going to have any effect. Not until the US government blocks trade with China. Which it won’t do any time soon.
Now there are over a billion Nokia handsets in use worldwide. If a boycott of Google is fruitless, other than earning you dinner party brownie points a boycott of Nokia is even more so, especially [as is rightly pointed out above] they are popular in the developing world for providing cheap energy-efficient handsets, responsible for covertly documenting human rights abuses coming from places such as Iran.
Incidentally, I saw one blogger squirming when the software Fring was revealed as the Iranian social-networking tool of choice [for the non-techies it connects to Yahoo, MSN, AIM, Skype etc. and allows file transfers e.g. vids/pics] Why? It is an Israeli run operation. A boycott of Israel would involve a boycott of Fring [which were a boycott in effect would probably never have made it into development...] thus depriving Iranian dissidents of one of the most useful tools in their arsenal.
Boycotts tend to be little more than vehicles for politicos to get all holier than thou and I’m afraid this one looks to be no exception.