Cisco says it does not help China block speech

NEW YORK: A top Cisco executive said the company does not supply the Chinese government with technology for the purpose of suppressing political speech, but cannot prevent China from using its equipment in the open market.

"The same technology to stop malicious hosts can also be used to block a server. The Chinese government uses that capability to block servers," said Chief Development Officer Charles Giancarlo at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in New York on Monday.

China buys Cisco Systems Inc.'s technology, which is used to direct Internet traffic, through independent resellers of its gear.

"It's physically impossible to police all 25,000 resellers," Giancarlo said.

Cisco and several other U.S. technology companies, including Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc., are facing the ire of some U.S. lawmakers, activists and investors for their alleged complicity in allowing the Chinese government to commit human rights abuses.

Cisco's products for routing Internet traffic contain technology that can block network attacks, but can be applied to block political content, according to a 2005 report on Internet filtering in China released by the OpenNet Initiative, a group of activist computer academics based at Harvard, the University of Toronto and Cambridge University.

"These same techniques can be applied to block political content," the report said. Filters used to stymie network threats, such as worms and viruses, can also be used to reject Web sites with words like "falun" in the name, the report said.

The Falun Gong is a dissident spiritual group that has been banned by the Chinese government.

Giancarlo acknowledged some of the company's products can be used to block political speech online, but that was not their original intent.

"As far as we know, our people have never been involved in configuring our products for the purposes of restricting speech," Giancarlo said.

He added: "Cisco has never and will never work with a foreign government of any type for the purpose of restricting political speech."