The verdict is in.
In the court of
public opinion, Google is guilty/innocent of
disrespecting-the-laws-of-a-sovereign-nation-in-which-it-does-business/standing-up-for-its-principles.
It is a paragon
of/typical example of an
ethical-enterprise-at-its-best/corporate-arrogance-at-its-worst.
Read the comments
following various blogosphere commentaries on
Google's decision to stop censoring its Chinese search engine and mostly
you'll discover ethics is a popular spectator sport.
When it's someone
else's ethical conundrum, solutions are always easy
and violators are always reprehensible. Ethics is always simpler when
you're in the bleachers than on the field playing the game, though.
Consider the case of
Google. Legally, it's probably in the clear for
the moment. It has no legal obligation to host its Chinese-language
search in mainland China. At the moment, Hong Kong's laws do not require
censorship in spite of China's sovereignty over it; China is free to
block access to Google at its borders.
And, while the
evidence is strong that agents of the Chinese
government have tried to hack Google's servers, the company has no
meaningful legal recourse, unless you think suing the Chinese government
in a Chinese court would do any good.
As a publicly held
company, Google's management must act in the best
interests of its shareholders. On the face of it, failing to conduct
business in the world's fastest growing economy would have been a
questionable choice ... Google probably had to make the attempt, and,
having made the attempt, did have an obligation to obey the laws of the
land whether or not its managers agreed with them.
On the other side of
that coin: Google's search algorithms are just
that ... algorithms. The Chinese government's censorship rules don't
work that way -- they are idiosyncratic. Which means obeying Chinese
censorship laws would require technological fiddling of the kludgiest
kind.
Then there's Google's
international brand, which depends on it
providing honest answers to the questions that are searches. Allow
censorship anywhere and the honesty of its search results are
questionable everywhere.
So while it's easy to
second-guess Google's decisions, making those
decisions was a much more difficult proposition, balancing as they did a
complex collection of fiduciary, legal, and ethical concerns.
Now let's get out of
the bleachers and onto the playing field.
More and more
companies that are putatively based in democratic
nations but are pleased to call themselves "multinational" have
subsidiaries, partnerships, suppliers and customers located in
less-than-democratic countries. China is the most prominent, but hardly
alone.
Even companies that
aren't multinationals employ citizens of those
countries -- here in the United States they're legally resident under
H-1B visas.
Imagine your company
is among them. You learn the Chinese government
is requiring your Chinese subsidiary to covertly gather information
about an H-1B employee, or an employee of that subsidiary, or an
employee of a trading partner or customer. You are instructed to provide
regular downloads of all e-mails sent or received by that individual.
The good news: From
your perspective the legal situation is clear.
Namely, it is whatever your company's general counsel says it is. Unless
you own the company you have no legal discretion in the matter.
Other than that,
nothing at all is clear. The individual in question
might have received trade secrets; providing them to the Chinese
government could easily mean you're donating them to Chinese
competitors.
Your colleague might
be a Chinese dissident, engaged in activities
that are perfectly legal and normal in a free society. Complying with
the request means helping consign a colleague -- someone you know, like
and admire -- to the extended hospitality of a Chinese prison warden.
Or, the individual
might belong in jail: Not all dissidents of
totalitarian regimes are admirable people. Even that is morally gray:
Most of those who have successfully overthrown totalitarian regimes have
been considerably less admirable than our own founders.
The world is, in Tom
Friedman's now clichéd formulation, flat, or at
least flattening. Trading and communications networks make this part of
our daily existence.
But that's the
economic perspective. The world of values is anything
but flat. It's convoluted, and seems determined to stay that way.
Long-time readers of Keep
the Joint Running know my dislike
for the simplistic formulation, "do the right thing." Occasionally, the
"right thing" is actually clear and simple. More often it's damned
complicated, especially when you're in a leadership role.
An example you'll be
facing with increasing frequency is finding the
laws of a foreign nation to be both beyond what you personally find to
be morally acceptable, and contractually binding.
The world's trading
systems are globally intertwined, but its moral
systems are not, making Google's "You can make money
without doing evil" far easier to
say than to turn into useful guidance.
