Microsoft made the right decision to stop helping Russian authorities use claims of software piracy to harass and silence dissenters. On Monday, it announced that it is barring its lawyers from taking part in such cases and will provide a blanket software license to advocacy groups and news media outlets in Russia, undercutting the Kremlin’s tactic.

Still, Microsoft’s willingness to lend itself to politically motivated investigations — it changed course only after an article by Clifford Levy in The Times on Sunday — suggests a shocking failure of corporate responsibility. The Times said lawyers for Microsoft bolstered state police in politically tinged cases across Russia. They made statements suggesting the company was a victim and called for criminal charges. After police seized a dozen computers from a Siberian environmental group, the group said all its software was legally licensed and asked Microsoft to confirm this. Microsoft would not. The police used information from the computers to track down and interrogate some of the group’s supporters.

Before changing policy on Monday, Microsoft executives said the company was required under Russian law to take part in such inquiries.

Unfortunately, Microsoft is not the only American company that has failed to stand up for the rights of its customers in undemocratic countries.

In China, all search engines have helped the state control access to the Internet. In 2004, Yahoo helped Beijing’s state police uncover the Internet identities of two Chinese journalists, who were then sentenced to 10 years in prison for disseminating pro-democracy writings online. Skype’s Chinese partner, Tom Online, scanned text messages for politically sensitive words and stored them alongside user information on servers that could be accessed easily by the Chinese government.

The one company that has stood up to China is Google. In March, after five years of complicity with Beijing’s censors, it began redirecting searches to its unfiltered engine in Hong Kong. By contrast, Microsoft’s founder and chairman, Bill Gates, defended the company’s continued collaboration with China’s censors. “You’ve got to decide: Do you want to obey the laws of the countries you’re in, or not?” he said during Beijing’s fight with Google. “If not, you may not end up doing business there.”

In 2008, Microsoft and Yahoo joined fellow businesses, human rights organizations and other groups in the Global Network Initiative and pledged to protect privacy and freedom of expression online. But declarations are cheap. They must put principle before profit and refuse to aid and abet repression. Microsoft can show that it now truly gets it by extending its offer of a blanket license to political and news media groups in China and other repressive countries around the world

Source:-http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/15/opinion/15wed2.html

Russia is suddenly very concerned with the rampant pirating of Microsoft software—but apparently only in dissidents’ computers, which the Kremlin is confiscating at a breathtaking clip. Typical is an environmental group that protested Vladmir Putin’s decision to re-open a factory that had polluted a lake. One afternoon, police appeared and seized all their computers—which contained legal Microsoft software and a lifetime’s worth of environmental data.

Moscow’s getting an unlikely hand from Microsoft, reports the New York Times in a lengthy look, which has filed suits against raid victims. Microsoft says it only acted because Russian law requires it, but it’s landed solidly in the delicate dance of tech giants with less-than-democratic states: Afraid to hurt business yet under pressure to push for human rights, Microsoft says it’s now reviewing its policies in Russia.

Source:http://www.newser.com/story/100348/how-russia-uses-microsoft-to-crack-down-on-dissenters.html

It was late one afternoon in January when a squad of plainclothes police officers arrived at the headquarters of a prominent environmental group. They brushed past the staff with barely a word and instead set upon the computers before carting them away. Taken were files that chronicled a generation’s worth of efforts to protect the Siberian wilderness.

The group, Baikal Environmental Wave, was organizing protests against a decision by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to reopen a paper factory that had long polluted nearby Lake Baikal, a natural wonder that by some estimates holds 20 percent of the world’s freshwater.

Instead, the group fell victim to one of the authorities’ newest tactics for quelling dissent: confiscating computers under the pretext of searching for pirated Microsoft software.

Across Russia, the security services have carried out dozens of similar raids against outspoken advocacy groups or opposition newspapers in recent years. Security officials say the inquiries reflect their concern about software piracy, which is rampant in Russia. Yet they rarely if ever carry out raids against advocacy groups or news organizations that back the government.

As the ploy grows common, the authorities are receiving pivotal assistance from an unexpected partner: Microsoft itself. In numerous politically tinged inquiries across Russia, lawyers retained by Microsoft have staunchly backed the police.

Interviews and a review of law-enforcement documents show that in recent cases, Microsoft lawyers made statements describing the company as a victim and arguing that criminal charges should be pursued. The lawyers rebuffed pleas by accused journalists and advocacy groups — including Baikal Wave — to refrain from working with the authorities.

Baikal Wave, in fact, said it had purchased and installed legal Microsoft software specifically to deny the authorities an excuse to raid them. The group later asked Microsoft for help in fending off the police. “Microsoft did not want to help us, which would have been the right thing to do,” said Marina Rikhvanova, a Baikal Wave co-chairwoman and one of Russia’s best-known environmentalists.

Microsoft executives in Moscow and at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash., said that they did not initiate the inquiries and that they took part in them only because they were required to do so under Russian law.

Microsoft, like many U.S. technology giants doing business in authoritarian countries, is often faced with ethical choices over government directives to help suppress dissent. Kevin Kutz, director of public affairs for Microsoft, said the company would ensure that its lawyers had “more clearly defined responsibilities and accountabilities.”

Source:http://www.tampabay.com/news/russia-stifles-dissent-using-pretext-of-microsoft-software-piracy/1121084