In 2011, As You Sow filed a proposal with Research in Motion, parent company of the BlackBerry device, on this issue. In 2010, the governments of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates threatened to halt BlackBerry service unless their demands for greater access to BlackBerry data streams were met. The company held similar discussions with India, Lebanon, and Indonesia. Failure to resolve these concerns poses a substantive business risk to the company.

We withdrew the proposal a short time later after the company agreed to engage us on the issue of internet freedom of expression.

Background
Companies in the information and communications industries face increasing government pressure to comply with the laws and policies of countries that require censorship and disclosure of personal information in ways that conflict with internationally recognized human rights laws and standards. Much of the spotlight has focused on companies operating in China where there is clear censorship of political issues.

Yahoo! was accused by human rights groups of providing the Chinese government with information about prominent dissidents including Shi Tao, a journalist, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2005 for "divulging state secrets.” Yahoo! said while it did not condone suppression of people's liberties, the firm had been compelled by local laws to hand over the information that was requested.

Like other web providers operating in China, Google’s China subsidiary provided censored search results as required by authorities for several years. But in January 2010, Google said that it was no longer willing to continue censoring results on the site, setting off a national debate over the ethical implications of doing business in China. In March 2010, it re-routed Chinese web users to an uncensored site based in Hong Kong.

Global Network Initiative
These dilemmas led to development of the Global Network Initiative (GNI), a multi-stakeholder effort to protect freedom of expression and privacy online. As You Sow was a signatory to a joint investor statement on Freedom of Expression and the Internet in October 2005 which served as a precursor to this initiative. GNI is a coalition of IT companies, human rights organizations, academics, investors, and technology leaders. GNI developed a set of Principles on Freedom of Expression and Privacy that provide guidance on how to protect and advance user rights to freedom of expression and privacy, including when faced with government demands for censorship and disclosure of user personal information.

We know that the principles by themselves will not stop censorship of web content but they are a good starting point for developing better strategies in a multi-stakeholder context.