Thanks hannanik. The link to your full article didn’t come through in your post. Here it is: http://fifi.voima.fi/artikkeli/Nokia-connects-now-in-Iran/2893 .

Siemens made the gas chambers and furnaces for the death camps as well.

The only way Nokia could avoid putting in such a box was not to sell the the network in the first place. That would mean no texts, no mobile tweets, no camraphone pictures of the horrors committed right now. I think a network is better than no network.

If you have time for a PDF, read their own promotional material. We’re talking about highly effective data mining: for example, possibly millions of phone calls monitored by speech recognition software that raises an alarm when it encounters certain keywords and patterns.

This morning, I interviewed Nokia Siemens Networks’ spokesperson Riitta MÃ¥rd.

She refused to give any details about the surveillance system her company sold to Iran, even if the information could help protesters. “We do not release this information about our clients.”

A moment ago, NSN sent out a press release with some of the information that MÃ¥rd refused to give me earlier. They’re claiming that they only sold voice monitoring of local calls, no surveillance of the Internet or of international calls. I have no idea how reliable this information is, but I’m glad to see that there’s public pressure about this, and that it’s making the company react.

Other highlights of the interview:

How did you take Iran’s political situation into consideration when negotiating this deal?

“Extraordinary circumstances like the ones in Iran right now cannot be predicted – it can happen anywhere.”

But it hasn’t exactly been a surprise. The fact that the government keeps a close watch on the opposition has been well known for years.

“We don’t set conditions like this to our clients. Companies can’t act like that, alone. And after all we’re talking about a system that was designed to increase people’s own safety.”

How was [NSN's corporate responsibility] policy reflected in the deal with Iran?

“We do indeed have a strict ethical code for our business partners, and we’ve been very actively making sure that your suppliers don’t use, for example, child labour. We use this code to choose who we buy from.”

But not who you sell to?

“In Iran’s case, there was no such impediment.”

As a fellow ORG member I’m appalled if this is true but as an employee of Nokia I’m fairly sure it’s not (or at least not as it is drafted). Well, if it is then we (Nokia employees) should be raising hell about it internally.

If you’re about in London and would like me to find someone here you can speak to in person about it I’ll do my best…

Alternately, it’s beta testing.

Nokia connects – now in Iran

When did people start expecting large multinational companies to act in ethical or political manners?

These companies sell a tool, which will make them money. As long as the tool they’re selling has legitimate uses (and it does), it’s kinda hard to blame them for doing what business does best.

Jeff Newman

*Yes, I know they aren’t US companies, but they have US subsidiaries.

The economic world follows rules that don’t take into account the rights of people because the economic world is a system where the dominant creature is the corporation, not the human being, as people couldn’t care less about ants in the normal world.
In this context, one could state that there’s no such thing as democracy in any “western” developed country because economic development requires being strongly integrated into that corrupt system.