US Companies helps China to crack down on dissidents -- Sept. 11, 2006 "Golden Shield "
Cisco, Oracle, and other U.S. companies [ Ed: Motorola, EMC, Extreme Networks, IBM , Nortel Networks, and Sun Microsystems.] are supplying China's police with software and gear that can be used to keep tabs on criminals and dissidents.

"ideological investigations" [ Ed: one's personal beliefs, faith, religion, morals, ideas, ethics, mores, lifestyle ]

The ministry uses the software to manage digital identity cards [ Ed: Smart card IDs ] that are replacing the paper ID that Chinese citizens must carry.

The scramble to sell technology to Chinese law enforcers seems, for starters, to be at odds with the intent of an American export law enacted after the massacre of hundreds of pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989. The Tiananmen sanctions prohibited the export "of any crime control or detection instruments or equipment" to China. "We wanted to undermine the effectiveness of the police in rounding up, imprisoning, and torturing political dissidents, not only those involved in the Tiananmen Square movement, but for years to come," explains Representative Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), who helped draft the law

The U.S. State Dept. says that the Communist government is holding at least 260,000 people in ideological "re-education" camps

But Lantos, the California congressman, says the sanctions have been undermined. "The Commerce Dept.'s decision to interpret the law narrowly is absolutely unconscionable," he argues. "By allowing American companies to sell high-tech computer and communications devices to the Chinese police, our nation is directly aiding in the suppression of political dissent in China."

Oracle, provider of smart-card software to the Ministry of Public Security, does one-third of its business in China with the government, says Derek Williams, head of the company's Asia-Pacific Div....
American software can be traced to modernization efforts supporting at least one arm of the Chinese ideological enforcement apparatus: the State Council Leadership Team for Preventing & Handling Cults. More commonly known as the 610 Office, a reference to the date in 1999 on which it was created, this body tracks followers of unauthorized religions

Some of the data were drawn from China's elaborate hukou, the household registration system that helps the government monitor and control the population.
The digitization of hukou, an enormous task that is part of the Golden Shield project, has involved American technology, including software provided by EMC, according to EMC executives. "Aside from the public security bureau's use of technology for criminal cases, the most important [use] is the tracking and suppression of Falun Gong followers," says Hao. The American companies emphasize that they don't determine how the Chinese use their products

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_38/b4001067.htm?chan=tc&chan=technology_technology+index+page_more+of+today's+top+stories

Emphasis, this editor