Rebecca MacKinnon Quotes


Companies should have a due diligence process to determine the likelihood that their technologies will be used to carry out human rights abuses before doing business with a particular country or distributor.


Citations

MacKinnon, Rebecca. Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom. Basic Books, 2012.

Related Quotes

General Motors in Germany had started manufacturing trucks for the Nazi regime. Ford also was building dual use—military and civilian—vehicles. A number of American corporations, with World War II having started in Europe, owned subsidiaries in Nazi Germany which under Nazi laws and regulations were required to produce products for the Nazi government. IBM machines were being used to keep track of all the anti-Nazis, Jews and other perceived “enemies”. Nazi contracts were very profitable and most American firms in Germany just closed their eyes to what the Nazi regime was doing and even fired their Jewish workers rather than close down their German factories. With this horrible experience with large corporations helping what was to be our enemy, after WW2 Congress passed legislation which allows the President to make it illegal for American firms to trade with, manufacture in, or provide technical assistance to Countries that are potential enemies.


Rebecca MacKinnon
Rebecca MacKinnon
  • Born: September 16, 1969
  • Nationality: American
  • Profession: Journalist, Author, Researcher

Rebecca MacKinnon is an author, researcher, Internet freedom advocate, and co-founder of the citizen media network Global Voices. She is notable as a former CNN journalist who headed the CNN bureaus in Beijing and later in Tokyo. She is on the Board of Directors of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a founding board member of the Global Network Initiative and is currently director of the Ranking Digital Rights project at the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute.