Egypt – the Vodafone dilemma
Amongst all the chaos in Egypt, the Egyptian government took a step last week which seems to be common amongst repressive regimes when protesters become bold: they turned off the Internet and SMS networks, to make it difficult for people to organize themselves.
Vodafone’s CEO confirmed that they received such an order, and that — under Egyptian law — they were obliged to comply.
Almost immediately, concerned citizens – obviously not Egyptian citizens, who were cut off from the service – started expressing their displeasure. Not just with Egypt, but with Vodafone. They urged people to write to Vodafone and demand that Vodafone return access to people in Egypt.
Be careful what you wish for
Here at the Big Bad Blog, we have a huge problem with this.
We are of the opinion that the Egyptian government’s actions was an oppressive act, performed by an oppressive regime. We wish the protesters well, and applaud private citizens who are contributing to projects such as TOR which can be used to circumvent actions like those of the Egyptian government.
However, we think that Vodafone did the right thing, and needs to obey the Egyptian government so long as they are the relevant authority in Egypt.
Our reasoning is simple: we do not believe that private corporations should decide what laws or (legally issued) government orders they should follow. We believe that private corporations already hold too much influence regarding the machinations of politics — just take a look at your local laws regarding “pirated” music — and do not think that the revolution should be sponsored by Vodafone.
If it is OK for Vodafone to disobey Egypt’s legal instruction to shut off their service, then what prevents Facebook from ignoring privacy concerns in Canada, or BP from ignoring environmental protection legislation in the United States?
For the most part, these people who want Vodafone to turn around and tweak Mubarek’s nose are those same people who decry that corporations are being treated as people when it comes to political donations in the United States, or the influence of industry on intellectual property laws.
This is nothing more than having one’s cake and eating it too.
If you — like us — believe that corporations should be obedient to the law and not agencies that work for political change, then Vodafone did the right thing. Be disappointed and upset with Mubarek’s government.
For Vodafone, turning off access to the Internet was something they had to do — it is a condition that was required in order to provide Internet access in the first place.
Well, Vodafone, like the rebelling citizenry, could bet that the government in Egypt would fall and be replaced by a different one. If that was their position they wouldn’t be merely undermining the legitimate authority, but agreeing that it WASN’T the legitimate authority and siding with the future authority. The analogy with large companies defying U.S., Canadian, or British laws breaks down at that point, since a company that rejected laws in those countries on the assumption that the authority was illegitimate and was going to be overthrown would be acting insanely. There needn’t be a broad disobedience precedent set if Vodafone refuses to comply with the current authority.
Who is that future authority? Which Mubarak laws is Vodafone allowed to break, and which are they not?
What of other corporations that do not provide mobile phone or Internet service? Are they permitted to break laws? Any laws?
Besides which, when the order went out last week, there was no reason to believe that the protests would be successful. History tells us that they usually are not.
And unlike, say, Iran (where election results were believed fraudulent, and an alternate leader in the wings) or Iraq (where the government was brought down with force, and a new system of government installed), there is no different “future authority”. The president is being called on to resign.
Presumably this means that the government of Egypt would still be the government of Egypt (and not an entirely new authority), but with new people.
And this leaves aside the issue of forcing your employees to defy a government that is going to barge in, shut you down, and (possibly) cart off some of your people to torture them.
You tried to hang the intuitive problem on the comparison with strong western states and big corporations. I offered that that parallel doesn’t hold because of the instability of the government. That’s all. I don’t have a position on whether Vodafone should defy the law, just that the reason we ought to think they should obey it shouldn’t be a worry about precedent.
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