Human Rights Watch presses tech leaders ahead of China meetings

Human Rights Watch is asking US technology executives to press Chinese President Xi Jinping about the country’s censorship, surveillance and data collection during meetings the week of Sept 21.

Kenneth Roth, the head of the advocacy group, sent letters to the heads of major technology companies, asking that they at least publicly commit “not to enable government abuses of freedom of expression and privacy in China.” “Your firms’ robust criticisms of the US government’s mass surveillance practices set a standard that you should not lower for China,” Roth wrote in a letter to the heads of Apple, Cisco, Microsoft, IBM, Google, Facebook and Uber.