Terrorism and Corporate Social Responsibility

Globalization brings with it new threats to human security.

States were the traditional providers of security. Globalization and the ICT infrastructure supporting it undermines the geo-political boundaries defining a traditional state area of competence. States now outsource much of their own delivery systems and infrastructure to commercial corporations. For commercial reasons these in turn source their own requirements through using a network of commercial organizations that often span the planet.

Threats to this system whither from terrorism or other sources no longer occur at a border set by a state. Even the infrastructure that seems to be within a jurisdiction is interpentrated by reliance on the global commercial network described. Internal ICT infrastructure now tends to be commercially owned. if it is on eoften finds its integrity depends on a global network of corporate commercial interconnectivity.

This raises three issues for present day Corporate Social Responsibility

First to what extent should a global corporate network use its own resources to assist any one state with data and access to the information that state feels it needs to ensure its own and its citizens security?

Second does any one corporation in such a global network of interconnectivity really know for the risks it is exposing its shareholders, employees and customers to when it outsources in such a manner?

Third in the global environment the jurisdiction of states and individuals no longer runs. The actors are all corporate, NGOs, commercial companies and semi-public international bodies and agencies. Is it legitimate for such corporate bodies to accept coporate social resposibility for their mutual security from terrorism etc when the resources they have access to have been provided to pursue partial not global social interests?

These are serious questions which do not seems as yet to be being addressed publicly by global corporations and theri stakeholders.

AT&T has been accused of being a participant with the Bush administration in the currently questioned intrusions into the privacy of US citizens and ofcourse the US Congress has recently inquired into the co-operation of CISCO Systems, Google, Microsoft etc with the security services of the government in China. At current rates of expansion in its ICT infrastructure China will soon be a bigger customer of these corporations than the US. While currently their national and corporate responsibilities may provide clarity as to where their loyalties commercially and nationally should lie. More ambiguity will clearly soon exist in defining the relationship between their corporate responsibility and theircorporate social responsibility

It is now clearly part of a corporations responsibility to manage the risks to which it exposes its various stakeholders but how can that be assessed in the world we describe. A telephone call or internet message will be automatically routed over the self organizing global network of communications in many different ways even perhaps in the course of one dialogue. Whose responsibility is the security of such a connection? If a corporation outsources its customers service calls to an other coporation in an other country how does it know for certain that the information such systems will inevitably generate, as to the quality and costs of their operation, do not leak to a competitor or a cyber terrorist interest in damaging them as a symbol of the state they emananate from?

Should coporate bodies not now be fully recognised as the indepedent intities they no dout are whither their origins are political, commercial or not for profit and act together in corporate society to protect each other from predation. To an extent this is happening but generally this rle is bein abrigated because such security is often seen by senior executives as the responsibility of the states they pay taxes to and not the coporations themselves.

This may be true but the danger does not exist geo-politically but in the global cyber infrastrucure on which they and us increasingly rely. Who polices those commons? Who can police those commons other than new social entities created by the corporate entities of which it is comprised? As yet only limited evidence exists sugesting that corporations see it is legitimate to act together collectively in the manner suggested here and proposed by ourselves in an organisation we as of now have chosen to call S.A.V.E (Security Advance Via Enterprise)