AFF's Doublethink

Unquestionably, it’s pretty shameful for Nokia and Siemens to help the Iranian government monitor dissidents online.

It’s one of those rare cases where private firms really should forego profits in the name of the public good.

On the other hand, the sale of monitoring capabilities may have lulled Tehran into believing it had the situation under it control, which it clearly didn’t.

Is there a third way? Nokia and Siemens could have consulted their respective governments before making the sale, to find out what the potential impact of their decisions would be.

Incidentally, Michael Goldfarb points out that Eli Lake of the Washington Times broke this story two months ago, but the Wall Street Journal somehow forgot to mention that fact in its own coverage this week.