Reality Check | Ephraim Schwartz » Yahoo under fire for revealing info to Chinese government

August 06, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Yahoo under fire for revealing info to Chinese government

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Sometimes chickens do come home to roost.

Back in October 2005, I wrote about Yahoo turning over e-mail account information to the Chinese government, resulting in a 10-year prison sentence for a reporter who posted material on a foreign Web site about a government crackdown on media and activists.

For more on Chinese justice, read this post from the New York Times (registration required).

Yahoo's excuse at the time was that "its local country sites must operate within the laws, regulations, and customs of the country in which they are based."

Yahoo also claimed "it did not know what he [Shi Tao] was being investigated for," according to the House Foreign Affairs Committee statement.

Well, it turns out that is not true, and now the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Tom Lantos, says Congress will look into whether Yahoo "misrepresented the company's role in a human rights case in China that sent a journalist to jail for a decade." Lantos also co-chairs the Congressional Human Rights Caucus.

In the full statement from the committee, this paragraph forms the heart of it and bears repeating.

"It is bad enough that a wealthy American company would willingly supply Chinese police the means to hunt a man down for shedding light on repression in China," said Lantos.

He added, "Covering up such a despicable practice when Congress seeks an explanation is a serious offense."

When Congress originally questioned Yahoo general counsel Michael Callahan about the case, Callahan testified that "we had no information about the nature of the investigation."

However, the San Francisco-based human rights organization Dui Hua Foundation has documents that show the Chinese government did inform Yahoo about the nature of the investigation.

Here's a partial translation of the notice sent by the Beijing State Security Bureau to Yahoo officials.

"According to investigation, your office is in possession of the following items relating to a case of suspecting illegal provision of state secrets to foreign entities that is currently under investigation by our bureau."

The items for collection, the notification went on to say, were "e-mail account registration information," and it gave Yahoo the e-mail name of the poster so that the company could ID the sender.

Well, someone once said, "The wheels of justice grind slow, but they grind exceedingly fine."

Maybe sometimes it is true, and we will see Yahoo and other large companies reprimanded for cooperating with totalitarian governments in this manner. Perhaps the bad publicity will even make them think twice next time they are confronted with a similar situation.

While one company can claim it cannot afford not to cooperate since its competitors do, maybe this Congressional investigation will create a single policy to which all American companies must adhere, thus making it easier for a single company to behave decently and ethically.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on August 6, 2007 02:40 PM

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