Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo Helps Jail Chinese Writer
An anonymous reader writes "Internet giant Yahoo has been accused of supplying information to China which led to the jailing of journalist Shi Tao for "divulging state secrets". "
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Was also poster earlier on Reporters sans Frontiere
Mike
Tune in, turn in, drop out of sight...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
it's not the only faul of You! Know! Who!
Grammar Zealots: please spare a non-english writer (lastknight dot com)
Yahoo was probably just mad at him for creating too many Yahoo email accounts.
Best Windows Freeware
An enormous multinational corporation with no sense of morality?
Inconceivable.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Nothing like a good accusation to get people stirred up.
Anything is possible, but an accusation is ceratinly easy to cook up.
Well?
State secrets? Then how did Yahoo get to them? HOW?!?! Either Yahoo writers are hackers (possible), or those aren't really "secrets" just things that the government would like to be secrets.
Not only "land of the free" but "land of the lawyers" who love a good old 1st amendment smackdown. Shihar 153932
...for violating Amazon's One-Click Snitch patent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#Quotat ions_and_speech
:)
Note the portion that begins: "For speech within speech"
Yeah, but they have something else we all can't live without, eh? Most consumer electronics, computers, tools, clothing, etc. There's even a China Motors in Capitola, CA and though I haven't dropped in to see what they're selling, I bet it's a chinese brand of car.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Seems like a lot of chest beating over nothing.
Just cause we in the west dont like it doesnt mean Yahoo could get away with NOT providing info. Reporters should know they are treading dangerously, after all they ARE in a communist country.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Here's the thing -- the Hong Kong arm of yahoo lives in HONG KONG! They live in a communist country! How could anyone think that threatened with life in prison by a repressive government, a Chinese "Citizen" would possibly choose to not immediately capitulate to ANY request by the police? Just because an employee in China decided to NOT be Patrick Henry doesn't mean Yahoo's in bed with the Reds.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
I RTFA, and I can't tell:
1. Did yahoo violate any of their terms of service with the victim?
2. Did yahoo violate it's privacy policy?
If neither of the above is true, is the journalist not to blame for doing buisness with a service that would not protect him? In the alternative, are we now requiring that all major corporations take up the fight against oppression and censorship? I thought we had already decided that all corporations are evil, profit minded monsters. Why should Yahoo! be different?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
Which justifies or excuses nothing. Saying "it's just business" is not, nor has it ever been, a valid excuse. Yahoo is undermining free speech and the liberties given to all men everywhere.
I'm sick of the excuses:
- We're just following Chinese law
- If we don't comply, are the Chinese people better off without Yahoo/Google/Cisco/MS?
Haven't we learnt a thing?
http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/
I don't expect US corporations to impose US laws on foreign soil, but perhaps we can at least expect them to respect a basic set of human rights standards.
It's not acceptable that these US based coporations become collaborators in the persecution of dissidents in another country. It's not acceptable for them to concede to ridiculous demands of filtering workds like "Freedom" or "Taiwan". It's not acceptable at all.
If these corporations want to ignore these basic human rights standards, let them go and base their HQ in China instead. They're not doing anybody any favors by helping repress the Chinese people.
We were told that more trade and more interaction with China would bring greater freedom. We were lied to.
- sigs are for wimps.
Thats the problem with buisnes decesions. You get into the same atitude as the God Father.
'Nothing personal, it's just business'
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
The real problem is the GLOBAL erosion of privacy, which our misguided government has provided great momemtum to. The fact that we invade and infrige upon previously protected privacy rights precludes us from preaching to other governments, and from faulting them.
No, I'm referring to the human rights violations under the current regime: http://www.derechos.org/human-rights/nasia/china/ and you really shouldn't presume what I thought in the first place and then extrapolate from there and then decide you don't like what you come up with. You're an idiot
I read this article before it was even posted on Slashdot (BBC RSS feeds are nice) and I can't really see why there's a big uproar about this, unless there's more to the story than the article mentions. Since when did complying with a government order amount to explicit consent and approval of government actions? Yahoo didn't convict/jail this guy, the Chinese government did.
Yahoo didn't actively seek to jail this Chinese writer. Nowhere in the article does it mention that Yahoo CONTACTED the police and said, "here is a guy you should arrest." While I come to expect this from slashdot, I'm somewhat disturbed that BBC is doing the same thing.
Maybe Yahoo did contact the police and tell them everything, but according to the article all they did was
Come on people, basic reading skills! Stop reading without thinking.Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
An easier link is thru the International Herald Tribune article of the same story (registration not required for this one).
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Non-communism of China aside, it is important to consider other possibilities. For all we know, Yahoo wasn't told what they were actually doing. Hell, they might have just been given the email headers and told to find out where they came from. Maybe they were told it was a child porn investigation. Would you demand to see the proof?
Of course, in a situation like this, we'll probably never know if Yahoo's employees knew what they were doing, whether this guy actually stole any "State Secrets" or if they just needed a phony charge to shut the guy up, or what the real truth is.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I read Schmidt (of Google) talking about this in China, and filtering.
He made it very clear: they must follow local law wherever they do business. Otherwise they get squashed -- naturally.
That being said, perhaps they should choose not to do business in someplaces -- like Burma.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Yahoo must be insane to have allowed this to happen, especially when their main competitor has a published philosophy including the statement: "You can make money without doing evil".
BTW, just to highlight the difference between this and the usual /. chatter, a brave journalist is going to spend 10 years in brutal, frightening conditions, at the mercy of a system that would prefer him to be dead. He would not be in Jail if Yahoo had not crossed the line and given the authorities access to his email account.
Sure, Yahoo has to protect it's $1bn investment in Chinese Ecommerce firm Alibaba.com but other companies manage to keep the Chinese authorities happy by censoring bloggers etc (Yahoo already has a strong record of collaborating in censorship) but, so far, other companies have drawn the line at becoming police informants.
And, yes, I understand that companies must obey the laws of the countries they operate in but, you know what, sometimes you have to recognize the difference between pragmatism and evil.
You'd do better to rail against similar US laws, including the PATRIOT Act. Journalism borders on espionage, especially when done for a foreign organization. Moreso when it is done for no legitimate purpose.
Lamentably, China makes no pretense at democracy. So gathering political information cannot use the excuse of "informing the voters". Just what what would be done with the information? Used it to titillate and embarrass?
Journalists are not above the law. They are to observe and record, not spy and foment change. When they cross over, they imperil their colleagues everywhere.
If there was a news report today that Yahoo helped use the information on its network to bring someone that the U.S. Government considered to be, say, a terrorist, to justice, would people be complaining?
Let's be consistent here. It sounds like China considered this guy to be a terrorist of sorts. Doesn't that mean, according to popular fear-driven definitions of justice, that it was right to do whatever was necessary to find him?
I should note, for those who didn't pick it up before now, that I don't mean at all that Yahoo should've actually helped in this effort. On the contrary, I think this should be considered to be a good example of how relative the definition of Terrorist is, and how if we are going to be so indignant about other countries abusing privacy issues to find their so-called "terrorists", perhaps we in the U.S. should not be so complacent as to accept and support when our own country goes on a witch hunt in violation of ethical law.
-Vendal Thornheart
From TFA: The companies say they have to abide by local regulations, and point out that since China is set to be the world's biggest internet market, they cannot ignore it.
Ahh.. so that's what it boils down to. "There is money to be made there. We have to bend over for their government and/or police, it's our fiduciary responsibility".
Fuck Yahoo. Helping send a person to jail for 10 years for a petty "crime"? I'm sure this will not be lost on the Chinese market, and there goes your "world's biggest Internet market".
This news has pretty much turned me against Yahoo!. I've been using Yahoo since the beginning when it was just someone's personal web site hosted at Stanford. My homepage in my browser is a "My Yahoo" page that I've customized and used since they offered customized pages. I've got a Yahoo email account going back to 1998.
And now I want out.
Can anyone provide some guidance on an easy way to export about 7 years worth of email out of Yahoo's system? I'm sticking with Google's customized homepage and my Gmail account from now on.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
But very few are ever particularly outraged when companies, based in the US, or Canada, or the UK, or some other country that pretend to love freedom and democracy enable these regiems, these dictatorships. That's called business nowadays, and I guess it's acceptable.
Is this the new deal? When do we stand up and boycott these companies in an effective way? Is it even possible anymore? Do enough people care?
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
Just because Yahoo is a western company in no way means they dont have to abide by the laws in China in working there. Even here if a person where to violate the law, yahoo would be forced to release info. Why is this any different in china where free press is (wait for it) AGAINST THE LAW.
Does it make it right no not at all. But at the same time the reporter was dumb enough to not hide his information or identity in using the web, a very easy and fast thing to do that would have helped in keeping his identity a secret.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Here is one guy's opinion on Google and China and "local law". His point is they have a lot of choices -- not just to bend over for the dictators.
I really wonder what local law means in Burma and Somalia -- is it "do what the local mafia running stuff says?"
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
What a steaming pile of bullcrap! If the story had been that Yahoo! had complied with an investigation into a child molester in the US, then there would have been no story. Yahoo! was simply complying with the laws of a country that Yahoo! has operations in. Big deal.
Yahoo! is a publicly-traded company. Its shareholders want one thing: more money. For Yahoo! to pull out of the biggest growing economy in the world wold be suicide. If they want to operate in China, guess what? They have to abide by Chinese laws. Their only options if they don't are to follow the political process in China to change the laws or to pull out of China entirely. There is no special Most Favored Corporation status that magically protects Yahoo! and makes it so they don't have to follow the laws just because they're popular with a bunch of pimple-faced, 40 year old virgins.
You think China's bad, then DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! Don't just sit here bitching about how someone else didn't.
Here is what the US State Department has to say about China's MODERN record:
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2003/27768.h
Oh and many ppl will be interested in a little ditty about the USA FROM CHINA:
http://english.people.com.cn/200503/03/eng2005030
If you would like an independent assessment, well... independent human rights monitoring organizations did not exist in China in 2002, so all relevant information after 1989, should be considered questionable/incomplete, at best. Good luck getting anything impartial regarding the last couple years. The great firewall has been particularly effective; no thanks to Yahoo.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Putting companies out of business that help imprison Chinese dissidents is 'doing something about it'.
Yahoo being a "publicly traded company" doesn't absolve them of being complicit with dictatorships.
I don't mind buying Chinese manufactured goods, unless they are made by, for example, prisoners who are being used as slave labor.
Article 9. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Article 12. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Article 18. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
Article 19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
(From: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights-human/)Here's a little excerpt from the Stanford Encylopedia of the ideas behind the Charter:
Reducing everything to local Chinese law is absurd. As we know, economic freedom goes better with political freedoms. Deng Xiaoping did nothing for the political rights of the Chinese. In fact, he sent 200,000 troops to crush the rebels of Tiananmen.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
Incidentally, if you would Godwin around less frantically, it'd be easier to have a lucid discussion of how to treat China.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2003/27768.ht m
http://english.people.com.cn/200503/03/eng20050303 _175406.html
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
That's your reply?
Yahoo is a US based corporation, thus they need to avoide by our law. A case can be made against them if they're found helping violate human rights in another country, and I really hope someone makes that case.
Also we can start imposing new laws on these corporations of our own whenever they do this, after all they have to "abide by our laws".
And look, it's great that you're making the argument for more US corporations being able to freely and with no worry help suppress other populations. That's real progress!!!
- sigs are for wimps.
Well, of course they must follow always local laws. They can't choose which laws, if they're not up to USA standards. Oh yeah, and if you think China is a bad place for putting people in prison, you might wanna check the percentage of people in prison in USA first. To put it short, China prisons people for "being wrong", and USA prisons people for "being too poor". But of course it is always easy to play jesus about it on Slashdot. It's also perfectly legal to sell booze to people of age 18 here in Finland. Now can I also come to sell it in USA to people of that age? Now where's my troll status?
When you enter a country, or are granted a license to conduct business there, you agree to abide and uphold that country's laws and regulations. When you enter the US, you are agreeing to follow all the laws the US has for foreigners. Among others, they include:
- Getting fingerprinted at the point of entry.
- Carrying identification papers with you all the time.
- Notifying the proper authorities of any address changes during your stay in the country.
While in US, a foreigner is also:
- Not allowed to be in possession of a firearm.
- Can be detained for about a month without any reason given.
- Does not get a lawyer if they can't afford one.
If you don't like this, well, then don't enter the country. If you are a foreigner, and you DO enter the country, then you agree to abide by the above rules. If you violate them, then you will be persecuted and/or deported.
So, getting back to China. If you are a foreign company working in China, and the authorities come to you and demand that you disclose information about a Chinese citizen, you are hard-pressed to refuse, since, well, you'd be in violation of the laws of the country. Since all corporations are interested in only one thing -- turning profit, -- it is not in their interest to go against direct orders issued by the local authorities, since otherwise they will be persecuted and/or their business license will be withdrawn.
It seems Yahoo did a logical thing. Don't like how the US witholds certain "unalienable rights" from non-citizens? Don't come to the US. Don't like how China witholds certain "unalienable rights" from both citizens and non-citizens? Don't do business with China.
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
I had to assume you were referring to Mao because the current Chinese regime has not murdered thousands of its own citizens, as the Iraqi regime did.
Depends on how narrowly you define murder, but the current Chinese regime has taken decisions that have killed hundreds of thousands. The flooding caused by ill advised dam projects, lack of even basic safety standards in major industries (particularily mining) and the low standard of healthcare despite a vast budget for military expenditure are examples of that.
As for not killing dissenters, they are sometimes killed, but the closed trials make it difficult to assess what they are charged with and how convincing the evidence is. Other dissenters are sent to labour camps, and some suffer the old Stalinist favourite of incarceration in mental hospitals - because you'd have to be mad to not want to live under a benevelent Communist party wouldn't you?
What bothers me about this is what China appears to be becoming -- this weird, totalitarian-corporate hybrid which Western businesses appear all too willing to support.
I can't help but think that corporations, which are almost always defined as anti-democratic entities, prefer a totalitarian government, since a totalitarian government allows for easy limitations on the things that drive corporations nutty -- labor rights, environmental regulations, consumer protections, and freedom of speech.
In Guantanamo Bay, you get a prayer rug and warm, filling meals compliant with your religion. You get clean, running water and state-of-the-art plumbing. You can spit, pee, and throw feces at the guards and not get punished. You are also allowed to read your choice of religious literature. You are never tortured, and have access to ACLU Lawyers. You get all this even though you fought against American troops and you didn't wear a uniform and you didn't fight in the name of any country that exists today.
In a chinese prison, your body parts get sold for profit by the government when you get executed. In fact, they'll speed up the execution if they have an urgent need for your body parts. You don't have any rights. There is no due process. You don't get a square meal. You don't get your favorite religious book. You don't get a prayer rug. If you backtalk to a guard, you get physically abused, perhaps even killed. You are regularly tortured and even brainwashed. You don't have access to any lawyers, and you don't even get access to your embassy.
Yeah, I can see how people might morally equivocate the two. I certainly have a hard time distinguishing communist China from the US of A!
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
and neither would:
It is better to break the law, than to enact a bad one.
--- blackironprison, where ignorance is bliss....
I take it you've never read the Patriot Act. You've probably taken all the second- or third-hand information and believed it.
The Patriot Act grants only a few "new" powers, all still within the constitution. These "new" powers aren't new at all. They are the same power the feds and local police have when investigated trusts and the mafia and drug violations. In a nutshell, the law enforcement still has to get a warrant to do search and seizure. Now they can get a warrant against a suspected terrorist and have that warrant hidden from the public so as not to alert the terrorists being investigated. That's common sense, is it not?
Technically, if you are suspected of fighting against the United States, whether on foreign or domestice soil, you have fallen out of the regular judicial system. All of a sudden, you find yourself under the judicial system of the military. Read the constitution and you'll see how the military justice system is allowed to differ from the domestic one.
And furthermore, foreign nationals, here illegally or legally, are not entitled to the same rights citizens have. My wife, although she is loyal to the US, is still a South Korean citizen. She has no right to petition government, she has no right to due process, and she has no right to be here at all. The feds could walk in tomorrow and put her in prison without any justification. But we just don't do that, because we don't think it is very kind.
Now, let's compare Amerikkka under the PatRIOT act to Communist China.
In China, even citizens have no rights. Even when government is at its most benevolent, her own citizens are treated more poorly than foriegn combatants. China is a corrupt country, with powerful men dictating the way things should be. Elections are a sham. Even if you elected representatives that opposed the government, they would be useless and replaced.
There is no court system that even approaches what we have in the US. I hear stories of farmers and homeowners having their property taken away without due process and without compensation. I hear stories of people in their homes being carted away by the police when there was no reason for the police to invade the home and the police certainly didn't have a warrant to do so.
You think Hurrican Katrina is bad, and it is. One of the worst effects it had (aside from the death and mayhem) is that families were torn apart. In Communist China, families are torn apart constantly. People don't know what happens to their loved ones. Are they in prison? Are they executed? No one knows. They just disappear.
In Communist China, one of the worst effects is that if you actually have some money, enough to get by well enough, you have to pretend you are a beggar. You can't walk around with modern clothing and a nice wristwatch. You certainly can't use your wealth to help your fellow people. One person who built a road to his village to connect them with Beijing found himself in prison because the people grew to actually like him and not the government.
I'm sorry, but the two don't even compare. I'm sick of all the wacko Bush bigotry and I wish people would open up their own eyes and see for themselves what is really happening rather than discarding opposing viewpoints because they think the other side is "dumb like W".
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
It is interesting how we attack Iraq for being totalitarian (official excuse) and we embargo Cuba decade after decade for the same reason. China however is totalitarian and we not only encourage investment there we allow our companies to aid and abet their oppression. Nice set of double standards we have.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
It's a new kind of tension developing in the modern world: nationless corporations (not multinational) vs. geographical interest groups known as nation-states. Corporations and companies have no loyalty to any state, and you could argue they should not., and states have interests contrary to the good of the globe as a whole at times. Nobody is blameless; it's just an issue we have to sort out.
Currently hooked on AMP
Obviously you know all this about the Gitmo because unlike every other human-rights, legal, political and humanitarian organization in the world, you have free, unrestricted access to roam around the grounds any time you choose. Not even congressmen get this level of access, but you have special omniscient and omnipresent powers.
You also must have unlimited access to interview detainees (that is, the detainees who didn't tell you about the torture, waterboarding, noise-assault and forced-nudity). Also you must've overlooked the medical staff who (in violation of medical ethics) were providing confidential patient information about detainees to interrogators.
Nice one, Mr. President. You're a very funny man.
How does that compare to a country that diverted money away from flood defences to the military, leading to thousands of deaths, and doesn't have a national health service despite having the largest economy and greatest military spending in the world?
I am trolling
You play paranoia, don't you?
never , tortured eh?
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Yes, I'm an American...
:(.
But, the world has pissed on repressive regiemes before. The only thing that seperates China from Iraq is a Billion people, money and no monetary interest in invading/converting the system to democracy.
It seems like America, the corporatations and the like only find ethical behavior and lack free speech useful or worth defending so long as their is a dollar in it for them at the end of the day.
Spin it however you like...boo yahoo
--pete
More detail for you: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/globalvoices/2005/09/ 06/warning-yahoo-wont-protect-you/
Officials from the Changsha security bureau detained Shi near his home in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, on November 24, 2004, several months after he e-mailed notes detailing the propaganda ministry's instructions to the media about coverage of the anniversary of the crackdown at Tiananmen Square. Authorities confiscated his computer and other documents and warned his family to stay quiet about the matter.
On December 14, authorities issued a formal arrest order, charging Shi with "leaking state secrets." On April 27, 2005, the Changsha Intermediate People's Court found Shi guilty and sentenced him to a 10-year prison term.
I'm sorry, but what a shocker. China tosses a journalist in jail for 10 years for a mislabled "crime". Here is a picture of this Chinese James Bond http://www.cpj.org/news/2005/China25aug05na.html
It should be of no suprise to anyone that Tao's appeal was rejected without reason nor public hearing. As is correctly pointed out at http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=14884 does Yahoo! simply state they are just following a countries law? When do they have ANY ethical considerations? Can the law in China stipulate that child labor is lawfull and Yahoo could practice this under the same defense?
Yahoo is the ONLY American search engine that has agreed to self sensor it's search results. They have invested heavily in China and as a result bow to their every request. "Just follwing the law" is not a defense for Yahoo in my opinion. Self censoring your search results is one thing, cooperating with Chinese security officials to track down an IP address is another.
Here is Mr. Tao's verdict http://www.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/Verdict_Shi_Tao.pdf
"The companies say they have to abide by local regulations, and point out that since China is set to be the world's biggest internet market, they cannot ignore it."
Sure they can. They just won't. Because human rights vs. profit is no contest to them.
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
It all boils down to profit. Yahoo can be sued by a minority of their shareholders for not pursuing profit toward to utmost benefit of wealth for the shareholders. Here (www.lapres.net) is a link of the precedent that makes this happen.
So it all boils down to no profit in protecting dissidents compared against the torrent of profit from serving Chinese Internet users. This is a travesty, but I suggest a market opportunity...
We need to establish a speculative futures market for human rights violations, perhaps by geopolitical region. Things like genocide, curable disease infections and suppression of thought under totalitarian regimes can be assigned fair market values and traded amongst participants.
Maybe this (www.capitalistpig.com/) can help set it up. I dunno, just an idea. It seems imagination is the only thing that will save us. Sure has worked out for the greedy people!
...but I'm sure this is just a coincidence. (From a Yahoo! press release, mysteriously dated August 11th, 2005.)
By the way, here is the original press release from Reporters Without Borders, since I didn't see it linked anywhere else.
My point is that China has redefined 'state secret' to mean 'anything that might embarrass us'. In light of this modified definition, yes, you do have a right to publish state secrets.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Even though I have a login here, I'm posting anonymously for obvious reasons.
I have a female friend in, well, let's say a middle eastern country well known for outrageous restrictions, who I met in a yahoo classical music chatroom; a wonderful person. In the course of our, well, getting to know each other, we noticed that her mailbox was being hacked, addresses she's never heard of were blocked, (emails from me were in there, too) and that someone else was logging into both of our accounts.
I reported this to yahoo for both of us, got the usual form letter...a couple of days later I was sent an automated request to rate the level of service - a ticket number was given. I sent an email to yahoo asking what had been happening, they sent me a form letter, from "Eugene", telling me that they don't discuss others' accounts with 3rd parties. After repeated requests, and nothing but form letters, and sound evidence of continued hacking, she finally went offline, quite frightened about the entire affair. We're on another messenger service, quite anonymous now, but she is definitely not the same person as before.
Yahoo would never give out the identity or i.p. number of the perpetrator(s), so God knows what those people at yahoo are doing...
God forgive them, it's not humanly possible for me to...
Yahoo! is a publicly-traded company. Its shareholders want one thing: more money.
The wishes of a corporation's shareholders does not give the corp a license to do whatever it wants. Also, even if the shareholders want money, that wish is not necessarily preclude them from having morals of their own.
Would Nike's shareholders agree to a plan to build a slave labor shoe manufacturing plant knowing it would translate into large devidends? Or to assassinate the entire board of Reebok?
Mind you I'm being sarcastic here ... Google's policy is a total smoke screen, and Yahoo is simply showing us exactly what Google will do to us eventually...scary thing is that Yahoo likely stores less info on us than Google, yet they are willing to bend over backwards to a murderous regime....hmm, I think I feel a little "regime change" is in order...hehe
Yay for our Right to Privacy!!! (again, sarcasm)