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)
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?
...for violating Amazon's One-Click Snitch patent.
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'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.
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.
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.
Not so mush that Yahoo HAD them, as much as Yahoo gave the chinese Government access to the Email accounts that Had them.
I guess reading the first paragraph of the article is too much work, before launching bold YELLING comment.
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
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.
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.
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?
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?
Here we go again. Please know that communism and authoritarian government are not the same!
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."--Howard Zinn
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