Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo Allegedly Sells Reporter Out to Chinese Authorities
truckaxle writes "Yahoo! has been accused, again, of providing information to Chinese authorities that resulted in the imprisonment of a Chinese journalist. Yahoo! apparently provided Chinese police with internet activity information in a case that resulted in the arrest of Li Zhi. His crime - trying to join the dissident China Democracy Party. Yahoo! says it simply responds to requests from the authorities and was just complying to local laws. A Reporters Without Borders post reported that 'Yahoo! certainly knew it was helping to arrest political dissidents and journalists, not just ordinary criminals'."
But anyone who attempts to join this party is an oridinaty criminal in the eyes of the Chinese authorities. It's us in the west who do not see political dissidents (at least I hope we don't...) as criminals.
I certainly don't condone what Yahoo has done or the policies of the Chinese Government, I'm just trying to point out a possible reason it was done. Maybe we should take a step back and realise our beliefs aren't everyone's elses.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
After all, they are only following orders...
of the free market.
"Lost time is not found again."
Yahoo! is a publicly traded corporation. Publicly traded corporations have one duty -- to make profit. If the Board of Directors thought that they'd make more money by turning in "dissident journalists", then they will do so. Similarly, if they could make more money (that is, after all penalties are levied against them for breaking any local laws/customs) by torturing children, they'd do it. In fact they have a fiduciary responsibility to do so.
Corporate ethics is an oxymoron.
What happens over here is that corporate lobbyists convince the government to do things their way, so everybody can make money. China isn't much different, except for the fact that the one who dictates the rules is the chinese government. That would actually be a good thing if the government wasn't draconian and used such power to enforce an intellectual dictatorship.
But... a place where the government enforces its laws for the greater good? Only when pigs start flying.
I'm no advocate of the Chinese government, but the US is applying a double standard to these companies. On the one hand, the US wants Google to roll over and give them what they want to stop something the US considers "bad", namely child porn. In the same breath, they want those same companies to stand up against foreign governments who are trying to prosecute something they consider "bad".
"We want you to always do the 'right thing', unless we're the ones asking you."
Jerry
http://www.networkstrike.com/
This is a deeper problem than it seems at first sight. From my point of view, Yahoo is not doing wrong as it surely is complying with petitions that the Chinese government asks.
A lot of people in slashdot think that just because they *believe* the type of Government China has is unfair then it is wrong and unfair. But companies working over there MUST comply with current legislation.
Just some days ago USA government gave an order to the Sheraton hotel to make the Maria Isabel Sheraton hotel in Mexico City remove some Cuban citizens from the installations and avoid a meeting with some USA company representatives (Caterpillar is one of them).
The problem was not the order that USA give, but that the Sheraton hotel *in Mexico* actually asked the people to leave AND did not returned their 3 night deposit.
Just today, the Sheraton hotel has been shut down as they tried to apply the Helms-Burton law in Mexican ground. This is bad, but is the opposite of what happened to Yahoo.
Yahoo MUST comply with local laws if they want to make buisness there, there is no other choice, comply or go, and while China keeps giving good revenue, they will continue.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Is China now an accepted member of the World Community or not?
It seems to me that everyone wants to do business in China while turning a blind eye to the simple fact that it is a one-party dictatorship with an extremely questionable human rights record.
We can't have it both ways - either our businesses are allowed to to business in China - in which case they HAVE to comply with the local laws (assuming we still believe in the sovereign state) - or they are not.
At this point we seem to want companies to do business in China under Western rules - sorry but that isn't how it works, any more than a company could come into Europe or the USA and only conform to Chinese laws.
So, are we working with China or not?
- Paul
Your average North American or European citizen really needs to take their own personal stand on this and live by it. Don't like what's going on in China then make sure those widgets you're using weren't made in horrendous working conditions. (Of course how could you ever be sure, I am sure that there are many products that come out of China that are made in good working conditions just as there are that are made in terrible ones).
The point is, don't flaunt the great buy you got on those widgets and then look down on the Chinese political system and mostly don't look down on corporations for doing what is they are meant (and want) to do, which is maximize profit. Don't like it? Let your government know and don't give your business to companies that don't share your views. Whatever, just drop the hypocrasy allready.
The US government has the same power to query Yahoo! that every other country has and under the current regime doesn't need a warrent. In the current state of affairs why is China's activity significant? If we don't have a 'democracy' there is no way we can influence China to have a 'democracy'. Unless you are under the sober notion that perhaps China could influece the US to not spy on its people...
To fathom our government's contemptible treatment of a handful of unbowed journalists, you must see the roots of that treatment in the moral ideal Christianity bequeathed the West.
In the face of the intimidation and murder of European authors, film makers and politicians by Islamic militants, a few European newspapers have the courage to defend their freedom of speech: they publish twelve cartoons to test whether it's still possible to criticize Islam. They discover it isn't. Muslims riot, burn embassies, and demand the censorship and death of infidels. The Danish cartoonists go into hiding; if they weren't afraid to speak before, they are now.
How do our leaders respond? Do they declare that an individual's freedom of speech is inviolable, no matter who screams offense at his ideas? No. Do they defend our right to life and pledge to hunt down anyone, anywhere, who abets the murder of a Westerner for having had the effrontery to speak? No--as they did not when the fatwa against Rushdie was issued or his translators were attacked and murdered.
Instead, the U.S. government announces that although free speech is important, the government shares "the offense that Muslims have taken at these images," and even hints that it is disrespectful to publish them.
Why does a Muslim have a moral right to his dogmas, but we don't to our rational principles? Why, when journalists uphold free speech and Muslims respond with death threats, does the State Department signal out the journalists for moral censure? Why the vicious double standard? Why admonish the good to mollify evil?
The answer lies in the West's conception of morality.
Morality, we are told incessantly, by secularists and religionists, the left and the right, means sacrifice; give up your values in selfless service to others. "Serve in a cause larger than your wants, larger than yourself," Bush proclaims to a believing nation.
But when you surrender your values, are you to give them up for men you admire, for those you think have earned and deserve them? Obviously not--otherwise yours would be an act of trade, of justice, of self-assertiveness, not self-sacrifice.
You must give to that which you don't admire, to that which you judge to be unworthy, undeserving, irrational. An employee, for instance, must give up his job for a competitor he deems inferior; a businessman must contribute to ideological causes he opposes; a taxpayer must fund modern, unemployed "artists" whose feces-covered works he loathes; the United States must finance the UN, which it knows to be a pack of America-hating dictatorships.
To uphold your rational convictions is the most selfish of acts. To renounce them, to surrender the world to that which you judge to be irrational and evil, is the epitome of sacrifice. When Jesus, the great preacher of self-sacrifice, commanded "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you," he knew whereof he spoke.
In the left's adaptation of this perverse ideal, selfless surrender to evil translates into a foreign policy of self-loathing and "sensitivity," of spitting in America and the West's face while showing respect for the barbarisms of every gang.
Bill Clinton, for instance, certainly no radical leftist, jumped into the recent fray to castigate us: "None of us are totally free of stereotypes about people of different races, different ethnic groups, and different religions . . . there was this appalling example in . . . Denmark . . . these totally outrageous cartoons against Islam."
In the right's version, selfless surrender to evil translates into a foreign policy of self-effacing service.
Our duty, Bush declares, is to bring the vote to Iraqis and Palestinians, but we dare not tell them what constitution to adopt, or ban the killers they want to vote for. We have no right to assert our principles, because they are rational and good. But the Iraqis and Palestinians have a right to
That sucks.
But- it is also the law. Saying Yahoo is evil for obeying the laws in the country which they serve I think is short sighted. Were Yahoo to balk the Chinese, they could be told to pack up shop and leave, which would do nothing to promote free speech for the Chinese people. China is getting better, slowly. For now, they will have to rely on the tools of all freedom fighters: obfuscation and anonymity. It worked for the Apostle Paul and for Harriet Tubman.
The war for free speech in China is good, but this battle isn't going to have a meaningful result.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
Why, when the Chinese government ask for information to enforce a law, is it wrong but when the American, or other Weston governments ask for information it isn't?
You can call them political dissidents if you want to, but we here in the west have branded them terrorists and have all sorts of powers to stump down on them.
Terrorism isn't just about violence, just look at what has become against the law since 2001 for evidence of that.
So when the Nazis were rounding up the Jews, it was right for IBM to help them rather than stimy them? Since the US had almost no trade with the Warsaw Pact, we can't compare that, but you are dead wrong. There comes a point in which the company is no longer morally obligated to obey the law of the land.
Google/Yahoo have a responsibility to not do business in countries where they will be compelled to violate basic human rights. They also DAMN WELL have an obligation to honor *U.S.* law (you know, the fucking country where they're headquatered) where this sort of thing is not only a violation of law, but a violation of the very CONSTITUTION on which the entire country was founded and all our law is based.
This "we're just following the law" dodge is just that--a dodge. They are just greedy fucks who are willing to sell their souls to get in on the rising Chinese market. Google's "do no evil" motto is the biggest bunch of obvious bullhit I've heard since George Bush's State of the Union address.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
This is a very lopsided piece of journalism. As has been stated in past posts on compliance with national governments by internet companies, these corporations are required to follow the laws of the countries in which they operate.
In the United States, they are required by certain laws to protect their customers privacy, and therefore required to refuse blatantly opening their records to law enforcement without a specific warrant. Good for Google.
In China, these companies don't have those laws to back them up in refusal to provide whatever information the government or law enforcement requests. Yahoo! is only following the law. As a corporation that is all they can do. It is unfortunate that the individual in question was victimized, but don't forget just who it is victimizing him - the Chinese government, not Yahoo!.
Does this mean Yahoo! should pull out of China? Of course not. Aside from the fact they would be remiss in their duty as a corporation (maximizing shareholder profits), they would be robbing the Chinese people of a valuable tool - communication. Make no mistake, this incident is unfortunate, but do you really think everyone trying to join the dissident parties are getting caught? Don't be ridiculous.
People with a technical bent will always find a way around these barriers, and there will be a good number of these people supporting the dissident movement. The government in China will change, simply because the government can't stop all the cross communication, and nobody rules a country with no support within the population, unless they do so behind an iron curtain. So regardless of these unfortunate events, Yahoo!, Google, and MSN are doing good there whether they like it or not.
Freedom won't come to anyone simply because a corporation pushes for it, it will come when the people demand it and make it happen (hopefully through peaceful means, but by whatever means the people deem reasonable).
Besides, any freedom given by a corporation will necessarily come at an unknown cost - it is a corporations primary responsibility to maximize shareholder profit after all. Personally, I would be very leery of any corporation that attempts to set a precedent by influencing any government in any way. That's the peoples job.
Besides, isn't there enough of that going on in the US?
A Reporters Without Borders post
This demonstrates a major fallacy. Borders exists and journalists are subject to them whether the like it or not. Journalists operate in an idealized environment where they are free to investigate and advocate as they care to only when the local government *gives* them the right to do so.
The pen is mightier than the sword only when those wielding the sword allows it to be.
Yahoo! says it simply responds to requests from the authorities and was just complying to local laws.
And they have no option in this matter. The decision is not do we comply with the local law or not, the decision is do we do business in China or not. Anyone who decides to do business in China will be subject to such laws.
I'd wager that most of the posters flaming Yahoo are hypocrites. They babble about how Yahoo should stand up but they fail to realize that they also fail to stand up. When they go shopping do they look at where something is made? Do they buy the $3 screwdriver made in China or the $6 screwdriver made somewhere else when they need to screw together their homebrew 64-bit Athlon Linux box. Yahoo can not change the Chinese government, western consumer might be able to.
Naturally, I'm thrilled to get the opportunity to live under an oppressive regime. Why should Eastern Europe and Northeast Asia get to have all the fun? Well, gotta go or I'll be late for four minutes hate.
Our greatest enemy is neither a single man, nor is it a nation, it is, as it has always been, our own greed.
So, I'm an IT consultant and I've worked with Russian customers. The KGB calls up and wants information about my clients. What do I do? Personally, I tell them to go stuff it. Knowing I won't be able to work in Russia ever again.
Part of the problem with these sorts of situations is that people want to imprint foreign custom and law with their own beliefs. If it was a legal requirement for businesses in Russia to provide information to the authorities as part of an ongoing investigation of criminal activity, then you would of course comply. If you don't feel you could do that, then you should have never elected to do business with them in the first place.
Now I want to take another approach. Let me put a different spin on your assertion and see if you feel the same way:
"So, I'm an IT consultant and I've worked with American customers. The NSA calls up and wants information about my clients. What do I do? Personally, I tell them to go stuff it. Knowing I could be branded as supporting terrorism and never seeing light of day again."
Still thinking of denying the authorities?
But that's just me. Yahoo might have a different perspective.
They most certainly do. I'm fairly confident that Yahoo's legal department has cleared the decision as in accordance with Chinese law. And I mean no disrespect when I say I'm also pretty confident that they stood to lose a lot more financially than you would if they were blackballed by the Chinese government. Yahoo can't cloak itself in its own morality when shareholders are at stake, especially if it's one culture's morality being applied against another's.
Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako insisted that in its dealings with China, the company "only responded with what we were legally compelled to provide, and nothing more".
So, if the secret police knock at your door, and they ask you for the location of any Jews, you lead them to Anne Frank's family in the attic, and "nothing more"?
Yes, I realize I've initiated the inevitable Godwin's Law thread. But I fail to see any fundamental distinction here. This is where craven obedience leads.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
http://english.people.com.cn/constitution/constitu tion.html
Article 33. All persons holding the nationality of the People's Republic of China are citizens of the People's Republic of China. All citizens of the People's Republic of China are equal before the law. Every citizen enjoys the rights and at the same time must perform the duties prescribed by the Constitution and the law.
Article 34. All citizens of the People's Republic of China who have reached the age of 18 have the right to vote and stand for election, regardless of nationality, race, sex, occupation, family background, religious belief, education, property status, or length of residence, except persons deprived of political rights according to law.
Article 35. Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.
Article 36. Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief. No state organ, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not to believe in, any religion; nor may they discriminate against citizens who believe in, or do not believe in, any religion. The state protects normal religious activities. No one may make use of religion to engage in activities that disrupt public order, impair the health of citizens or interfere with the educational system of the state. Religious bodies and religious affairs are not subject to any foreign domination.
Article 37. The freedom of person of citizens of the People's Republic of China is inviolable. No citizen may be arrested except with the approval or by decision of a people's procuratorate or by decision of a people's court, and arrests must be made by a public security organ. Unlawful deprivation or restriction of citizens' freedom of person by detention or other means is prohibited; and unlawful search of the person of citizens is prohibited.
For instance, you may be able to sleep with little children by law in certain Asian countries, but you can't by our laws. The reverse is true about your freedom of speech in some Asian countries. You may be guaranteed freedom of expression by our laws, but if you go to China and start a pro-democracy campaign then you may find yourself in a Chinese prison. The best our country could do is to try and secure your release. With the under-aged prostitutes you'll find that we have a task force that investigates Americans who go to areas where that is legal and brings charges against them in the US.
Certainly it's much easier to enforce an action that happens within your own physical region than it is one that occurs elsewhere but is covered by your laws. I believe that is the reason why you're noticing such a discrepancy in enforcement.
In this case they followed the appropriate set of laws. Someone who is not protected by the laws of our sovereign violated the laws of theirs. This appears contradictory to our laws, but our laws only apply to our people. It might not be morally or socially just, especially by our standards, but it follows the laws that they must abide by. Otherwise they will end up blocked from the Chinese internet users.
Well, I don't see anyone jailing the Danish cartoonists. Their leader affirmed the freedom of press while responding to his muslim counterparts. Bill Clinton and even Bush have a right to their own opinions as long as they don't force them on me. With a heavy heart I have to say so do the people of Iraq and China as long as they don't commit any violence outside their borders and allow free emigration. Otherwise how can I hope to someday live in a liberal place that will be patently offensive to any capitalists, communists or christians?
Me, I kind of like those cartoons. The one about running out of virgins is hilarious. Here is a link for slashdotters whose local media doesn't have balls.
I don't think the current violence has anything to do with an obscure newspaper page published 6 months ago. (Many) muslims just hate westerners and naturally find mascots to express their rage.
Jesus, using his crucifix as a makeshift crossbow, shooting people as they enter/exit an abortion clinic.
My guess? It'd not go down well at all, and might expose a bit of hypocrisy.