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Yahoo Sued for Giving User Information to China
taoman1 wrote with news of a CNN article about a suit brought against Yahoo! for alleged aiding in human rights violations. The World Organization for Human Rights USA has filed suit against the search company for (so the suit claims) assisting in torture by revealing information that led to the arrest of dissidents. "The lawsuit cites federal laws that govern torture and other violations of international law. Plaintiffs included jailed dissident Wang Xiaoning and his wife, Yu Ling, who was visiting San Francisco this week as part of the group's campaign. Sklar said he knew of three other cases, but the dissidents were reluctant to join the complaint for fear of harm to their families living in China. Among those three dissidents is journalist Shi Tao, who was sentenced in 2005 to 10 years in jail."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yahoo could just respond to requests to provide names of people who use online forums for political dissent with a standard response like, "The culprit you are looking for is a Mr. Chin."
So when will The World Organization for Human Rights USA bring suit against George W for allowing torture in the detention camps?
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
Well, yahoo maps seems to normally outdo mapquest, but that's really about it. 8 years ago, I loved their directory services, which has now gone to utter crap.
That's Google you pillock.
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
in the Ars article they said Yahoo claims that it is simply following local law and that it has no choice but to comply with legal requests from the Chinese government if it wants to keep doing business in that country. If Yahoo had existed during WWII would they have ratted out Jews to Hitler? But I guess it's okay as long as they can turn a dime.
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Drink deeply or not at all."
Yahoo! needs to take a page from Google's "Do no evil"
I vote for Yahoo!'s new company slogan to be, "Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil."
Seriously, what did they think the totalitarian Chinese government was going to do with this personal information? Create some targeted advertising?
Dear political dissident:
Have you heard of our new state-run work-camps? Your advanced computer skills are needed by the government. If you reply within the next 24 hours we'll promote you from "Wikipedia Article Revision" to "Pornography Censorship".
Love,
China
Inexcusable.
"By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect 'Hungry.'" -Gary Larson
Thats sarcasm, you pillock you
In fairness, the *full* statement is, "Don't be evil, unless necessary to advance the broader interests of the human race."
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Nah, it's Simon Jester :D
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
That's Google's tag-line. I guess Yahoo's is "Do lots of evil!" that and "We're #2!" and/or "At Yahoo, we're so closely tied to AT&T we thought it our duty to turn in anything any government asks for, warrant optional!" :P
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
Very good point
Check http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
Where to begin??? Guantánamo Bay
USA is in violation of (at least):
Article 7.
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
Article 8.
Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.
Article 9.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Article 10.
Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.
Until the world lawyers figure the new laws out. So they would have been banned, sued, and possibly extridited and tried in China if they didn't comply and sued if they didn't?
Well, not working directly for international clients anyway. My boss would have to deal with the headache then...
In other news today, everybody with the family name Chin disappeared mysteriously today.
Authorities were quoted as saying, "there never was a Chin family name."
Somehow I don't think they're going to run into a lot of Republican judges in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco.
But feel free to review their records here: http://www.cand.uscourts.gov/cand/judges.nsf/
"By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect 'Hungry.'" -Gary Larson
The US gov't deals favorably with CHina every day
other US corporations manufacture their goods in China every day
US citizens buy the products made in China every day
every day we empower china with our $$$ and our looking away...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
yees, but these are two intrenched opponents, one has tons of money to throw at the case, the other has enough money and ethical convictions to see it through. there will be appeals going on for years.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Hey Yahoo, grow some fucking balls and stand up for your users.
Finally, the prospect of a little justice. Yahoo CEO Terry Semel says he believes in improving the customer experience. I'm not sure ratting on your customers to a repressive, totalitarian regime is the experience they were looking for.
BTW Jerry Wang (Director of Yahoo), thanks for those plans you stole from the Chinese Military. My buddy who works for the intelligence community said the spy masters were really impressed by your work. Jerry Wang I heard they are asking you to steal secret plans for the Chinese Jin ballistic missile submarine! You must be a real busy guy being a Yahoo Director *and* a spy. Enjoy your next visit to China, Jerry. Maybe you'll get to meet some of your 'customers' there!
well.. there never was... the name Chin doesn't exist in chinese... maybe Qin, but that's extremely rare anyway...
It's interesting how it's essentially impossible to do business without breaking laws now. If they hadn't given away this information, they would now be having the Chinese government talk about how Yahoo must hate freedom and doesn't respect the laws of their country.
I know a lot of people must be thinking "well, the decision is obvious, they should have followed the American laws instead since ours are more free", but remember that Yahoo actually has workers in China. If Yahoo didn't conform to Chinese laws, they would undoubtedly be hit with some kind of penalties, likely trickling down to their employees. This is probably not an issue they thought of when they opened offices in China.
Of course, Google has offices in China also. It'll be interesting to see what their solution is if the Chinese government gets sufficiently pissed off at them.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
This should be an episode.
O.K., children, Yahoo! is evil, mmmmKay?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
When I was an employee at BigY, it was not uncommon for engineers to cheer mock-enthusiastically about how psyched we were to have achieved second place.... yet again.
The engineers (at the time anyway, can't speak to now) definitely seemed to "get" that management was willing to settle for second way more often than we would have liked.
My uncle's name is Chin. Well that's his personal name, not his family name.
dont worry then...he will not disappear and remain your loving uncle and you can visit him for long time until the government decides to tun down first-name Chins also :-)
It's bad when American companies - like Yahoo! - abide by foreign laws and courts, releasing information as required by foreign governments.
It's good when American companies - like Microsoft - are sued because they do not abide by foreign laws and courts, and do not release information as required by foreign governments.
Just want to know what the heck the standard should be... I guess it depends upon who you are...
Oh, and for those who will come back and say "But it's RED CHINA!", I'm sitting in a factory in Dongguan right now, working with those same "evil Chinese"... Now if you'll excuse me, it's time to go grab a bit of breakfast, and schedule my flight back to Shanghai tomorrow.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Dude nobody said US is completely clean. We never were 100% compliant with the constitution and other civil rights issues. Thats why I don't like it when we poke fun of other countries. It is a big propaganda cycle.
Google would do the same thing Yahoo did. They are a corporation. A corporation's #1 goal is to make money. If they didnt they would be failing their shareholders. I remember when communist used to be bad, but since you can make money dealing with communist china its now ok.
I have to return some videotapes...
SO does it related to US Law and court actually?
Unfortunately The Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data in Hong Kong said that Yahoo Hong Kong is doing the right thing, not violating Hong Kong Law.
God Damn it Hong Kong is decaying, but we can do nothing as a HongKonger.
Yes, the Chinese campaigners will very probably get an unfriendly reception back home. China is doing its best to be warm and cuddly but on some things it simply will not change. But hang on a second. The reason we found out about Yahoo's cooperation with the Chinese authorities was that there was nothing in Chinese (HK) regulations to stop that information from being made known to the public. The big difference is that the US (and other western countries) have similar if not identical regulations and laws. The US Patriot Act makes it a felony to admit in any way any cooperation with the authorities or any action those authorities take regarding you and your use of Yahoo services. Its absolutely illegal, its an American state secret. Unlike China (and HK where the original request to Yahoo (HK) was made) in America you are not allowed to know if the authorities have requested information on you (this also applies to your local library where your book borrowing habits must be made secretly available to the authorities upon secret request). Companies like Yahoo are obliged to obey the law of the place they have a presence and that means handing over information when requested according to law. I know it feels good to have a hack at the Chinese but really in terms of law and regulation they are marginally better than the USPA where you cannot know of any official interest. So, shine a light on yourselves before you cry "Sic Semper Tyrannis".
OK, I'm underwhelmed by Yahoo's response to this, and I wish I could believe their execs thought that the civil liberties of a billion Chinese were perhaps almost as important as last quarter's numbers (which sucked, by the way)....
HOWEVER, in Yahoo's defense -- any internet provider that runs a large email service (Yahoo, Google, AOL, MSN) gets dozens of subpoenas every week requesting specific users' emails. The subpoenas do not tell why the emails are being requested. Yahoo or Google can't tell if the cops are after a child porn suspect, a Nigerian 419 scammer, or the latest suspect in the Abramoff scandal. The guy who handles the subpoena is an administrator in the legal department -- a clerk, unlikely to raise a stink if he sees something that seems fishy.
I suspect the same thing is true in China. One might hope that the clerk retrieving the emails might notice, "Hey, these aren't child porn, they're just political stuff -- maybe we should push back." It would be great if, say, company policy were to review such requests in light of US standards of political freedom. It would be especially great if Congress would pass a law backing up companies who wanted to do business this way overseas. However, none of those things (apparently) being the case as yet, I think that, regrettably, it's expecting an awful lot for a company like Yahoo! to take on the Chinese government on this issue.
Fuck Yahoo in their rosy red rectum for willfully aiding and abetting a government to jail and torture its own citizen's all in the name of profit motives and a better bottom line. Just because you have a duty to shareholders doesn't mean you throw out basic human rights and decency.
Boycott Yahoo, Boycott Chinese products (lol everything!) and send a clear message that this kind of behaviour is not tolerated.
I hope they get maximum penalties imposed on them as allowable by law. I also hope Google and Cisco and all the other shills who rolled over for a fat Chinese cock in the ass get their comeuppance as well.
Fucking bastards, the whole bloody lot of em!
When the news came out that Google was going to censor their search data but inform people they were being censored everyone went nuts.
Yahoo helps the Chinese government put people in prison for 10 years and no one says anything. The Yahoo employees had a choice they could have just said they didn't collect the data that the Chiense government needed. Instead they wasted their time digging out that data and handing it over to the government.
Would Google do the same? The Thai government asked Google for information on who posted the YouTube video of their king and they denied them the information. If they find out who did it they'd probably be in Jail for 10 Years as well.
Maybe I'm being too hard on Yahoo after all "they're just doing their job". Ofcourse the Nazi Soldiers were also just doing their "job" when they killed millions of people.
am so damn pissed off with Yahoo and this would be last nail. I had my mail a/c with them for last 10 years but am now migrating to gmail for good. guess what.... there is no feedback button on yahoo anywhere. may be i wont be able tell them about their wrong doing. if anybosy knows the link....reply me.
Eclipse PDE and Me
The Sun reports it as "China Chin-less" Ay thank you. I'll be here all week. Try the veal
It is of great concern that when you search online, your data can be handed over to authorities easily. This recent post http://haisojnetwork.com/autos/what-microsofts-msn -google-yahoo-and-aol-know-about-you/ reveals that MSN, yahoo, Google and AOL are all doing the same thing. Beware!!!
The situation here is a lot more complex than what the media coverage suggests.
... should do. However - it is very easy for the armchair warriors and -philosophers on /. to make wise about what an international business should do, after all it is not your money, is it? It's easy to have ideals ten miles high when they are never likely to be tested.
/. go on about China or other pet peeves, they seem to think that the only valid view of the world is the one Americans have been brought up with. Is it really so hard to accept that people in another country can and will have another outlook? Americans carp on about 'democracy' and 'freedom' and seem to believe that those are the most important things in life, and perhaps that is what an American genuinely believes. In other parts of the world they see it differently, they really do. This is not to say that freedom isn't important to most people, but how about such a thing as having something to eat at least several times a week? Or having a roof over your head? I wonder whether you guys would be quite as smug if you had known real hardship.
First of all, torture is always wrong and should never be ignored. This is the case whether the perpetrator is China, Russia or USA. Torture is 100% wrong and can only be condemned. The ones who commit that kind of atrocities are hardly worthy of the label 'human'.
Having said that, though, if you want to do business in a country, you have to follow the law of that country. The only other option is not to conduct business in a country where you feel the law is unethical, and perhaps that is what Yahoo, Google, Microsoft,
Apart from that - do you actually, positively know that the information you have is solid fact? It has always been difficult to get valid information about China - 30 years ago it was because the country was secretive and very hostile to the outside world, but now it is more because elements mostly in American media and intelligence have an agenda to distort the information. When it comes to news items about China, especially in the States, you have to check and double check it, unfortunately.
Finally, when the howling crowds on
Now, go on, mod me through the floor, it won't change the truth of what I've said.
Pot calls kettle black. Story at 11. This kind of behaviour by the US/British/_____ gov't is acceptable, while China is the booger-man? Whatever.
The political agenda from the occident is to encourage changes in China, not by isolation but
through greater exchanges.
We should not feel guilty to enjoy our Chinese goods.
However, a line is crossed when you actively participate in the persecution of a man based on his political beliefs. Basically what I say is: wanna deal, yeah. But take care of your dirty stuff alone.
I stopped using Yahoo when I first heard about this. The only time I use Yahoo is to learn what advertisers use their service so I can avoid their products.