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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."
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."
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.
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
They won't - it'll be The World Organization for Human Rights China that does that.
FGD 135
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?
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."