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."

Comments

Cost of doing business

[Tofystedeth]

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.

Company Motto

[Clever7Devil]

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.

Re:Company Motto

[Clever7Devil]

Not quite.

From http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyId=17&articleId=9017 182&intsrc=hm_topic/:

According to the lawsuit, the Chinese court specifically relied on evidence supplied by Yahoo to identify and convict Xiaoning. The judgment noted that Yahoo HK informed investigators that a mainland China-based e-mail account (bxoguh@yahoo.com.cn) was used to set up Xiaoning's "aaabbbccc" Yahoo Group, and that the e-mail address ahgq@yahoo.com.cn, which Xiaoning used to post e-mails to that Yahoo Group, was also a mainland China-based account maintained by Xiaoning. The Chinese court said Yahoo was instrumental in causing Xiaoning's arrest and criminal prosecution, according to the lawsuit. Looks like Yahoo knew exactly what he was doing and led the authorities to his doorstep. It doesn't matter what doublespeak was used in the request, Yahoo had the facts in front of them.

As for Google, they have refused to give out personal information before. I am disappointed in their actions regarding censorship, but I don't see how you can compare it negatively to the torture and imprisonment of a citizen.

Re:Issues with international companies

[Nasarius]

Then Yahoo simply shouldn't be doing business in China. Yes, it's impossible to conduct ethical business in a country with a horrific human rights record. I don't see why this should come as a surprise to anyone.

This is probably not an issue they thought of when they opened offices in China.

Very funny. Of course they know, they just don't give a shit. That's why they handed over this information. Anything for the sake of making money.