Slashdot Mirror
Letter Casts Doubt On Yahoo China Testimony
Saint Aardvark writes "A hand-written letter has surfaced that sheds new light on the case of Chinese reporter Shi Tao. The letter (PDF), believed to be from Chinese police, 'is essentially a standardized search warrant making clear that Chinese law enforcement agencies have the legal authority to collect evidence in criminal cases. This contradicts Yahoo's testimony (PDF) to Congress in 2006 that they 'had no information about the nature of the investigation.' 'One does not have to be an expert in Chinese law to know that 'state secrets' charges have often been used to punish political dissent in China,' says Joshua Rosenzweig, manager of research and publications for The Dui Hua Foundation. Shi Tao was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his reporting on the Tianamen Square massacre."
Why, we were just following orders? You don't expect us to break the laws of other nations, do you? Don't worry, by helping Chinese officials silence those Chinese citizens brave enough to criticize their regime, we are in fact bringing freedom to China!
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Normally I'd have something terrible to say, but in this case I think I'd say this: As much as we hate hearing about Paris Hilton 234987129371 times, Freedom of the Press is important, even though Fox abuses it incessantly.
Sure baby, I'll give you my phone number...in Hex
Let's see. After all, it looks like Yahoo lied to congress, if I interpret this correctly. There was an investigation from congress, and they said it ain't so. In my books, this constitutes as a lie.
Now the congress is in a considerable problem. Either they fine a company or they accept that companies lie to them freely. Decisions, decisions...
I have a gut feeling I know how this will end.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
... as to how the comments on this thread will compare to the comments on the thread about police recording license plate locations and times?1 45253
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/30/0
It would appear that some degree of privacy / anonymity is necessary for Freedom.
I am impressed how international the Chinese police is. Local Chinese search warrants now issued in English and pdf format.
Mao must be proud
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
Thus sayeth an expert in Chinese law, at any rate.
I have a hard time seeing how these reporters can use this to collect damages, although I wish them the best of luck. My well-reasoned intellectual opinion: fuck Yahoo and the PRC.
Still, it's hard to see how a U.S. court will find that Yahoo had an obligation to analyze every search warrant it receives from the Chinese government for prosecuting disclosure of state secret cases. "Excuse me, Colonel, but how do we know that's really what you're after?"
And yes, fellow nitpickers, I know there's supposed to be an exclamation point after Yahoo. However, as previously stated: fuck Yahoo.
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
things. I love it and I tend to think idealistically about it, but I think when you cut right down to it that's what it is. We develop things to control more. It's inevitable that we'd start using technology to control ourselves, or the people we don't trust.
Quack, quack.
...let's at least get the transliteration correct.
It's Tiananmen Square. There's an "n" in there. I walked through through that very square on Saturday.
...and one modpoint wasted.
They testified that they had no knowledge of the details surrounding the case. The "warrant" simply states that the Chinese government is asserting its right to obtain the IP address and content of the e-mails. No details are provided other than the justification.
For some reason, there's 3 pages of posts modded up for berating Yahoo's supposed perjury before Congress, but, as usual, nobody bothered to read the fucking anything.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Lying under oath. Whether in front of congress or a court or whatever, when you take an oath to tell the truth that oath carries legal force and you can be charged for violating it. That's the whole reason for "pleading the 5th" and such. You can't be made to incriminate yourself, but that doesn't mean you are allowed to lie not to. Thus the 5th amendment allows you to not answer the question.
Many people don't realise that this is often the real legal deal surrounding some of the political controversies. For example the legal problem for Bill Clinton wasn't that he banged his secretary, it was that he lied under oath about it. The press and the public may have made a big deal out of the sex act, but the legal problems were surrounding the testimony.
When you are under oath you can refuse to answer for certain limited reasons (like anything that would violate the 5th amendment) and you can always pull the political favourite of "not being able to recall that" but you can't lie about it, at least not legally. Getting caught doing that can get you in trouble, even had what you were being questioned about been perfectly legal. The whole "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," isn't just for show. When you say "I do," you've made a formal oath and can be held to that.
Insight china under communist
Wu Dahai
Wenzhou, CHINA
Nov. 2006
Since the dream of democracy and freedom of The Great Father Sun Yat-sen who toppled the last emperor of Qing dynasty in the oriental land had been shattered by ambition of expansion of Japanese empire that destroyed the most armies of his successor. The communist derived from Germany rooted Russia deeply and viciously stretched the branch of root with both ITS Missionary and military conquest that intended to satisfy someone's ambitious dream to be global empire once again, border with Russia the infection was notorious. Dramatically, Nazi Germany and Japan's dream of global empire end with the wounds of Pearl Harbor. In the oriental land, Japan surrendered and withdraw the force from china after America and former soviet union's attack, that offered the great opportunity for communist-in-china whom USSR supplied both its ideology and aid of arms, united the poverty; homeless; gangster; aimless; bankrupt ones with propaganda, which took the land easily once governed by KUOMINTANG but completely turmoil and collapsed fledgling system under Japan's attack.
Once again, the chaos within black-box of planet settled down after World War II, nation independent spread across the global wide, so did in china. KUOMINTANG FLEED to Taiwan Island after the communist thrived in mainland china. Mao Zedong, head of communist-in-china, who is puppet of USSR in china in Stalin and his successor's eyes, but he enjoyed it and the communist ideology widespread in china with his coerce propaganda.
Once again, the stupidity emerged from uncivilized Mao who brought his self-halo & legend to the core of his heart as the ancient emperor did but hadn't prospered the great nation, CHINA. The Mao's socialism game failure amongst the massive people's famine
, however, Deng Xiaoping, Mao's successor, who practice capitalism in china resurrected the energy both economy and people, which communist-in-china denied again and again that the Deng's practice was capitalism like as a coward. The strife of internal clique of communist-in-china are severe, there are the communist politic phenomenon: Jiang Zemin former president of china rise, Chen Xitong former mayor in Beijing fall; Hu Jintao incumbent president rise, Chen liangyu former mayor in shanghai fall.
When the plan-economy transformed to market-oriented economy, the communist ideology have been tested and been proved that the system is vulnerable and stupid. Once the private activity for business was illegal as a smuggling, but now, that was for the free-market, which provided the unprecedented opportunities for extremely poverty individuals caused by fail to raise the crops and gamble as well, some of them with no choice but explored the land by traveling and trading the goods, sometimes faked one as well. the extreme shortage for the necessary/daily goods of peoples' basic needs was triggered by Mao's socialism game that practice the equal earning system in which hard worker earned the same as lazy one, meanwhile the state-run enterprise which produced and distributed the necessary for civilians burden heavily and even worse by deep-rooted bureaucratic system & notorious nepotism in which communist leader haven't a strategy/solution to cope with, so the commodities trader/seller had a great market with no competition, the pioneer of private economy brought plenty of money home, which flamed the neighbors' blood for exploring the business with ripple effect.
The rise of entrepreneurs; The fall of workers
Businessman learned that the goods supplier is severe shortage too, some pondered why not set up the factory by himself, which output the goods from integrating both the labor/human and natural resources, inevitably, the well-managed factory possessed the most resources and polluted the environment that Mother Nature given and once enjoyed by every individuals from generation to generation, workers of factory got to pay the bill cost their total salaries for the
One does not have to be an expert in Chinese law to know that 'state secrets' charges have often been used to punish political dissent in China.
Yes, but it could also mean that state secrets were indeed being stolen. "Could have" and "is" are two different things. It's not Yahoo's job to tell the difference, and if it becomes an issue, then the gov't in the future will just say "for an unspecified crime".
Table-ized A.I.
Who is evil now?
Yahoo have exhibited disgusting behaviour and being caught lying about it.
A man rots in Jail because of them.
Money for anothers freedom - Judas.
I call for a boycott on Yahoo - don't use any services, don't click any links - lets let the lights go out in their dirty part of the web. If this happens enough perhaps they will change - otherwise more will join their merry dance.
I'd ask China's former food chief what he thought about all this censorship business, but he was executed not too long ago.
Everyone assumes the reporters are angelical. Ninety percent of Chinese reporters are dirty, low down scum who will say anything to get their name on the papers or on TV. This includes breaking the law to achieve it. I mean even recently with the cardboard dumplings - that's tame to what they concoct.
;-) Who knows, perhaps he had a history we are not hearing about.
Unfortunatly, most of it is in Chinese on BBS forums to spike a story which they can then later follow.
Dunno about this chap though