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Congressional Commitee Rips Yahoo Execs
A number of readers sent word of the hearing by the US House Foreign Affairs Committee in which committee members raked two Yahoo execs over the coals. "While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies," the committee chairman Tom Lantos, D-Calif., said angrily after hearing from Jerry Yang and Michael Callahan about Yahoo's actions that resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of a Chinese dissident. In 2004 Yahoo turned over information about journalist Shi Tao's online activities requested by Chinese authorities. In Feb. 2006, Yahoo's General Counsel Callahan testified that he had not known the nature of the investigation the authorities were conducting. He later learned that several employees of Yahoo China were aware at the time that the investigation involved "state secrets," but Callahan did not go back to Congress to amend his testimony. Committee members were withering in their disdain for Yahoo's refusal to help Shi Tao's family after his arrest.
Isn't that like the pot calling the kettle black?
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
I wonder will these politicians be as robust in their denunciation of China's human rights record the next time a Chinese trade delegation pays them a visit.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Congress should know "moral pygmies" when they see them. They are the experts aren't they?
Yahoo's actions that resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of a Chinese dissident.
Yahoo complied with a request from the government of a country that is on friendly terms with the US government for an investigation that involved "state secrets".
Since the US government is taking the position that you have no privacy in your email, ever, and they can read it anytime without getting a warrant, let alone for "National Security" investigations, it's a bit ridiculous to expect US companies to have stricter standards in other countries.
Note that I'm not saying Yahoo is innocent, just that the congresscritters are being hypocritical.
What's Yahoo supposed to do when faced with a subpoena from the Chinese Government?
Tell the Chinese the US Government thinks you're douchebags and so we're not really gonna give you what you want?
Sure, that'll work real well.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
What happens in China, stays in China?
Right, so Yahoo are bad for grassing up the online activities of a Chinese dissident to their government, but AT&T are good for spying on Americans for their government. This, presumably, is because the US government has a squeaky clean human rights record.
Aha. OK. You can put me on your list now.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
For a politican to call them "moral pygmies" must've been hard to keep a straight face and not burst out laughing.
pathetic
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
but wouldn't they expect Yahoo! U.S. to rollover if presented for an information request on the basis of "national security"?
Yahoo! China has to follow the laws of that country, just as we expect Yahoo! U.S. to do so.
Maybe the U.S. Government should issue Letters of Marque to multi-national corporations...
I don't for a second condone what Yahoo! did on moral grounds. However, legally they acted as expected.
Yahoo general counsel: we so horny, boom boom long time, we have ride stances
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
were morally and ethically upstanding
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Parent is exactly right. They either have the choice to not work in china or to obey the government. So, we can either do the superficially morally-correct thing, or we can get a foot in the door of the next great superpower that has a longstanding record of human rights abuse, and make sure that foot is the greatest tool for the spreading of information since the printing press.
Please, someone explain why he's marked as a troll when, in reality, he's exactly right.
...You're Black!"
I think that would be a pretty good response to the statement "While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies"
But, it's ok to rake through the private email of US citizens WITHOUT a warrant. I think the haggle over warrants is just a ruse, one to MAKE us think that the government (various agencies, that is) are OBEYING the law.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
The use of the word pygmies may turn out to be ill advised. Bring ethnic characters into conversation as an insult is flat out asking for it. I suspect the pygmy population in the United States is rather low, but it probably doesn't matter. In fact if I was Yahoo I might even arrange to quietly cause a stink about it.
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/l000090/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Lantos
Boy, getting lectured by this guy on morality... those poor Yahoo execs. It must have been hard not to burst out laughing.
All because they bought up the absolute best game server browser, All-Seeing Eye, and then proceeded to kill it. Dead. Fuck Yahoo right in its crooked ass, same for Sony.
"To err is human, to mod Funny divine."
It's going to be more and more cases like this, with economical globalization moving ahead, from the request of corporations with the approval of politicians. Corporations are not in the business of polical moral, political freedom, etc. they are in the business in making a buck anywhere in the whole universe.
As corporations will be more and more globalized, individual states will have less and less control over them.
Even the US government won't be (may be this should be a present tense, really) able to control or truly regulate them.
This is the era when national politicians still pretend to the public that they have such power - but in fact, they have been stupid enough to let it slip a while ago.
I think it's not too far away when megacorp execs. won't even bother to show up before the Congress or other political organization.
Make him any less correct?
Or for that matter, does your opinion of the US Govt make the oppressive Chinese government any better?
Cripes, it's like you're all a bunch of Michael Moore clones or something. US=bad, so everything else = good?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
If it was bush or cheney calling me that, i wouldnt give a fart. Yet, lantos is not a light load when it comes to ethics.
Read radical news here
What's wrong with being a pygmy ??
No seriously, how is that a means to insult someone? It's not a medical condition or disability, it's a harmless characteristic -- like hair color.
That's Chinese for "classified information", right?
What?
I don't know in what capacity these people serve, but we put them onto the 'extraordinary rendition', Guantanamo bay etc people. That would be fun.
-1 not first post
Please, Yahoo!, step aside with your feeble attempts to please one of your host countries. We have more important wars to wage, and may indeed want to take out those pesky Chinese. So you moral pygmies, out of our war errr our way, for we have important wars errr good deeds to wage.
Ignore the homeless, the ghetto, the pollution, the drug addicts, the crime, the Wal-mart, the blind political correctness, the perversion of religion and patriotism, the secret detention camps and the suburban blight on your way out.
technical writing / development
What were the options for Yahoo employees? Aren't they binded by China laws when they are in China?
From TFA:
"Callahan has since acknowledged that Yahoo officials had received a subpoena-like document"
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
Interesting that they just couldnt make the connection between "state secrets" and dissident prosecution when the evidence was all around them and well known. I wonder if any violations in that respect got trumped by The Almighty Stockholder(not to be confused with mutual fund holders). Nothing like cash to overlook your violation of "state secrets" law.
This illustrates one more case for trade regulations so that this problem stays solved.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
No, actually it would be a rather childish response. The many failings of the U.S. Government (especially in its current incarnation) do not excuse Yahoo's actions.
If Yahoo wants to criticize some of the idiotic things the U.S. gov has been doing lately, they may of course do so (hey I wish they would!), but it has no bearing on this case.
We live, as we dream -- alone....
Warmongerer Lantos is responsible for the slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians. I would have loved to be there and confront this bastard.
Let's see a Congressman get away with substituting in Black/Jew whatever and lasting out the day.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
This is complete bullshit. If Congress really cared we wouldn't be using Chinese labor for cheap crap to be peddled on tv which is trucked up to North America from Mexico to good ol FUCKING WAL-MART!
Fuck off dickheads! China has been given "MOST FAVORED NATION STATUS", why in God's name would they actually give a fuck!
I am frankly astonished that a self-labelled libertarian would be against Yahoo here. The fact is, they are doing what it takes to make money, and having the GOVERNMENT step in and interfere with that fundamental right goes against everything a good objectivist should stand for.
The better the state is established, the fainter is humanity. To make the individual uncomfortable, that is my task. -- Nietzsche
I love Slashdots almost prescient ability to provide a fortune that bears on the topic. The US is going into the toilet, Bush's war needs to be paid for and that money is going to be coming from US' citizens children for quite some time to come. The government of the US exists within a moral vacuum, nobody asks if something is "right" they just ask if its "legal". From the Patriot Act denying first ammendment rights (you can't tell anyone - even your lawyer or a judge - if you've been served under that act effectively cutting due process out of the loop) to what is torture, waterboarding. I think they should all be lined up against a wall and shot. This would be satisfying but would not likely result in any improvements so something else must be done. The only thing I can think of that has any hope of leading us out of the quagmire is demanding full transparency out of government. So, no "secret" subpeonas, no "secret" detentions, no "secret" trials, no "secret" interrogation techniques, no secrets because thats where evil hides.
Fuck Bush. I think he's leading a great nation into ruin.
Shh.
The congress did nothing at all to punish the perps who conquered China in the late 1940s. They'd prefer to scold Yahoo execs than to actually go so far as to wag a finger at the Red Dynasty.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
How is this different from what google just did? http://www.cnet.com/8301-13739_1-9811569-46.html?tag=blog.2 Is anyone going to do anything to google?
Interesting that the known translation for "Political Dissent" on Google comes up to
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
N/T
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Congress wouldn't have been upset if China would have outsourced torture like the US does by sending the 'dissident' to an Egyptian torture facility. Perhaps the CIA could knock down the trade deficit by managing the outsourcing of torture for China...
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
We'd have to expand Guantanamo Bay to the entire island of Cuba to even come close to meeting their requirements. That, and it'd become painfully obvious that we're doing extraordinary rendition by the amount of air traffic. Unless you can hide millions of people on millions of flights that'd presumedly happen at very regular intervals, it's going to stick out.
To even do so, you would need a national airline sized fleet of planes to meet the demand. It'd be more practical to just send them to a waiting bus ready in-country to execute, extract and dump.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I recently heard Tom Lantos speak and I was pleasantly surprised. I've become pretty cynical about politicians so I didn't expect much, but these were my impressions: He's smart; he seemed to have a pretty clear set of values that did not necessarily follow a party line; he appears to truly care about freedom, which makes sense given his background (WWII).
As I've looked into his career a little bit (yes, you know where I went to look up a quick summary of information), it looks like his actions are consistent with his words.
I don't think this is a case of the old pot and kettle.
So they only got the rip huh? I'll wait for the lossless bootleg to come out on the torrent sites, thanks though.
And WHAT exactly is being ripped anyway?
Have gnu, will travel.
"...You're Black!"
Clearly meant to imply our melanin-added friends are somehow inferior for their blackness, negritude, or simply absence of albinism as seems to be preferred in the industrialist West.
"Dont you mean that in two decades, China will become as free as the US?"
Have you actually read the "Patriot" Act? A couple more pieces of legislation like that and the US will be very close to "as free" as China. Just a couple more well-place terrorist acts, and US citizens will be begging the government to take away their liberty. Works the same anywhere (http://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.asp).
Now, where's my damn soma?!
Corporations need to be held to the standards of the bill of rights no matter what they own or how much money they have.
They have power rivaling government (especially those which control essential pieces of our IT infrastructure) and need to be held to the same responsibilities.
Specifically, this amendment would assure corporations can't include little clauses in their eulas entitling them to spy on your machine or hack into and destroy your machine(see my sig..microsoft), to alter or govern your property after it's sold to you (i'm talking about you apple, microsoft, the AACSLA, and MAFIAA), or to spy on your personal data (i'm talking about you major isp's).
The copyright clause needs to be further specified/strengthened, to make damned sure judges have no wiggle room. If anyone can offer the slightest example in which a law purporting to be related to intellectual property does the opposite of fostering innovation (i'm talking about YOU dmca) that law shall be struck down.
Finally, we need to strengthen the legislative clauses to make sure congress and only congress is allowed to pass legally binding regulation. This means no passing things along.. no more president appointed lackies being able to decree with the force of law (i'm talking about you FCC and FDA *nixon drug laws*)
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
That's just two stories below the one about US warrantless E-mail surveillance, together with a gag order banning the Plaintiff ISP from even discussing the case.
Maybe Congress should get its own house in order before complaining about China. From China's perspective, the Chinese "democracy activists" are also "terrorists".
Yahoo! has neither the right nor a responsibility to determine the validity of a legal case(they can't and shouldn't decide if a suspected criminal is actually a criminal). Yahoo! can't and shouldn't try to determine the difference between a serial child molester and a political dissident. So they either have to refuse all requests for the private information of their users, or they have to submit to all legal requests regardless of the record of their country of origin.
The only way to accomplish the former in all countries is for Yahoo! and everyone else to log nothing whatsoever, or to have the protection of international law, or at least US law.
This would mean that no government could get private information about users. No information about spammers, no information about pedophiles, con artists, terrorists, murderers, or any other group you can imagine no matter how terrible they might be. If we make exceptions for certain groups then law enforcement in oppressive regimes will just claim that the people they're looking for aren't a member of that group and Yahoo! isn't qualified to make that decision.
Pot calls kettle black, news at 11
the team-killing fuck-tards that run around the capital have determined that getting 1 man arrested is more evil than allowing our idiot in chief the power to run amok across the globe. I wonder just WHO DOES NOT GET IT....
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
It goes: If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 billion, that's the bank's problem. --J. Paul Getty
Shi Tao was jailed for sending on to foreign websites an e-mail from the ruling
Communist Party warning journalists not to cover the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 2004.
From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7081458.stm
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I think this dilemna was predictable and never should have occured. Messages boards and email never should have been provided on Yahoo China.
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
Any corporation worth its salt has ethical codes of conduct(in many cases voluntary ones, that is, nobody forces the company to behave in certain ethical ways).
/.ers ejaculating this nonsense about companies not having ethics, having as only legal responsibility to make profits and increase shareholder value, etc. is that the stereotype of the geek in the parent's basement is not far form the true (or is close enough for comfort).
The only conclusion I can draw from so many
Anybody that has worked as little as a month in any serious corporation will be aware of internal ethical codes of conduct.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I'm not defending Yahoo, they deserve a kick in the ass. It's just that there needs to be more internal Government scrutiny like this. Financially the US is a giant, but like Yahoo, morally it is also a pygmy.
Lets demand that tigers become vegetarian while we are at the demanding game.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
it doesn't take a saint to criticize someone else's sins
everyone sins to some extent, but those who sin the worst, are not allowed to deflect criticism because someone else jaywalks
what the yahoo execs did was wrong, period, and should be criticized
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies," the committee chairman Tom Lantos, D-Calif., said angrily after hearing from Jerry Yang and Michael Callahan about Yahoo's actions that resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of a Chinese dissident"
Pot, meet kettle. Black!
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
Not to defend the actions of Yahoo but congress should remove the log from their own eye first. The Bush administration and few bureaucrats that call them selves Judicial branch public servants, possibly even a few 'Legislators' and the people running corporate entities such as AT&T should be held accountable and criminally charged for violating the constitution and the civil liberty of US citizens. From what I can see there appears to be sufficient evidence to impeach, dismiss AND charge these parties.
If we do not act soon our generation may very well be cursed by our descendants as the selfish spineless cowards that pissed away everyones hopes, dreams and liberty. Congress has it within their power, but we must demand it. It's time to plant your feet and raise your voice folks. The very stuff you see happening today are the same types of things that inspired statements like "Don't Tread On Me" and "Live Free Or Die". To allow a oligarchic kleptocracy and a bunch of brain dead country music star 'patriots', bible thumping narrow minded bigots and other assorted chicken hawks to destroy our childrens liberty is a sin if there is indeed such a thing. Hundreds of thousands or maybe millions have already given up their blood, hopes and dreams indeed for many their everything so WE and OUR children could live in a world where these were not simply hollow platitudes. We are committing a horribly sacrilegious act of omission as we allow things to continue as they are.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
Dammit. Emigration
Everybody seems to think I'm lazy I don't mind, I think they're crazy
Things get a little different when you own (hold hostage?) the mechanisms and ideology that define the global financial markets. Then there's the matter of settling up. In the global sandbox, there is no Sheriff to come with a court order to seize assets, so nobody can really push things past a certain point with the US (let us be real here). Everyone knows this, so the game is played in a more limited way.
To use the current real estate market as an example, there is a good chance that banks will forgive debt to avoid foreclosures and keep those monthly payments coming in. The same kind of thing will likely happen with this so-called US debt* you are talking about if things get bad enough.
* This "US Debt" is a catchall phrase for a lot of different stuff. Specifically, the gory details of who owns what to whom matters.
As far as China buying a US bank, they better watch their pockets! The US financial markets are considered a strategic asset, and anyway the establishment firms won't even let young American firms into the inner circle. Some boss dude at a big firm was just fired for suggesting the idea. If some people in China buy a bank, you can bet that they are being played for suckers by the most devious crooks on the planet, the US financial establishment, and will likely only end up owning a heaping pile of crap MBS.
I thought you were saying that the US will be broke soon, and subsequently "pwn3d" by foreigners. Are you still saying that? What does it mean? If I own a couple hundred common shares of GOOG, I own something, but control nothing.
I think we are under different understandings of certain concepts, like ownership, assets, bank, etc. I tried to say before, when you talk of "China" owning a "US" "bank", what does this even mean? What kind of bank, who in China, etc? You have all the acronyms and vocabulation down, but the map is not the territory, what matters is the mechanism. If Japan buys Pebble Beach at the top, who cares? They cannot take Pebble Beach anywhere, its in the US, they can come visit.
Promises of cash money income from people is way better than fake credit. The credit was just a tool to get control of the money feeds of real people. They autopay their little paystubs into your bank, you autotake your mortgage interest out. Thats renting out money; nice business. OK little munchkins, we forgive your debt by $100K, but um, we're gonna have to raise interest rates a bit, mkay? Money flow preserved, Geddit?
BTW, the moment that the debt is forgiven, that is like a little elf took that money, opened a furnace door, and popped it in. That is deflation, and that means the dollar drifts higher, not lower.
As far as this foreign "pwn4ge" goes, once again, control is key. Unlike with the little people with their mortgages, who can be controlled quite easily, the US nation is much harder to control. I thought I caught a hint of you saying that the US is kind of, shall we say, pugnacious? Well, let's say they are. Do you really think they are just going to roll over like a little lamb?
Um, here's an idea! Say I was, by any measure, the most powerful country in the world, but was running up a big "debt" (AKA accounting fiction) with other countries. If I thought the game of printing more fake money to get real stuff was over, maybe I would cover my bases somehow. Maybe I could take control of the oil region that my partners need to fuel their economic development. I could settle some old scores, test out the new "toys", flex a little muscle, but mainly keep things under control.
Maybe this is the case, maybe not. What I know from my forays into things financial and political is that me and the other J6Ps are the last to know what is really happening. Another thing is whenever things get trendy and in the news, you best saddle up, because we're drivin' the cattle to market. In other words, you are hearing about it now, because the financial/political establishment is running a move on you.
I have not been able to pin down what real, non-accounting-fiction, thing you think is going to knock the US off the top of the heap in the next few years, or who you think will take their place. We should all pray that all the financial doomsayers and USA haters are wrong, because if the US is destabilized financially, the whole world will suffer, and we could all end up in a world war.
The problem with your scenario is that the banks can't "forgive" the debt, for 3 reasons:
Simply put, the "game" has changed. Nobody believes the US is a credible invading force any more, in the sense of being able to keep whatever the US goes after. Iraq is another Viet Nam, just as Afghanistan was the USSR's Viet Nam.
"We should all pray that all the financial doomsayers and USA haters are wrong, because if the US is destabilized financially, the whole world will suffer, and we could all end up in a world war."
The US is already destabilized financially. Look at the federal deficit, the accumulated debt, the 16 million vacant homes, the 2 million homes that are expected to go into foreclosure over the next 2 years, the latest 39 billion dollar loss GM took in the most recent quarter, the tanking dollar, the inflation of stuff that people need on a daily basis (food, energy, mortgage payments) that isn't included in the "Core Consumer Price Index", the record increase of people using their credit cards to pay their mortgages and day-to-day living expenses ...
There are a couple of trillion dollars of "false gains" that have to be removed from the US economy. That's going to be painful, just like any other hangover. Party's over. Unfortunately, we're all going to pay the price for the US's fake "economic gains" in the last 5 years, but a war? Not going to happen. You don't have the money to pay for your current war effort, never mind another one.
Kevin Smith on Prince
this is much closer to them insulting mom for yelling at them when all they did was listen to dad. Seeing as how China and the US are complete Nanny states, I think the parent comparison is pretty good...... of course, it would be much more instructive to draw the pot nad kettle analogy between the US and china.
Yahoo is obligated to follow local law-inforcement to turn over evidence in a crime investigation. Whatever your misgivings toward the chinese government, as a business, when you are in China you are obligated to follow local laws. Foreign company has to do that when they come to the US. Why the heck are the US companies exampt from doing so when they go abroad. Shi Tao wants to push a specific political agenda to which he knows the consequences. That is a decision he's made on his own, why is Yahoo morally obligated to risk its business in China in order to cover his trails?! Business is business. Yahoo is only morally obligated to its share-holders, period.It would also be unethical for Yahoo to hold a political agenda that damages its business. This is not even bringing in the hypocracy arguments. I mean why aren't we outrage with cooperations that actually KILL people?
You keep posting this same kooky theory in almost any context, facts be damned. Good luck with that.
Because we can't survive without cheap Chinese-made shit from WalMart.
Follow the money.
Congress can use Yahoo executives as scapegoats, but has no balls to follow through on things they could do.
Gee, big surprise.
+++OK ATH
MSNBC had an interesting cover of this. The video is a little out of sync with the audio, but still worth a look. CC for the hearing impaired.
Bob
China is sending out all the signals, and the markets are reacting. So much for your "facts be damned". Must be hard to take, the capitalists beholden to "dirty pinko commies". Just one of todays' headlines ...
Of course, you could have read this yesterday
Kevin Smith on Prince