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Yahoo Settles With Imprisoned Chinese Journalists
Terms of the deal are secret, but Yahoo has reached settlements with two Chinese journalists who were arrested based on information the company provided to the ruling Communist government. "[...] a source at Yahoo said the company has been 'working with the families, and we're working with them to provide them with financial, humanitarian and legal assistance.' Yahoo has also agreed to establish a global human rights fund to provide 'humanitarian relief' to support dissidents and their families. The source said that details still have to be worked out."
For the good of the people.
What I would like to know: have they reached a "deal" to stop cooperating with totalitarian censors in suppressing freedom of speech and political opposition?
Read Pynchon.
Original article (instead of Tomcat error)
In any case, the real judge is how they decide to act next time something like this happens...
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Why does China deserve a big Fuck You, as you so eloquently put it? China is a sovereign nation
:D
Mod parent funny!
Really? Please define "hooliganism" for us, if you would.
No, really - you said they knew up-front what the laws were. So please define for us, exactly, what a law based on a subjective and ever-changing term would be. Incidentally, China has thousands of such laws, its citizens have no real right to a decent trial, and "subversives" can be detained for the rest of their natural lives without so much as being read anything approaching a Miranda statement, let alone get a trial.
Idiot.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
how about when the DOJ arrests a UK citizen, off an in-transit plane (outside customs entry into the USA) at a US airport on layover, that runs an online gambling site legal in the UK but not in the USA, using data the airline supplied under homeland security? Isn't that EXACTLY the same thing. Airline Companies not of US origin allowing the USA govt to arrest their passengers when they are still on that companies property via international travel should not get a free pass either.
If China wishes to continue the suppression of its poeple, that is their choice, but for Western companies to be helping them in this oppression is beyond the pale.
Your argument is rather like Burma's military junta defending their crackdown as simply a legalistic maneuver, and after all, Burma's a sovereign country, so why should we care? Say the same for Kosovo, for Darfur, for Apartheid-era South Africa? I mean, can any abuse of human beings be justified because "It's local law and custom"?
The US already goes after companies doing business in other parts of the world over activities like bribery, even when such activities are deemed as acceptable in the place the American companies are doing business. There's a key notion here that just because you head abroad doesn't suddenly mean you no longer can be scrutinized by the US government.
And besides, when did something being a law mean that it was unassailable? Heck, laws banning interracial marriage were found in a number of states. Would you have been going up to Mildred and Richard Loving and scolding them for violating local laws?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
What don't you get? Anything is illegal in China that threatens the state. Anything. The notion that these people were breaking laws is nothing more than a pure formality. They were threats, in their own small ways, to the autocratic governing structure in China, and they were delivered like lambs to the slaughter by Yahoo.
As I've said, if China wishes to continue suppressing basic human freedoms, and the people of China want or have no choice but to go along with it, then that's fine. But I don't think an American company has any business helping them, whether it's Yahoo, Google and Microsoft selling out dissidents and journalists, or it's Cisco providing the hardware and support for the Great Firewall. Let China do its own dirty work.
Oh, and I thought "We were just following orders" had been dispensed with as a defense for violation of human rights and dignity some sixty years ago.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Heck, even the dimmest rural Chinese citizen knows well the failings of the system (probably from bitter personal experience).
That requires them to have a basis for comparison (ie, what it's like elsewhere). Additionally, not knowing all of the things happening to other people across the country also helps the establishment.
The Chinese have historically done a very good job of censorship. When I was an undergrad I worked in a research group that was 80% Chinese, including a number of visiting scholars who were educated entirely in China. A bunch of us started talking about our respective countries once, and Tienman (sp?) Square came up. One of the Chinese scholars had never heard of it, and didn't believe it could have possibly occurred (understandably). A few of us found some articles on it, which he read. He was visibly shaken as he realized the things his country did while lying to the people. So believe me, they're very good propagandists.
What is the difference between the Chinese government forcing any telecommunications company, search engine, or whatever to give up consumer data and the US government doing the same thing sometimes without even a warrant? Or a business filing a subpoena because some anonymous person posted bad things about their company/products and they want to punish them? I suppose it is ok because anyone we do this to is obviously a terrorist and wrong so it is ok. While anyone any other 'axis of evil' country does this to is oppressing them.
Despite it all, the Executive is still constrained by Congress and the Judiciary. There is simply nothing in the Chinese power structure that resembles the checks and balances in the American system, unless you consider the way the President and Premier play the power dance with the PLA somehow similar to the Constitutionally constrained entities of the US government.
There is no real regularized judiciary in China, so saying that Chinese officials knocking on Yahoo China's door is the equivalent of the FBI or Scotland Yard knocking on your door is as piss-poor an analogy as there is. In China, the fact is that if they decide your a threat, there is no appeal, no fair trial, no guarantee of adequate representation. You're fucked, truly and completely, so Yahoo China selling out dissidents is significantly different than Yahoo in the States turning in someone because law enforcement has a warrant approved by a judge.
Yes, there have been abuses in the States, but the party largely responsible for it has lost control of Congress and, unless things change dramatically, looks about ready to lose the White House as well. The very fact that power changes hand in that fashion ought to preface any claim of moral equivalency between the US and China.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The level of abuse in China pales in comparison to even the worst parts of the PATRIOT Act. The comparison doesn't hold water. I'm no fan of some recent American legislation, but there are different shades of "bad", and China is very, very much further on the scale than even the most heinous of American laws.
Not to mention that "we were just following orders" was deemed a non-defense at the Nuremberg trials. Somebody writing a decree on a piece of paper does not absolve you of your personal responsibility to behave with due morality.
It cuts both ways in spite of how Congress wants to be all high-n-mighty about itThe parallel can be drawn, but they are not the same. The US has due process and the rule of law, both concepts do not exist in China. When a company is compelled to turn over information, a warrant is required (recent Bush shenanigans notwithstanding), official records exist that will be accessible after the conclusion of any investigations. The entire thing is (fairly) transparent and accessible to the people, including the accused. To do anything to the individual involved, even with this information, requires officially charging the individual with a crime (which has to be clearly defined in legislation, not just trumped up in some generic category like "treason"), and granting him a right to fair trial in a jury of his peers, selected through a rigorous process to ensure impartiality. Heck, undue influence of the jury can even result in a mistrial.
China? The process goes more like... Make trumped up charges based on vague, generic crimes not well defined in any sort of legislation. Compel companies to release confidential data with neither warrant nor proper, transparent procedure. Imprisonment without a fair trial - or use your control of the media to stage a laughable trial with jury members cherry-picked from party loyalists. Convicted "criminals" have no legal recourse, no access to a higher court of law, nor an appeals process.
While America has certainly taken a few steps backwards, one would be sorely mistaken to believe it's ANYWHERE near as bad as China in its current state.