Yahoo Gets Chinese Journalist 10 Years in Jail! I just closed my account!

[DoctorMyEyes]

I found the story on Jesus' General:
http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/2006_01_22_patriotboy_archive.html#113800086905228190


Information supplied by Yahoo ! helped journalist Shi Tao get 10 years in prison

The text of the verdict in the case of journalist Shi Tao - sentenced in April to 10 years in prison for “divulging state secrets abroad” - shows that Yahoo ! Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd. provided China’s state security authorities with details that helped to identify and convict him, Reporters Without Borders said today.

“We already knew that Yahoo ! collaborates enthusiastically with the Chinese regime in questions of censorship, and now we know it is a Chinese police informant as well,” the press freedom organisation said.

“Yahoo ! obviously complied with requests from the Chinese authorities to furnish information regarding an IP address that linked Shi Tao to materials posted online, and the company will yet again simply state that they just conform to the laws of the countries in which they operate,” the organisation said. “But does the fact that this corporation operates under Chinese law free it from all ethical considerations ? How far will it go to please Beijing ?”

Reporters Without Borders added : “Information supplied by Yahoo ! led to the conviction of a good journalist who has paid dearly for trying to get the news out. It is one thing to turn a blind eye to the Chinese government’s abuses and it is quite another thing to collaborate.”

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=14884

Sign a petition here:
http://www.booyahoo.blogspot.com/

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. done

[MidwestTransplant]

2. And they spill to the Gubbermint when Google holds out.

[KakistocracyHater]

3. How soon before Americans are also jailed

for revealing "state secrets"? The very phrase used to silence Sybel Edmonds(sp?) & others who have something to say about the Bush regime.

[mom cat]

10. If Alito is confirmed, all bets are off. Fight like hell!

[CrackpotAmerica]

4. WOW.. Thank you for posting this..

I discovered a lot about Yahoo over the weekend... All Bad..

:NOMINATED:

[FreedomAngel82]

5. So scary

And will Bush do the same thing?

[il_lilac]

6. So, do we know a spyfree provider?

I feel compelled now to switch. Any progressive providers out there?

[sproutster]

7. Dear Yahoo,

Someday you will be held to account for your invasion of privacy.

But that is not the worst, the worst is the destruction of a voice in the darkness - you did not passively extinguish that voice, you actively and with malice destroyed that voice.

[Don Claybrook]

8. I just blocked all yahoo traffic through my firewall

No URL ending in .yahoo.com can get through any longer (does anyone know of other yahoo-owned domains?). I think I'll inform them of my decision. This is pretty easily done, either on a hardware-based or software-based firewall, btw.

[Spiffarino]

9. After many years with Yahoo

...I'm getting out. My friends and family will hear about this, I assure you. It's Google from here out.

I'm utterly disgusted.

Edit: I sent a message to everyone in my Yahoo address book telling them I was quitting. I linked to the RSF story about Shi Tao and gave them a quick account of his story. I have also emailed a couple of my favorite radio hosts, not asking that they say anything on the air, but just to get the word out to everyone they know and perhaps to steer them away from doing business with them. I'll inform as many people as possible. Thanks and kudos to the OP.

[klook]

11. I've closed my Yahoo acct too

http://au.help.yahoo.com/help/au/acct/acct-17.html

Screw 'em.

[zanne]

22. Just closed mine.. nt

[crispini]

12. K&R

disgraceful.

[crispini]

13. kick

[DoctorMyEyes]

14. Thanks for the kicks, everyone!

I was so pissed when I read about this last night I deleted my account without even saving anything first. I was planning on dumping Yahoo when I learned that they'd cooperated with our government - turning over their search engine records, but when I read how they sold out this Chinese journalist I didn't feel like I could wait another minute.

[B3Nut]

19. Same here

The mail account had become a spamhole and even regular mail-list messages had piled up so much it would take forever to clean out my inbox.

Since they are so eager to roll over and not tell authoritarians to go to hell I just dumped the whole shebang.

Hey Yahoo.......see ya!!!!

Todd in Beerbratistan

[thefool_wa]

15. I hate to say this

But I am sure that cooperating with the Chinese police isn't something that is exactly voluntary. I know very little about Chinese law, but I am sure that, when a company (or a division of a company) that operates and has facilities within the PRoC is approached and "asked" to provide information it is 10 years for the guy they are looking for or 10 years for the guy who didn't give them what they needed to convict him. Then they take what they needed and its 10 years for they guy they were after in the first place anyways.

They don't operate like us and any company who wants to do business there has to follow their rules. Do I like it, no I don't, but the only way Yahoo can operate within China is to do things their way and they are one of the largest online providers out there (i.e. mega corporation, i.e. evil) so of course they want to operate in China, 1.2-1.5 BILLION potential customers.

Be mad at China if you want, but it sounds like this guy (if we are to believe the Chinese, so grain of salt here) was a traitor to his nation. If someone here was doing the same thing, Yahoo would do the same thing, the only difference is the need for a warrant. So cancel your subscriptions if you want, but that only makes China a more attractive market to Yahoo since they can't get customers here. Oh, and stop buying shoes, t-shirts, electronics, and all those other things that we have to have in this country that are made in China by companies that, through action or inaction, support the tactics of the Chinese government by doing so much commerce there.

on edit: oh yeah, K&R'd.

[DoctorMyEyes]

17. All I can do is what I can.

I can't dictate American policy, let alone Chinese. I do the best I can. I turn out and vote for the best candidates I can. I write my representatives and an occasional letter to the editor. I work and shop at Costco. I drive a little car. I won't spend one thin dime at Walmart, and now I won't use Yahoo's free services.

I'm just one little impotent person doing the best I can in a big world.


on edit: I wanted to add - even my dog doesn't listen to me. But, I talk to him anyway.

[thefool_wa]

24. That's all any of us can do

Impotent is right. It seems that even doing what we can is not enough. I was at the mall today and decided to check and see what I would have to avoid purchasing if I were to truly boycott China. I am going to be a rich man because I would not have been able to spend a single penny anywhere but the food court. I am also going to be naked, in the quiet, and possibly the dark because I can't buy light bulbs from anything other than a national mega-corporate chain retailer.

I am convinced that there is no economic recourse left. The market is polluted and the mega-marketplace has driven away all local commerce. The only bastion of true free market is freakin E-bay! And even then, most of he stuff you will buy is made in China. An you can't buy light bulbs (or maybe you can, I should look).

It's enough to drive a person mad...

[Deja Q]

20. I agree with you. 100%.

They don't operate like us.

In their country, we have to obey their laws.

Just wait until our business interests there get tired of the laws, or because the laws get used against them at some point. The Chinese wouldn't be keen of having American executives over there forever...

[klook]

23. And what was Shi Tao's heinous crime?

He sent an email to foreign-based web sites containing the text of an internal Chinest Communist Party message. (Apparently they don't have Sunshine Laws over there.) The message, according to Reporters Without Borders, warned journalists of the dangers of social unrest resulting from the return of dissidents on the 15th anniversary of the June 2004 Tiananmen Square massacre.

In other words, what he did is the equivalent of publicizing a statement from the U.S. government warning American journalists about the possibility of social unrest resulting from the return of dissidents on the 36th anniversary of the May 1970 Kent State massacre (or the 15th anniversary of the Rodney King uprising).

For this he gets 10 years in prison.

Yahoo is an American company and therefore not subject to Chinese law. The only reason they offered up this sacrificial lamb is that they want to make further inroads in the Chinese marketplace.

Read the letter from fellow Chinese journalist Liu Xiaobo and tell me if you honestly feel Yahoo should get a pass on this.

I want to express my heartfelt thanks to the investigation of Reporters Without Borders, which offers insight to the whole world, especially the free countries of the West, into two types of ugliness: the ugliness of the CCP, which trades China's business profits for the cooperation of foreign enterprises in China in order to maintain its Internet control and to intimidate political dissidents, and the ugliness of Western enterprises, which bow before the communist dictatorship and trade human rights and business ethics for China's business opportunities. It is a fact that such famous companies as MSN and Google are complicit with the CCP's Internet suppression, but it is hard to say whether these companies have ever gone so far as to betray their customers, as your company has.

More: http://cicus.org/news/newsdetail.php?id=5421

[thefool_wa]

25. His crime is not really the issue

We all know the Chinese have a history of prosecuting crimes we don't consider to be crimes here, so I really make no judgments on the severity of his crime or their determined punishment (other than business as usual in China - it sucks).

I have issue with the idea that an American company operating a subsidiary facility within China is some how not subject to Chinese law. Every worker in that facility is subject to their laws and must abide. When Chinese cops show up demanding information, it matters not where the company was founded, the information is given to them. I stand by my statement that the person who received the original request in Hong Kong was not given an opportunity to decline. They didn't call the American legal department, they called their Chinese legal department and were told to comply.

I will concede, though, that Yahoo's overall purpose is to infiltrate the Chinese market, and to deny this request means the termination of access to their marketplace (so business as usual in corporate america - it sucks).

Their is a more important issue that is dissolved in the stories about Yahoo...the upcoming protest in Tienanmen Square. Yahoo's crime and Shi Tao's sacrifice pale before what could happen there. And we probably won't hear anything about it...

[Twist_U_Up]

16. just deleted my account but....

I want to send them a letter and cant find the contact info on their page . Anyone ?

[DoctorMyEyes]

18. I added a note to the petition

I couldn't find a way to contact Yahoo! either, so I added my comments to the online petition linked from http://www.booyahoo.blogspot.com/

Here's a link to the petition:
http://www.webpetitions.com/cgi-bin/print_petition.cgi?99500108

[Ksec]

21. Meanwhile back in America

Our lovely corporate and government world are busily exporting Americas wealth to build China into a military power second to none. Twenty years from now , after all the corporations bleed the Chinese people dry , the communist government in China will be able to bully its will on the rest of the world. Gotta love capitalism.