Call it a Chinese-on-Chinese crime. Call it ratting out a brother. Call it whatever you want. But it won’t change the fact that Chinese reporter Shi Tao is sitting in a Chinese prison because Yahoo! officials handed over confidential information to the Chinese government implicating the journalist as a traitor. And when I say traitor, I mean by Chinese standards. Back in April, 2004, when Shi worked as a reporter for Contemporary Business News, he received a mass email from the Chinese government mandating that journalists refrain from covering the upcoming 15th anniversary of Tiananmen Square protests. Shi then forwarded the email to an overseas website called Asia Democracy Foundation using his personal Yahoo! email address. When the Chinese government found out about this, they ordered Yahoo! to hand over the email Shi wrote, which the company did without any reservation, and in 2005 Shi was sentenced to 10 years in prison for “leaking state secrets.” Tuesday, Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang (of Taiwanese descent) and the company’s top lawyer Michael Callahan went before a U.S. Congressional committee that rebuked the two officials for not only handing over Shi’s name to the Chinese government, but also for lying to the House Foreign Affairs Committee last year when Callahan claimed Yahoo! had no idea why Beijing needed the information. It turns out some other Yahoo! employees have since testified that Yahoo! had a document that clearly expressed that the information requested by the Chinese government dealt with “suspected illegal provision of state secrets.” So not only is Yahoo! spineless, but it seems they are also liars. Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Tom Lantos told Yang and Callahan, “Yahoo claims that this is just one big misunderstanding. Let me be clear — this was no misunderstanding. This was inexcusably negligent behavior at best, and deliberately deceptive behavior at worst.” Lantos went on to tell Yang, “While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are Pygmies.” Ouch. The worst part of the whole verbal lashing is that the family of Shi Tao was present at the hearing and according to a BBC report, Lantos made Yang and Callahan “beg the forgiveness” of Shi’s mother which they did with a head nod. How embarrassing. It makes you think about how low these tech giants are willing to stoop in order to get a piece of the Chinese market. It should also make you think about switching to Gmail.

•Reuters: Yahoo CEO Slammed Over Chinese Dissident
•BBC: US Rebukes Yahoo Over China Case

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