Yahoo lied to us says US Congressional committee

Stan Beer
Thursday, 18 October 2007 06:02

Your IT - Home IT

A US Congressional committee has summoned Internet giant Yahoo's CEO Jerry Yang and general counsel Michael Callahan to explain why the company allegedly previously gave false testimony about its role in revealing the identity of a dissident journalist to the Chinese Government.

The journalist, Shi Tao, a Yahoo Mail user, was imprisoned for 10 years by the Chinese Government in 2004 for posting state secrets on the Internet, a common charge levelled at dissidents who criticise the existing regime. Tao's identity was revealed to the Chinese police by Yahoo after an official request was made to hand over details of the dissident in its database.

The problem for Yahoo, according to the House Foreign Affairs Committee and its chairman Tom Lantos, is not that the company complied with Chinese law in helping the local police track down a suspect in a criminal investigation. The Committee claims Yahoo's general counsel Callahan lied to it in a February 2006 hearing about the role of the company in the affair.

In the February 2006 hearing, Callahan is said to have told the Committee that when it received the request from the Chinese police the company had no knowledge of the nature of the investigation.

However, US-based Chinese human rights watchdog The Dui Hua Foundation says the police search warrant now posted on a US-based Chinese language web site reveals that Yahoo's Hong Kong office was made aware of the nature of the investigation when it received the request for the dissident's identity in 2004.

"Addressed to the Beijing representative office of Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd., the April 2004 notice specifies that evidence is being sought in a case of suspected “illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities” (a state security crime under China’s criminal code) and requests the account registration, login times and corresponding IP addresses, and email content over a two-month period in early 2004 for a specific Yahoo! email account, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Court documents have already revealed that this account information was used as evidence in the trial against Shi."

More details are available here   and a copy of the letter in both Chinese with an English translation can be found here .

The revelation of the details of the Chinese warrant appear to contradict Callahan's claim that Yahoo was oblivious to the nature of the investigation.

According to The Dui Hua Foundation, documents in another of four known cases involving Yahoo and the imprisonment of Chinese dissidents dating back to 2002 show conclusively that information provided by the company’s Beijing office was being used as part of Chinese police investigations into political crimes. Details of the cases and the alleged supporting evidence of Yahoo's role can be found here .

Internet providers such as Yahoo are caught between a rock and a hard place when they receive requests from governments to hand over information involving their clients. On the one hand, they are required to comply with local laws. However, in cases where Yahoo has helped a government track down political dissidents, the company has been severely embarrassed. If it comes to light that Yahoo knowingly aided and abetted human rights abuses in China and then lied about it to the US Congress, the embarrassment will deepen further.