Yahoo sells out Chinese blogger

Once again, we see that there are bigger threats to bloggers' rights than campaign finance reform.

Boing Boing reports that Yahoo Inc. sold out a blogger to the Chinese authorities:

Human rights group Reporters Without Borders is reporting that Yahoo! provided Chinese authorities with personally identifying data on yet another of its customers in China. Li Zhi, a 35-year-old resident of Sichuan province, used what he believed to be an anonymous Yahoo account to express his opinions on message boards and chatrooms, and was accused of communicating online with overseas dissidents.

The data Yahoo gave authorities led to his imprisonment for eight years, says RSF -- that would be the second such case involving Yahoo in less than a year (Link to previous Boing Boing posts about Shi Tao, the Chinese journalist jailed for ten years with Yahoo's help).

More on this story from the Washington Post.

This is an issue of immediate concern for all bloggers and internet users. Yahoo isn't just a popular search engine and web portal, the company now owns blog.s, Flickr photosharing, and much more.

If Yahoo is willing to sell bloggers out to governments, presumably they're willing to do so at home as well as abroad.

Comments

[Eli]

I'm reluctant to join up with the American outrage over Yahoo's position on this. The Chinese policy is a bad one, no doubt. But it seems to be asking something unreasonable to expect internet companies to operate transnationally but declare themselves subject only to the authority of some of the countries they operate in.

[neil]

It's worth mentioning that Google, which has taken a lot of flak for being willing to do business in China, refuses to offer any services there which involve personally identifying information. Yahoo should be doing the same.

No, we're not going to offer some Google products, such as Gmail or Blogger, on Google.cn until we're comfortable that we can do so in a manner that respects our users' interests in the privacy of their personal communications.

[Eli]

But is that the superior choice - to simply not offer the services at all? If those are the options, I'm not at all sure which choice is preferable.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

I hope Yahoo was upfront about its privacy policy. If Yahoo made it clear in their terms of service that the company would provide information to the state about anonymous bloggers, then I suppose it would be a borderline acceptable business practice--if the alternative is not providing the service at all.

However, if Yahoo didn't warn its Chinese customers, then the company would effectively be running a sting operation for the Chinese government. That would be unconscionable.

[squashed lemon]

But it seems to be asking something unreasonable to expect internet companies to operate transnationally but declare themselves subject only to the authority of some of the countries they operate in.

Posted by: Eli | February 09, 2006 at 11:07 AM

It's basic trust between a user and it's service provider. If a user doesn't broke any law, or breaking very unjust law, an IT company should not just comply without even asking question.

of course anybody using yahoo account to do heavy duty political work without all sort of proxy and encryption is pretty stupid to begin with.

If somebody is going aginst the system, at least he has to understand how the system works.

[Squashed lemon]

Incidentally, All Majik readers should read those short 'how to, listing simple lists one can take to exchange information securely'. the very least majik readers should be comitting SUCH dumb mistake.

(yeah that also include google, yahoo, typepad accounts etc.)

[typo squashed]

'should not commit'...ehrrrr.... (all these typo will pay off someday. If I do it random enough, no search engine will be able to reconstruct my pattern at all...)

:P

[squashed lemon]

Surveillance Is on the Rise, Straining Carriers

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/06/02/09/145241.shtml

"The number of telephone wiretaps from 2000 to 2004 authorized by state and federal judges increased by 44%, the Wall Street Journal reports, in part because of a rise in terrorism investigations after 9/11, and because the Patriot Act extended surveillance to Internet providers. All the surveillance activity can put a strain on carriers. 'Smaller telecom companies in particular have sought help from outsiders in order to comply with the court-ordered subpoenas, touching off a scramble among third parties to meet the demand for assistance', the WSJ reports, adding, 'Government surveillance has intensified even more heavily overseas, particularly in Europe. Some countries, such as Italy, as well as government and law-enforcement agencies, are able to remotely monitor communications traffic without having to go through the individual service providers. To make it easier for authorities to monitor traffic, some also require registering with identification before buying telephone calling cards or using cybercafes.'"

[John Stith]

While I'm no expert, I do know a bit about these companies we're dealing with and the privacy issues involved. In many way, Yahoo's got some problems with this whole issue.

This makes the second time Yahoo has outed someone to the Chinese government. Microsoft's done it too. But in essence, these businesses do what they can too make money.

A recent incident in France involving an auction of Nazi memorabilia. This stuff is illegal in France. Yahoo claimed it violated their speech to advertise the products in their auction and ran to the U.S. court system to try and bail them out.

This China thing is interesting to me though. Right now, these companies are complying with Chinese companies just like they complied with the U.S. government when they asked to look at their search records(Yahoo and Microsoft did, Google didn't).

Also, this is the same as when AT&T rolled over for the NSA and let them see all their records. While the search engines SAY they didn't give away any personally identifiable info, who to know what they gave away. At the same time, however, if change is to be made in China and people's rights are opened up, do these companies help the process or hinder it. That I'm not sure about.

All in all, I think this looks more at corporate complicity to protect themselves. They don't mind too much if companies cheat on their tax returns, just don't tell anyway. Give us a hand and we'll cover your back. I've got more to say and I might say it later. In the end, these companies are in it for the money. They're not going to jeopardize that under most circumstances. Most of us aren't worth their time on an individual level. That's why the fight one side with France over a fine and kiss China's ass to be able to do business their.

[Rasputin]

We're in bed with the devil when it comes to China...

""Lenin, who spent most of his life in the West and not in Russia, who knew the West much better than Russia, always wrote and said that the Western capitalists would do anything to strengthen the economy of the USSR. He said: They will bring us everything themselves, without thinking about their future. And, in a difficult moment, at a party meeting in Moscow, he said: 'Comrades, don't panic, when things get very though for us, we will give the bourgeoisie a rope, and the bourgeoisie will hang itself.' Then Karl Radek, who was a very resourceful wit,said: 'Vladimir Ilyich, but where are we going to get enough rope to hang the whole bourgeoisie?' Lenin effortlessly replied, ‘They will sell it to us themselves.' " -Alexander Solzhenitsyn, speech to the AFL-CIO, Washington, D.C., June 30, 1975"

[Bill Hooker]

Nart at Internet Censorship Explorer is the go-to guy for the facts behind stories like these.

[John Stith]

That's a pretty darn good quote.

[Philo]

Thanks for the outrage, I was starting to lose faith in progressive bloggers. Practically no one on the left covered the launch of Google.cn -- as if recognizing that Google has taken a major step away from their stated mission and values was somehow a negation of the cool stuff they've put out for us to play with in the past.

The bottom line in my mind, though, is that we're watching China change the values and business practices of American corporations before our very eyes. Yahoo is now guilty of twice (that we know of) providing information that allowed China to jail journalists and cyberdissidents. Microsoft has shut down political blogs in China and Google is actively blocking users in China and Tibet from accessing anything other than CCP propaganda on "politically sensitive topics." All of this after being told for years that the spread of American business into China would liberalize them - yet here we are today with our flagship corporations facilitating tyranny.

Check out more of my rant on Yahoo's informing on Li Zhi here.

Students for a Free Tibet is running a one-day boycott of Google this Valentine's Day. You can check out the site, as well as our email campaigns to executives at Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cisco by visiting NoLuv4Google. Thus far our supporters sent over 42,000 emails to Google's execs and around 2,000 people have joined the Google boycott.

[squashed Lemon]

Posted by: Philo | February 09, 2006 at 11:37 PM

EXACTLY!

capitalism doesn't have any moral value. All it has is bottom line. If it sells more to kill chinese peasants or few dissidents, who cares.

whoever thinks 'free market' will change anything. It's either naive or deliberately making excuse.

[squashed lemon]

Limited Email Surveillance Approved

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/06/02/10/1329231.shtml

CNet reports that some surveillance of your email has been permitted by U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan in Washington, D.C., without first requiring any evidence of wrongdoing. Curiously: 'instead of asking to eavesdrop on the contents of the e-mail messages, which would require some evidence of wrongdoing, prosecutors [of the US Justice Dept.] instead requested the identities of the correspondents. Also included in the request was header information like date and time and Internet address--but not subject lines.'"

[Squashed Lemon]

(whew, google is getting more and more evil.)

EFF Warns Not to Use Google Desktop

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/06/02/10/0114203.shtml

"The EFF is asking users not to use the new version of Google Desktop that has a 'search across computers' option. The option will store copies of documents on your hard drive on Google servers, where the government or anyone who wants to may subpoena (i.e. no search warrants) the information. Google says it is not yet scanning the files for advertising, but it hasn't ruled out the possibility."

[gordo]

Squashed--

I don't think that just anyone can issue a subpoena. If someone has to get a subpoena to look at these records, that's a far cry from a "warrantless search."

Also, I don't think it's fair to call Li Zhi "stupid" for trying to pass information to his fellow countrymen. It's hard for me to imagine that he didn't know he was taking a big risk, and would probably be caught. Would you also call Andrei Sakharov an idiot?

[Squashed Lemon]

Posted by: gordo | February 10, 2006 at 06:11 PM

trust me, he is stupid. (that doesn't mean I don't sympathize with his cause, but the chinese dissident scene knows all the necessary tool to move around detection. He should know how to use all tools before he touches keyboard. )