Congressional Commitee Rips Yahoo Execs 293
A number of readers sent word of the hearing by the US House Foreign Affairs Committee in which committee members raked two Yahoo execs over the coals. "While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies," the committee chairman Tom Lantos, D-Calif., said angrily after hearing from Jerry Yang and Michael Callahan about Yahoo's actions that resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of a Chinese dissident. In 2004 Yahoo turned over information about journalist Shi Tao's online activities requested by Chinese authorities. In Feb. 2006, Yahoo's General Counsel Callahan testified that he had not known the nature of the investigation the authorities were conducting. He later learned that several employees of Yahoo China were aware at the time that the investigation involved "state secrets," but Callahan did not go back to Congress to amend his testimony. Committee members were withering in their disdain for Yahoo's refusal to help Shi Tao's family after his arrest.
PKB (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Morally you are pygmies? Look in the mirror... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yahoo complied with a request from the government of a country that is on friendly terms with the US government for an investigation that involved "state secrets".
Since the US government is taking the position that you have no privacy in your email, ever, and they can read it anytime without getting a warrant, let alone for "National Security" investigations, it's a bit ridiculous to expect US companies to have stricter standards in other countries.
Note that I'm not saying Yahoo is innocent, just that the congresscritters are being hypocritical.
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Yahoo is not required to apply any 'moral' standards - whose morals should they use ?
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad Yahoo, good AT&T (Score:5, Insightful)
Aha. OK. You can put me on your list now.
Dave
Re:PKB (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Morally you are pygmies? Look in the mirror... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure this is redundant already (Score:5, Insightful)
Yahoo! China has to follow the laws of that country, just as we expect Yahoo! U.S. to do so.
Maybe the U.S. Government should issue Letters of Marque to multi-national corporations...
I don't for a second condone what Yahoo! did on moral grounds. However, legally they acted as expected.
all of the pygmies i have known (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Troll my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
How precisely is Yahoo helping making China free by selling out dissidents? Explain precisely how Google is bringing freedom to the masses in China by censoring the Tiananmen Square incidents?
They are colluders, profiteers and immoral traitors to the societies in which they were created. Corporations exist as legal fictions in the industrialized world as a favor to their investors, but I see no reason that if those investors and those they put in positions of authority within the corporate entity decide to piss on the human rights that the industrialized world have taken since the Enlightenment to be inalieable that notions of legal fictions of personhood should stand. I think a consistent threat to strip corporations doing business in other parts of the world of their personhood, making directors and stockholders directly criminally and civily responsible for the actions of their foreign dummy companies would go a looong way. Let the cowards and villains in China's government persecute their own citizens, without the collusion of Western companies.
Make that the price of China doing business with the West.
Re:PKB (Score:4, Insightful)
Do ad-hominem attacks on Lantos (Score:2, Insightful)
Or for that matter, does your opinion of the US Govt make the oppressive Chinese government any better?
Cripes, it's like you're all a bunch of Michael Moore clones or something. US=bad, so everything else = good?
Re:Troll my ass (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Troll my ass (Score:2, Insightful)
As pointed out in the article, Yahoo would have been putting their chinese employees at risk by refusing to turn over the information. Where's the moral superiority there? The only argument that can be made is that they shouldn't do any business at all in China, thereby increasing the separation between chinese citizens and the rest of the world. Unless you think isolation is in the best interest of the Chinese people (eg North Korea).
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
So we should make it illegal for Yahoo! to do in China what we make it illegal for them to not do here?
While I agree that the Chinese government is very much not nice, the same Congress that is chastising -- and threatening punishment -- Yahoo! executives is the same Congress that allowed damned near any government employee to demand the same information about any Yahoo! customer, in the United States, without a warrant, and prohibiting Yahoo! from telling anyone about it.
Every government in the world may operate by "Do what we say, not what we do," but it's still sickening to hear someone complaining about how awful it was that a Chinese citizen was imprisoned and tortured, yet know that that same someone has refused to do anything to stop American citizens from being imprisoned and tortured.
Human rights are for everyone, not just for foreigners.
Re:I don't understand what Yahoo is supposed to do (Score:1, Insightful)
How about not getting in that position in the first place by choosing not to do business in a country with an oppressive regime?
Re:PKB (Score:5, Insightful)
The irony here is that Yahoo's simply following the leadership that our elected leaders demonstrate. If our leaders have a problem with what's going on, they might want to look at how they are leading this nation, rather than hold disingenuous hearings.
So - the kettle/pot comments are appropriate considering the subject matter. And before you go much further condemning Yahoo - Check your belongings. How much of it says "Made in China"?
Re:PKB (Score:5, Insightful)
I think what people are expressing is that the Congress should not expect ethical behavior from corporations when their actions have been ethically questionable and it's their job to regulate the corporations. Clearly in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, congress has allowed privacy and human rights to fall by the wayside worldwide.
Re:I don't understand what Yahoo is supposed to do (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if you take this extreme, then Yahoo! still did the wrong action.
This whole hearing is bad for Yahoo!; weak management who didn't have the full story on something this big, bad publicity in non-China far-east Asia, bad publicity in the tech community around the world, potential new legal regulations in their home country, management has to spend time on this whole issue (now and in the future).
Ignoring morals, this whole thing is bad for shareholders.
Secret Gnomes (Score:4, Insightful)
I love Slashdots almost prescient ability to provide a fortune that bears on the topic. The US is going into the toilet, Bush's war needs to be paid for and that money is going to be coming from US' citizens children for quite some time to come. The government of the US exists within a moral vacuum, nobody asks if something is "right" they just ask if its "legal". From the Patriot Act denying first ammendment rights (you can't tell anyone - even your lawyer or a judge - if you've been served under that act effectively cutting due process out of the loop) to what is torture, waterboarding. I think they should all be lined up against a wall and shot. This would be satisfying but would not likely result in any improvements so something else must be done. The only thing I can think of that has any hope of leading us out of the quagmire is demanding full transparency out of government. So, no "secret" subpeonas, no "secret" detentions, no "secret" trials, no "secret" interrogation techniques, no secrets because thats where evil hides.
Fuck Bush. I think he's leading a great nation into ruin.
Re:PKB (Score:5, Insightful)
Step 2: The bad guys close down their firewalls, but the US, EU, Canada, AU, etc, grow in prosperity and freedom through freedom of speech on the Internet
Step 3: China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran all try to emulate our success, and tear down their firewalls.
The importance of freedom of political speech on the Internet can't be understated. It's the future of the world at stake.
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Nobody here seems to really get it yet. Time for me to explain.
All the vitriol, the accusations, the namecalling, etc. on the part of Congress add up to...nothing. Nada. Zilch. Not a damned thing.
It's part of the game. Congress pulls the Yahoo execs in and questions them about what they're doing and generally gives them a hard time. Why? Because it's on record. It's a cynical attempt on the part of Congress to appear like they actually give a shit about human rights and such.
But make no mistake: it's just a game. Know what's going to happen to the Yahoo execs after all this is said and done? Not a goddamned thing, that's what. Hell, after the hearings are over with, I won't be surprised at all to find these same members of Congress and the Yahoo execs getting together for drinks afterwards and laughing it up.
And those who own and run the big corporations, who really own the government these days as well, like it that way. Which is why this dog and pony show won't have any real effect at all. At least, none that would be of any benefit to anyone other than those in the gilded ruling class.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Article 5. [Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and the highest percentage of people in prison and on death row except for China]
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 8. [Gitmo]
Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.
Article 9. [Gitmo]
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Article 10. [Gitmo]
Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.
Article 12. [Warrantless wire tapping, and the nice comments about email we just heard from the FBI]
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Article 13. [No, you don't have a right to a passport in the US]
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Article 21. [at least 2 million convicted felons are prohibited from voting, even after they finish their sentence]
(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
Now I am not implying that the US--the country I chose to live in--is even close to China/North Korea/etc in oppression, but what happened to REPUBLICAN values?
I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it and see it still.
Ronald Reagan, Farewell Address to the Nation
Oval Office
January 11, 1989
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
How do the sins of this country in any way have a bearing on respecting basic human rights elsewhere?
Re:PKB (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:PKB (Score:3, Insightful)
Think about it.
Re:Troll my ass (Score:2, Insightful)
What's better for a chinese citizen, a Google search that's censored by google as legally required by the government, a chinese company's search result, or no search result? I'm of the opinion that a censored google is better than no google at all.
Maliciously falsified *disinformation* is quite often worse than no information at all.
With no information, you know you don't know shit and can plan accordingly.
Disinformation takes that away from you and gives you wrong information to base your plans on.
So, they are actively working to subvert everybody in China except for the scum that's risen to the top.
Definitely worse that way.