Yahoo's Role
The incident sparked a controversy about the business practices of Yahoo!, the Hong Kong arm of which provided technical information connecting the message and email account with Shi Tao's computer. Yahoo! was criticized by Reporters Without Borders for acting as a "police informant". Yahoo! was first called to testify about the incident to the House Foreign Affairs Committee of the United States Congress in 2006.
In August 2007, Congress began an investigation into Yahoo!'s handling of the case, with Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang testifying in another hearing before Congress. The congressional panel found that Yahoo!'s 2006 testimony, in which a Yahoo! executive had wrongly claimed the company had been unaware of the reason for China's request for information, had been "inexcusably negligent behaviour at best, and deliberately deceptive behaviour at worst". Chairman Tom Lantos told Yang to "beg the forgiveness" of Shi's mother, who was attending the hearing, and stated that "Much of this testimony reveals that while technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies". Representative Christopher H. Smith stated that there was a "parallel" between Yahoo's actions in the case and businesses that helped Nazi Germany locate Jews during the Holocaust. Yang apologized to Shi's mother and stated that he didn't think any Yahoo! employee "was trying to do anything wrong" and that the company was committed to "protecting and promoting free expression and privacy". He testified that the company was also collaborating with human rights organizations on an industry code of conduct to protect human rights. Yang later met with Shi's family.
Also in 2007, the World Organization for Human Rights filed a lawsuit in San Francisco against Yahoo! for allegedly providing information (emails and IP addresses) to the Chinese government that caused the arrests of journalists Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning. After unsuccessfully seeking to have the suit dismissed, Yahoo! settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.
Prior to a trip by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to China in February 2008, Yang appealed to her to "actively pursue the release of Shi Tao, Wang Xiaoning and other Chinese dissidents who have been imprisoned for exercising internationally recognized rights of expression".
Read more about this topic: Shi Tao
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