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Free Liberal: Coordinating towards higher values

Free Liberal

Coordinating towards higher values

The Yahoos at Yahoo

by Paul Jacob

Last year the people who provide the Yahoo search engine helped the Chinese government track down a man named Shi Tao.

Shi is a Chinese dissident who posted information on a foreign website. According to the Times, his posting merely summarized a letter from the Communist Party to media outlets around the country. But the Chinese government doesn't want the world to know the details of how they gag their media.

Shi's posting was anonymous. He should have used an anonymizing software to cloak the address of his computer. Instead, he trusted Yahoo. A mistake.

The Times says that according to documents in the case, "Yahoo provided records that showed that Mr. Shi used a computer at his workplace . . . to gain access to his Yahoo e-mail account. Authorities say the offending e-mail message was sent to the New York Web site from that e-mail account around that time. . . ."

Yahoo has not denied any of this. Just said they must obey local laws and customs of a host country. No matter what those laws and customs might be, and no matter the consequences.

For journalist Shi Tao, the consequences will be ten years in prison.

Yahoo officials imply they had no alternative. But they could have done any number of things instead, from feeding false information to the Chinese to shutting down their operations in the country. Instead, they chose the most shameful path. Like too many software firms operating in China, they are actively helping to censor and repress the Chinese people.

This is Common Sense. I'm Paul Jacob.

Common Sense is published by Americans for Limited Government. Their website can be visited at www.limitedgov.org



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