Originally published February 23 2006
Yahoo provides personal email information of journalist
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Chinese authorities demanded Yahoo provide the personal email information of a journalist who was later convicted under state secrecy laws. Yahoo said it had to comply with Chinese laws and regulations.
Yahoo had to comply with a demand by Chinese authorities to provide information about a personal e-mail of a journalist who was later convicted under state secrecy laws and sentenced to 10 years in prison, the company's co-founder Jerry Yang said Saturday.
Yang, responding to questions during an internet forum in this eastern Chinese resort city, said he could not discuss the details of the case involving Shi Tao, a former writer for the financial publication Contemporary Business News.
Overseas-based human rights groups disclosed days earlier that Yahoo Holdings (Hong Kong), part of Yahoo's global network, provided e-mail account information that helped lead to Shi's conviction.
The demand for the information was a "legal order" and Yahoo gets such requests from law enforcement agencies all the time, and not just in China, Yang told the forum.
Other Chinese journalists have faced similar charges of violating vague security laws as communist leaders struggle to maintain control of information in the burgeoning internet era.
Despite government information-sharing requirements and other restrictions, Yahoo and its major rivals have been expanding their presence in mainland China in hopes of reaching more of the country's fast-growing population of Internet users, which now number more than 100 million.
New York-based Human Rights in China and the Paris-based international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders sent an open letter addressed to former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who was a keynote speaker at the internet forum, urging him to bring up Shi's case during his visit to China.
"The internet, no matter what political system a country has, and our political system is different from yours, the internet is having significant political and social consequences and they cannot be erased," he said.
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