First it was Google agreeing to restrict access to certain web sites in order to gain approval from the Communist government of China to operate there. Now we hear that Yahoo may have helped the Chinese government arrest a dissident.
Reporters Without Borders (RWB) has accused Yahoo! of helping Chinese authorities arrest a cyber-dissident. The press freedom watchdog said that the US-based internet giant has given the authorities in Beijing data on a subscriber in China, Li Zhi, which it said resulted in his arrest and imprisonment. Yahoo! dismissed the accusations, saying that it was unaware of the case.
Meanwhile, when the US government shows up at Google and asks for help procuring non-specific data on web searches—nothing tied to identifying data—in order to help track down terrorists using the Internet, Google says take a hike. How does this make sense?
Freedom is not an American right; it is a universal one
Technorati Tags: China, Communism, Internet, oppression, politics, technology
What Google did is small stuff—maybe even arguably OK—but this is the second occasion on which Yahoo has turned over information on dissidents to Chinese police. Maybe it’s time to dump Yahoo.